The Empire Reformed: English America in the Age of the Glorious Revolution

Introduction: Popery and Politics in the British Atlantic World

introduction: Popery and Politics in the British atlantic World On 4 June 1702, a crowd of worshippers gathered in Boston to pay homage to their departed monarch. William iii had died the previous march, and as the reverend Benjamin Wadsworth noted, seldom had there been a more heroic leader. William had been “a Good King,” Wadsworth preached, because he “imploy[ed] his Power and authority for the good of his People.” The king’s greatest moment had been the manner in which he had come to the throne fourteen years earlier. at that time, England and its dominions were in “languishing circumstances,” ruled by a catholic monarch, James ii, whose policies alienated many of his subjects. They were “quite depriv’d of Liberty and Property,” Wadsworth remembered, “having their Religion, Laws, and Lives in utmost hazard; sinking under Arbitrary Power and Tyranny; almost overwhelm’d with Popery and Slavery.” William, then the Prince of Orange, bravely “came over the sea to help them,” engineering the coup that became known as the Glorious revolution and establishing the Protestant faith and limited monarchy in Great Britain for good.1 in its time, Wadsworth’s paean to William was an utterly uncontroversial statement—one probably recreated by dozens of ministers around the king’s dominions. in this case, however, an ordinary event gave testimony to great political changes that had occurred on the far reaches of the empire. in the years before William’s accession, colonial americans had reputations as refractory subjects. none were worse than new Englanders, and in that region, congregational ministers had particular reputations for disloyalty. The first royal governor in the region, Edward cranfield of new Hampshire, believed there would be no peace in the colonies until the king “remove[d] all such their Preachers who oppose & indeavour to disturb the peace of this Government.” 0 0 500 1000 Kilometers 1000 Miles 500 A T L A N T I C O C E A N CARIBBEAN SEA BAHAMA ISLANDS HISPANIOLA PUERTO RICO JAMAICA (English) P A C I F I C O C E A N NEWFOUNDLAND Hudson Bay ACADIA Montréal Boston New York St. Augustine Charles Town BERMUDA (English) Albany Quebec SPAIN NEW FRANCE FLORIDA N O R T H A M E R I C A S O U TH AMERIC A MOSQUITO COAST (English) SURINAM (Dutch) Lake Superior Lake Michigan Lake Erie Lake Ontairio Lake Huron M i s s i s s i p p i R . V I C E ROYALTY OF NEW SPAIN VICEROYALTY OF PERU I n s e t m a p N 0 0 100 200 Kilometers 100 200 Miles A T L A N T I C O C E A N NEW FRANCE NEW YORK PENNSYLVANIA RHODE ISLAND CONNECTICUT EAST NEW JERSEY WEST NEW JERSEY PLYMOUTH MASSACHUSETTS NEW HAMPSHIRE St. Mary’s City Jamestown New York Providence Boston Ipswich Plymouth Albany Portsmouth Montreal Pemaquid Lake Ontario Lake Champlain Roanoke Island Chesapeake Bay MARYLAND V I R G I N I A N English possessions French possessions Spanish possessions Dominion of New England Figure 1. The British atlantic world in the late seventeenth century. Popery and Politics in the British Atlantic World 3 However bad the ministers were, they were only a step removed from colonial subjects as a collective group, who engaged in open rebellion with an alarming frequency during the late 1600s. The problem was that rulers and subjects often had different ideas about how politics and governance should work, about how the empire should be constituted. These rifts combined selfinterest and ideology, with religion lying just below the surface. People like Cranfield believed that the king had wide latitude to decide how he ruled his foreign plantations, and that subjects had the responsibility to obey him—a duty they cast in religious terms. Colonial subjects, on the other hand, had become used to some degree of autonomy. Some of them, especially Reformed Protestants like Wadsworth, believed that people had no duty to obey an ungodly or tyrannical ruler. The general disobedience of Americans led many imperial administrators to believe that only a show of brute force could make the empire work.2 C A R I B B E A N S E A G u l f o f M e x i c o A T L A N T I C O C E A N C U B...