Home Readings.—­Parkman’s Montcalm and Wolfe; Franklin’s Autobiography; Brooks’s In Leisler’s Times; Coffin’s Old Times in the Colonies; Cooper’s Last of the Mohicans; Scudder’s Men and Manners One Hundred Years Ago.

CHAPTER 8

THE COLONIES UNDER CHARLES II

[Sidenote:  The Puritan in England.  Higginson and Channing, English History for Americans, 182-195.]

[Sidenote:  The Colonies, 1649-60.]

65.  The Puritans and the Colonists, 1649-60.—­In 1649 Charles I was executed, and for eleven years the Puritans were supreme in England.  During this time the New England colonists governed themselves, and paid little heed to the wishes and orders of England’s rulers.  After some hesitation, the Virginians accepted the authority of Cromwell and the Puritans.  In return they were allowed to govern themselves.  In Maryland the Puritans overturned Baltimore’s governor and ruled the province for some years.

[Sidenote:  The Restoration, 1660. English History for Americans, 196.]

[Sidenote:  The Navigation Laws.]

66.  Colonial Policy of Charles II.—­In 1660 Charles II became king of England or was “restored” to the throne, as people said at the time.  Almost at once there was a great revival of interest in colonization, and the new government interfered vigorously in colonial affairs.  In 1651 the Puritans had begun the system of giving the English trade only to English merchants and shipowners.  This system was now extended, and the more important colonial products could be carried only to English ports.

[Sidenote:  Charles II and Massachusetts.]

[Sidenote:  Massachusetts and the Quakers. Higginson, 80-81.]

67.  Attacks on Massachusetts.—­The new government was especially displeased by the independent spirit shown by Massachusetts.  Only good Puritans could vote in that colony, and members of the Church of England could not even worship as they wished.  The Massachusetts people paid no heed whatever to the navigation laws and asserted that acts of Parliament had no force in the colony.  It chanced that at this time Massachusetts had placed herself clearly in the wrong by hanging four persons for no other reason than that they were Quakers.  The English government thought that now the time had come to assert its power.  It ordered the Massachusetts rulers to send other Quakers to England for trial.  But, when this order reached Massachusetts, there were no Quakers in prison awaiting trial, and none were ever sent to England.

[Sidenote:  Charters of Connecticut and Rhode Island, 1662-63.]

[Sidenote:  New Haven absorbed by Connecticut.]

68.  Connecticut and Rhode Island.—­While the English government was attacking Massachusetts it was giving most liberal charters to Connecticut and to Rhode Island.  Indeed, these charters were so liberal that they remained the constitutions of the states of Connecticut and Rhode Island until long after the American Revolution.  The Connecticut charter included New Haven within the limits of the larger colony and thus put an end to the separate existence of New Haven.