Captain George, who had long nursed a private quarrel with the arch-disturber of Massachusetts, and chief adviser of the Governor, "cast all the blame now upon that devil, Randolph; for, had it not been for him, he had never troubled this good people;—earnestly soliciting that he might not be constrained to surrender the ship, for by so doing both himself and all his men would lose their wages, which otherwise would be recovered in England; giving leave to go on board, and strike the top-masts, and bring the sails on shore." The arrangement was made, and the necessity for firing on a ship of the royal navy was escaped. The sails were brought on shore, and there put away, and the vessel swung to her anchors off Long Wharf, a harmless and a ridiculous hulk. "The country-people came armed into the town, in the afternoon, in such rage and heat that it made all tremble to think what would follow; for nothing would satisfy them, but that the Governor should be bound in chains or cords, and put in a more secure place, and that they would see done before they went away; and to satisfy them, he was guarded by them to the Fort."
The Fort had been given in charge to Nelson, and Colonel Lidgett shared the Governor's captivity. West, Graham, Palmer, and others of his set, were placed in Fairweather's custody at the Castle. Randolph was taken care of at the common gaol, by the new keeper, "Scates, the bricklayer." Andros came near effecting his escape. Disguised in woman's clothes, he had safely passed two sentries, but was stopped by a third, who observed his shoes, which he had neglected to change. Dudley, the Chief Justice, was absent on the circuit at Long Island. Returning homeward, he heard the great news at Newport. He crossed into the Narragansett Country, where he hoped to keep secret at Major Smith's house; but a party got upon his track, and took him to his home at Roxbury. "To secure him against violence," as the order expresses it, a guard was placed about his house. Dudley's host, Smith, was lodged in gaol at Bristol.
To secure Dudley against popular violence might well be an occasion of anxious care to those who had formerly been his associates in public trusts. Among the oppressors, he it was whom the people found hardest to forgive. If Andros, Randolph, West, and others, were tyrants and extortioners, at all events they were strangers; they had not been preying on their own kinsmen. But this man was son of a brave old emigrant Governor; he had been bred by the bounty of Harvard College; he had been welcomed at the earliest hour to the offices of the Commonwealth, and promoted in them with a promptness out of proportion to the claims of his years. Confided in, enriched, caressed, from youth to middle life by his native Colony beyond any other man of his time, he had been pampered into a power which, as soon as the opportunity was presented, he used for the grievous humiliation and distress of his generous friends. That he had not brought them to utter ruin seemed to have been owing to no want of resolute purpose on his part to advance himself as the congenial instrument of a despot.
A revolution had been consummated, and the government of the King of England over Massachusetts was dissolved. The day after Andros was led to prison, the persons who had been put forward in the movement assembled again to deliberate on the state of affairs. The result was, that several of them, with twenty-two others whom they now associated, formed themselves into a provisional government, which took the name of a "Council for the Safety of the People and Conservation of the Peace." They elected Simon Bradstreet, the last Charter Governor, now eighty-seven years of age, to be their President, and Wait Winthrop, grandson of the first Governor, to command the Militia. Among the orders passed on the first day of this new administration was one addressed to Colonel Tyng, Major Savage, and Captains Davis and Willard, serving in the Eastern Country, to send certain officers to Boston, and dismiss a portion of their force. There was probably a threefold purpose in this order: to get possession of the persons of some distrusted officers; to gratify a prevailing opinion that the exposures of the campaign had been needless as well as cruel; and to obtain a reinforcement of skilled troops at the centre of affairs.
The Council felt the weakness of their position. They held their place neither by deputation from the sovereign, nor by election of the people. They hesitated to set up the Colonial Charter again, for it had been formally condemned in the King's courts, and there was a large party about them who bore it no good-will; nor was it to be expected that their President, the timid Bradstreet, whatever were his own wishes, could be brought to consent to so bold a measure. Naturally and not improperly desirous to escape from such a responsibility, they decided to summon a Convention of delegates from the towns.
On the appointed day, sixty-six delegates came together. They brought from their homes, or speedily reached, the conclusion that of right the old Charter was still in force; and they addressed a communication to that effect to the Magistrates who had been chosen just before the Charter government was superseded, desiring them to resume their functions, and to constitute, with the delegates just now sent from the towns, the General Court of the Colony, according to ancient law and practice. Their request was denied. Either the wisdom or the timidity of the Magistrates held them back from so bold a venture. The delegates then desired the Council to continue to act as a Committee of Public Safety till another Convention might assemble, of delegates bringing express instructions from their towns.
Fifty-four towns were represented in the new Convention. All but fourteen of them had instructed their delegates to insist on the resumption of the Charter. In the Council, the majority was opposed to that scheme. After a debate of two days, the popular policy prevailed, and the Governor and Magistrates chosen at the last election under the Charter consented to assume the trusts then committed to them, and, in concert with the delegates recently elected, to form a General Court, and administer the Colony for the present according to the ancient forms. They desired that the other gentlemen lately associated with them in the Council should continue to hold that relation. But this the delegates would not allow; and accordingly those gentlemen, among whom were Wait Winthrop, the newly appointed commander-in-chief, and Stoughton, whom the people could not yet forgive for his recent subserviency, relinquished their part in the conduct of affairs. They did so with prudence and magnanimity, engaging to exert themselves to allay the dissatisfaction of their friends, and only avowing their expectation that the state-prisoners would be well treated, and that there should be no encouragement to popular manifestations of hostility to England.
Scarcely had this arrangement been made, when it became known, that, if dangers still existed, at least the chief danger was over. On the twenty-sixth of May a ship arrived from England with an order to the authorities on the spot to proclaim King William and Queen Mary. Never, since the Mayflower groped her way into Plymouth harbor, had a message from the parent-country been received in New England with such joy. Never had such a pageant as, three days after, expressed the prevailing happiness been seen in Massachusetts. From far and near the people flocked into Boston; the Government, attended by the principal gentlemen of the capital and the towns around, passed in procession on horseback through the thoroughfares; the regiment of the town, and companies and troops of horse and foot from the country, lent their pomp and noise to the show; there was a great dinner at the Town-House for the better sort; wine was served out in the streets; and the evening was made noisy with acclamations till the bell rang at nine o'clock, and families met to thank God at the domestic altar for causing the great sorrow to pass away, and giving a Protestant King and Queen to England.
The revolution in Massachusetts determined the proceedings in the other Colonies of New England. On learning what had been done in Boston, the people of Plymouth seized the person of their townsman, Nathaniel Clark, one of Andros's Counsellors and tools, and, recalling Governor Hinckley, set up again the ancient government. When the news reached Rhode Island, a summons was issued to "the several towns," inviting them to send their "principal persons" to Newport "before the day of usual election by Charter, ... there to consult of some suitable way in this present juncture." Accordingly, at a meeting held on the day appointed by the ancient Charter for annual elections, it was determined "to reassume the government according to the Charter," and "that the former Governor, Deputy-Governor, and Assistants that were in place ... before the coming over of Sir Edmund Andros, the late Governor, should be established in their respective places for the year ensuing, or further order from England." Walter Clarke was the Governor who had been superseded by Andros. But he had no mind for the hazardous honor which was now thrust upon him, and Rhode Island remained without a Governor.
On the arrival in Connecticut of the news of the deposition of Andros, the plan of resuming the Charter of that Colony, and reëstablishing the government under it, was immediately canvassed in all the settlements. Agreeably to some general understanding, a number of principal men, most of them elected as Deputies by their respective towns, assembled, on the eighth of May, at Hartford, to consult together on the expediency of taking that step. They determined to submit, the next day, to the decision of the assembled freemen three questions, namely: 1. "Whether they would that those in place and power when Sir Edmund Andros took the government should resume their place and power as they were then; or, 2. Whether they would continue the present government; or, 3. Whether they would choose a Committee of Safety."