Sir Edmund Andros

Sir Edmund Andros (born Dec. 6, 1637, London, Eng.—died Feb. 24, 1714, London) was an English administrator in North America who made an abortive attempt to stem growing colonial independence by imposing a kind of supercolony, the Dominion of New England.

Andros grew up as a page in the royal household, and his fidelity to the crown during its exile after the English Civil Wars was rewarded in 1674 by his appointment as governor of New York and New Jersey. (He was also knighted in 1678.) Although the mother country regarded him as an able and conscientious administrator, the colonists considered him both arrogant and arbitrary, and he was recalled in 1681.

Andros returned to America in 1686 as governor of the Dominion of New England, which included the jurisdiction of all the New England colonies and later of New York and New Jersey as well. Andros’ imposition of Episcopalian worship in the Old South Meetinghouse in Boston, his vigorous enforcement of the Navigation Acts, his requirement that landholders take out new land patents, and his limitations upon town meetings and rights of local taxation all aroused sharp resentment in colonial America. When news of the overthrow of James II (1688) reached Boston, the colonists revolted, deposing Andros and imprisoning him. Returned to England, he was tried and immediately released. He later served as governor of Virginia (1692), Maryland (1693–94), and the island of Guernsey (1704–06).