rrible cruelties that followed, kept Colonel Kirke busy in England
through the summer, and left the new king scant leisure to think about
America. Late in the autumn, having made up his mind that he could not
spare such an exemplary knave as Kirke, James II. sent over Sir Edmund
Andros. In the mean time the government of Massachusetts had been
administered by Dudley, who showed himself willing to profit by the
misfortunes of his country. Andros had long been one of James's
favourites. He was the dull and dogged English officer such as one often
meets, honest enough and faithful to his master, neither cruel nor
rapacious, but coarse in fibre and wanting in tact. Some years
before, when governor of New York, he had a territorial dispute with
Connecticut, and now cherished a grudge against the people of New
England, so that, from James's point of view, he was well fitted to be
their governor. James wished to abolish all the local governments
in America, and unite them, as far as possible, under a single
administration. With Plymouth there could be no trouble; she had never
had a charter, but had existed on sufferance from the outset. In 1687
the charters of Rhode Island and Connecticut were rescinded, but the
decrees were not executed in due form. In October of that year Andros
went to Hartford, to seize the Connecticut charter but it was not
surrendered. While Sir Edmund was bandying threats with stout Robert
Treat, the queller of Indians and now governor of Connecticut, in the
course of their evening conference the candles were suddenly blown out,
and when after some scraping of tinder they were lighted again the
document was nowhere to be found, for Captain Wadsworth had carried
it away and hidden it in the hollow trunk of a mighty oak tree.
Nevertheless for the moment the colony was obliged to submit to the
tyrant. Next day the secretary John Allyn wrote "Finis" on the colonial
records and shut up the book. Within another twelvemonth New York and
New Jersey were added to the viceroyalty of Andros; so that all the
northern colonies from the forests of Maine to the Delaware river were
thus brought under the arbitrary rule of one man, who was responsible to
no one but the king for whatever he might take it into his head to do.
[Sidenote: Sir Edmund Andros] [Sidenote: The Charter Oak]

The vexatious character of the new government was most strongly felt at
Boston where Andros had his headquarters. Measures were at once take