The Glorious Revolution in America

Conclusion

Conclusion The results of the Glorious Revolution in America were not clear-cut, for the effects were as varied as the causes. If the chief goal of revolution was a shift of allegiance from James to William, as it was in England, then it was universally achieved, for it obtained in the colonies which did not revolt as well as in those which did. If a primary purpose of revolution was to smash a Catholic conspiracy (real or imagined) against Protestant Englishmen, then again, it v/as considered a successful affair. Further, if the acts of rebellion were simply the overthrow of arbitrary governments, the Dominion over New England , New York, and New Jersey and Lord Baltimore's regime in Maryland, then the Revolution was accomplished, for the Dominion was dissolved and the proprietor in Maryland lost control of his colony. If these were the heart of the Glorious Revolution in America, it was as successful there as it was in England. But to accept these consequences alone—all true—as a means to explain the rebellions of 1689 would be to write poor history and to gloss over what these people were about. Even a cursory reading of the preceding pages, I hope, would disprove such simplistic conclusions if left by themselves. 375 376 The Glorious Revolutionin America If, however, each of the rebellions was also a strike for supremacy by one or more groups of colonists over others, in order to satisfy selfinterested needs, then the consequences fall less into a pattern. Viewed in this light, the upheavals were not one revolution at all but separate outbursts for distinct causes. Moreover, in Maryland the rebels' strike was victorious, while in New York it went down to bloody defeat. Among Bay colonists a large and small group collaborated to overthrow Andros' Dominion, after which their interests split. Results in Massachusetts were a mixture of success and failure on that score. Less important to the total picture were Connecticut and Rhode Island; each achieved eventually from rebellion precisely wr hat it sought: a return to charter government with a built-in privilege, for the most part, of being left alone. If, too, the revolutions in America were also an attempt by colonists to realize a conception of empire based on an equality between Englishmen at home and abroad, the results were diverse. Maryland achieved one primary purpose: a substantial shift of power from the hands of a proprietor to an elected assembly under royal government. But like Virginia in 1675, its legislature was unable to translate the Crown's grace and favor into a permanent right, or find a constitutional means to protect its dependent position from prerogative power. That this was the scheme of the antiproprietary party was as evident after the Revolution, when the prerogative was royal, as it had been before, when it was proprietary. New Yorkers had struggled for the same kind of guarantee, from the conquest of 1664, through Leisler's Rebellion, well into the 1690's, but they were defeated on all counts. Granted they won an assembly from the Revolutionary settlement, like that of Maryland it lacked the warranty which they had hoped to attach to it. In Massachusetts the circumstances and the outcome were different, reflecting the peculiar character of that province. The chief difficulty in attempting to restore the godly community, which lived on in the minds of many Bay colonists, was the very nature of the Revolution and the King's settlement of the colony's government. And in this there was an unappreciated irony. In justifying revolt Massachusetts was forced off its usual foundation of old covenant and original charter, for such parochial sanctions had little appeal in the world of empire outside New England. Bay colonists had transcended their local and peculiar bases which long since had sustained them against royal commissions , Indian wars, Navigation Acts, and customs officers. In rebellion they greedily grasped the rights of Englishmen, a set of principles whose prospects the Glorious Revolution gave great promise to, or so Conclusion 377 it seemed. Puritan settlers, who earlier had gloried in their holy isolation from Englishmen's rights and responsibilities had come suddenly to see their value in relieving them from a nasty dilemma. But curiously, the very rights granted them in the new charter, religious toleration, a more equitable basis for suffrage, a wider participation in lawmaking and tax levying, militated against...