Conceal

Connecticut

Charter.

came to an end, and Andros ordered the charter to be returned to its box and delivered to him. Suddenly the lights were put out. Naturally there must have been some confusion and some delay ment of the in relighting the candles. When this was at length done, the charter was not to be found. It had disappeared in the darkness. The instrument, at least, was safe, and the royal Governor so far baffled. Other resistance, however, was useless, even if any was thought of, for Andros had at his back sixty obedient soldiers. The General Court submitted, for they could do no otherwise. Entering upon their records a minute of the meeting, they wrote at the end

the significant word "FINIS." The crowd dispersed, sorrowfully no doubt, but quietly. The beloved parchment was safe in a hollow oak on the grounds of Samuel Wyllys, one of the magistrates, where it had been put by Captain Wadsworth of Hartford, and where it long remained.

Connecticut was now only a part of the royal province of New England. A few months later Andros received a commission as governor, also, of New York and New Jersey.

News of the
English
Revolution.

When the rumor came creeping up in April, 1689, from Virginia, of the landing of the Prince of Orange in England the previous November, the inhabitants of Boston could hardly fail to look upon it as a providential interposition. The young man who brought the news John Winslow-was impris

1689.]

GOVERNOR ANDROS DEPOSED.

393

oned, and Andros issued a proclamation against the Prince's cause. But the people could not be restrained by that, nor by the hesitating policy of some of their own leading men. The reports and suspicions which usually spring up in such critical moments, filled the air of Boston, and needed no electric wire to thrill the adjacent towns. Was there a plot for a massacre of the people by the Governor's Guards? Was the town to be fired at one end by traitors on shore, while Captain George from the Rose frigate set it on fire at the other end by bombardment?

The North End

The popular excitement was soon beyond control. heard that the South End was in arms; at the South End came swift rumors that the North End was up and on the march. The tar-barrels blazed up on Beacon Hill. From the country round about the people came raging into Boston by land and by water on the 18th of April. Drums beat through the town; where the signals had blazed on Beacon Hill by night, a flag was raised by day. Up King, now State, Street marched a company of Boston soldiery under Captain Hill, escorting a number of the former magistrates, whom the crisis had called together at noon. These gentlemen appeared on the balcony of the Town House overlooking King Street, and to the expectant and excited crowd below was read a "Declaration of the Gentlemen, Merchants and Inhabitants of Boston and the Country adjacent." It rehearsed the oppressive acts of Andros's administration; the illegal appointment of the Dudley Commission; the wrongful suppression of the charter; it hailed the accession of the and arrest Prince of Orange to the throne, and justified the arrest and imprisonment of "those few ill men which have been (next to our sins) the grand authors of all our miseries." Cotton Mather is supposed to have been the author of this address.

Deposition

of Andros.

Some of the most obnoxious of the citizens, official and otherwise, had already been arrested. Captain George of the frigate Rose was met on the street and arrested. A boat was sent by his lieutenant to rescue Andros, who was in the fort on Fort Hill, but was captured by the soldiers. Finding escape impossible, he went to the Town House with others, and was put under guard in a private house, to be removed a day or two later to the fort. Several members of the council were arrested with him. Randolph was thrown into the common. jail. Dudley, who was absent on his judicial duties — he had been made Chief Justice was arrested a few days later. The next day the fort was surrendered. The Rose, it was agreed, should strike her topmasts and send her sails ashore, and so lie helpless in the stream under the guns of the fort. The revolution was complete and without the shedding of a drop of blood. A provisional government was

organized under the name of a "Council for the Safety of the PeoThe Council ple and Conservation of the Peace." The venerable Simon Bradstreet, now eighty-seven years of age, was appointed president, and a number of the old assistants were called to his aid as a council.

of Safety.

Twice Andros escaped from confinement; the first time by disguising himself in the clothes of a woman. He passed two of the guards in safety, but his shoes betrayed him to the third, and he was

taken back to the fort. The second attempt was more successful. His servant plied the sentinel with liquor and took his master's place. On the 5th of August he was recognized in Newport, arrested the same day, and returned to Boston.1

The overthrow of the Andros government was as complete in the other colonies as in Massachusetts. Rhode Island remained without a governor; but Connecticut at once restored her old magistrates. 1 For a complete history of the Andros administration, see The Andros Tracts, in Pub lications of the Prince Society.