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A series of measures followed, the most vexatious
and tyrannical to which men of English descent were ever exposed.
‘The wicked walked on every side;
and the vilest men were exalted.’
As agents of James II., they established an arbitrary government; as men in office, they coveted large emoluments.
The schools of learning, formerly so well taken care of, were allowed to go to decay.
The religious institutions were impaired by abolishing the methods of their support.
‘It is pleasant,’ said the foreign agents of tyranny, ‘to behold poor coblers and pitiful me-
chanics, who have neither home nor land, strutting and making noe mean figure at their elections, and some of the richest merchants and wealthiest of the people stand by as insignificant cyphers;’ and therefore a town-meeting was allowed only for the choice of town
officers.
The vote by ballot was rejected.
To a committee from
Lynn,
Andros said plainly, ‘There is no such thing as a town in the whole country.’
To assemble in town-meeting for deliberation was an act of sedition or a riot.
Personal liberty and the customs of the country
were disregarded.
None might leave the country without a special permit.
Probate fees were increased almost twenty fold.
‘West,’ says
Randolph,—for dishonest men betray one another,—‘extorts what fees he pleases, to the great oppression of the people, and renders the present government grievous.’
To the scrupulous Puritans, the idolatrous custom of laying the hand on the
Bible, in taking an oath, operated as a widely-disfranchising test.
The Episcopal service had never yet been performed within
Massachusetts Bay, except by the chaplain of the hated commission of 1665.
Its day of liberty was come.
Andros demanded one of the meeting-houses
