Step by step the list of royal provinces lengthened. On the accession of the duke of York to the throne, the proprietary colony of New York entered the new status and there remained. New Hampshire became a royal province in 1679. The restoration of the Stuarts put an abrupt stop to the wide free autonomy of Massachusetts Bay. A royal commission inquired into charges that the Puritans had violated their charter and disobeyed imperial enactments. Continued contumacy led Charles II to abrogate the charter in 1684 and take special measures for governing the colony. Massachusetts, with Maine, New Hampshire, and part of Rhode Island, was first given a single governor. Then in 1686 Sir Edmund Andros arrived with instructions to take all of New England, New York, and New Jersey under his jurisdiction as the Dominion of New England. His arbitrary regime ended, however, with the Glorious Revolution of 1688–89 in England, and Massachusetts Bay by adroit effort obtained from William and Mary a new charter which incorporated Plymouth in the colony.

By the time of George I, eight of the colonies were royal provinces. Connecticut and Rhode Island under their old charters were virtually little republics; Pennsylvania and Maryland were still under proprietary regimes; and Georgia struggled along under its trustees until 1752. Some British leaders wished to see all the colonies put under uniform royal control, but successive ministries hung back, unwilling to arouse popular resentment or increase the power of the crown. All the colonies had representative assemblies which controlled appropriations and filled many offices and were usually in sharp opposition to the royal governors or proprietors. Connecticut and Rhode Island elected their own governors. The colonists had the best of it in these continuous quarrels, for self-interest gave them more persistence and skill. But representative self-government did not mean a true democracy. The franchise in all the colonies was on a property basis, so that the poorest people were unrepresented in the assemblies. Moreover, the oldest settled seaboard communities saw to it that apportionment of seats favoured them as against the newer frontier settlements.

In all the royal and proprietary colonies, the assembly attempted to whittle away the powers of the executive. Using their power of taxation as a lever, they steadily encroached on the authority of the governor and widened that of the legislature. They seized control of fees on which the executive depended, turned appointive positions into elective offices, and staged frequent revolts against the governors’ councils and other “official cliques.” Popular government thus broadened decade by decade. One province, Pennsylvania, after 1701 had no legislative council, the assembly controlling all legislation.

Ultimate authority over English America rested in the crown, acting through the secretary of state and Privy Council. But it was deputed to a succession of committees or boards: first, in 1660, to the Privy Council committee for foreign plantations, then in 1675 to the Privy Council committee called lords of trade, and finally in 1696 to the commissioners of trade and plantations, separate from the Privy Council. It was impossible, however, to keep control highly centralized; it was distributed to various agencies. The treasury board audited whatever revenues came from the colonies, oversaw expenditures for them, and scrutinized appointments for the colonial service. The admiralty board dealt with the equipment of the navy in American waters, the protection of commerce, and the punishment of smugglers. The war office had control over military affairs within the colonies. The bishop of London supervised the appointment of clergymen of the Anglican church and watched over their conduct and the parish schools they helped keep. The Privy Council received letters and petitions on colonial business, arranged hearings and inquiries, and issued letters, instructions, and orders in council on a wide variety of subjects. It also acted as a colonial court of appeals.

The administration thus required a considerable bureaucracy. But in time a good deal of the business was handled directly by the office of one of the secretaries of state in London, without going before the Privy Council. That is, the cabinet took control; the secretary of state for the southern department became especially important. Various colonies sent to London agents, like Benjamin Franklin, or hired some able British subject, such as Edmund Burke, to make sure their views were effectively presented. In general, imperial administration was loose rather than strict. The very remoteness of the colonies helped ensure this; to send a letter from England to New York and get an answer took at least three months. Distance, a tradition of letting well enough alone, and a belief that the Americans could mind their own affairs capably combined to make the crown authorities complacent. Until 1760 the colonists possessed greater political freedom than perhaps any other people on earth. They enjoyed many privileges and rights that were totally unknown in French and Spanish lands.

Rights in the colonies

Until 1760 Parliament passed only about 100 statutes in all relating to the colonies, and most of these dealt with military and economic matters. Some of the provinces adopted great parts of the statute law of England, and all of them attached high importance to the English guarantees of fundamental rights. The English common law automatically came into force throughout British America. While the crown after 1690 generally required the colonial assemblies to send their acts to England for approval or disapproval by the king in council, this was not a great hardship. As the 18th century advanced, the imperial government was concerned primarily with the acquisition of more colonial territory, the fixing of boundaries, and the maintenance of commercial interests. It also gave some attention to the Anglican (Episcopal) church and its revenues.

By the end of the colonial period the Puritan or Congregational Church enjoyed establishment in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Connecticut. Farther south the Anglican church was established in the Carolinas, Georgia, Virginia, and Maryland and in four southern counties of New York, but its hold in North Carolina and western Virginia was precarious. In the other colonies, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey, church and state were separated. The discrimination involved in the Congregational and Episcopal establishments did not mean that religious tolerance suffered. On the contrary, in the 18th century freedom of faith was much more widely accepted in British America than in most other parts of the world. The crusading Roger Williams and the liberal William Penn had founded model commonwealths whose influence was widely felt. The crown, the various proprietors, and important colonial interests, eager to attract settlers, had encouraged a variety of religious sects: Jews to New York and Rhode Island; Huguenots to South Carolina and New York; Mennonites, Dunkards, and other German sects to Pennsylvania; Scotch-Irish Presbyterians to lands all the way from New Hampshire to North Carolina; and Roman Catholics to Maryland. This variety of denominations helped keep the religious atmosphere free. In some colonies Jews were barred from the franchise and from office, but Jews were few in number. In most colonies Roman Catholics (partly because of fear of the French) lay under some disabilities, but they had far more freedom than Protestants enjoyed in Roman Catholic lands.

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The temper of colonial life was friendly to freedom of thought in every field. Both in New England and the southern provinces the grip of the established churches was gradually loosened as the 18th century wore on. Dissenting sects grew rapidly among the common people and Deism among the intellectuals. Taxation for the establishment of churches naturally aroused increasing resentment. The religious revival called the Great Awakening, which reached full force in the 1730s, perhaps indicated that the older churches had failed to provide the emotional and intellectual nutriment the people needed. It was led in Massachusetts by Jonathan Edwards, an eloquent Yale graduate whose sermons dealt with faith, sin, and punishment; in the middle colonies by William Tennent, who came from Scotland to preach with fervour and to establish a “log college” in Pennsylvania for training other zealous clergymen; and in Georgia by the indefatigable George Whitefield, who soon began touring other colonies and cast his spell everywhere over immense audiences. The movement continued with vigour throughout the 1740s, converted multitudes, and, by strengthening a spirit of revolt against older forms of religion, gave new strength to the Baptists, to new light Presbyterianism, and in time to the Methodists headed by John Wesley.

The colonists had at least as much freedom of speech, of assembly, and of the press as the British did at home. When John Peter Zenger allowed a political leader in New York to criticize the royal governor in his New York Weekly Journal, he was arrested for libel. By a spirited appeal to the jury the aged but intrepid Andrew Hamilton, an attorney of Philadelphia, won Zenger’s release on the ground that a fundamental British liberty was at stake. As this case suggests, America was soon a land of newspapers. By 1765 every colony but Delaware and New Jersey had at least one, and the whole list numbered 25. Debate in the colonial assemblies had even fewer inhibitions than in Westminster and was in general fully reported and discussed. Pamphlet publications increased. Intermarriage among peoples of different national stocks produced new generations with no firsthand knowledge of Europe who considered themselves purely American. All the conditions of life in the new country, where the abundant natural resources could be seized only by determined efforts, encouraged a spirit of individual enterprise which chafed at restraints.