The City-State of Boston: The Rise and Fall of an Atlantic Power, 1630–1865

Chapter 3 ─  ─ Boston Pays Tribute The Political Trials of an Expanding City-State It is ordered, that ye two very large masts now on board Capt Peirce his ship . . . be presented to his maj[es]ty . . . as a testimony of loyalty and affection from ye country, & that all charge thereof be paid out of the country treasury. —Massachusetts General Court, 1666 Boston’s desire for territorial expansion, driven by the perception that its charter boundaries were too small to provide land for its colonists and resources for its economy, caused violence among the competing political forces within the New England region. The Pequot War of 1637 and King Philip’s War in 1675–78 were products of this same expansive impulse. But Boston’s drive to expand created conflict in other spheres as well. The original charter of the Massachusetts Bay Company was in every way ideal for promoting the colony’s autonomy, except for the amount of land that it granted. Sustaining this autonomy remained a goal throughout the seventeenth century. Although the charter had been the gift of Charles I, Boston viewed it as a license to evade the authority of the king, and after the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, the authority of his sons, Charles II and James II, as well. Had the land grant defined in the charter been large and rich enough to furnish the productive hinterland that Boston needed, evading royal authority might have been easy. Instead, other plantations whose settlers saw the Stuarts as their benefactors and did not share Boston’s desire for independence bounded the Massachusetts Bay Colony to the north and east. Whenever Boston risked conflict with its neighbors for the sake of 140 chapter 3 expansion, it also risked the political consequences that Crown intervention in the dispute might bring.1 During the 1640s, English royal authority was distracted by civil war and then collapsed altogether. The execution of Charles I left Parliament and Oliver Cromwell to rule from 1649 to 1660. Boston took advantage of the absence of Crown oversight to solve some of the problems caused by its narrow charter limits. The creation of the United Colonies in the mid-1640s united most of southern New England into a confederation of allies with Boston in the dominant political, military, and economic role.2 This achievement was fostered by the fact that the southern New England colonies of Connecticut, New Haven, and Plymouth shared most of Boston’s fundamental religious and political allegiances; Connecticut and New Haven were themselves, at least in part, colonies of Massachusetts , and graduates of Harvard College soon began to fill church pulpits in the older Plymouth Colony. The political organization of Rhode Island was so chaotic as to pose little threat to Boston’s hegemony . As a result, Boston settlers and investors gained access to land and resources in southern New England in the years after the Pequot War, even when political control remained out of their hands. King Philip’s War further enhanced these territorial gains, as the previous chapter described.3 This chapter turns from Boston’s economic and political integration of the southern New England hinterland to its efforts to expand its political influence to the north and east. The previous chapter focused on Boston’s efforts at internal economic integration and their destructive consequences for Indian relations through the cataclysm of King Philip’s War in the 1670s. Here I first circle back in time to trace Boston’s early external relationships with its competitor colonies to the northeast, and then follow the escalating conflicts that emerge between colony and Crown in the wake of the Restoration of 1660. The region beyond Massachusetts’ boundary north of the Merrimack River proved to be a difficult challenge in the era of the Stuart Restoration. An overlapping patchwork of patents and land grants held by various English aristocrats and colonial promoters predated the claims of Massachusetts Bay. The holders of [150.230.61.141] Project MUSE (2024-11-27 19:45 GMT) Boston pays triBute 141 these earlier claims, some with close ties to the royal court, shared few of Boston’s sympathies for religious dissent and independence from the Crown. During the civil wars and interregnum, Massachusetts took advantage of the demise of royal authority to extend its influence deeply into these regions, asserting itself as an independent city-state more strongly than ever. But after the Restoration of Charles II to the throne in 1660, the former claimants to...