Colony or Commonwealth: Massachusetts Bay, 1661-1666

Abstract

T She restoration of Stuart monarchy in England heralded a transformation in the status of the New England colonies. Since their inception, Massachusetts and her neighbors had flourished with only token interference from England. But, under Charles II, royal officials reassessed the loose relationship between England and her colonies and took the first tentative steps toward imperial centralization. Predicated upon the idea that colonies existed for the benefit of the mother country, the movement toward centralization suggested the implementation of a colonial policy designed to organize the colonies into a politically unified and economically productive whole.' For the colonists of Massachusetts Bay, the largest and most powerful of the New England colonies, the Crown's desire to strengthen their bond with England was an unexpected turn of events. Neglected, they had expended their energies creating a stable society in a wilderness and had given little or no thought to the relationship of that society to the home country. However, in the first years of the Restoration the policy of the English government made the constitutional structure of empire a question of public concern. A bitter and protracted debate ensued, one which brought the colonists to the realization that they held widely divergent views concerning the political relationship between themselves and the mother country. In general, scholars of early Massachusetts have overlooked this division. They have been content to believe that the inhabitants of the Bay Colony viewed their country as a commonwealth free from English control.2 Only recently have some writers suggested otherwise. Bernard