croft, and Ravenscraft. Boys ran along the streets with clubs; the drums beat: the governor, with his creatures, resisted in council, withdrew to the fort to desire a conference with the ministers and two or three more. The conference was declined. All the companies soon rallied at the town-house. Just then, the last governor of the colony, in office when the charter was abrogated, Simon Bradstreet- venerable with fourscore years and seven, one of the early emigrants, a magistrate in 1630, whose experience connected the oldest generation with the new drew near the town-house, and was received by a great shout from the freemen. The old magistrates were reinstated, as a council of safety; the town rose in arms, "with the most unanimous resolution that ever inspired a people;" and a Declaration, read from the balcony, defended the insurrection as a duty to God and the country. "We commit our enterprise," it was added, "to Him who hears the cry of the oppressed, and advise all our neighbors, for whom we have thus ventured ourselves, to join with us in prayers and all just actions for the defence of the land."

On Charlestown side, a thousand soldiers crowded together; and the multitude would have been larger if needed. The governor, vainly attempting to escape to the frigate, was, with his adherents, compelled to seek protection by submission: through the streets where he had first displayed his scarlet coat and arbitrary commission, he and his fellows were marched to the townhouse, and thence to prison.

On the next day, the country came swarming across the Charlestown and Chelsea ferries, headed by Shepherd, a schoolmaster of Lynn. All the cry was against Andros and Randolph. The castle was taken; the frigate was mastered; the fortifications were occupied.

How should a new government be instituted? Town meetings, before news had arrived of the proclamation of William and Mary, were held throughout the colony. Of fifty-four towns, forty certainly, probably more,

REVOLUTION IN PLYMOUTH AND RHODE ISLAND. 79

voted to reassume the old charter.

Representatives were chosen; and Massachusetts once more, in May, 1689, assembled in general court.

It is but a short ride from Boston to Plymouth. Already, on the twenty-second of April, Nathaniel Clark, the agent of Andros, was in jail; Hinckley resumed the government, and the children of the Pilgrims renewed the constitution which had been unanimously signed in the Mayflower. But not one of the fathers of the Old Colony remained alive. The days of the Pilgrims were over, and a new generation possessed the soil.

The royalists had pretended that "the Quaker grandees" of Rhode Island had imbibed nothing of Quakerism but its indifference to forms, and did not even desire a restoration of the charter. On May-day, their usual election-day, the inhabitants and freemen poured into Newport; and the whole "democracie" published to the world their gratitude "to the good providence of God, which had wonderfully supported their predecessors and themselves through more than ordinary difficulties and hardships." "We take it to be our duty" thus they continue "to lay hold of our former gracious privileges, in our charter contained." And, by a unanimous vote, the officers whom Andros had displaced were confirmed. But Walter Clarke wavered. For nine months there was no acknowledged chief magistrate. The assembly, in February, 1690, accepting Clarke's disclaimer, elected Almy. Again excuse was made. All eyes turned to one of the old Antinomian exiles, the more than octogenarian, Henry Bull; and the fearless Quaker, true to the light within, employed the last glimmerings of life to restore the democratic charter of Rhode Island. Once more its free government is organized: its seal is renewed; the symbol, an anchor; the motto, HOPE.

Massachusetts rose in arms, and perfected its revolution without concert; "the amazing news did soon fly like lightning;" and the people of Connecticut spurned the government which Andros had appointed, and

which they had always feared it was a sin to obey. The charter, discolored, but not effaced, was taken from its hiding-place; an assembly was convened; and, in spite of the FINIS of Andros, new chapters were begun in the records of freedom. Suffolk county, on Long Island, rejoined Connecticut.

New York also shared the impulse, but with less unanimity. "The Dutch plot" was matured by Jacob Leisler, a man of energy, but passionate and ill-educated, and not possessed of that happy natural sagacity which elicits a rule of action from its own instincts. But the common people among the Dutch, led by Leisler and his son-in-law Milborne, insisted on proclaiming the stadtholder king of England.

In New Jersey there was no insurrection. The inhabitants were unwilling to invoke the interference of the proprietaries. There is no reason to doubt, that in the several towns, officers were chosen, as before, by the inhabitants themselves, to regulate all local affairs; while the provincial government, as established by James II., fell with Andros. We have already seen that Maryland had perfected a revolution, in which Protestant intolerance, as well as popular liberty, had acted its part. The passions of the Mohawks, also, are kindled by the certain prospect of an ally; they chant their loudest war-song, and prepare to descend on Montreal.

Thus did a popular insurrection, beginning at Boston, extend to the Chesapeake, and to the wilderness. This New England revolution "made a great noise in the world." Its object was Protestant liberty; and William and Mary, the Protestant sovereigns, were proclaimed with rejoicings such as America had never before known in its intercourse with England.

Thus have we traced, almost exclusively from contemporary documents and records, the colonization of the twelve oldest states of our Union. At the period of the great European revolution of 1688, they contained not very many beyond two hundred thousand

inhabitants, of whom MASSACHUSETTS, with Plymouth and Maine, may have had forty-four thousand; NEW HAMPSHIRE and RHODE ISLAND, with Providence, each six thousand; CONNECTICUT, from seventeen to twenty thousand; that is, all New England, seventy-five thousand souls; - NEW YORK, not less than twenty thousand; NEW JERSEY, half as many; PENNSYLVANIA and DELAWARE, perhaps twelve thousand; MARYLAND, twenty-five thousand; VIRGINIA, fifty thousand, or more; and the two CAROLINAS, which then included the soil of Georgia, probably not less than eight thousand souls.

The emigration of the fathers of these commonwealths, with the planting of the principles on which they rested, though, like the introduction of Christianity into Rome, but little regarded by contemporary writers, was the most momentous event of the seventeenth century.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

THE SOUTH AFTER THE REVOLUTION OF 1688.

THE Stuarts passed from the throne of England. Their family, distinguished by a blind resistance to popular opinion, was no less distinguished by misfortunes. During the period of their separate sovereignty over Scotland, but one of the race escaped a violent death. The first of them who aspired to the crown of Great Britain was by an English monarch doomed to death on the scaffold; her grandson was beheaded in the name of the English people. The next in the line, long a needy exile, is remembered chiefly for his vices; and, as if a domestic crime could alone avenge the national wrongs, James II. was reduced from royalty to beggary by the conspiracy of his own children. Yet the New World has monuments of the Stuarts; North America acquired

its British colonies during their rule, and towns, rivers, headlands, and even states, bear their names. The pacific disposition of James I. promoted the settlement of Virginia; a timely neglect fostered New England; the favoritism of Charles I. opened the way for religious liberty in Maryland; Rhode Island long cherished the charter which its importunity won from Charles II.; the honest friendship of James II. favored the grants which gave liberties to Pennsylvania, and extended them to Delaware; the crimes of the dynasty banished to our country men of learning, virtue, and fortitude. Thus did despotism render benefits to freedom. "The wisdom of God," as John Knox had predicted, "compelled the very malice of Satan, and such as were drowned in sin, to serve to his glory and the profit of his elect."

Four hundred and seventy-four years after the barons at Runnymede had extorted Magna Charta from their legitimate king, the aristocratic revolution of 1688 established for England and its dominions the sovereignty of parliament and the supremacy of law.

To the English people, the change was the source of hope the colonies could not fail to perceive that, as the revolution of 1688 had been made for the rights of Englishmen, not for the rights of man, so, in its external policy, the dominant motive was the interest of England, and not the reciprocity of justice.

To the proprietaries of Carolina the respect of the revolution for vested rights secured their possessions. The statute book of South Carolina attests the moderation and liberality of the insurrectionary government, which now came to an end. Factions multiplied in a colony which had as yet gained no moral unity. The legal sovereigns would not expend their private fortunes in reducing their insurgent liegemen; the colonial oligarchy, which they favored, was too feeble a minority to conduct the government; and the people were forbidden by law to take care of themselves. To this were added the evils of an uncertain boundary on the south, and of disordered finances.