Lucius R. Paige, History of Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1630-1877, with a genealogical register

In the Massachusetts Archives¹ is a manuscript by Thomas Danforth, so nearly identical with this petition that it may properly be regarded as its first draught. It is highly probable that Danforth prepared it, and sent it; to Mather, who made a few verbal alterations before presenting it to the king. It seems to have been written in 1688, while Randolph was endeavoring to obtain possession of seven hundred acres of land near Spy Pond. This was one of his many attempts, of a similar kind, to enrich himself at the public expense. Besides asking for free grants in divers other places, he ‘petitioned for half an acre of land, to be taken out of the common in Boston, for a house lot.’² Several documents relating to the Cambridge case are here inserted, as a specimen of the wrongs and indignities to which the inhabitants were subjected under the arbitrary government of Sir Edmund Andros. Other communities suffered like evils; and other persons were only less rapacious than Edward Randolph.