Chapter 135: Upheavals in English North America
After the death of Charles I in 1654, royal power had begun a gradual resurgence under the rule of the more unassuming Charles II. Parliament’s 10 year monopoly over military and ministerial appointments ended and a royalist faction would emerge in the House of Commons itself. Additionally, though the Parliamentarians would still retain a dominant majority in the Commons, internal divisions remained between Presbyterian moderates, congregationalist Independents, and even a few radical Levellers. Nevertheless, the biennial renewal of Parliament and the inability for the king to dissolve the House of Commons would continue to limit the Crown’s power. Charles II therefore relied on his appointed ministers as well as short-term coalitions between royalists and moderate Parliamentarians in the House of Commons against the radicals. He reached the peak of his popularity after overseeing the reconstruction of London from the Great Fire of 1666 and the forging of an Anglo-Dutch alliance in 1668. However, Charles II would play too ambitious of a hand when he accepted subsidies from French to become less financially dependent on Parliament in return for neutrality in the Franco-Dutch War, turning most of the Commons against him.
England’s North American colonies would also adjust to the political and religious changes taking place in their homeland. Virginia, being the most Anglican colony prior to the war, transitioned towards Presbyterianism with the Church of England while Plymouth and its puritanical Separatism remained distant from its mother country. In the other New England colonies as well as Maryland, these changes would prove to be more disruptive. Although the Massachusetts Bay colony welcomed the dismantling of the old Church of England and its hierarchy of bishops and archbishops, its reformation into a Presbyterian church undermined the established Congregationalism and legitimized the efforts of a vocal minority advocating for a Presbyterian polity. Tensions grew when the Crown attempted to establish the Church of England throughout New England. This issue, along with attempts by England to exert greater control over its New England colonies via mercantilism, persisted without any resolution for the entirety of Charles II’s reign due to Massachusetts Bay’s status as a self-governing joint-stock colony largely independent of England. They would be resolved by the next king.
Meanwhile, Maryland’s status as a Catholic haven under the proprietary rule of the Lords Baltimore was increasingly undermined as Puritan settlers grew in numbers and sought to take over the colony. Eventually, war broke out between the colonial government and the breakaway Puritan settlement of Providence, leading to the Battle of the Severn, where the Puritans beat Governor William Stone and those loyal to Lord Baltimore. Westminster would subsequently recognize a Puritan assembly as the legitimate government of Maryland, ending proprietary rule and paving the way for anti-Catholic discrimination in the colony [1]. Many Catholic colonists would eventually emigrate to New Netherlands where they would settle amongst the Flemish and Brabantine Catholic community.
Depiction of the Battle of the Severn
It was in this state of affairs in which James II ascended to the throne in 1685. The younger brother of Charles II, he immediately gained Parliament’s trust and approval with his mediated end of the Franco-Dutch War. The line of succession for the House of Stuart was also secure through him, as he had had 3 sons with his young and new queen Johanna Magdalena of Saxe-Altenberg [2]: James, Charles, and Francis. Unlike his late brother, however, James would prove to be a more authoritative monarch after witnessing the decline of Crown authority in England and Scotland. His gaze first turned towards Congregationalist New England, still recalcitrant towards royal authority. In 1686, he issued a royal decree that reorganized the various colonies that made up New England as the Dominion of New England and appointed colonel Percy Kirke [3] as its first governor. Under Kirke, the Church of England would be formally established in the new colonial capital of Boston and efforts were made to harmonize colonial law with royal English law. However, Kirke’s policies were undermined and even boycotted by Puritan leaders like Cotton Mather at every turn and the new Church’s bid to incorporate the independent congregations into a new presbyterian hierarchy went nowhere.
The anti-Presbyterian Puritans would even go further and petition the dwindling but vocal minority of congregationalist Independents in Westminster to raise their grievances before the whole body and to the king. However, the royal majority in Parliament not only tabled any discussion on these grievances but accused the Independent MPs of colluding with the colony’s leadership to undermine the Crown’s authority. Although nothing would happen to the MPs, James II would send a fleet and a sizable force of English and Scottish soldiers in 1688 under the command of the Duke of Monmouth, an illegitimate son of Charles II from one of his many affairs, to Boston in order to bolster royal authority in New England [4]. With Monmouth now present, Kirke began to see success in enforcing his decrees. A proper chapel, King’s Chapel, would be built to facilitate the proper establishment of the Church of England in New England and many independent congregations began to be forced under its authority. Newly passed tax laws began to be uniformly enforced as Monmouth’s presence coerced many towns to give in and appoint commissioners that would collect the revenue. Even Kirke’s controversial proposals to force landowning colonists to confirm their titles and land grants with the new Dominion government began to see compliance, though many in Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay provinces continued their abstention from the process.
Portrait of Percy Kirke, 1st governor of the Dominion of New England
Nevertheless, anti-government sentiment among many Puritans remained high, their voices airing prominently at New England’s town meetings. This was when Kirke would go too far in centralizing New England and fundamentally altering its socio-political dynamics. In 1690, he issued an order to crack down on New England’s town meetings after becoming paranoid of the criticism being aired there. On April 18th, when dominion officials attempted to enforce Kirke’s order in the town of Salem, they were thrown out by the local militia. In response, a dominion militia marched into the town and confronted the hostile townspeople. The situation quickly spiraled out of control and the dominion militia ended up firing into the aggressive mob in what would be known as the Salem Massacre. Sympathetic towns, especially in Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth heavy with remaining congregationalist and Separatist churches, began raising local militias of their own and connecting with one another. An anti-Dominion resistance soon sprung up and what would become known as the Salem Revolt broke out. The anti-government side supported rolling back the Dominion’s harsh decrees and returning to the pre-Dominion society that had predominated much of New England and was successful in spreading their efforts for the first few months. However, the Dominion’s forces were able to contain this spread, managing to hold onto Boston despite an extensive attempt there by the city’s Puritans to seize it from Kirke and the Dominion’s government.
Depiction of Dominion officials being driven out of Salem by its local militia
Eventually, James II would be able to send reinforcements to Boston and by the end of 1691, the Dominion had suppressed much of the revolt. Kirke also died in the same year, to be succeeded by Edmund Andros. Andros noticeably would take a lighter approach towards the colonists, walking back Kirke’s previous attempt to crack down on town meetings across the board and including more colonists including congregationalists into the government. As a result, the remaining embers of the Salem Revolt were put out on their own and the Dominion quickly recovered political unity. This would help when the Castin’s War [5] broke out between France and England over border tensions between New England and New France, the interests of each country’s preferred native tribes, and Louis XIV’s ambitions in North America in 1692. After 5 years of inconclusive warfare, the Treaty of Portsmouth was signed between the two sides maintaining the prewar status quo.
It also strengthened the king’s political position at home and for the rest of the 17th century, strong royalist majorities would dominate in Parliament. Meanwhile, the congregationalist Independent faction saw its ranks drastically dwindle in coming elections as they became tied to the failed rebellion in New England. As a result, Parliament was now almost entirely made up of two factions: the pro-king Court party and the parliamentarian Country party with a smattering of radicals remaining separate from the mainstream. Through strong parliamentary majorities and the political will of the king, the Court party would monopolize the various ministerial posts of the kingdom, empowering James II and giving the Stuart monarchy the most power it had since the English Civil War.
[1]: ITTL, Westminster declines to reinstate the proprietorship, ending it 34 years earlier than IOTL.
[2]: As royal marriages with Catholics are forbidden ITTL, James marries a German Lutheran princess.
[3]: Percy Kirke was supposed to be the governor of the Dominion of New England, but his actions when suppressing the Duke of Monmouth's revolt IOTL got him dismissed. ITTL, there's no revolt by the Duke of Monmouth so he never gets dismissed.
[4]: Because James II is a Presbyterian and not a Catholic, the Duke of Monmouth never rebels and continues being a prominent member of the English government.
[5]: A name for OTL’s King William’s War but the main name for what is essentially TTL’s King William’s War.