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Communicating an English Revolution to the Colonies, 1688–1689

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2014

Ian K. Steele
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Extract

The America of Boston, bound from its home port to London in December of 1688, began taking soundings that were political as well as nautical as it approached England. Two weeks before an English port was reached, the first news was heard from a shipmaster returning from Barbados, who shared what he had heard earlier from an English vessel out of Galloway. The passengers of the America were told that William of Orange had landed at Torbay early in November, that the prince had taken England, and that King James was dead. The truth, the guess, and the false rumor all came aboard with equal credibility. They were only four days from port before they learned that the king was not dead, though the source was a five-week-old report from the Canary Islands. The occupants of the America could still be buffeted by strange and disturbing tales when they were only one day from Dover. The master of a pink that was two weeks out of Liverpool gave the date of the prince's landing as three weeks later than the event, gave William's force as an astounding 50,000 men and 600 ships, and told the apprehensive colonials that the drowned bodies of Englishmen were being found tied back-to-back and that French men-of-war were cruising with commissions from King James II. All this worrisome “news” proved erroneous but accompanied an account that would prove correct, that the king was not dead but had fled to France.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 24 , Issue 3 , July 1985 , pp. 333 - 357
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1985

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References

1 The Diary of Samuel Sewall, 3 vols. (Boston, 1878–1882), 1:240Google Scholar. On November 12, 1688, Governor Andros granted a license for the America, a 140-ton ship, William Clarke master, to sail for London (State House, Boston, Massachusetts Archives, vol. 7, Commercial 1685–1714, p. 61).

2 The Diary of Samuel Sewall, 1:242, 245, 246Google Scholar.

3 The crisis is here considered as beginning with the royal proclamation of September 28, which was printed in the London Gazette (October 1). The new monarchs accepted the throne on February 13, 1688/9.

4 For Maryland, see The Declaration … of their Majesties Protestant Subjects in the Province of Maryland (St. Mary's, Md., and London, 1689)Google Scholar (reprinted in Andrews, C. M., ed., Narratives in the Insurrections, 1675–1690 [New York, 1915], p. 311CrossRefGoogle Scholar); and Mariland's Grevances Wiy The Have Taken Op Arms, ed. B. McAnear and printed in Journal of Southern History 8 (1942): 392–409CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For Boston, see the Declaration of the Gentlemen, Merchants, and Inhabitants of Boston and the Country Adjacent … (Boston, 1688) (reprinted in Andrews, , ed., pp. 175–82Google Scholar; and in Whitmore, W. H., ed., Andros Tracts, 3 vols. [Boston, 1868–1874], 1:11–19Google Scholar). For New York, see O'Callaghan, E. B. and Brodhead, J. R., eds., Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New York, 15 vols. (Albany, N.Y., 1856–1883), 3:660Google Scholar.

5 D. , C., New England's Faction Discovered (London, 1690) (reprinted in Andrews, , ed., p. 257)Google Scholar. For the collapse of the case against Andros, see Lewis, Theodore B., ed., “Sir Edmund Andros's Hearing before the Lords of Trade and Plantations, April 17, 1690: Two Unpublished Accounts,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 83, pt. 2 (1974): 241–50Google Scholar.

6 Among recent works on the subject, the following deserve special note: Carr, L. G. and Jordan, D. W., Maryland's Revolution of Government, 1689–1692 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1974)Google Scholar; Ritchie, Robert C., The Duke's Province: A Study of New York Politics and Society, 1664–1691 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1977)Google Scholar; Archdeacon, T. J., New York City, 1664–1710: Conquest and Change (Ithaca, N.Y., 1976)Google Scholar; and Lovejoy, D. S., The Glorious Revolution in America (New York, 1972)Google Scholar. Lovejoy has succinctly restated this argument in “Two American Revolutions, 1689 and 1776,” in Three British Revolutions, 1641, 1688, 1776, ed. Pocock, J. G. A. (Princeton, N.J., 1980), pp. 244–62Google Scholar. Johnson's, Richard R.Adjustment to Empire: The New England Colonies, 1675–1715 (New Brunswick, N.J., 1981)Google Scholar, chaps. 2–4, is sensitive to developments on both sides of the Atlantic.

7 See Steiner, B. C., “The Protestant Revolution in Maryland,” in American Historical Association Annual Report for 1897 (Washington, D.C., 1898), p. 290Google Scholar; Mason, Bernard, “Aspects of the New York Revolt of 1689,” New York History 30 (1949): 166Google Scholar.

8 Calendar of State Papers, Colonial (CSPC), 1685–88, no. 1910.

9 London Gazette, no. 2409 (December 13, 1688). For the Boston reprint, see below.

10 London Gazette, nos. 2410–15 (December 17, 20, 24, 27, 31, 1688; January 3, 1688/9).

11 John Blackwell to William Penn, April 8 and May 1, 1689, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Penn Papers, reel 6, accession (acc.) nos. 503, 1617.

12 CSPC, 1689–92, no. 8.

13 Ibid., nos. 20, 22, 25; Public Record Office (PRO), Colonial Office (CO) 324/5, p. 38; Acts of the Privy Council (APC), Colonial, 2:122Google Scholar.

14 CSPC, 1685–88, no. 1929. In sharp contrast, two advice boats were sent on April 24, 1689, to warn West Indian and North American governors that England would declare war on France (PRO, CO 324/5, pp. 41–43).

15 Edwin Stede to William Blathwayt, August 16, 1688, Colonial Williamsburg, Blathwayt Papers, vol. 32; Stede to lords of trade, August 30, 1688, in CSPC, 1685–88, nos. 1876, 1876(i)–1876(iii).

16 There was an embargo that affected colonial trade between October 19 and 29 (APC, Colonial, 2:116Google Scholar).

17 Existence and survival of the naval officers' list were signs of stability in themselves (PRO, CO 33/13, fol. 20).

18 Edward Hill was her master. She had a crew of twenty and a cargo of hardware and metal goods (ibid.).

19 CSPC, 1689–92, nos. 3, 14, 15, 34, 35.

20 PRO, CO 33/13, fol. 20. Stede to Blathwayt, March 16, 1688/9, Colonial Williamsburg, Blathwayt Papers, vol. 32. CSPC, 1689–92, no. 43.

21 Clearances from Barbados directly for North America in the quarter commencing December 25, 1688, were two each for Maryland, Virginia, New York, and Newfoundland and one for Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, departure dates were not recorded. (PRO, CO 33/13, fol. 20.)

22 CSPC, 1689–92, nos. 88, 256; Dunn, R. S., Sugar and Slaves (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1972), pp. 133–34Google Scholar.

23 CSPC, 1689–92, no. 256.

24 John Winslow's oath is printed in Whitmore, ed. (n. 4 above), 1:78.

25 CSPC, 1689–92, nos. 88, 255, 256.

26 Whitson, Agnes M., The Constitutional Development of Jamaica, 1660–1729 (Manchester, 1929), pp. 131–32Google Scholar; Dunn, pp. 160–62.

27 CSPC, 1685–88, nos. 1940, 1941, 1943, and 1689–92, nos. 6, 7.

28 CSPC, 1689–92, nos. 50, 51; Smyth Kelly to Blathwayt, May 27 and June 5, 1689, Colonial Williamsburg, Blathwayt Papers, vol. 22.

29 CSPC, 1689–92, no. 52.

30 On March 15, Sir Francis wrote the lords of trade of being affronted and abused “so that in view of the danger from French and Spaniards and to secure the peace and quiet of the Island, I proclaimed martial law” (ibid.). On June 6 he wrote Blathwayt that martial law was proclaimed in keeping with King James's order of October 16, 1688 (Colonial Williamsburg, Blathwayt Papers, vol. 27).

31 CSPC, 1689–92, no. 397.

32 The proclamation was covered by a letter dated March 1, 1688/9 (CSPC, 1689–92, no. 42). On October 18, 1690, the proprietors acknowledged a letter of August 11, bringing word that the proclamation had occurred (Salley, Alexander S., ed., Records in the British Public Record Office relating to South Carolina, 1685–1690 [Atlanta, Ga., 1929], p. 292Google Scholar).

33 See Sirmans, M. Eugene, Colonial South Carolina, a Political History, 1663–1763 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1966)Google Scholar, esp. chap. 3.

34 Nicholas Spencer to Blathwayt, March 1, 1688/9, Colonial Williamsburg, Blathwayt Papers, vol. 16; McIlwaine, H. R. and Hall, W. L., eds., Executive Journals of the Council of Colonial Virginia, 5 vols. (Richmond, Va., 1925–1945), 1:101Google Scholar.

35 CSPC, 1685–88, no. 1929. Compare the Virginia colonial entry book (PRO, CO 5/1357), which suggests that the message was sent on October 25.

36 This tentative connection presumes that Andries Greveraet's report to Francis Nicholson derived from this packet (O'Callaghan and Brodhead, eds. [n. 4 above], 3:660). Nicholas Spencer's letter to Blathwayt of March 1, which mentions “this most unhappy Conjunction of Affairs,” presumes more news than appeared in the council minutes of February 27 (Colonial Williamsburg, Blathwayt Papers, vol. 16).

37 McIlwaine and Hall, eds., 1:104–6.

38 Ibid.

39 Spencer to Blathwayt, June 10, 1689, Colonial Williamsburg, Blathwayt Papers, vol. 18, mentions “a Rescue lately made in Stafford County by a Rabble of abt. two hundred.”

40 Browne, W. H.et al., eds., Archives of Maryland, 72 vols. (Baltimore, 1883–), 8:56–57, 62–65Google Scholar; CSPC, 1685–88, no. 1910. Compare Lovejoy, , The Glorious Revolution in America (n. 6 above), p. 260Google Scholar.

41 Two vessels are recorded as clearing Barbados for Maryland before Christmas of 1688 (PRO, CO 33/13, fol. 19). Three other vessels, which cleared customs from Maryland in the first quarter of 1689 (for which only fragmentary lists survive), had previously come in from Barbados (PRO, CO 5/749, fol. 4).

42 Browne et al., eds., 8:65.

43 Ibid., p. 88.

44 Sparks, F. E., Causes of the Maryland Revolution of 1689 (Baltimore, 1896), p. 572Google Scholar.

45 Carr and Jordan (n. 6 above), chap. 1; Kammen, M. G., “The Causes of the Maryland Revolution of 1689,” Maryland History Magazine 55 (1960): 293–333Google Scholar.

46 Nash, Gary N., Quakers in Politics (Princeton, N.J., 1968), pp. 114–26Google Scholar.

47 Minutes of the Provincial Council of Pennsylvania, 10 vols. (Harrisburg, Pa., 1852), 1:246–47Google Scholar.

48 “Minutes of the Councill att New York, Mr. 1, 1689,” Collections of the New York Historical Society, vol. 1 (New York, 1868), pp. 241–42Google Scholar. Blackwell and Andros had discussed improving communications before the Puritan soldier left Boston to take up the governorship of Pennsylvania (Blackwell to Penn, November 20, 1688, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Penn Papers, reel 6, acc. no. 2615; Minutes of the Provincial Council of Pennsylvania, 1:287–88Google Scholar).

49 Minutes of the Provincial Council of Pennsylvania, 1:299–300Google Scholar. It is surprising that Queen Mary's position was still not clear in Philadelphia four months after the Virginia proclamation.

50 Ibid. A public reading of the duke of Shrewsbury's circular letter of April 15 was needed to quell popular concern that orders to proclaim William and Mary may have arrived.

51 Ibid., pp. 302–11.

52 Richard Wharton to Wait Winthrop and Thomas Hinckley, October 18, 1688, quoted in Lewis, T. B., “Massachusetts and the Glorious Revolution, 1660–1692” (Ph.D. thesis, University of Wisconsin, 1967), p. 290Google Scholar. Andros's proclamation of January 10 is reprinted in Whitmore, ed. (n. 4 above), l:75–76n.

53 Andries Greveraet apparently brought the initial news by sea (O'Callaghan and Brodhead, eds. [n. 4 above], 3:660).

54 Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 6th ser., vol. 3 (1889), pp. 495–96Google Scholar.

55 John West to Fitz-John Winthrop, February 23, 1688/9, ibid., pp. 496–97. The only ship that could have brought the news to Barbados in accordance with West's details was the Friendship of Bristol, Jeremiah Pearce master, arriving in Barbados on January 2 (PRO, CO 33/13, fol. 20).

56 Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, pp. 496–97. In all the subsequent oath taking designed to discredit Andros and his officers there was nothing relating to this incident. What “seditious & rebellious libells” could have been gathered at Barbados and St. Christopher at the end of January? The above discussion suggests that the confirmed information available there would be the same news Nicholson was sending Winthrop.

57 West would certainly have informed Andros as fully as he did Winthrop. It was a three-day trip from Boston to the governor. Although Andros destroyed his papers, it seems reasonable to estimate that he heard of the news in Boston as early as February 19 and certainly before the end of the month.

59 “Minutes of the Councill att New York” (n. 48 above), pp. 241–42.

59 Hall, M. G., ed., “Autobiography of Increase Mather,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 71 (1961): 331–32Google Scholar; PRO, CO 5/905, p. 42; Andrews, ed. (n. 4 above), p. 277; CSPC, 1689–92, no. 21.

60 Lewis, , “Massachusetts and the Glorious Revolution,” p. 290Google Scholar. Wait Winthrop's correspondence with his brother in New London has a comparable gap (Massachusetts Historical Society, Winthrop Papers).

61 Mather regarded stopping the letters to Andros as justifying his agency in itself (Hall, ed., p. 332). Besides this news and the accession of the king and queen, Mather also knew by February 22 that both Andros and Nicholson were to be recalled (CSPC, 1689–92, nos. 28, 37; APC, Colonial, 2:124–25Google Scholar).

62 The embargo, to man the fleet in anticipation of war with France, was not imposed until April 15 (APC, Colonial, 2:117–19Google Scholar). Randolph later claimed that “the revolt here was pushed on by the Agent in England, Mr. Mather, who sent a letter to Mr. Bradstreet encouraging him to go cheerfully to so acceptable a piece of service to all good people” (CSPC, 1689–92, no. 407). This claim was made later and was unconfirmed and partisan. Mather is not likely to have urged Bostonians to take for themselves what he wanted to bring them from London, though this does not preclude the possibility that this news, if received, would have helped provoke the local initiative. The only vessel known to be bound from London to Boston late that winter, a ship captained by Benjamin Guillam, was still registering cargo on March 11 (PRO, Exchequer 190/148/4, p. 3). Even if he had sailed immediately and enjoyed one of the best spring crossings recorded for newsbearing ships (see table 1), he would have arrived in Boston only in time to witness the rising there.

63 John Nelson to [?], March 25, 1689, Boston Public Library, Prince Collection, Mather Papers, 7:81. The letter, to an Acadian correspondent, who may well have been Jean-Vincent d'Abbadie de Saint-Castin, was mutilated so that any additional news of the English scene is gone. On Saint-Castin's trade with New England, see Dictionary of Canadian Biography, 2:4–7Google Scholar; and also Rawlyk, George A., Nova Scotia's Massachusetts (Montreal, 1973), pp. 35ff.Google Scholar

64 Increase Mather, 's A Narrative of the Miseries of New England (London, 1688)Google Scholar was reprinted in Boston and dated “1688” in the reprint (Evans, Charles, ed., American Bibliography: A Chronological Dictionary of All Books, Pamphlets and Periodical Publications Printed in the United States …, 14 vols. [Chicago and Worcester, 1903–1959], no. 450)Google Scholar. The Boston reprint also included an application to Prince William by the bishop of London, dated September 21, 1688. The Boston reprinting of these three items together would occur between the end of February (giving six weeks passage and one week at each end for conveyance and printing) and March 25 (the official end of 1688).

65 Winslow's oath, taken ten months after the event, was printed in The Revolution in New England Justified (Boston, 1691), pp. 16–17Google Scholar (which was reprinted in Whitmore, ed. [n. 4 above], 1:78–79).

66 Whitmore, ed., 1:77–79.

67 Further Quaeries upon the Present State of the New-English Affairs (London, 1690), p. 4 (reprinted in Whitmore, , ed., 1:196)Google Scholar.

68 CSPC, 1689–92, no. 256. For a very different view of what news Winslow brought, see Barnes, Viola F., The Dominion of New England (New Haven, Conn., 1923), p. 239Google Scholar; and Milker, Guy H., “Rebellion in Zion: The Overthrow of the Dominion of New England,” Historian 30 (1968): 450Google Scholar.

69 Samuel Wyllys to Mary Wyllys, April 8, 1689, Collections of the Connecticut Historical Society, vol. 21 (Hartford, Conn., 1924), p. 307Google Scholar. In Newport, R.I., on April 1 it was known that “Prince William was in command in England” (Lovejoy, , The Glorious Revolution in America [n. 6 above], p. 238)Google Scholar.

70 The Revolution in New England Justified, p. 56 (Whitmore, , ed., 1:118)Google Scholar.

71 Whitmore, ed., 1:9.

72 Declaration of the Nobility, Gentry and Commonality … ([London?], 1688)Google Scholar; Kenyon, J. P., “The Revolution of 1688: Resistance and Contract,” in Historical Perspectives: Studies in English Thought and Society in Honour of J. H. Plumb, ed. McKendrick, Neil (London, 1974), pp. 46–47Google Scholar.

73 London Gazette, no. 2409 (December 13, 1688); and Evans, ed., no. 465; and the Readex microedition of Clifford Shipton, ed., Early American Imprints, 1639–1800.

74 Whitmore, ed., 1:18.

75 Harris was supposedly protected from abuse by a guard of Whigs. Harris's paper soon became the True domestic intelligence and by March 1681 was replaced by the Loyal Protestant and true domestic intelligence (Crane, R. S. and Kaye, F. B., eds., A Census of British Newspapers and Periodicals, 1620–1800 [Chapel Hill, N.C., 1927], p. 33Google Scholar). See also Hudson, Winthrop S., “William Penn's English Liberties: Tract for Several Times,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 26 (1969): 578–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and the unsympathetic Muddiman, J. G., The King's Journalist, 1659–1689 (London, 1923), pp. 214–19Google Scholar.

76 See Evans, ed., no. 474.

77 Ibid., no. 453.

78 For Plymouth colony, see Shurtleff, N. B. and Pulsifer, D., eds., Records of the Colony of New Plymouth in New England (Boston, 1855–1861), 6:208–9Google Scholar; and CSPC, 1689–92, no. 183. For Rhode Island, see CSPC, 1689–92, no. 99; and Bartlett, J. R., ed., Records of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations in New England, 1632–1792, 10 vols. (Providence, R.I., 1856–1865), 3:257Google Scholar. For Connecticut, see Bulkeley, Gershom, The People's Right to Election (Philadelphia, 1689)Google Scholar, and Will and Doom (London, 1692)Google Scholar; and Dunn, R. S., Puritans and Yankees: The Winthrop Dynasty of New England, 1630–1717 (Princeton, N.J., 1962)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, chap. 13. See also Lovejoy, , The Glorious Revolution in America, pp. 196–208Google Scholar.

79 Livingston, Robert to Randolph, Edward, March 22, 1688/1689, Edward Randolph …, Including his Letters and Official Papers, 1676–1703 …, 7 vols. (Boston, 1898–1909), 4:262Google Scholar.

80 O'Callaghan and Brodhead, eds. (n. 4 above), 3:591.

81 CSPC, 1689–92, no. 104; O'Callaghan and Brodhead, eds., 3:574–76.

82 See Ritchie (n. 6 above), esp. chap. 9; and Reich, J. R., Leisler's Rebellion (Chicago, 1953)Google Scholar, chap. 3.

83 O'Callaghan and Brodhead, eds., 3:585–86.

84 Ibid., pp. 583–84.

85 Rich, E. E., ed., Hudson's Bay Copy Booke of Letters Commissions Instructions Outward, 1688–1696 (London, 1957), p. 50Google Scholar.

86 Ibid., pp. 50–53, 59, 75–76, 93–104.