=The Royal Provinces.=—­Of the thirteen English colonies eight were royal provinces in 1776, with governors appointed by the king.  Virginia passed under the direct rule of the crown in 1624, when the charter of the London Company was annulled.  The Massachusetts Bay corporation lost its charter in 1684, and the new instrument granted seven years later stripped the colonists of the right to choose their chief executive.  In the early decades of the eighteenth century both the Carolinas were given the provincial instead of the proprietary form.  New Hampshire, severed from Massachusetts in 1679, and Georgia, surrendered by the trustees in 1752, went into the hands of the crown.  New York, transferred to the Duke of York on its capture from the Dutch in 1664, became a province when he took the title of James II in 1685.  New Jersey, after remaining for nearly forty years under proprietors, was brought directly under the king in 1702.  Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Delaware, although they retained their proprietary character until the Revolution, were in some respects like the royal colonies, for their governors were as independent of popular choice as were the appointees of King George.  Only two colonies, Rhode Island and Connecticut, retained full self-government on the eve of the Revolution.  They alone had governors and legislatures entirely of their own choosing.

The chief officer of the royal province was the governor, who enjoyed high and important powers which he naturally sought to augment at every turn.  He enforced the laws and, usually with the consent of a council, appointed the civil and military officers.  He granted pardons and reprieves; he was head of the highest court; he was commander-in-chief of the militia; he levied troops for defense and enforced martial law in time of invasion, war, and rebellion.  In all the provinces, except Massachusetts, he named the councilors who composed the upper house of the legislature and was likely to choose those who favored his claims.  He summoned, adjourned, and dissolved the popular assembly, or the lower house; he laid before it the projects of law desired by the crown; and he vetoed measures which he thought objectionable.  Here were in America all the elements of royal prerogative against which Hampden had protested and Cromwell had battled in England.

[Illustration:  THE ROYAL GOVERNOR’S PALACE AT NEW BERNE]

The colonial governors were generally surrounded by a body of office-seekers and hunters for land grants.  Some of them were noblemen of broken estates who had come to America to improve their fortunes.  The pretensions of this circle grated on colonial nerves, and privileges granted to them, often at the expense of colonists, did much to deepen popular antipathy to the British government.  Favors extended to adherents of the Established Church displeased Dissenters.  The reappearance of this formidable union of church and state, from which they had fled, stirred anew the ancient wrath against that combination.