The Fall of New Netherland and Seventeenth-Century Anglo

The Fall of New Netherland and Seventeenth-Century Anglo-American Imperial Formation, 1654–1676 Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/tneq/article-pdf/87/4/666/1793661/tneq_a_00417.pdf by guest on 23 September 2021 l. h. roper

N 27 August 1664,1 an English force compelled the New O World Dutch town of New Amsterdam to capitulate to eight commissioners led by Sir Richard Nicolls and including Sir Robert Carr, Sir George Cartwright, Connecticut Gover- nor John Winthrop Jr., and New England colonists Thomas Clarke, Samuel Maverick, John Pynchon, and Samuel Wyllys. Having been duly charged by King Charles II, Nicolls, Carr, Cartwright, and Maverick then executed the takeover of the rest of New Netherland, after which they proceeded to investi- gate a series of intercolonial disputes across a region stretching from Maine to Delaware Bay, an expansive territory Charles had granted as a proprietorship to his brother James Stuart, duke of York.

I would like to thank Sarah Barber, Evan Haefeli, Lauric Henneton, Jaap Jacobs, Dennis J. Maika, David L. Smith, attendees at sessions of the 2012 meeting of the British Group in Early American History and the Medieval and Early Modern Studies Colloquium at SUNY–New Paltz, and the anonymous readers of the New England Quarterly for their help with this article, the Ofﬁce of Academic Affairs at the State University of New York–New Paltz for defraying the costs of archival research in England, Martine van Ittersum for graciously supplying documents from the microﬁlm edition of the Winthrop Family Papers, and the Massachusetts Historical Society for permission to cite those documents. I would also like to thank Linda Smith Rhoads for her scrupulous editorial attention. 1Dates from the sources are rendered “Old Style” in accordance with the calendar in effect in seventeenth-century England and its colonies (the capitulation took place on 8 September 1664 under the Gregorian calendar in effect in the Dutch Republic and its colonies) but with the year beginning on 1 January.

666 ANGLO-AMERICAN IMPERIAL FORMATION 667 Characterizing the significance of this episode within the context of English imperial history seems straightforward enough: for the first time the English state conducted a successful military operation in North America; and for the first time it designated officials to report to imperial institutions, themselves newly constituted, for possible action by the center. Megan Lindsay Cherry recently restated the long-standing view that Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/tneq/article-pdf/87/4/666/1793661/tneq_a_00417.pdf by guest on 23 September 2021 the capture of New Netherland reflected, in conjunction with an effort “to stop the spread of [New England’s] infectious independence,” the Restoration government’s “policy of consolidating control over its North American empire.” Christian Koot, in his examination of the seventeenth-century English Em- pire, similarly concludes that the seizure of the Dutch colony and the Nicolls commission’s activities signaled “the process by which a new idea of an exclusive British empire displaced the seventeenth century’s interimperial Atlantic community.” Yet, Koot claims, Restoration “officials could not extend their fiscal-military state across the Atlantic until locals eschewed their cross-national, flexible origins and chose to conform to new imperial standards.”2 Since the “grand atavistic visions” of metropolitan imperialists “clashed with those of the English small-planter regimes already established in North America,” Daniel Richter argues in a recent survey of pre-independence North America, late Stu- art attempts at “state building and imperial expansion” faltered due to, on the one hand, the incompetence of policy advocates and, on the other, colonists’ successful adaptation to new imperial circumstances.3 As David Hall explains, “the arrival of

2Megan Lindsay Cherry, “The Imperial and Political Motivations behind the English Conquest of New Netherland,” Dutch Crossing 34 (March 2010): 77–94 at 78–79,and Christian J. Koot, Empire at the Periphery: British Colonists, Anglo-Dutch Trade, and the Development of the British Atlantic, 1621–1713 (New York: New York University Press, 2011), p. 5. 3Daniel K. Richter, Before the Revolution: America’s Ancient Pasts (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011), pp. 241–56 at 241, 242. The standard account of the takeover, from which Richter’s survey of pre-independence American history derives, remains Robert C. Ritchie, The Duke’s Province: A Study of New York Politics and Society, 1664–1691 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977), pp. 9–24. For more measured views of James II, see Scott Sowerby, Making Toleration: The 668 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY four commissioners dispatched by the government of Charles II to terminate the colonists’ de facto independence from En- gland” threatened the “rights or privileges” of New England’s freemen. As the freemen saw it, the constitution of their ancient church accorded them the right “first and foremost . . . to install popular participation, consent, and ‘Fundamental’ law at the heart of civil governance, and second . . . to create a Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/tneq/article-pdf/87/4/666/1793661/tneq_a_00417.pdf by guest on 23 September 2021 purified church, the Congregational Way.”4 Just beneath the surface of Cherry’s, Koot’s, Richter’s, and Hall’s various characterizations lingers an age-old comprehen- sion of Anglo-American history as a benchmark of modernity, the key elements of which, in this view, include “state building” or “state formation” and the progress of liberty: seventeenth- century colonists—New Englanders specifically—successfully (in general) resisted the encroachments of a centralizing state— especially the governments of Charles II (r. 1660–85)andJames II (r. 1685–88)—on their particular liberties. The prevailing in- terpretation has correspondingly relegated the aforementioned James Stuart, often identified as the chief English proponent of Louis XIV–style “absolutism,” to Clio’s dunghill as the losing party in the “Glorious Revolution” of 1688–89.5 The modernization thesis tends, however, to overestimate the interest in and capacity for pursuing “a centralized overseas territorial empire,” let alone “a modern absolutist state,” on the part of late

Repealers and the Glorious Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013), pp. 1–55; John Callow, The Making of King James II: The Formative Years of a Fallen King (Stroud, Gloucester, U.K.: Sutton Publishing, 2000), pp. 7–21, and John Miller, James II (1978; New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000). 4David D. Hall, A Reforming People: Puritanism and the Transformation of Public Life in New England (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011), p. 191. 5J. C. D. Clark, “Secularization and Modernization: The Failure of a ‘Grand Narra- tive,’” Historical Journal 55 (March 2012): 161–94,doi:10.1017/S0018246X11000586. The case of New Netherland/New York supports to a degree Robert Bliss’s claim that an understanding of the “politics of empire,” which incorporates the reality of “colonial dependence,” must “supplant” both the “debate over the sources of English ‘imperial policy’” in the seventeenth century and the view that the Restoration “marked a central turning point (or a useful starting point) for imperial history” (Revolution and Empire: English Politics and the American Colonies in the Seventeenth Century [Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1993], pp. 3–4). Remarkably, Bliss’s study offers no discussion of the run-up to the capture of New Netherland. ANGLO-AMERICAN IMPERIAL FORMATION 669 Stuart governments.6 The characterization also misapprehends the degree to which that state could and did assume respon- sibility for “imperial policy” as well as, more signiﬁcantly, the degree to which colonists resisted sociopolitical developments ostensibly orchestrated from London, and, accordingly, the degree to which the nature of Anglo-American imperial politics Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/tneq/article-pdf/87/4/666/1793661/tneq_a_00417.pdf by guest on 23 September 2021 in the third quarter of the seventeenth century can be styled as “colonial versus imperial.” To comprehend the English imperial enterprise properly, then, we must assess its achievements and failures within the context of seventeenth-century England’s political culture, where the interests of the state required, at the least, the cooperation of local leaders. In the case of empire, “success,” even after the Restoration, arose from the activities of “private” individuals—such as Martin Noell, Thomas Povey, and Maurice Thompson—in conjunction with the metropolitan as- sociations they formed. These men—whose perspectives and interests transcended “colonial” or “imperial,” “merchant” or “planter” and ranged from the East Indies to West Africa to the West Indies to Hudson’s Bay—supported, even provided the impetus for, the state’s greater role in imperial affairs that was palpable after 1649. There is evidence to suggest, for example, that they had a hand in establishing a council for foreign plantations, which protected and advanced their interests.7 Povey, whose colonial concerns originated with plantations on Barbados, took charge of imperial affairs from September 1658 (after Cromwell’s death) through May 1660 (the Restoration),

6Steve Pincus, 1688: The First Modern Revolution (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009), p. 6. 7[Thomas Povey], “Proposition for a Council for the Plantations to be selected from the Privy Council, with a permanent secretary, [1660], Egerton Ms. 2395,fol. 276, British Library (BL). See also Steve Pincus, “Rethinking Mercantilism: Political Economy, the British Empire, and the Atlantic World in the Seventeenth and Eigh- teenth Centuries,” along with responses by Cathy Matson, Christian J. Koot, Susan D. Amussen, Trevor Burnard, and Margaret Ellen Newell, in “Forum: Rethinking Mer- cantilism,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 69 (January 2012): 3–70.Forthe sociopolitical character of early modern England and its colonies prior to the Civil Wars (1642–51), see Michael Braddick, State Formation in Early Modern England, c. 1550–1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 397–419,andPhil Withington, Society in Early Modern England: The Vernacular Origins of Some Pow- erful Ideas (Cambridge, U.K., and Malden, Mass.: Polity Press, 2010), pp. 215–31. 670 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY and he was likely responsible for reconfiguring the imperial administration in 1660. Noell also initiated his career on Bar- bados, which became the platform from which he mounted his wider activities. The shadowy Thompson, whose extensive interests conflicted with those of the Dutch, consistently advo- cated an anti-Dutch policy. He took a leading role, for example, in drafting the first Navigation Acts in 1651, which sought to Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/tneq/article-pdf/87/4/666/1793661/tneq_a_00417.pdf by guest on 23 September 2021 bar Dutch shipping from English colonies.8 The progress of the careers of Povey, Noell, and Thompson, as well as of those involved in the case of New Netherland considered here, suggest that state consolidation as directed by the state postdated the Civil War period (1642–51), the Inter- regnum (1649–60), and the Restoration. Indeed, even during the reign of William III and Mary II (1689–1702), the “process of economic policy-making” remained, as Tim Keirn has noted, “extremely fragmentary and usually instigated by private interest groups without government coordination (except, notably, in revenue matters). In this sense, the state’s interest in economic affairs was ‘reactive’; it took little interest in directing economic

8For Povey, who also served as York’s treasurer and receiver-general between 1660 and 1668 after having served the Protectorate and Council of State, see Register of Letters Relating to the West Indies, 1655–1661, Add. Ms. 11411, BL; AO 1/309, fol. 1218 and E 351,fol.357, The National Archives (NA), Kew, Richmond, Surrey, U.K.; and [Povey], Proposition for a Council for the Plantations. For the establishment of imperial institutions after the Restoration, see Order appointing a Committee for Plantation Affairs, 4 July 1660,inDocuments Relative to the Colonial History of New York (DRCHNY), ed. E. B. O’Callaghan and B. Fernow, 15 vols. (Albany, N.Y.: Weed, Parsons, and Co., 1853–87), 3:30. For Noell, see East India Company in London to the Agent and factors at Fort Cormontine, 16 July 1658 and 8 November 1659,inTrade on the Guinea Coast, 1657–1666: The Correspondence of the English East India Company, ed. Margaret Makepeace (Madison, Wisc.: African Studies Program, 1991), pp. 15– 17, 42–46, and The Humble Petition of Martin Noel and William Watts merchants in the behalf of themselves and others interested with them, [1656?], Egerton Ms. 2395,fols.107–13, BL. For Thompson, see Lancelot Stavely at Fort Cormantine to Maurice Thomson, Samuel Vassall, and John Wood of the Guinea Company in London, 1 May 1658, in Makepeace, Trade on the Guinea Coast, pp. 9–10;Captain John Blake to the Guinea Company, 15 February 1651/2,inDocuments Illustrative of the Slave Trade to America, ed. Elizabeth Donnan, 4 vols. (1930; repr. New York: Octagon Books, 1965), 1:134–36; and Agreement of the Company of Nova Scotia for carrying on a trade there, from: “America and West Indies: May 1658,” ed. W. Noel Sainsbury, Calendar of State Papers Colonial, Volume 1: 1574–1660, pp. 465–66, http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=69326 (accessed 29 March 2013). For Thompson and the Navigation Acts, see J. E. Farnell, “The Navigation Act of 1651, the First Dutch War, and the London Merchant Community,” Economic History Review, n.s., 16 (April 1964): 439–54. ANGLO-AMERICAN IMPERIAL FORMATION 671 affairs and acted only when spurred by the initiatives of interested groups and individuals from London and the provinces.” We need only add “and colonies” to complete Keirn’s analysis.9 A rationale for the value of doing so—that is, for recalibrating the way we approach the monarchy’s post-Restoration relationship to its “possessions”—is set forth in what follows. Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/tneq/article-pdf/87/4/666/1793661/tneq_a_00417.pdf by guest on 23 September 2021

English Restoration Imperialism and the Case of the Dutch From the metropolitan perspective, “Restoration imperialism” had decidedly mixed results. As the Nicolls expedition crossed the Atlantic, York—so far was he from seeking to consolidate central authority overseas—hived off a chunk of his proprietorship ranging from the Hudson to the Delaware Rivers and granted it as a separate proprietorship to his old friends Sir John Berkeley and Sir George Carteret. Even so, when considered in conjunction with the capture of Jamaica from Spain (1655–60), the acquisition of Tangier in Morocco (1662), and the creation of the Carolina proprietorship (1663), the seizure of New Netherland would seem to suggest both a greater sense of imperial purpose and the ability to carry out that purpose during the period surrounding the “return” of Charles II to the English throne in May 1660. Moreover, the Restoration government clearly sought—or was encouraged— to take stock of colonial affairs. Regardless of from whence the urge to advance imperial interests came, the English imperial reach in the seventeenth century was decidedly limited, as has long been recognized. For instance, the Cromwellian “Western Design” of 1655 against Santo Domingo failed wretchedly. The ensuing effort to wrest Jamaica as a consolation prize took another ﬁve years to ac- complish, a success achieved only because the government of Felipe IV decided to abandon the island rather than continue

9Tim Keirn, “Monopoly, economic thought, and the Royal African Company,” in Early Modern Conceptions of Property, ed. John Brewer and Susan Staves (London and New York: Routledge, 1995), pp. 427–64. 672 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY to resist English occupation of it.10 Unable to relieve the continuing Moroccan harassment of Tangier, the English withdrew from the port in humiliation in 1684, and New York itself was recaptured by the Dutch in 1673. Although the English re- gained it the following year, the Dutch retained Suriname, the tropical prospects of which, especially in terms of the slave trade, made it economically more attractive as well as mili- Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/tneq/article-pdf/87/4/666/1793661/tneq_a_00417.pdf by guest on 23 September 2021 tarily more defensible than the North American province. An American-centered outlook on the overseas exploits of an allegedly increasingly potent English state tends, then, to obscure the generally miserable consequences of its involvement in the Anglo-Dutch Wars, viz. expulsion from the South American mainland, from the Gold Coast, and, most important, from the Spice Islands.11 Notwithstanding attempts to characterize seventeenth- century Anglo-American colonies and an “Atlantic World” as places distinguished by “boundary crossing” and “interimperial” activity, many English people regarded the Dutch as unwanted competitors in the pursuit of commercial and territorial ad- vantage. Hostility over the fur trade and various land claims, for example, dated from the 1630s and continued through the Third Anglo-Dutch War (1672–74).12 In 1651, the imperialist thinker Benjamin Worsley warned the Council of State that Dutch aims “to laie a foundation to themselves for ingrossing the Universal Trade, not onely of Christendom, but indeed of the greater part of the known world” now approached the long- standing “Design of Spain” to secure “the Universal Monarchie of Christendom” as the gravest threat to English overseas interests. As Anglo-Dutch relations soured after 1650, when English

10Irene A. Wright, “The Spanish Resistance to the English Occupation of Jamaica, 1655–1660,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 4th ser., 13 (1930): 117–47. 11Vincent C. Loth, “Armed Incidents and Unpaid Bills: Anglo-Dutch Rivalry in the Banda Islands in the Seventeenth Century,” Modern Asian Studies 29 (October 1995): 705–40. 12Lauric Henneton, “The House of Hope in the Valley of Discord: Connecti- cut Geopolitics beyond ‘Anglo-Dutch’ Relations (1613–1654),” in The Worlds of the Seventeenth-Century Hudson Valley, ed. Jaap Jacobs and L. H. Roper (Albany: SUNY Press, 2014), pp. 169–94,andThe Second Part of the Tragedy of Amboyna : Or, A True Relation of a Most Bloody, Treacherous, and Cruel Design of the Dutch in the New-Netherlands in America (London: Printed for Thomas Matthews, 1653). ANGLO-AMERICAN IMPERIAL FORMATION 673 overtures to form a union of the two republics (under English domination) were rebuffed and the Navigation Acts and the First Anglo-Dutch War (1652–54) ensued, anti-Dutch colonists lobbying for their agendas found themselves welcomed in the metropolis.13 In North America, although the 1650 Hartford Treaty had supposedly demarcated colonial boundaries, New England con- Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/tneq/article-pdf/87/4/666/1793661/tneq_a_00417.pdf by guest on 23 September 2021 tinued its “invasions, intrusions, and usurpations” against New Netherland. No English government rubber-stamped this colonial agreement, however, so Dutch claims to the western half of Long Island and to territory east of the Hudson/North River remained in dispute. When war broke out between En- gland and the Dutch Republic in 1652, the enemies of the Dutch in America used their connections to solicit approval from Cromwell’s government for a full-scale strike against New Netherland as well as the resources to mount it, which included two hundred men as well as the ships to transport them to Man- hattan. In due course, a force commanded by colonials John Leverett and Robert Sedgwick assembled to attack the Dutch colony, but by that time, the war had ended, and the men turned their attentions toward French Acadia.14 The Restoration did little to disrupt the status quo ante, largely because, despite the political convulsions of the previ- ous two decades, a number of key players retained their authority. Notable among them was Sir George Downing, cousin of the younger Winthrop and English representative at The Hague from 1657 to 1671, who with notorious ease transitioned

13[Benjamin Worsley], The Advocate: or, A Narrative of the state and condition of things between the English and Dutch Nation, in relation to Trade, and the consequences depending thereupon, to either Common-wealth (London: William Dugard, 1651), p. 1. See also Thomas Leng, Benjamin Worsley (1618–1677): Trade, Interest and the Spirit in Revolutionary England (Woodbridge, U.K.: Boydell and Brewer, 2008). 14Jaap Jacobs, “The Hartford Treaty of 1650: European Perspective on a New World Conflict,” De Halve Maen 68 (Winter 1995): 74–79, and Francis J. Bremer, Building a New Jerusalem: John Davenport, a Puritan in Three Worlds (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2012), pp. 246–48. For the expedition, see Major Robert Sedgwicke to the Protector, 1 July 1654, and Mr. John Leverett to the Protector, 4 July 1654, in “State Papers, 1654:July(1 of 7), A collection of the State Papers of John Thurloe,” vol. 2: 1654, ed. Thomas Birch, pp. 419–20, 425–26, British History Online, http://www.british-history.ac.uk/source.aspx?pubid=610 (accessed 23 July 2013). 674 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY from scourge of royalist exiles during the Protectorate to loyal Crown servant. Moreover, Charles II and his lord chancellor, the earl of Clarendon, inherited a continuing set of issues with the Dutch: viz., the interminable delay in handing over the East Indian island of Pulau Run pursuant to the terms of the 1654 peace; the irregular compliance with the obligation that Dutch ships dip their flags to their English counterparts; ram- Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/tneq/article-pdf/87/4/666/1793661/tneq_a_00417.pdf by guest on 23 September 2021 pant smuggling operations in the Chesapeake, for which New Amsterdam provided the base, and in the West Indies; and the exclusion of competitors from the East Indies and West Africa, all underpinned by a hypocritical—to English minds— insistence on mare liberum. At the same time, Charles and his advisors decided to back Louis XIV in his conflicts with Spain. The Dutch Republic’s determination to reinforce Habsburg control over the Spanish Netherlands against Louis’s desire to seize them, the Stuart distaste for the Dutch republican form of government, and Charles’s concern about the political status of his young nephew, William of Orange, who was barred from his hereditary office of stadhouder between 1650 and 1672, aggravated Anglo-Dutch animosities.15 The government encountered certain constraints, of course, in bringing itself to bear upon its rivals across the North Sea. Fiscal realities obliged, for instance, that Dunkirk be offloaded to France in 1662. Practicalities, however, did not prevent Charles’s government from maintaining a relatively ambitious anti-Dutch policy: in addition to revamping the Navigation Acts in 1660, it pursued an alliance with Portugal, then in its final stages of wresting its independence from Habsburg control.

15See, e.g., Sir George Downing to The Lord Chancellor Clarendon, 21 June/1 July 1661, Downing to Clarendon, 15 July 1661 (n.s.), Clarendon to Downing, 16 August 1661, Downing to Clarendon, 18 September 1663,inLife and Administration of Edward, Earl of Clarendon with Original Correspondence and Authentic Papers Never Before Published, ed.T.H.Lister,3 vols. (London: Longman, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1837), 3:144–48, 152–55, 166–69, 249–53; Charles II to Dutch Ambassadors, 26 June 1661,inCalendar of the Clarendon State Papers Preserved in the Bodleian Library, ed. F. J. Routledge, 5 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), vol. 5 (1660–1726), p. 110; and Desires of the East India Company to the Lords Commissioners appointed to treat with the Dutch, [February 1661], ed. Ethel Bruce Sainsbury, A Calendar of the Court Minutes etc. of the East India Company, 1660–1663 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1922), pp. 86–88. ANGLO-AMERICAN IMPERIAL FORMATION 675 This agreement, concluded in 1661, brought the king a wife, Catherine of Braganza, whose dowry included Tangier, which, given its location at the western end of the Strait of Gibraltar, some figures regarded as something of a prospective jewel in an expanding (especially at the expense of the Dutch) imperial crown. That Tangier might also serve to advance English slav- ing interests, especially by supplying slaves for transshipment Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/tneq/article-pdf/87/4/666/1793661/tneq_a_00417.pdf by guest on 23 September 2021 to Barbados and the Spanish colonies, also did not escape the government’s attention.16 A number of Englishmen, including the duke of York, had become increasingly aware that the Dutch were extracting sub- stantial wealth from their commerce along the Atlantic coast of Africa. Little persuasion was required to convince English officials of the potential: as early as 18 December 1660, the Crown, recognizing “how necessary it is to the honour and profit of this our Realme of England that the said trade, and also such others as are hereby intended to be granted should be vigourously prosecuted,” granted monopoly powers over the “Guinea trade” to York and a Company of Royal Adventurers Trading into Africa. The campaigns that Robert Holmes conducted against Dutch interests on the Gold Coast between March 1661 and the summer of 1664 offer further evidence of England’s attrac- tion to this commerce.17 Meanwhile, certain North American English colonies continued to pursue their own imperial designs. As early as 3 November 1654, Connecticut colonists purchased from the In- dians lands on the Dutch side of the Hartford treaty line all the way to the Hudson. Two months later, the New Haven General Court authorized the renewal of that colony’s coloniza- tion efforts, which dated back over a decade, along Delaware Bay. From the summer of 1659 to the spring of 1660,asthe First Esopus War (1659–60) preoccupied the Dutch colony,

16Charles II to Lord Willoughby of Parham, governor of Barbados, 22 December 1663,CO1/17,fol.257, NA, and Tristan Stern, “Tangier in the Restoration Empire,” Historical Journal 54 (December 2011): 985–1011. 17Copie of ye Royall Companyes Patent, [10 January 1663], CO 1/17,fols.2–18 at 14r, and Petition of the Company of Royal Adventurers in England Trading into Africa, 26 August 1663,SP44/13,fol.355,bothinNA. 676 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY Pynchon, the Connecticut River Valley’s leading English fur trader when he appeared at the transfer of New Amsterdam, spearheaded a settlement on Wappingers Creek (in modern- day Dutchess County, New York). The settlement’s backers, according to New Netherland’s veteran director-general Petrus Stuyvesant, intended to “hold” the land there and “divert” the Hudson River beaver trade to Massachusetts. Stuyvesant’s op- Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/tneq/article-pdf/87/4/666/1793661/tneq_a_00417.pdf by guest on 23 September 2021 position to the colony, and his attendant insistence on maintaining Dutch claims to the Hudson River Valley, threatened war between New Netherland and New England, according to the Reverend John Davenport at New Haven. On 17 May 1660, Connecticut’s General Court absorbed the Long Island town of Huntington, as it had done earlier with the more easterly Southampton.18

18For the Connecticut settlement in Westchester, which Stuyvesant forced to submit to Dutch authority, see J. Thomas Scharf, History of Westchester County, New York, including Morrisania, Kings Bridge, and West Farms, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: L. E. Preston & Co., 1886), 1:25–26; Protest against Thomas Pell for Settling on Lands Belonging to the Dutch with Notice to Quit, 19 April 1655 (n.s.), Application of the Fiscal, Recapitulating Pell’s Intrusion at Westchester etc. and requesting that he be ordered to quit, 15 March 1656 (n.s.), and Petition of Thomas Wheeler and Other Settlers of Westchester, submitting to the Government of New Netherland and asking for certain privileges, which are granted, 16 March 1656, all in DRCHNY, 13:38–39, 64–66. For the New Haven patent on the Delaware, see Records of the Colony or Juris- diction of New Haven, from May, 1653 to the Union, ed. Charles J. Hoadly (Hartford: Case, Lockwood, and Company, 1858), pp. 127–32. For New Haven’s pursuit of its Delaware claims, which continued until the colony was absorbed by Connecticut and cost, its governor claimed, $1,000, see, e.g., The humble petition of Jasper Graine William Tuttill and many others the Inhabitants of Newhaven and Totokett and Commissioners of the United Colonies to the Dutch Governor, 5 September 1651, in vol. 1 (1643–1651)ofActs of the Commissioners of the United Colonies of New England, 1643–1679, ed. David Pulsifer (Boston: Wm. White, 1859), pp. 210–15 (my thanks to Lauric Henneton for this reference); Theophilus Eaton and New Haven Court (in English) to Johan Risingh, 6 July 1654, Handel och Sjofart¨ 194,Rik- sarkivet (National Archives of Sweden), Stockholm, fiche 15 (unfoliated), reprinted in C. A. Weslager, English on the Delaware, 1610–1682 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1967), pp. 265–66; William Leete to John Winthrop Jr., 6 August 1661, Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society (MHS Collections), 4th ser., vol. 7 (Boston: The Society, 1865), pp. 548–50. For the Wappingers settlement effort and Stuyvesant’s opposition to it, see John Pynchon to John Winthrop Jr., 20 January 1660,inThe Pynchon Papers, Volume I: Letters of John Pynchon, 1654–1700, ed. Carl Bridenbaugh (Boston: Colonial Society of Massachusetts, 1982), pp. 29–30 at 30; Minutes of the Court of Fort Orange, 4 August 1659, Extract from a Let- ter of Director Stuyvesant and Council to the Directors in Holland, 4 September 1659, Extract from a Letter of Director Stuyvesant to the Directors in Holland, [October 1659] (n.s.), Extract from a letter of the Directors in Holland to Director ANGLO-AMERICAN IMPERIAL FORMATION 677 At the Restoration, Connecticut staked out a particularly au- dacious program. First and foremost, it sought to legitimize its existence. Founded when a disaffected Thomas Hooker and his followers left Massachusetts in 1636, Connecticut (unlike Massachusetts) lacked a royal charter. No legal authority had established its boundaries, preserved its liberties, and provided for its government. The colony’s leaders saw an opportunity to Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/tneq/article-pdf/87/4/666/1793661/tneq_a_00417.pdf by guest on 23 September 2021 encourage Charles II to define their colony as they did, that is, to include within its precincts the Narragansett Country (at Rhode Island’s expense), along with New Haven, Long Island, and New Netherland. On the face of things, however, Con- necticut’s agenda was up against a serious obstacle: the colony was inhabited by “puritans,” who were presumably fiercely hos- tile to the Stuart monarchy. Would the restored king really extend his favor to those who seemed uncomfortably akin to the perpetrators of the recent usurpation? Still, the prospects for Connecticut’s success were rather brighter than might be supposed. As he had promised in the Declaration of Breda, issued just before negotiations were com- pleted for the return of the monarchy, Charles II took pains to effect a reconciliation between king and subjects. The makeup of the Council for Foreign Plantations accordingly demon- strated the king’s willingness to reach out to former foes, for it included such personalities as Edward Montagu, earl

Stuyvesant, 9 March 1660 (n.s.), Extract from a letter of Director Stuyvesant to the Directors in Holland, 21 April 1660 (n.s.), DRCHNY, 13:101, 107–8 at 107, 123–26 at 126, 149–150 at 150, 162–63 at 162; and John Davenport to John Winthrop Jr., 20 April 1660, MHS Collections, 4th ser., 7:511–13. The operations of Pynchon and his father, William, based in Springfield, Massachusetts, competed with those of the Dutch at Fort Orange for some forty years; see Ruth A. McIntyre, “John Pynchon and the New England Fur Trade, 1652–1676,” in The Pynchon Papers, Volume II: Selections from the Account Books of John Pynchon, 1561–1697, ed. Carl Bridenbaugh and Juliette Tomlinson (Boston: Colonial Society of Massachusetts, 1985), pp. 3–70 at 50–60. For Connecticut’s absorption of Huntington, see The Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut, ed. J. Hammond Trumbull and Charles J. Hoadly, 15 vols. (Hartford: Brown & Parsons, 1850)(Connecticut Records), 1:348; Huntington’s admission to the Hartford government was confirmed on 13 March 1662, Connecti- cut Records, 1:377; Union between Connecticut and the town of East Hampton, 3 May 1658, DRCHNY, 3:27–29, reconfirmed 21 May 1658 (An Agreement between Easthampton and the Colony of Connecticut, CO 1/13,fols.104–5,NA). 678 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY of Manchester, John, Lord Roberts, the Lord Privy Seal, and William Fiennes, viscount Saye and Sele.19 Manchester, Roberts, and Saye, “who loves those who are godly,” afforded a natural patronage conduit for promoting Connecticut’s plans. Although eighty years old and infirm by 1660, Saye had maintained an interest in Anglo-American colo- nization for three decades and had served on the committee on Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/tneq/article-pdf/87/4/666/1793661/tneq_a_00417.pdf by guest on 23 September 2021 colonial affairs, headed by Robert Rich, second earl of Warwick (d. 1658), which the Long Parliament had established in 1643. In addition, Saye’s eponymous “Saybrook” patent, which he purportedly received from Warwick in 1631, provided the legal fig leaf for Connecticut’s charter claims. Moreover, Saye had been concerned for some time about Dutch claims in North America.20 Most important, Connecticut had Winthrop, one of the pre- eminent seventeenth-century English colonial-imperialists, who had known Saye since serving as agent on the ground for the failed Saybrook plantation. The able and ingratiating governor possessed, moreover, the requisite political acumen and official network to promote his colony’s ambitions. The “occasions of the colony” created “some probabilities” by October 1660 that Winthrop would travel to England, and on 7 June 1661 the General Court approved the governor’s departure. He would carry with him “a speedy address” to “our Soveraigne” that would “acknowledge our loyalty & allegiance to his highnes” and “humbly petition” for the confirmation of the colony’s liberties as well as letters for Manchester and Saye craving their

19Order appointing a Committee for Plantation Affairs, 4 July 1660, and Patent of King Charles II, constituting a Council for Foreign Plantations, 1 December 1660, both in DRCHNY, 3:3, 32–34. 20Letter of Lord Say [sic] and Seal [sic] to Governor Winthrop, 11 December 1661, in Benjamin Trumbull, A Complete History of Connecticut, Civil and Ecclesi- astical, from the Emigration of the First Planters, 2 vols. (New Haven: Maltby, Gold- smith and Co. and Samuel Wadsworth, 1818), 1:515. For Saye and New Netherland, see Appendix received from My Lord Saye, Read 9th August 1642,inDRCHNY, 1:128. For Roberts’s involvement, including his direct relationship with Maverick and Winthrop, see John Danson to John Winthrop Jr. [1662], Winthrop Family Papers, microﬁlm ed., 53 reels (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1976)(Winthrop Family Papers), reel 7. ANGLO-AMERICAN IMPERIAL FORMATION 679 assistance; the following month Winthrop left for London via, at the invitation of Stuyvesant, New Amsterdam.21 At the Dutch town, Winthrop called on Stuyvesant, who seems to have conceived of a different purpose for the governor’s trip. Rumors were circulating about another war between England and the Dutch Republic, about a plan to take New Netherland, and about Long Island having been granted Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/tneq/article-pdf/87/4/666/1793661/tneq_a_00417.pdf by guest on 23 September 2021 to one John Scott.22 The director-general was alarmed; yet, the prospect of the Connecticut governor’s London mission sent a shaft of light through his gloom. Stuyvesant, “Confeydinge & trustinge more in the Words & promises of the honourable Gouvernor Winthrop,” entertained hopes that Whitehall would ratify the Treaty of Hartford and put an end to boundary disputes between Connecticut and New Netherland. Stuyvesant’s optimism soared when he learned that Winthrop had reportedly recommended that the Crown repudiate Scott’s pretensions.23

21Minutes of General Session, 7 June 1661, and Letter to the Earl of Manchester, [1661], Connecticut Records,1:361–62, 369–70, 583–84; Petition to his majesty, King Charles II, for charter privileges, 1661, and The letter of Connecticut to Lord Say and Seal, 7 June 1661, in Trumbull, A Complete History of Connecticut, 1:511– 14. For Winthrop and Saybrook, see Francis Bremer, John Winthrop: America’s Forgotten Founding Father (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 252–60. For Stuyvesant’s invitation, see Peter Stuyvesant to John Winthrop Jr., 5 July 1661 (n.s.), MHS Collections, 5th ser., vol. 1 (1871), p. 391. For the West India Company’s confidence in Winthrop, “who has always shown himself a friend of our nation and the government there,” see Extract from a Letter of the Directors to Stuyvesant, 16 April 1663 (n.s.), DRCHNY, 14:525–26 at 525. Rev. John Davenport had little doubt that Winthrop would secure a favorable new patent, although his expectations that New Haven would remain independent proved unfulfilled (Letters, &c., relating to the Regicides, Mather Papers, MHS Collections, 4th ser., vol. 8 [1868]: 187). Indeed, New Haven sought Winthrop’s assistance in securing a charter for their colony, but he had already left for Europe (William Leete to John Winthrop Jr., 6 August 1661, MHS Collections, 4th ser., 7:548–50). The government of New Plymouth also asked Winthrop to employ his talents and connections on that colony’s behalf, but no evidence has been found that he did so: see Thomas Prence to John Winthrop Jr., MHS Collections, 5th ser., 1:392–93. The latest biography of Winthrop—Walter W. Woodward, Prospero’s America: John Winthrop, Jr., Alchemy, and the Creation of New England Culture, 1606–1676 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), pp. 253–301 at 301—considers his imperial thinking and connections in terms of opposition to “imperial imposition” on Connecticut’s liberties in the conventional sense. 22Extract from a Letter of Director Stuyvesant to the Directors in Holland, 24 September 1661 (n.s.), DRCHNY, 14:506. 23Extract from a Letter of Stuyvesant to the Directors, 15 July 1662 (n.s.), DRHCNY, 14:515. Winthrop was well aware of Stuyvesant’s hopes and expectations; 680 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY Stuyvesant’s confidence and trust, which were shared by his superiors in Amsterdam, were, of course, entirely misplaced. Once in London, Winthrop quickly set about removing obsta- cles, including New Netherland, to Connecticut’s expansion. Recognizing that the court was suspicious of his colony’s ex- tralegal fifteen-year history as well as its loyalty, Winthrop freely offered his knowledge of New England’s affairs to the govern- Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/tneq/article-pdf/87/4/666/1793661/tneq_a_00417.pdf by guest on 23 September 2021 ment, which had a poor sense of the place.24 He commenced his petition with a lament for “the calamities of the late sad times,” which had prevented Connecticut’s timely solicitation of a charter. His maneuvering was amply rewarded in April 1662: a royal grant to all of the lands the colony sought. More remarkably, given the chronic issues with the Massachusetts Bay charter, the Crown capped Winthrop’s mission by creat- ing a “Company & Society of our Connecticut in America,” to which it delegated control over the admission of freemen and the selection of colonial officers; that body remained in place until the colonies together declared their independence from the king over a century later. Nine months after giving Stuyvesant his assurances, Winthrop had secured the legal basis

see Peter Stuyvesant to John Winthrop Jr., 20 July 1663 (n.s.), and Thomas Willett to Winthrop, 23 July 1663, MHS Collections, 5th ser., 1:395–97. For Stuyvesant and Winthrop’s friendship, see, e.g., Peter Stuyvesant to John Winthrop Jr., 5 July 1661 [n.s.], MHS Collections, 5th ser., 1:391, and Robert C. Black III, The Younger John Winthrop (New York: Columbia University Press, 1966), pp. 154–55.Thefaithof Winthrop’s New Haven friends was similarly misplaced; see, e.g., John Davenport to John Winthrop Jr., 22 June 1663, MHS Collections, 4th ser., 7:521–24. Having secured employment as agent to advance the interests of Connecticut, Scott raised “mutiny” in various towns, thus aggravating Stuyvesant, but his attempt to claim Long Island as his own proprietorship ran counter to the ambitions of his employers, who ordered his arrest: see John Davenport to John Winthrop Jr., 22 March 1664, MHS Collections, 4th ser., 7:525–26; and Agreement between the Dutch Commissioners and John Scott, 4 January 1664, Extract from a Letter of Stuyvesant to the Directors, 26 April 1664 (n.s.), and Extract from a Letter of Stuyvesant to the Directors, 4 August 1664 (n.s.), all in DRCHNY, 14:544, 546–48, 551–55. Having escaped, Scott turned up at the capitulation of New Amsterdam, but Winthrop’s intervention facilitated his failure to ingratiate himself with Nichols, and he withdrew to the West Indies and, then, to Europe; see James Long and Ben Long, The Plot Against Pepys (London: Faber & Faber, 2007), pp. 138–63. 24Proceedings of his Majesties Council for Foreign Plantations, 14 January 1661, CO 1/14,fol.146, NA. “Mr Wentrop” was directed to attend the council on 26 February 1661/2, Minutes of the meeting of the Privy Council, 26 February 1662, PC 2/55,fol.284,NA. ANGLO-AMERICAN IMPERIAL FORMATION 681 for his colony’s existence and royal approval for his deﬁnition of its boundaries. In short order, he made preparations to perfect those claims.25

Connecticut’s Aspirations and the Attack on New Netherland Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/tneq/article-pdf/87/4/666/1793661/tneq_a_00417.pdf by guest on 23 September 2021 Winthrop, however, did not operate singlehandedly; he worked with Maverick, a resident of Massachusetts since the late 1620s, and the prominent Boston merchant Thomas Bree- don. Historians’ lingering confusion over Winthrop’s role may stem from the timing of his departure from London. Although Rhode Island’s objections to his colony’s designs on the Narra- gansett Country obliged him to tarry in the capital, he returned to Hartford in June 1663. With the Connecticut governor back in America and Breedon focused on his quest for the gover- norship of Nova Scotia, Maverick took the lead in continuing to petition the court regarding Connecticut’s claims to New Netherland, an effort that generated the collection of documents, later published by the New-York Historical Society, that since 1870 has provided the evidentiary platform for investigat- ing the takeover of the Dutch colony.26

25Petition of John Winthrop, 12 February 1662,CO1/16,fol.36, NA; Charter of Connecticut, 23 April 1662, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/17th century/ct03.asp (accessed 11 July 2013); A Grant to ye Province of Connecticut in New England of their Charter, 23 April 1663,CO1/16,fols.118–26 at 118v, NA. Interestingly, Winthrop arrived in London via the Netherlands, where he met his cousin, Downing, on 12 September 1661, although the substance of this encounter remains unknown (Journal of my voyage from Manhatoes [September/October 1661], Winthrop Family Papers, reel 6; Lucy Downing to John Winthrop Jr., 25 November 1661, MHS Collections, 5th ser., 1:52–54). 26Samuel Maverick to the earl of Clarendon, [1662], Collections of the New-York Historical Society (NYHS Collections), vol. 2 (New York: The Society, 1869–70), pp. 19–43. For the Narragansett dispute, see Sydney V. James, John Clarke and His Lega- cies: Religion and Law in Colonial Rhode Island, 1638–1750, ed. Theodore Dwight Bozeman (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999), pp. 43–82. For Breedon’s ambitions, see An Answer to the Ambassador of France or rather Monsieur Le Bourne his claime to Lacadie and Nova Scotia, 19 February 1662, CO 1/16,fols.32–33; Instructions given unto Capt. Thomas Breedon by Thomas Temple Lieutenant to his highness Oliver Lord Protector, 27 December 1658,CO 1/13,fol.143; Petition of Thomas Temple, 23 April 1662,CO1/16,fol.73;Sir Thomas Temple’s Patent to Nova Scotia, [1662], CO 1/16,fols.109–13; and Petition of Thomas Temple, 7 August 1662,CO1/16,fol.200, all in NA. 682 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY Yet, since neither Maverick nor Breedon subscribed to the religious and political orientation of Massachusetts, they, unlike Winthrop, son of that colony’s founding governor, have been regarded as disingenuous in their claims and aggressive in their prosecution of the Bay Colony’s uniquely reform-minded and democratic (albeit in seventeenth-century terms) agenda. Mav- erick, “a long-time opponent of the Massachusetts Bay regime” Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/tneq/article-pdf/87/4/666/1793661/tneq_a_00417.pdf by guest on 23 September 2021 and an “agent” of Stuart “imperialism,” plotted “to curtail the liberties of the colonists” and “to topple the Bay Colony” out of “personal animosity towards the Puritans.” Breedon (despite his godly pedigree) was “an Anglican Royalist, [who] strongly disap- proved of the Massachusetts government. Hoping that a change in sovereigns could effect a change in colonial government, he sailed to England to present his case against the authorities in Boston and to promote his own interests.” In pressing for the capture of New Netherland, in conjunction with a broader endeavor “to stop the spread of [New England’s] infectious independence,” Breedon and Maverick, historians have concluded, furthered the “policy” of Charles II and his advisors “of consolidating control over its North American empire.”27 Such judgments about Maverick and Breedon ﬁt nicely with the prevailing perception of Puritan colonists defending their liberties against the meddling interventions of the imperial state. But to what degree does the record support such a characterization? The evidence clearly indicates that the pair championed a proposition wholly at odds with Massachusetts orthodoxy (not to mention the orthodoxy of almost all of mid- seventeenth-century Christendom): religious toleration.28 In the 1640s, Maverick had backed efforts by William Vassall, an

27Hall, A Reforming People, pp. 191–96 at 191–92, 196; Richter, Before the Rev- olution, pp. 254, 261; Francis J. Bremer, First Founders: American Puritans and Puritanism in an Atlantic World (Durham: University of New Hampshire Press, 2012), pp. 221, 223; Bernard Bailyn, The New England Merchants in the Seventeenth Century (1955; New York: Harper & Row, 1964), pp. 110–11, 114–26. For Bree- don’s godly pedigree, see Henry F. Waters, Genealogical Gleanings in England, 2 vols. (1907; Baltimore, Md.: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1969), 1:746–48. 28John Coffey, “Puritanism and Liberty Revisited: The Case for Toleration in the English Revolution,” Historical Journal 41 (December 1998): 961–85; Blair Worden, “Toleration and the Protectorate,” in his God’s Instruments: Political Conduct in the England of Oliver Cromwell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 63–90. ANGLO-AMERICAN IMPERIAL FORMATION 683 original member of the Massachusetts Bay Company, Robert Child, and others to achieve it. Their heated petition of 1646 to the General Court of the colony alleged that the colonial establishment had violated English laws and deprived colonists of their English liberties. Fighting another war for souls and minds with Samuel Gorton and his followers at the time, the Massachusetts authorities brooked no dissent; the petitioners Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/tneq/article-pdf/87/4/666/1793661/tneq_a_00417.pdf by guest on 23 September 2021 were subjected to imprisonment, search and seizure of their papers, hefty ﬁnes, and exile, and their application was sum- marily rejected. Following their release from prison, the pair traveled to London to appeal to Warwick, who had charge of imperial affairs at the time and whom they regarded as sympa- thetic, for religious toleration in Massachusetts and the appointment of a “general governor or some honorable commissioners” to oversee the colony. From pulpits and printing presses, the Massachusetts leadership denounced Child and Vassall, as the quarrel made its way to the capital along with the petitioners, before using their own metropolitan connections to have the appeal quashed.29 Maverick, following in the footsteps of his former associates, arrived in London in the summer of 1660 to secure royal guar- antees for a similar religious settlement for Massachusetts. He had access to a patronage network that included James Ley, third earl of Marlborough, a prominent member of the Coun- cil for Foreign Plantations who devised several schemes for the colonies, and, most important, Clarendon, to whom over the next three years Maverick appealed for the “reducement” of Massachusetts “to dew obedience,” assuring the chancellor that “three parts of foure at least” of the colony’s freemen would happily “submit to such Gover[nmen]t as his Ma[jes]t[i]e shall appoynt over them.” He also presented a sketch describing the Dutch colony and offering reasons, such as the proﬁts generated by the fur trade, for the English “regaining” of it. For his

29Robert Emmet Wall Jr., Massachusetts Bay: The Crucial Decade, 1640–1650 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1972), pp. 157–224; Hall, ARe- forming People, pp. 91–92, 122–24, 191–92. The quotation from the petition appears in Thomas Hutchinson, The History of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay from the First Settlement Thereof, 3rd ed. (Salem, Mass.: Thomas C. Cushing, 1795), p. 139. 684 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY part, Breedon delivered a narrative to the Council for Foreign Plantations in March 1661 denouncing Massachusetts as a “free state,” which had welcomed the regicides William Goffe and Edward Whalley after they ﬂed England and whose inhabitants feared that a royally appointed governor would threaten their liberties.30 Despite Maverick and Breedon’s machinations, a careful in- Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/tneq/article-pdf/87/4/666/1793661/tneq_a_00417.pdf by guest on 23 September 2021 vestigation of the evidence reveals the centrality of Winthrop’s role in garnering metropolitan assistance for an attack on the Dutch colony and his at least tacit support for the attendant commission. Such a recognition casts doubt on the customary view of the activities of Maverick and his fellow commissioners and of the behavior and attitude of the imperial government toward New England. The governor knew as early as October 1660 that his friend “Mr Maverack” was in London. Indeed, Maverick later stressed to Clarendon that “Mr Winthrop, Cap- tain Breedon and my selfe, and another or two, are ready all ways to wait on your Lordship” with answers to any questions the chancellor might have about New England affairs.31

30Maverick to Clarendon, 1 September 1663, NYHS Collections, 2:56–57;Capt. Thos. Breedon to Council for Foreign Plantations, 11 March 1661, Calendar of State Papers, vol. 7: 1661–1668, nos. 45, 15; and Narrative and Deposition of Cap- tain Breedon, 11 March 1661 (affirmed 17 October 1678), DRCHNY, 3:39–41.For the timing of Maverick’s summer 1660 arrival in London, see The Humble Peti- tion of Samuel Maverick, 28[?] August 1663,SP44/13,fol.356, NA. Maverick’s sketch of New Netherland appears in NYHS Collections, 2:1–14. For Marlborough’s involvement in colonial affairs, see, e.g., Proposals concerning Jamaica by my lord Marlborough, [November 1660?], CO 1/14,fols.123–24, NA. Despite his age and infirmity, Saye also lobbied Manchester on Winthrop’s behalf; see Lord Saye and Sele to John Winthrop Jr., 14 December 1661, MHS Collections, 5th ser., 1:394. 31Samuel Maverick to the earl of Clarendon, [1662], in NYHS Collections, 2:35–37 at 37. For the timing of Winthrop’s awareness of Maverick’s presence in London and his characterization of the latter as a friend as well as the cultivation of Albemarle through Colonel Thomas Reade, Winthrop’s brother-in-law, see John Winthrop Jr. to Fitz-John Winthrop, 25 October 1660, MHS Collections, 5th ser., vol. 8 (1882): 72. Winthrop also characterized Breedon as a friend; he promised, in accordance with the latter’s desire, to provide him with “speedy notice” of the arrival of the frigates sent to transport the English against New Amsterdam, of which “I doubt not but shall have speedy intelligence” (John Winthrop Jr. to Thomas Breedon, 4 July 1664, Winthrop Family Papers). For Winthrop’s awareness of the commission and its functions before it sailed for America, see Petition of the Inhabitants of Westchester to the English Commissioners, 22 August 1664, DRCHNY, 13:391–92; At the Committee for Plantations, PC 2/56,fol.78, NA; Commissioners to General ANGLO-AMERICAN IMPERIAL FORMATION 685 The trio’s efforts finally bore fruit in January 1664 when, after having “discoursed with several persons very well acquainted with the affairs of New England, some of them lately inhabited on Long Island,” Sir John Berkeley, Sir George Carteret, and Sir William Coventry of the Council for Foreign Plantations accepted a plan to attack New Amsterdam. Certain colonists had taken the initiative in targeting New Netherland, the doc- Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/tneq/article-pdf/87/4/666/1793661/tneq_a_00417.pdf by guest on 23 September 2021 ument discloses, and it stresses that Connecticut, specifically as opposed to New Haven, was crucial to the operation’s success: “That some part of the colony of Newhaven is distant about 15 leagues, where at present Mr. Winthrop commands from whence & from the east end of Long Island (which consists of English) may be gathered in 8 or 9 days time, 1300 or 1400 men, besides other English which (they affirm) will come freely from other colonies & some probability of engaging the Indians if need require.” This force would link up with a metropolitan contingent of three hundred soldiers, the latter accompanied by indispensable supplies, such as gunpowder, which the colonies could not produce. By April, the operation had received the approval of the Privy Council.32

Court, [May 1665], in Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England (Massachusetts Records), ed. Nathaniel B. Shurtleff, 5 vols. (Boston: William White, 1854), vol. 4,pt.2 (1661–74), pp. 184–86 at 184; Council on Foreign Plantations to the governor and council of Connecticut colony, 23 April 1664,CO 1/18,fol.121, NA; and The copye of the Lord Chancellors letter to the Governor of Connecticut, 28 April 1664, Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 2nd ser., 13 (1899–1900): 425–56 at 455. Thomas Mayhew, on Martha’s Vineyard, who also knew Maverick, heard that Winthrop “hath much intercourse with” Nicolls and sought the Connecticut governor’s intervention on his behalf with the commission; see Thomas Mayhew to John Winthrop Jr., 15 July 1664, MHS Collections, 4th ser., 7:40–41. Winthrop was also a friend and partner (in an ironworks) of Child (d. 1654), Maverick’s fellow proponent of religious toleration, with whom Winthrop shared an imperial and scientiﬁc vision: see William Coddington to John Winthrop Jr., 19 February 1651, MHS Collections, 4th ser., 7:280–84, and Margaret E. Newell, “Robert Child and the Entrepreneurial Vision: Economy and Ideology in Early New England,” New England Quarterly 68 (June 1995): 223–56. 32Proposal for Long Island, 29 January 1664,CO1/18,fols.26–27,NA.The Council’s payment order appears in Minutes of the Privy Council, 13 April 1664, PC 2/57,fols.33–35 at 34v; Secretary Bennett to Col. William Legg, Lieutenant of the Ordnance, 25 February 1664,WO55/331,fol.1v, as well as York’s supplemental order of forty additional muskets, four blunderbusses, ten pairs of pistols, and twelve “musket rods,” 1 April 1663 [1664], WO 55/331,fol.2r, all in NA. The ﬁgure of three hundred soldiers, brought by two frigates, appears in York’s recollections, 686 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY The Connecticut leadership did not await the conclusion of London’s laborious process. News that it had received its charter, which was proclaimed in the colony on 9 October 1662, was taken as a license to intensify its pressure to detach Long Island and “West Chester” from Dutch authority and to extend its “protection” to the New Haven towns of Southold (on Long Island) and Guilford. By 8 January 1663, Stuyvesant learned Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/tneq/article-pdf/87/4/666/1793661/tneq_a_00417.pdf by guest on 23 September 2021 that Connecticut was asserting that its patent included all of Long Island. Accordingly, the colony had issued a “peremptory order” to the inhabitants of Oostdorp (Westchester) informing them that henceforth they were subject to Connecticut’s control; in addition, over the course of 1663, Connecticut operatives incited riots against Dutch authority at Rustdorp (Jamaica), Middleburgh (Elmhurst), Vlissengen (Flushing), Hempstead, and Gravesend. In December, Stuyvesant was compelled to arms to prevent an English group from acquiring the lands of the Neversink Indians between the Barnegat and Raritan Rivers in modern New Jersey. By the spring of 1664, Dutch authority in these places hung in the balance as Hartford, acting expressly in accordance with its new powers, directed Winthrop and three other leading colonists—Wyllys, Matthew Allyn, and John Young—“to go over to Long Island, and to settle the English plantations on the Island under this Government,” while Thomas Pell received “liberty” to buy the Indian lands between “West Chester” and the Hudson River. Five days later, Stuyvesant received a report that “the English of Westchester” had been intriguing with the Esopus and Wappinger Indians, who between June and December 1663 had fought a nasty war with the Dutch in the Hudson River Valley, “to kill all the Dutch and drive them away” after the English had seized Long Island and Manhattan. A presumed English spy arrived at Wiltwijck (Kingston) the

Original Papers; Containing the Secret History of Great Britain from the Restoration to the Accession of the House of Hanover. To which are preﬁxed Extracts of the Life of James II Written by Himself, ed. James Macpherson, 2 vols. (London: Printed for W. Stahan and T. Cadell, 1775), 1:27; compare Cherry, “Motivations behind the English Conquest of New Netherland,” at 84. The manuscript of the plan clearly indicates that someone had prepared it for the councilors’ approving signatures. ANGLO-AMERICAN IMPERIAL FORMATION 687 following month proclaiming that the English would take over New Netherland “within 6 or 8 weeks.”33 Stuyvesant’s protests to Connecticut and to his superiors in the West India Company brought him no satisfaction on either front.34 When Winthrop returned to America, Stuyvesant asked him for a “categorical answer”; meanwhile, a delegation to Hart- ford in October 1663 requested that the neighbors honor their Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/tneq/article-pdf/87/4/666/1793661/tneq_a_00417.pdf by guest on 23 September 2021 1650 treaty until further directions were received from Europe. Connecticut ofﬁcials insisted on the colony’s right to all of the disputed territory and, further, its duty to perfect the king’s grant. Continuing to dissemble, Winthrop, supposed friend of the Dutch colony, advised the visitors that the Connecticut patent did not include New Netherland; nonetheless, he mostly absented himself from the negotiations on the grounds of ill- ness and declined to put his opinion in writing since, as he insisted, the language of the patent was clear on its face. His councilors, though, when presented with this view, observed

33Report made by P. W. van Couwenhoven of Information Respecting Intrigues of the English with the Wappins and Esopus Indians, [March 1664], and Letter from Ensign Nyssen to Director-General Stuyvesant, Reporting the Visit of an Englishman at Wildwyck, 21 April 1664 (n.s.), DRCHNY, 13:363–64, 368. For English activity in the Neversink country, see Instructions Given to Martin Cregier and Covert Loockermans for the Purchase of the Nevesing Country, from Barnegatt to the Raritan, 6 December 1663 (n.s.), Journal of a Voyage to the Newesinghs by Captain Cregier, and Agreement Made by the Newesingh Indians to sell to the Dutch their Lands, not already sold, 6–11 December 1663 (n.s.), DRCHNY, 13:311–12, 314–16, 316–17; Edward Rous and Others to John Scott, 2 December 1663, MHS Collections, 5th ser., 1:397–99. For Connecticut’s activities, see Connecticut Records, 1:384–87, 392–98 at 398; Letters Relating to the Annexation of Long Island to Connecticut, DRCHNY, 14:516–18; Meeting of the General Assembly, 10 March 1664, Connecticut Records, 1:416–24 at 418. For the attachment of “West Chester” and Long Island to Connecticut, see Extract from a Letter of Stuyvesant to the Directors, 8 January 1663 (n.s.), DRCHNY, 14:520; Meeting of the Council, 10 July 1663, Meeting of the General Assembly, 8 October 1663, At a Generall Assembly Held at Hartford, 12 May 1664, and At a General Session of the Generall Assembly at Hartford, 8 [October] 1663, Connecticut Records, 1:406–7, 425–31 at 426–27, 409– 16 at 411–12; Extract from a Letter of Stuyvesant to the Directors [Westchester], 14 May 1663 (n.s.), To his Honor, Secretary Cornelis van Ruyven, at Fort Amsterdam, 15 November 1663, and Letters from Director Stuyvesant to the Governor and Council of Connecticut about the Claims of the Latter, 5 November 1663 (n.s.), DRCHNY, 14:526–27, 531–40. 34Extract from a Letter of Stuyvesant to the Directors, 26 April 1664 (n.s.), and Extract from a Letter of Stuyvesant to the Directors, 4 August 1664 (n.s.), DRCHNY, 14:546–48 at 547–48, 551–55. 688 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY that “the Governor is but one man.” The confused and irri- tated emissaries returned to New Amsterdam empty handed.35 By August, Stuyvesant, now fully disabused of Winthrop’s motives, had prepared as best he could for an English attack. He informed the West India Company of Connecticut’s preda- tions on Long Island, which reﬂected his neighbors’ contempt for the boundary negotiated in 1650. He also heaped skepticism Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/tneq/article-pdf/87/4/666/1793661/tneq_a_00417.pdf by guest on 23 September 2021 on the report relayed by his superiors. The assembling commissioners and military expedition, the report had concluded, were intended for New England with the brief to “install” bishops there and to unite those colonies “under one form of government in political, as well as ecclesiastical matters.” Dismissing the report’s hopeful inference that the initiative would provoke resistance and manifest New English afﬁnity for the Dutch colony, Stuyvesant insisted that New Netherland was the real target, and his intelligence was supported by news that Rhode Island had received a charter, which included a grant of liberty of conscience, and that York had been granted his patent.36 Four frigates bearing Nicolls, Maverick, Carr, Cartwright, and between three and four hundred soldiers reached Nan- tasket toward the end of July. The commissioners sought the assistance of the Massachusetts government, which agreed to recruit and pay for two hundred volunteers and to send Clarke and Pynchon (Wyllys’s son-in-law and close friend of Winthrop, the physician of his wife, Amy) as the colony’s representatives to the mission. Notifying Winthrop of their arrival, the other commissioners planned to rendezvous with him at Gravesend, at the western end of Long Island.37 At the end of August, the

35Journal kept by Cornelis van Ruyven, Burgomaster Cortlandt and John Lau- rence, Delegates from New Netherland to the General Assembly at Hartford, in New England, in the month of October, 1663 (n.s.), DRCHNY, 2:385–93; Peter Stuyvesant to John Winthrop Jr., 20 July 1663 (n.s.), and Thomas Willett to John Winthrop Jr., 23 July 1663 (n.s.), MHS Collections, 5th ser., 1:395–96, 396–97. 36Extract from a Letter of Stuyvesant to the Directors, [4 August 1664 (n.s.)]; [responding to] Chamber of Amsterdam to the Director and Council of New Nether- land, 21 April 1664 (n.s.), DRCHNY, 14:551–55 at 552–54, 2:235–37 at 235–36. 37John Pynchon and Thomas Clarke to Secretary Edward Rawson, [15 August 1664], Pynchon Papers, 1:32; Colonial Records: General Entries, vol. 1, 1664–65, University of the State of New York, State Library Bulletin, History, no. 2 (May ANGLO-AMERICAN IMPERIAL FORMATION 689 ﬂeet arrived at New Amsterdam and ordered the town to surrender or be sacked; meanwhile, Nicolls proceeded to recruit additional colonial troops to swell the occupying force.38 Stuyvesant’s attempts to delay the inevitable came to noth- ing; with a shortage of powder and his defenses in disarray, he was compelled to accept terms. Yet, despite the Crown’s involvement, Connecticut’s hand remained ﬁrmly on the tiller. Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/tneq/article-pdf/87/4/666/1793661/tneq_a_00417.pdf by guest on 23 September 2021 According to the Reverend Samuel Drisius, “about 600”New Englanders had joined the expedition. Stuyvesant, in his report to the States General, noted that defeat came at the hands of “the Hartford Colony, our too powerful enemies,” who had been “reinforced by four Royal ships.” We may wonder what went through the director-general’s mind when Winthrop per- sonally delivered the articles of capitulation to him.39

1899): 55; Massachusetts Records, vol. 4,pt.2, pp. 120–24. For Pynchon’s relation- ships with Winthrop (with whose family Amy Wyllys Pynchon lived in 1654–55, while he treated her) and Wyllys, see, e.g., letters between Pynchon and Winthrop of 22 May, 20 June, 26 July, [30 November], and [17 December] 1654, Pynchon Papers, 1:5–13, 131. The social connections between these New England imperialists also appear from Amy Pynchon’s requests for treatment on her knee from Thomas Pell (John Pynchon to John Winthrop Jr., 1 and 7 May 1660, Pynchon Papers, 1:32–34). 38License to Recruit Soldiers on Long Island against the Dutch, 24 August 1664, and Letter from Col. Nicolls to Capt. Young about such Long Island People as have taken up arms against the Dutch, 29 August 1664, DRCHNY, 14:555–56. 39The West India Company and its operatives on the South River had reports of 300 soldiers; see West India Company to the Burgomasters of Amsterdam, [July 1664], and Commissioners of the Colonie on the Delaware River to the Burgo- masters of Amsterdam, [June 1664], DRCHNY, 2:243, 244. The New Amsterdam government later reported that one of the frigates carried almost 450 soldiers “and the others in proportion,” but this seems an exaggeration given the other accounts and the size of the ships; see Translation of a letter from the Schout, Burgomas- ters, and Schepens of the City of New Amsterdam, to the West India Company, 16 September 1664, in John Romeyn Brodhead, Commemoration of the Conquest of New Netherland on the Two Hundredth Anniversary, by the New York Historical So- ciety (New York: By the Society, 1864), pp. 70–71; Letter from Rev. Samuel Drisius to the Classis of Amsterdam, 15 September 1664 (n.s.), DRCHNY, 13:393–94 at 393. E. B. O’Callaghan, the nineteenth-century translator and editor of DRCHNY, translated “gesecondeert” as “reinforced” in Stuyvesant’s Report of the Surrender of New Netherland, 1665 (DRCHNY, 2:365–70 at 366), but “seconded” or “supported” seems a superior translation of the original Report of the Honorable Peter Stuyvesant, late Director-General of New Netherland, on the causes which led to the surrender of that country to the English (Archive States General, 1.01.07 inv.nr. 12546.57, Nationaal Archief, The Hague). My thanks to Jaap Jacobs for the original reference and for his wisdom on this and many other points. For Winthrop’s deliv- ery of the terms, see Answer of Ex-Director Stuyvesant, 1666, DRCHNY, 2:429–47 at 444. 690 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY The Royal Commission and Imperial Interests His mission accomplished, Winthrop returned home, as did the other colonial commissioners save Maverick. The gover- nor’s victory was, however, far from complete, for in soliciting metropolitan involvement in the successful overthrow of New

Netherland, Connecticut now had to confront the proprietary Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/tneq/article-pdf/87/4/666/1793661/tneq_a_00417.pdf by guest on 23 September 2021 authority of the royal brother. Winthrop had to look on as “New York” absorbed Long Island and the New York–Connecticut boundary was drawn halfway between the Hudson and Con- necticut Rivers.40 With New Amsterdam secured, Carr accepted the surrender of the Dutch colony on the Delaware/South River, and Cartwright negotiated the capitulation of Beverwijck (Albany) as Nicolls prepared for the seemingly inevitable Dutch reply to the attack (war began officially in March 1665). Back in Boston after four years and armed with royal authorization, Maverick could now turn his attentions toward the toleration issue. It is important, however, to note what he did not ask the Crown to do: he did not call for a review of Massachusetts’ charter (as Child and Vassall had suggested to parliament in 1646);41 he did not request troops to overthrow colonial magistrates (as had happened in Barbados—another alleged “free state”—in 1652); and he did not solicit any changes in any colonial government, notwithstanding the terms of York’s patent. Rather, Maverick envisioned that royal intervention in colonial affairs, and an accompanying reconfiguration of New England, would extend English liberties to English inhabitants of all Protes- tant persuasions and, in the process, halt the persecution of the heterodox in Massachusetts. If the Crown were to rein- state English liberties, grant religious toleration, confirm land titles, and settle each colony’s boundaries, Maverick repeatedly assured Clarendon, the freemen thereof would “freely and ioye- fully surrender and submit” to any government the king chose

40Governor Richard Nicholls to Freemen of Southold, 8 February 1664/5,in Southold Town Records, ed.J.WickhamCase,2 vols. (Riverhead, N.Y., 1882), 1:38– 39; Ritchie, The Duke’s Province, p. 32. 41Hutchinson, History of Massachusetts Bay, p. 139. ANGLO-AMERICAN IMPERIAL FORMATION 691 to establish. For its part, the Crown envisioned the commission that Nicolls, Carr, Cartwright, and Maverick undertook—the ﬁrst such device it had employed—as a means of acquiring better information on American issues.42 Like Winthrop, Maverick did not operate alone, although the tendency to regard him as a maverick helps underpin the hypothesis of a relatively egalitarian, cohesive, even rel- Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/tneq/article-pdf/87/4/666/1793661/tneq_a_00417.pdf by guest on 23 September 2021 atively tolerant New England targeted by a centralizing, even tyrannical Crown abetted by a handful of colonial malcontents. This view, though, does not fully consider, either chronolog- ically or geographically, the magnitude of discontent in mid- seventeenth-century New England. Maverick, accompanied by Breedon, ﬁrst appeared before the Council for Foreign Plan- tations in March 1660/1; on that occasion, the two men provided information and presented a series of petitions, including Breedon’s aforementioned “narrative,” alleging Massachusetts’ despotism.43 Edward Godfrey and John Gifford, both of whom had been complaining to various metropolitan governments about the Bay Colony for almost a decade, were also in attendance. In 1652, Godfrey, after announcing that he had devoted twenty-seven years to advancing English interests in Maine, charged that Boston’s pretenses to the territory north of the Merrimack River had left him and his family destitute. In conjunction with Godfrey’s employer Ferdinando Gorges, Robert Mason, who had a proprietary claim north of the Merri- mack River, and other petitioners, Godfrey lamented that, after Maine submitted (pointedly, unlike Massachusetts) to the “Ingagement” of 1651—whereby Parliament had declared the American colonies “dependent uppon & subordinate to [ye] Commonwealth of England”—the southern colony moved “to bring all or the most part of that vast Country under their power

42Correspondence between Samuel Maverick and the earl of Clarendon, [1662] and 1 September 1663, NYHS Collections, 2:22–28 at 22–23, 42–43, 56–57. 43Edward Godfrey to John Winthrop Jr., 5 October 1661, MHS Collections, 4th ser., 7:380. For the appearances before the council, see Minutes of the Council of Foreign Plantations, 4, 11, 14, 17, 24 March and 1 April 1661,CO1/14,fols.152v– 53v, NA. For Barbados as a “free state,” see, e.g., John Bayes to the Council of State, 30 June 1652, Calendar of State Papers, Volume 1: 1574–1660, p. 384,no.59. 692 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY and subjection, have subverted the Ancient Government, deprived us of our privileges, Patents, and interests therein; and imposed on us an oath of Fidelity to their State without any relation to England; to somes utter ruin, and their Families undoing.” Having had no redress, Godfrey produced another series of complaints in 1657. Directed to Parliament, these linked, seemingly for the ﬁrst time, the Massachusetts patent, Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/tneq/article-pdf/87/4/666/1793661/tneq_a_00417.pdf by guest on 23 September 2021 the colony’s “proceedings,” and the existence of “New Nether- lands,” “in the Center Heart and Bowels, of the Country,” as matters of state importance. This petition was reintroduced among those presented to the Crown in 1661.44 By apparent coincidence, in February 1661, the Council for Foreign Plantations directed the government of “New England” to prepare an answer to these complaints and to provide a sense of the state of Massachusetts (the uncertainty here seems symp- tomatic of the metropolitan government’s general unfamiliarity with colonial affairs at this time), which it also asked the governors of Barbados and Virginia to do for their colonies. The council’s letters, largely “boiler-plate,” in addition to announcing the existence and purpose of this new imperial institution,

44To the Right Honorable The Parliament of the Commonwealth of England and the Dominions thereto belonging The Humble Petition of Edward Godfrey, Oliver Godfrey, Ferdinand Gorges, Robert Mason, and Edward Rigby, Henry Gardner, and sundry others of Patentees and Inhabitants of the Provinces of Mayne, and Liconia, in New-England (London, [1657]), CO 1/13,fol.190, NA. For Gifford, see Queries and Objections against the Massachusetts encroaching power upon several other proprietors, [1658], Egerton Ms. 2395,fols.199–201, BL; Edward Godfrey Gover- nor in the name & by the order of the General Court to [the Council of State], 6 November 1652,CO1/11,fol.193, NA. For the other colonial complaints, see Pe- tition of John Gifford, Archibald Henderson, Edward Chapman, James Bate, Henry Wilson, Robert Seymor, Edward Godfree, Theophilus Salter, John Dane, George Baxter, John Baker, Archibald Crowder, John Baxe, [March/April 1661]; Petition of Lyonell Copley, Thomas Foley, Thomas Pory, Nicholas Bond, John Pocock, William Heycock, John Bech, William Greenhill, George Sherpuls & William Berk on the behalf of themselves & other Merchants & Adventurers in the iron works in New England, [March/April 1661], Petition of Archibald Henderson, [March/April 1661]; The humble petition of Gyles Sylvester Merchant for and on the behalf of himself and divers other of the Inhabitants of Shelter Island under the colony of New Haven in new England, [March/April 1661]; The humble petition of Ferdinando Gorges Esq. & heir of John Gorges, Esq. deceased, [March/April 1661]; For the King of England Being a Representation in short of the sufferings of our friends in New England and also the request and desire of the exiled for thee to consider with all speede, 8 April 1661,CO1/15,fols.56–61, NA, and draft in Egerton Ms. 2395, fols. 299–300,BL. ANGLO-AMERICAN IMPERIAL FORMATION 693 sought information on the colonies’ population (including num- bers of slaves and free inhabitants), government, laws, economy, and state of defense as well as plans for enforcing the revamped Navigation Acts.45 Reminding its recipients that the king wanted to “restore” those of his subjects who had become detached from “Royal authority” and that their “Constitution, Government, & protection Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/tneq/article-pdf/87/4/666/1793661/tneq_a_00417.pdf by guest on 23 September 2021 is derived” therefrom, the version of the document directed to “New England” particularly stressed the royal desire for reconciliation even though the Crown had received complaints that Massachusetts had suspended royal grants and commissions, thereby depriving colonists of their rights, and had enacted “Rules of Government . . . which are repugnant to the Laws of England and to that Equitie & indifference which ought to be exercised and weighed out with an impartiall hand.” Requesting further details about the place, the letter recommended that an agent be appointed to convey that intelligence to London; in other words, to gain a better understanding of the colony with the goal of administering imperial affairs for the beneﬁt of all, the Crown was soliciting the cooperation of Massachusetts. Perhaps with the intent of achieving a readier compliance, the letter makes no mention of religion whatsoever.46 The Council for Foreign Plantations reported that in crafting its letter it had exercised “all possible tenderness” while also taking into account the various petitions, Breedon’s narrative, and the terms of the Massachusetts charter. A careful review of those documents revealed that the colony had “strayed into many enormities”: enacting laws repugnant to those of England,

45Council of Foreign Plantations to Governor and Council of Barbados, 11 Febru- ary 1661,CO1/14,fol.149; same to Governor and Council of Virginia, 18 February 1661,CO1/14,fols.150v–52r, both in NA. 46Council of Foreign Plantations, A Letter for New England, 1 April 1661,CO 1/14,fol.154v. After the letter was engrossed, it was ordered to be delivered to the Secretary of State, Sir Edward Nicholas, and the Privy Council; see Minutes of the Council of Foreign Plantations, 13 and 27 May 1661,CO1/14,fol.156. Upon royal instruction, the council appointed Povey and Robert Boyle, scientist and Winthrop friend, to revise the letter: Minutes of the Council of Foreign Plantations, 11 November 1661,CO1/14,fol.161, all in NA. The letters to Barbados and Virginia cited in n. 43 both recommended the promotion of orthodox religion in those colonies. 694 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY avoiding the payment of customs, bullying smaller colonies, and placing on its inhabitants “unreasonable” restrictions “in matters of conscience” and on “freehold status.” Thus, the council summoned the colony’s purported agent, John Leverett, then resident in London, for an explanation, but he claimed to have given up his agency and to have no knowledge of the issues being raised. Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/tneq/article-pdf/87/4/666/1793661/tneq_a_00417.pdf by guest on 23 September 2021 The councilors hoped to avoid any course that “might stir [the colonists] to any fears or distrusts.” Therefore, in addition to avoiding religious issues, they made no mention of the harbored regicides and “had not pressed the Act of Navigation (as we have done in other places).” They did, however, recommend that the Privy Council send its own letter to Massachusetts to remind its leaders that they lived in an English colony, which entailed their subordination to the Crown. If their disobedience persisted, then a greater application of royal authority would be in order and, the councilors suggested, Breedon would be the man to implement it.47 From the Crown’s perspective, they observed, “a perforce establishment of the King’s sovereignty and the subjects prosperity” would necessarily involve “dependence, appeals, militia, oath of allegiance, annual homage, a seal, money raised in the king’s name, all in the king’s name, the king’s arms in their courts, vice admiralty customs to be established, liberty of conscience, favor to the Church of En- gland, Acts of Trade and Navigation, to abolish the laws made against those of England, to settle bounds to the respective proprietors.”48 The essential question, having been put directly for the ﬁrst time in English imperial history, was: Did Massachusetts wish to withdraw itself from the empire, thereby casting itself adrift from royal authority and protection? Even for the most radical of the colony’s inhabitants, the answer had to be “No.” After all, the “citty upon a hill” had been created under that very

47Report of the Council of Plantations concerning New England, [30 April 1661], CO 1/15,fols.83–84,NA. 48Important Points for Settlement of New England, [1663?], Egerton Ms. 2395, fol. 396,BL. ANGLO-AMERICAN IMPERIAL FORMATION 695 authority and protection. To ignore this irony would jeopar- dize the legality of the all-important charter, thus inviting de- scent into a wholly unpalatable anarchy, an unhappy prospect painfully realized when the Crown ﬁnally revoked the document in 1684. Still, pragmatism did not require absolute submission. The colony’s leaders continued to drag their feet and pursue agendas at odds with metropolitan ones. For, unlike the Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/tneq/article-pdf/87/4/666/1793661/tneq_a_00417.pdf by guest on 23 September 2021 other New England colonies, Massachusetts had secured its liberties from the king; until somebody called its bluff and brought a successful quo warranto proceeding, the colony’s government could do as it saw ﬁt. Unlike those in Connecticut and Rhode Island, its leaders believed—or perhaps hoped—that it did not have to send agents to curry favor at the Restoration, nor did it proclaim the restoration of kingly authority in England and its colonies until 1662. This reluctant recognition of the return of kingly government stemmed from a deep-seated fear of bishops and the Book of Common Prayer, also newly restored, although Charles II’s personal preference for toleration made the proliferation of sects, rather than that of bishops, the more likely ecclesiastical sce- nario in an English America governed by royal prerogative. To be sure, a monarch who issued Declarations of Indulgence and freed Nonconformists might well impose a policy that would abet Presbyterians, anti-Trinitarians, or, worse, Quakers, who had begun to plague the godly commonwealth. Regardless, the novel presence of royal commissioners in Boston, presumably unsympathetic to godly republicanism and thus potential al- lies of disaffected residents of Massachusetts, brought orthodox anxieties to the fore.49

49Evan Haefeli, “The Creation of American Religious Pluralism: Churches, Colo- nialism, and Conquest in the Mid-Atlantic, 1629–1688” (Ph.D. diss., Princeton Uni- versity, 2000), esp. pp. 211–23, 263–64. For the religious policy of Charles II, see Ronald Hutton, Charles II: King of England, Scotland, and Ireland (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), pp. 194–95. For the Massachusetts fear of Quakers, see Att a General Court, 19 December 1660,CO1/14,fol.182v, NA, and The Humble Petition and Address of the General Court sitting at Boston in New-England, unto The High and Mighty Prince Charles the Second and presented to His Most Gracious Majesty Feb. 11 1660 (Cambridge: Printed by [S. Green], 1661), pp. 5–6. For fear of bishops, see, e.g., Letter from the Governor of Rhode Island to the Governor of Massachusetts, 9 January 1676, DRCHNY, 14:710–11 at 710. 696 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY When the commissioners arrived at Boston, they delivered a letter of 28 June 1662 from the king to the Massachusetts government directing it to widen freeman status beyond church membership in accordance with English practice throughout the empire. The colony duly repealed the old law but then listed religious orthodoxy, as evidenced by a “certificat” signed by the minister “of the place where they dwell” (as opposed Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/tneq/article-pdf/87/4/666/1793661/tneq_a_00417.pdf by guest on 23 September 2021 to certification by a bishop of the Church of England as stip- ulated under English law), among the new requirements for becoming a “freeman.” Moreover, it announced, it was not obligated to dissolve the “present government” because the commissioners had allegedly neglected to provide the colony with “his majesties further instructions, directing or limiting them in the exercise of their commission.” This oversight, Mas- sachusetts’ leaders claimed, had particular importance for their liberties given that Maverick’s “menacing” of the constable of Portsmouth upon his arrival there had fueled their suspicions that their enemies planned to exercise retributive tyranny upon them.50 The king professed himself at a loss over the colony’s lack of cooperation. Having “so many complaints presented to him by particular persons of injustice done them” by Massachusetts, Charles claimed he had no choice but to send commissioners. The “artifices” of “a few persons” had caused the populace to fear the loss of their charter, “when it is not possible for his Majesty to do more for the securing it or to give his subjects there more assurance that it shall not in any degree be infringed then he hath already done.” Indeed, the dreaded Nicolls commissioners not only had “the least authority to infringe any clause in the said charter,” but a major part of their brief was “to see that the charter be fully and punctually observed.”51 While Massachusetts took pains to obstruct the commissioners, other New Englanders welcomed the king’s representatives. Rhode Island and the still charter-less New Plymouth,

50Minutes of the General Court, 3 August 1664, Massachusetts Records, vol. 4, pt. 2, pp. 166–68. 51Secretary Bennett to Governor and Council of Massachusetts, 25 February 1665,CO1/19,fol.50,NA. ANGLO-AMERICAN IMPERIAL FORMATION 697 whose long-standing boundary disputes with its neighbors required adjudication, “freely consented” to the Oath of Alle- giance and to the administration of justice in the king’s name, as, of course, did Connecticut.52 Not only were they delighted to have their new charters, but Connecticut and Rhode Island undoubtedly welcomed royal intervention in their dispute over the Narragansett Country. Maverick, Carr, and Cartwright Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/tneq/article-pdf/87/4/666/1793661/tneq_a_00417.pdf by guest on 23 September 2021 heard the competing claims and, as an administrative conve- nience, created a temporary “King’s Province,” which would be governed by Rhode Island until the king’s pleasure might be known. The commissioners meanwhile conﬁrmed land titles, including those of Winthrop’s Atherton Company.53 The grievances of the colonists living north of the Merrimack River—which were linked to claims of proprietors Ferdinando Gorges and Robert Mason, who had worked with Maverick and Breedon for several years—dated back at least a decade. When the commissioners arrived in Maine, its inhabitants, eager to forestall Massachusetts’ attempts to control their settlements, made their “joyful submission” to the proprietors’ agents, “generally desiring” that “they might be taken under His Maj[es]ties immediate[e] go[ve]r[men]t” or that some temporary government be established until the king’s will was made known. Certain inhabitants of modern New Hampshire likewise peti- tioned for a royal takeover, which Massachusetts and its local supporters fervently opposed, again using the powers granted by the Bay Colony’s charter to conduct inquiries and to punish those who brought grievances to the royal representatives.54

52Sir George Cartwright to Colonel Robert Nicolls, 4 March 1665, 1/19,fol.55; Sir Robert Carr, Sir George Cartwright, and Samuel Maverick to Secretary Bennett, 27 May 1665,CO1/19,fols.144–45 at 144r; and submissions of Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Plymouth, CO 1/19,fols.332–35,read14 December 1665, all in NA. For the Charter of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, 15 July 1663,see http://avalon.law.yale.edu/17th century/ri04.asp (accessed 24 July 2013). 53Sir George Cartwright to Col. Robert Nicolls, 25 January 1665,CO1/19,fol.43; Petition of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, 26 October 1670, CO 1/25,fols.179–80 at 179; The humble representation of Randall Holden & John Green, Deputies for your Majesty’s Colony of Rhode Island & Providence Plantation in New England, read in Council, 4 December 1670 (read again 2 March 1680), CO 1/25,fol.220, all in NA. 54The humble address of the bench in sessions at Wells for the province of Mayne, 25 October 1665,CO1/19,fol.193; The humble petition of Ferdinando 698 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY Faced with its neighbors’ incontrovertible desire for a more formal imperial relationship, Massachusetts went to consider- able lengths to discredit the commissioners and to revive wor- ries about their presence. Cartwright warned Nicolls, preparing for an anticipated Dutch attack on New York, that Leverett had received £34 for entertaining the chief commissioner, “and the country is made to believe that we have put them Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/tneq/article-pdf/87/4/666/1793661/tneq_a_00417.pdf by guest on 23 September 2021 to £300 charge already, and that we intend to exact 12dfor every acre of land and £3000 a year besides it and to abridge them of their greatest privileges, liberty of their consciences, and many such.” Cartwright also grumbled about the commissioners’ “underhanded dealing to get petitions made to themselves for maintaining the government as it is.” Back in London, Clarendon, aware that Massachusetts’ leaders were wary that Maverick “should have any authority over them,” encouraged— and warned—him to erase all doubts as to his objectivity and dedication to the “public trust” so as to give them no cause to challenge the commission’s proceedings.55 Maverick’s careful maneuvering between the Scylla of colonial contempt and the Charybdis of royal disapproval came to naught: a frustrated king recalled the commissioners in April 1666. To ascertain the degree to which Massachusetts had exceeded its authority in anticipation of rendering a ﬁ- nal judgment on New England’s affairs, the Crown ordered

Gorges, [January 1670], CO 1/25,fol.10; Order of preference upon Mr. Gorges petition, meeting of the King and Council, 26 January 1670,CO1/25,fol.11; John Archdale, A Relation touching the proceeding of the Commissioners sent by Mr. Gorges to New England, [6 February 1672], CO 1/28,fols.21–22, all in NA; Maverick to the earl of Clarendon, 24 July 1665, NYHS Collections, 2:69–74 at 71. For New Hampshire, see, e.g., Samuel Maverick to Col. Nicolls, 18 June 1665, CO 1/19,fol.160; The Petition of the inhabitants of Portsmouth and Strawberry Bank, [July 1665], CO 1/19,fols.163–64; Petition of Portsmouth, Strawberry Bank, Dover, Exeter, and Hampton, [July 1665], CO 1/19,fol.192, all in NA; Councils Letter to Mr Cutts and Selectmen of Portsmouth, 12 July 1665; Commission to Thomas Danforth, Eleazer Lusher, & Major General John Leverett to “settle the eastern parts,” 1 August 1665; Portsmouth Petition or Subscription, 9 October 1665, in Documents and Records of the Province of New-Hampshire, ed. Nathaniel Bouton, 7 vols. (Concord, N.H.: George E. Jenks, 1867), 1:272, 276–77, 285–86. 55Sir George Cartwright to Col. Robert Nicolls, 25 January 1665,CO1/19,fol.43, and Earl of Clarendon to Samuel Maverick, 15 March 1665,CO1/19,fol.60,both in NA. ANGLO-AMERICAN IMPERIAL FORMATION 699 the colony’s magistrates to attendance at Whitehall. In the meantime, the temporary boundaries and governments the commissioners had established were not to be changed, and those who had been imprisoned for appealing to the commissioners were to be freed.56 Massachusetts’ tactics of stalling the metropolis and intimi- dating the locals had served it well, and these stratagems con- Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/tneq/article-pdf/87/4/666/1793661/tneq_a_00417.pdf by guest on 23 September 2021 tinued to be effective after the commissioners were recalled. By 1664, the Boston government had developed a long record of frustrating those with interests north of the Merrimack who were unsympathetic to the Bay Colony. One of the magistrates now ordered to Whitehall, Major William Hathorne, had been among the members of a panel appointed by Gov- ernor John Endecott “to settle civill government” upon “the most northerly extent of our patent” in 1652, and so he was familiar with the issues involved. Predictably, this entity had conﬁrmed Massachusetts’ claims to the northern territory. Twelve years later, Boston responded to the petitions north- erners had submitted to the royal commissioners by accusing those Crown representatives of exceeding their instructions, disturbing “his Majesties subjects,” and interfering with colonial laws and justice while moving to restore the “distracted state” of those same subjects to its authority.57 On 11 June 1664, the Crown ordered Massachusetts to yield its northerly claims to Gorges, but six years later the proprietor still had not received satisfaction because the Council for Foreign Plantations had not been able to secure copies of the original grants, nor had it “had any opportunity as yet of hearing the Governor and Council of Massachusetts or Bay of Boston in defense of their rights and feelings therein.” After he returned to England, Nicolls appeared before a committee of the council with Gorges and

56Charles II to Governor and Council of Massachusetts, 10 April 1666, Egerton Ms. 2395,fol.44,BL. 57CO 1/11,fol.192, and Privileges granted the Town of Kittery in the Province of Maine by the Commissioners of the Massachusetts, 10 November 1652,CO 1/11,fol.196, both in NA; Order about the governing of Yorkshire, 25 May 1665, Massachusetts Records, vol. 4,pt.2, pp. 151–53. 700 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY several others to petition again in support of Gorges’s rights. The committee found the “dealings of the Government of ye Massachusetts Bay” to be “violent injurious & unjust,” and the Privy Council confirmed its determination. But, “it appearing to be a matter of state and importance,” the petition was sent to the Committee for Foreign Affairs, where it seems to have languished. By the end of 1672, “the power of the Bay of Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/tneq/article-pdf/87/4/666/1793661/tneq_a_00417.pdf by guest on 23 September 2021 Boston” had defeated the Gorges loyalists and resumed control of the northern territory.58 Even a year before that, the Crown had been ready to start over. After hearing a report from Cartwright, the Council for Foreign Plantations decided that it still lacked the information about New England it needed to make recommendations to the Crown. The 1664 commissioners had not been up to their task, the council intimated, either in terms of their ability or the degree of their detachment from the colonists. So that the required services—to assure the colonies of the Crown’s benevolent intentions toward them, to settle colonial boundaries, and to redress grievances—might be better performed, the council suggested sending a new set of commissioners with “greater regard being had to their qualifications of ability and integrity” and who would not be “contrary to the personal hu- mour of that people.” It also recommended that a royal official be appointed “to contribute to your Majesty’s part to the prosperity of those colonies and to show that your Majesty hath yet a good opinion of their disposition and obedience.”59 Gorges and Mason submitted additional petitions through 1675,over twenty years after Godfrey had first brought his complaints,

58Nicholas Shapleigh to Charles II, 17 December 1672,CO1/29,fols.171–72, NA. For Gorges’s petitions, see At the Court at Whitehall, 11 May 1670,CO1/25, fol. 64; At the Court at Whitehall, 9 May 1670,CO1/25,fol.12; Nicolls to the earl of Arlington, 23 May 1669,CO1/24,fol.115; Petition of Ferdinando Gorges, Esq. heard by the Committee of Foreign Affairs, 5 March 1671,CO1/26,fol.94, all in NA. The petition was referred to the Council on Plantations which deferred action: Council of Foreign Affairs to King, 12 July 1671,CO1/26,fol.95, NA. For similar allegations against Massachusetts in New Hampshire, see Petition of Robert Mason to the Council for Foreign Plantations, 24 July 1671,CO1/27,fol.23, and John Leverett to Lord Privy Seal, 6 September 1675,CO1/35,fol.108,bothinNA. 59Report of Committee on Foreign Plantations, 12 July 1671,CO1/27,fol.27, NA. The minutes of Cartwright’s interview are in Minutes of Council for Foreign Plantations, 21 June 1671,CO1/26,fol.200,NA. ANGLO-AMERICAN IMPERIAL FORMATION 701 but the Crown consistently refused to act until it had heard from Massachusetts, “it being not agreeable to our royal justice.”60 Maverick, writing from the New York City retirement home York had given him, lamented to Nicolls, “It grieves me exceed- ingly to see his Majesties loyal subjects and ancient friends enslaved, as now they are, my whole aim was (in expending Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/tneq/article-pdf/87/4/666/1793661/tneq_a_00417.pdf by guest on 23 September 2021 so much time and money) only to have procured for them some freedom, but now they are left in a far worse condition then we found them.” Massachusetts had succeeded in maintaining its control over Maine, Maverick reported, by im- prisoning those who accepted ofﬁcial royal appointments and threatening those who signed the commissions; thus, the “Loyal Party which groans under the burden of the Massachusetts government now despair of relief as by frequent letters from all parts I am informed.”61 Yet, even though Nicolls duly broad- cast the plight of “the oppressed people of the Province of Maine” and even though New Hampshire, to the “great thank- fulness” of its inhabitants, became a royal colony in 1679,Maine did not secure its independence from Boston’s authority until 1820.62 Meanwhile, Connecticut received an unexpected opportunity to renew its ambitions when New York City capitulated to a Zeeland-Amsterdam ﬂeet at the beginning of August 1673. Quickly taking the lead, Connecticut advised the Dutch

60The humble Proposalls of William Earle of Starling, Ferdinando Gorges, Esq., and Robert Mason, 20 March 1674,CO1/31,fol.72; Petition of Ferdinando Gorges, Esq., December 1674, 1/3,fol.277; The humble petition of Robert Mason, 22 April 1675,CO1/34,fol.4; Considerations in order to his Majesties establishing his Interests in New England, 1 May 1675,CO1/34,fols.145–46; The humble petition of Robert Mason the proprietor of the Province of New Hampshire in New England, [read] 22 December 1675,CO1/35,fols.307–8; The humble petition of Ferdinando Gorges Esq. proprietor of the Province of Maine in New England, read 22 December 1675,CO1/35,fol.309, all in NA. For the Crown’s response, see King to the Governor and Council of Massachusetts, 10 March 1675/6,CO1/36, fol. 59,NA. 61Maverick to Nicolls, 5 July 1669,CO1/24,fols.97–98,NA. 62The General Laws and Liberties of the Province of New-Hampshire, in Jeremy Belknap, The History of New-Hampshire, 3 vols. (1784; Dover, N.H.: S. C. Stevens and Ela & Wadleigh, 1831), 1:453–54 at 453. 702 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY commander that Charles II had designated “we and our confederates, the United Colonies of New England,” as “keepers of his subjects liberties in these parts,” and it summoned those confederates to pronounce their determination to resist Dutch attacks on any member of the alliance. The eastern towns on Long Island responded enthusiastically to these developments. In October, Connecticut accepted a petition from Southampton Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/tneq/article-pdf/87/4/666/1793661/tneq_a_00417.pdf by guest on 23 September 2021 and other towns that sought its “protection and government,” and the following February the colony sent a force that retook Southold and positioned itself to offer “continued assistance” to those communities eager to rebuff Dutch pretenses to Long Island.63 The loss of New York stirred opposition in other colonial quarters as well. Two months after the English surrendered, Rhode Islander William Dyer, addressing the Council for For- eign Plantations, set out ﬁve folio sheets listing reasons why New York—“the very center and key of his Majesties Domin- ions in America,” which he likened to Tangier and the Downs (the roadstead on the Kent coast that harbored shipping en- tering and departing the Thames River) in terms of imperial importance—must be retaken. His appeal joined a battery of memorials from America, which persuaded the government that fall to accept their recommendation that English control of New York be restored.64

63The General Court’s Letter to the Commander of the Dutch Fleet, 7 August 1673, Connecticut Records, vol. 2, 1665–1676 (Hartford, Conn.: F. A. Brown, 1852), p. 561; Letter from the General Court of Connecticut to the General Court of Massachusetts, 17 October 1673, and Part of a Letter from Major John Winthrop, in command of the Connecticut forces at Southold, 25 February 1674, Connecticut Records, 2:563, 567. 64Some Propositions Concerning the Consequence of New York being in the hands of the Dutch, 24 September 1673,CO1/30,fols.171–73. The October memorials include A memorial sent to Mr. Locke by Mr. Bridgman, 23 October 1673, CO 1/30,fol.192; Project of Mr. Dyer for reducing New York, 27 October 1673, CO 1/30,fol.195; A proposal of Sir John Knight touching New York, 29 October 1673,CO1/30,fols.197–98; and Memorials of what strength will be necessary for thetakingofNewYork,3 November 1673,CO1/30,fol.199, all in NA. For the recommendation to retake New York, see Council for Foreign Plantations to the King, 15 November 1673,CO1/30,fols.203–4, NA. After the return of New York, Dyer became collector of customs for the colony (Commission of William Dyer to be Collector of New-York, DRCHNY, 3:221–22). ANGLO-AMERICAN IMPERIAL FORMATION 703 Perhaps because his mother, Mary, had been one of the Quakers Massachusetts hanged for violating its order of ban- ishment in 1660, Dyer was among those who disdained the Bay Colony. Three months after New York was returned to the English under the Treaty of Westminster of February 1674, he composed a “Description of Maine and New Hampshire.” In it, he rehearsed the grievances of “your Majesties suffering Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/tneq/article-pdf/87/4/666/1793661/tneq_a_00417.pdf by guest on 23 September 2021 subjects” against “the Massachusetts usurping power,” and he supported New England proprietors’ petition for a royal buy- out of their patents. Liberation from the Bay’s oppressions, Dyer claimed, “depends wholly upon his Majesties wisdom and justice,” which, he believed, should eventuate in a uni- ﬁed “Dominion of all New England.” Two months later, the Crown created such a union and placed it under York’s proprietary authority, although colonial charters remained in effect, while Dyer became Collector of Customs for New York.65

State Formation and Conceptions of Liberty Whitehall’s response to appeals from the colonies tracked the character of its relations with localities in England, that is, the government intervened not of its own accord but to settle local concerns brought to its attention by interested parties. That pat- tern remained in force until the period of the Exclusion Crisis, Popish Plot, and Rye-House Plot following York’s conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1673. Fears that the throne would devolve to a “popish” heir, manifested in efforts to modify the succession as well as threats to the king and his brother, trig- gered investigations that brought the Crown into local affairs to an unprecedented degree, including initiatives against the chartered liberties of London and other corporations as well as those of the colonies. These interventions, in turn, always

65The Humble Petition of William Dyer, of New England, Gent., inscribed “Description of Maine and New Hampshire,” May 1674,CO1/31,fols.116–18, NA. For York’s patent, see Copy of his Royall Highnesses Commission to ye Gov- ernance, 1 July 1674,CO1/31,fols.150–51,NA. 704 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY coupled to York’s religion, fueled charges of “Stuart tyranny” that have echoed down to the present day.66 Yet, even though this attempt to reconfigure the relationship between the English state and its colonies had its origins largely in the desires of certain influential colonists to apply imperial order to colonial affairs, it did constitute a new av- enue for centralization in the English Empire. Moreover, the Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/tneq/article-pdf/87/4/666/1793661/tneq_a_00417.pdf by guest on 23 September 2021 new New York, unlike other proprietorships, had a special imperial place due to York’s unique status as a colonial proprietor who was also heir to the throne. York’s appointment of Sir Edmund Andros as governor of New York in 1674 un- derscored the colony’s novel situation. A veteran servant of the House of Stuart, Andros came to his office without the sort of patronage ties, derived from religious or other sociopolitical connections unrelated to the state, that governors and prominent colonists, such as Maverick and Winthrop, had hith- erto employed in pursuing imperial aims. Instead, Andros’s direct association with the proprietor-duke, in conjunction with the more direct role that the Crown now began to assume in intercolonial matters—initiated largely at the behest, ironi- cally, of colonists, as we have seen—meant he pursued York’s interests with less concern—and even at the expense of— those of the colonists. Thus, he successfully advanced New York’s territorial claims against Connecticut’s, including sub- jugating Long Island when the inhabitants there sought to place themselves under the Hartford government after the Dutch returned New York to the English (although Winthrop

66Paul D. Halliday, Dismembering the Body Politic: Partisan Politics in English Towns, 1650–1730 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). Those opposed to a “popish” heir (“Whigs”) maneuvered unsuccessfully to have the duke barred from the throne. From 1678 to 1681, their perjured charges that a Catholic conspir- acy to kill the king and his ministers and install James took hold briefly and resulted in the judicial murder of a number of “papists,” including Oliver Plunkett, titular Roman Catholic archbishop of Armagh. Frustrated with the failure to block York, a handful of plotters devised an attempt to assassinate the royal brothers on their return to London from the Newmarket races in 1683. These maneuvers generated a furious governmental reaction in the form of executions, including the republican Algernon Sidney, the proceedings against charters (although local politicians played an important role here), and Charles II’s refusal to call a parliament after 1681. ANGLO-AMERICAN IMPERIAL FORMATION 705 successfully resisted Andros’s efforts to place all of Connecticut under New York’s authority) and sought to manage the fur trade to the benefit of New York City (and himself and his cronies, according to his enemies). Rather more adroitly, he negotiated an alliance between the English colonies and the Iroquois League.67 The mid-1670s brought other changes to the English imperial Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/tneq/article-pdf/87/4/666/1793661/tneq_a_00417.pdf by guest on 23 September 2021 order. First, Winthrop (d. 1676) and his cohort of colonial leaders passed on, leaving an arguably less capable generation in charge of colonial affairs. Moreover, although it provided another pretext for avoiding an imperial inquiry into Maine, King Philip’s War (1675–76) compelled Massachusetts to seek an accommodation with metropolitan authority to obtain relief in the wake of the conflict’s devastation. Acting as a “free state” seems, in the long run, to have had its disadvantages.68 The “Restoration Empire” took form, then, when individuals outside of Whitehall, seeking to cloak their own activities in public purpose, prodded it to act. Appeals to a higher authority for intervention in local affairs, such as those involved in the case of the commissioners sent to New England, involved the language of liberty, but the “liberty” at stake invariably de- volved from the Crown through its issuance of charters. Hence, the historiographical confusion noted above, especially when considering “New England,” a concept that is often read as “Massachusetts.”69

67Mary Lou Lustig, The Imperial Executive in America: Sir Edmund Andros, 1637– 1714 (Cranbury, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2002). Andros’s authority was extended to the Dominion of New England that was created in 1686 until the Glorious Revolution. For New York’s eventual subjugation of Long Island, see Captain R. Griffith of the Diamond to Naval Commissioners, 12 March 1675,ADM 106/311,fols.124–25, NA; my thanks to Evan Haefeli for this reference. 68John Leverett to Secretary Williamson, 18 December 1675,CO1/35,fol.288, and Richard Wharton to Mr. John Wensley, 10 February 1676,CO1/36,fol.40, both in NA; Richard S. Dunn, Puritans and Yankees: The Winthrop Dynasty of New England, 1630–1717 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962); Richard R. John- son, Adjustment to Empire: The New England Colonies, 1675–1715 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1981). 69See, e.g., Att a General Court held at Boston, 19 October 1664, Massachusetts Records, vol. 4,pt.2, pp. 129–33; compare Paul D. Halliday, Habeas Corpus: From England to Empire (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010). 706 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY On the one hand, then, the general seventeenth-century English understanding of “liberty,” which incorporated the “divine right” to exercise “royal justice,” registers with modern sensibilities as “tyranny.” On the other hand, a sociopolitical understanding whereby “the people”—“saints” who removed to a remote land to escape the “tyranny” of monarchs and bishops—exercised their “divine right” to exclude the “repro- Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/tneq/article-pdf/87/4/666/1793661/tneq_a_00417.pdf by guest on 23 September 2021 bate” from their godly commonwealth resonates with modern appreciations of “liberty.” Moreover, the difficulties contem- poraries had in squaring their views about and solutions for governing their societies—including the attendant assertions of “liberty,” all-too-often expressed as tocsins ringing against the pernicious plotting of opponents, as well as the political behav- iors with which those assertions were inextricably intertwined— gave rise to that fundamental change in the orthodox definition of “liberty” with which scholarship of the “early modern” period has remained tinged. The process of that imposition also, in turn, generated the seemingly eternal debate over the degree to which “democracy” or “oligarchy” characterizes seventeenth-century New England (not to mention the even more venerable “declension” question), which this essay has sought to avoid, especially insofar as its topic might be taken to presage the run-up to the independence of the United States a century later.70 How clearly, though, can we determine the degree to which the colonists adhered to definitions of “godly republicanism” forged by, for instance, John Cotton or Algernon Sidney? How many, and who among them, dissented from such opinions, as those who urged royal intervention in New England’s affairs alleged? How distinctive was New England from the rest of the seventeenth- century English-speaking world?71

70James E. McWilliams, “Beyond Declension: Economic Adaptation and the Pur- suit of Export Markets in the Massachusetts Bay Region, 1630–1700,” in Cultures and Identities in Colonial British America, ed. Robert Olwell and Alan Tully (Balti- more: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), pp. 121–46. 71Michael P. Winship, Godly Republicanism: Puritans, Pilgrims, and A City on a Hill (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012), pp. 243–49; Hall, A Reforming ANGLO-AMERICAN IMPERIAL FORMATION 707 Such questions might be better approached if we bear in mind the activities of the relatively latitudinarian and politic John Winthrop Jr. In addition to securing the support of the king’s government for the destruction of New Netherland, he also neatly orchestrated the demise of the staunchest manifes- tation of an American “New Jerusalem”: John Davenport’s New Haven.72 These maneuvers, as well as Winthrop’s ready asso- Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/tneq/article-pdf/87/4/666/1793661/tneq_a_00417.pdf by guest on 23 September 2021 ciation with Maverick, suggest that in New England, as in the metropolis, the fervor that had propelled the “Great Migration” of the 1630s before leveling monarchy, episcopacy, and House of Lords as well as Irish, Scottish, and Dutch opponents, had palpably subsided by 1660. The sudden return of kingly government and the attendant resurrection of patronage lines unleashed an unprecedented ﬂurry of grievances against “the Puritan commonwealth,” while a new generation of colonists, sometimes in alliance with old foes of the godly regime, employed rather more Machi- avellian than Mosaic principles in pursuing political advan- tage. These new realities surprised proponents of the “New England Way”—such as Davenport, Endecott, and Richard Bellingham—at a time when they faced pressing internal concerns about the character of their commonwealth, as evident in the dispute over the Half-Way Covenant (1662). The in- tense heat that still emanates from the historical record makes it difﬁcult to proffer entirely satisfactory answers, but if we re- assess conventional sociopolitical conceptions about early modern England and its possessions and attend closely to the facts on the ground, we will certainly gain a deeper understanding of

People, pp. 53–95, 191–96. For the endurance of the “democratic” debate, see John J. Waters, “From Democracy to Demography: Recent Historiography of the New England Town,” in Perspectives on Early American History: Essays in Honor of Richard B. Morris, ed. Alden B. Vaughan and George Athan Billias (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), pp. 222–49, and B. Katherine Brown, “The Controversy over the Franchise in Puritan Massachusetts, 1954 to 1974,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 33 (April 1976): 212–41. 72Richard S. Dunn, “John Winthrop, Jr., Connecticut Expansionist: The Failure of His Designs on Long Island, 1663–1675,” New England Quarterly 29 (March 1956): 3–26. 708 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY this critical episode in the history of Anglo-American political culture.

L. H. Roper is Professor of History at the State University

of New York–New Paltz. He is the author of Conceiving Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/tneq/article-pdf/87/4/666/1793661/tneq_a_00417.pdf by guest on 23 September 2021 Carolina: Proprietors, Planters, and Plots, 1662–1729 (New York and Houndmills, U.K.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004) and The English Empire in America, 1602–1658: Beyond Jamestown (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2009) as well as the coeditor (with Bertrand Van Ruymbeke) of Construct- ing Early Modern Empires: Proprietary Ventures in the Atlantic World, 1500–1750 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2007) and (with Jaap Jacobs) The Worlds of the Seventeenth-Century Hudson Valley (Albany: SUNY Press, 2014). He is presently working on a book manuscript on the history of the English Empire between the accession of Charles I and the annulment of the charter of the Massachusetts Bay Company (1625–84).