The Glorious Revolution in America

Craig Yirush

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511921599.003

2 - The Glorious Revolution in America

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012

Craig Yirush

Show author details

Craig Yirush: Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles

Book contents

Get access

Summary

The first British Empire was acquired in a decidedly ad hoc fashion. Beginning in the early sixteenth century, the Crown added to the remnants of its medieval territories several previously independent kingdoms. It acquired Wales and Ireland by conquest, incorporating the former into the realm in 1536, while leaving the latter in a rather ambiguous status somewhere between dependent colony and independent kingdom until the late eighteenth century. The accession of James VI of Scotland to the English throne (as James I) brought Scotland into this loose association of political entities in 1603, although a full political union would not be completed until 1707.

From the early 1600s, the Crown allowed various private interests to establish English colonies on the eastern seaboard of North America, sanctioning these ventures with either a corporate or a proprietorial charter. In the former, a group of individuals who formed a company (as in Massachusetts) received a royal charter (or letters patent). In the latter, the Crown granted the right to settle to a courtier or royal favorite (such as Lord Baltimore in Maryland or William Penn in Pennsylvania). And, beginning with Virginia in the 1620s, the Crown created royal colonies ruled directly by a governor it appointed. Although rare in the seventeenth century – they often resulted from the Crown's revocation of a corporate or proprietary charter – royal colonies became increasingly common in the eighteenth-century empire.

Information

Type: Chapter
Information: Settlers, Liberty, and Empire
The Roots of Early American Political Theory, 1675–1775
, pp. 51 - 80

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511921599.003 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Book purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

York, Neil L., Neither Kingdom nor Nation: The Irish Quest for Constitutional Rights, 1698–1800 (Washington, DC: Catholic University Press of America, 1994)Google Scholar

Andrews, Charles M., “The Government of the Empire, 1660–1763,” in Rose, J. Holland, Newton, A.P., and Benians, E.A., eds., The Old Empire, Volume One of The Cambridge History of the British Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1929), 405–435Google Scholar

Keith, A.B., The Constitutional History of the First British Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1930)Google Scholar

Greene, Jack P., ed., Great Britain and the American Colonies, 1606–1763 (New York: Harper and Row, 1970), 11–26Google Scholar

MacMillan, Ken, Sovereignty and Possession in the English New World: The Legal Foundations of Empire, 1576–1640 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 79–120Google Scholar

Konig, David, “Colonization and the Common Law in Ireland and Virginia, 1569–1643,” in Henretta, James A., Kammen, Michael, and Katz, Stanley N., eds., The Transformation of Early American History: Society, Authority, Ideology (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991), 70–92Google Scholar

Cheyney, Edward P., “The Manor of East Greenwich in the County of Kent,” American Historical Review 11 (1905), 29–35CrossRef Google Scholar

Bond, Beverly, The Quit Rent System in the American Colonies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1919)Google Scholar

Thorpe, Francis, ed., The Federal and State Constitutions, Colonial Charters and Other Organic Laws (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1909), VI, 3802–3810Google Scholar

Greene, Jack P., ed., Great Britain and the American Colonies, 1606–1783 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1970), 28, 30Google Scholar

Dargo, George, Roots of the Republic: A New Perspective on Early American Constitutionalism (New York: Praeger, 1974), 58Google Scholar

Murrin, John, “Political Development,” in Greene, Jack P. and Pole, J.R., eds., Colonial British America: Essays in the New History of the Early Modern Era (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984), 419Google Scholar

Bliss, Robert M., Revolution and Empire: English Politics and the American Colonies in the Seventeenth Century (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990), 132–160Google Scholar

Greene, Jack P., ed., Settlements to Society, 1607–1763: A Documentary History of Colonial America (New York: W.W. Norton, 1975), 134–139Google Scholar

Sosin, J.M., English America and the Restoration Monarchy of Charles II: Transatlantic Politics, Commerce, and Kinship (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1980), 49–73Google Scholar

Pestana, Carla, The English Atlantic in an Age of Revolution, 1640–1661 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004)Google Scholar

Andrews, Charles, The Colonial Period of American History: Volume IV, England's Commercial and Colonial Policy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1938), 370–372Google Scholar

Armitage, David, The Ideological Origins of the British Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 146–169CrossRef Google Scholar

Rich, E.E., “The First Earl of Shaftesbury's Colonial Policy,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 7 (1957), 47–70CrossRef Google Scholar

Bieber, Ralph, The Lords of Trade and Plantations, 1675–1696 (Allentown, PA: H. R. Haas, 1919)Google Scholar

Root, Winifred T., “The Lords of Trade and Plantations, 1675–1696,” American Historical Review 23 (1917), 20–41CrossRef Google Scholar

Andrews, Charles, British Committees, Commissions, and Councils of Trade and Plantations, 1622–1675 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1908)Google Scholar

Egerton, H.E., “The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Privy Council in Its Relations with the Colonies,” Journal of Comparative Legislation and International Law 7 (1925), 1–16Google Scholar

Hall, Michael, Edward Randolph and the American Colonies, 1676–1703 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1960)Google Scholar

Webb, Stephen Saunders, “William Blathwayt, Imperial Fixer: From Popish Plot to Glorious Revolution,” William and Mary Quarterly 25 (1968), 3–21CrossRef Google Scholar

Murison, Barbara C., “The Talented Mr. Blathwayt: His Empire Revisited,” in Nancy L. Rhoden, ed., English Atlantics Revisited: Essays Honouring Professor Ian K. Steele (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 2007), 33–58Google Scholar

Lucas, Paul, “Colony or Commonwealth: Massachusetts Bay, 1661–1666,” William and Mary Quarterly 24 (1967), 88–107CrossRef Google Scholar

Shurtleff, Nathaniel B., ed., Records of the Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay in New England, Volume IV, Part 2 (New York: A.M.S. Press, 1968), 165–166Google Scholar

Pulsipher, Jennifer, Subjects unto the Same King: Indians, English, and the Contest for Authority in Colonial New England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), passimCrossRef Google Scholar

Labaree, Leonard, ed., Royal Instructions to British Colonial Governors, 1670–1776 (New York: D. Appleton-Century, 1935), I, 125–126Google Scholar

Dunn, Richard S., “Imperial Pressures on Massachusetts and Jamaica, 1675–1700,” in Olson, Alison G. and Brown, Richard M., eds., Anglo-American Political Relations, 1675–1775 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1970), 52–75Google Scholar

Grant, W.L., Munro, James, and Fitzroy, Sir Almeric, eds., Acts of the Privy Council of England, Colonial Series, Volume I (London: His Majesty's Stationery Office, 1910), 827–833

Whitson, Agnes M., The Constitutional Development of Jamaica, 1660–1729 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1929), 70–109Google Scholar

Labaree, Leonard, Royal Government in America: A Study of the British Colonial System before 1783 (1930; New York: Frederick Ungar, 1958), 220–221Google Scholar

Lovejoy, David S., The Glorious Revolution in America (1972; Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1987), 56Google Scholar

Burk, John, History of Virginia from the First Settlement to the Present Day (Petersburg, VA: Dickson and Pescud, 1805), II, xlv–lGoogle Scholar

Morton, Richard L., Colonial Virginia: The Tidewater Period, 1607–1710 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1960), 227–277Google Scholar

Rainbolt, John C., “A New Look at Stuart ‘Tyranny’: The Crown's Attack on the Virginia Assembly, 1676–1689,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 75 (1967), 387–406Google Scholar

Webb, , The Governors General: The English Army and the Definition of Empire, 1569–1681 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979), 340–343Google Scholar

McIlwaine, H.R., ed., Journals of the House of Burgesses of Virginia, 1659/60–1693 (Richmond, VA: Colonial Press, E. Waddey Co., 1914)Google Scholar

Hulsebosch, Daniel, Constituting Empire: New York and the Transformation of Constitutionalism in the Atlantic World, 1664–1830 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005), 44–45Google Scholar

Ritchie, Robert C., The Duke's Province: A Study of New York Politics and Society, 1664–1691 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977)Google Scholar

Craven, Wesley, The Colonies in Transition, 1660–1713 (New York: Harper and Row, 1968), 74–78Google Scholar

Lustig, Mary Lou, The Imperial Executive in America: Sir Edmund Andros, 1637–1714 (Madison, NJ: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 2002)Google Scholar

O'Callaghan, Edmund, ed., Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New York (Albany: Weed, Parsons, 1858), III, 230, 235Google Scholar

Pencak, William and Wright, Conrad, eds., Authority and Resistance in Early New York (New York: New York Historical Society, 1988)

Halliday, Paul, Dismembering the Body Politic: Partisan Politics in England's Towns, 1650–1730 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 149–263CrossRef Google Scholar

Hall, Michael, Edward Randolph and the American Colonies, 1676–1703 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1960)Google Scholar

Barnes, Viola F., The Dominion of New England: A Study in British Colonial Policy (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1960)Google Scholar

Pincus, Steve, 1688: The First Modern Revolution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009)Google Scholar

Breen, T.H., The Character of the Good Ruler: A Study of Puritan Political Ideas, 1630–1730 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970)Google Scholar

Bailyn, Bernard, The New England Merchants in the Seventeenth Century (1955; New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1964)Google Scholar

Steele, Ian K., “Origins of Boston's Revolutionary Declaration of 18 April 1689,” New England Quarterly, 62 (1989), 75–81CrossRef Google Scholar

Hall, Michael G., Leder, Lawrence H. and Kammen, Michael, eds., The Glorious Revolution in America: Documents on the Crisis of 1689 (New York: W.W. Norton, 1964), 42–46

Lake, Peter, “Anti-Popery: The Structure of a Prejudice,” in Richard Cust and Ann Hughes, eds., Conflict in Early Stuart England: Studies in Religion and Politics, 1603–1642 (London: Longman 1989), 72–106Google Scholar

Stanwood, Owen, “The Protestant Moment: Antipopery, the Revolution of 1688–1689, and the Making of an Anglo-American Empire,” Journal of British Studies 46 (2007), 481–508CrossRef Google Scholar

Steele, Ian K., The English Atlantic, 1675–1740: An Exploration of Communications and Community (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 106, 136Google Scholar

Vorhees, David, “The ‘fervent Zeale’ of Jacob Leisler,” William and Mary Quarterly 51 (1994), 470–471Google Scholar

O'Callaghan, E.B., ed., Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New York, Volume III (Albany: Weed, Parsons, 1853), 583–584Google Scholar

Andrews, Charles M., ed., Narratives of the Insurrections, 1675–1690 (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1915)CrossRef Google Scholar

Greene, Jack P., “Empire and Identity from the Glorious Revolution to the American Revolution,” in P.J. Marshall, ed., The Oxford History of the British Empire: The Eighteenth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 208–230Google Scholar

Bailyn, Bernard, The Origins of American Politics (New York: Vintage Books, 1967)Google Scholar

Johnson, Richard, Adjustment to Empire: The New England Colonies, 1675–1715 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1981), 183–241Google Scholar

Lewis, Theodore B., “A Revolutionary Tradition, 1689–1774: ‘There Was a Revolution Here as Well as in England’,” New England Quarterly 46 (1973), 424–438CrossRef Google Scholar

McIlwain, Charles H., The American Revolution: A Constitutional Interpretation (1923; Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1958), 179Google Scholar

Greene, Jack P., The Quest for Power: The Lower Houses of Assembly in the Southern Royal Colonies, 1689–1776 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1963)Google Scholar

Bilder, Mary, The Transatlantic Constitution: Colonial Legal Culture and the Empire (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004)Google Scholar

Accessibility standard: Unknown

Accessibility compliance for the PDF of this book is currently unknown and may be updated in the future.