[7] Massachusetts and Plymouth were both somewhat politically independent from England in their early days, but this situation changed after the restoration of Charles II to the English throne in 1660.

[10] Dominion governor Edmund Andros was highly unpopular in the colonies, but he was especially hated in Massachusetts where he angered virtually everyone by rigidly enforcing the Navigation Acts, vacating land titles, appropriating a Puritan meeting house as a site to host services for the Church of England, and restricting town meetings, among other sundry complaints.

[11] James was deposed in the 1688 Glorious Revolution, whereupon Massachusetts political leaders rose up against Andros, arresting him and other English authorities in April 1689.

The Massachusetts colonial government was re-established but it no longer had a valid charter, and some opponents of the old Puritan rule refused to pay taxes and engaged in other forms of protest.

The effect of this change has been a subject of debate among historians, but there is significant consensus that it greatly enlarged the number of men eligible to vote.

[15] The new rules required prospective voters to own £40 worth of property or real estate that yielded at least £2 per year in rent; Benjamin Labaree estimates that this included about three-quarters of the adult male population at the time.

Their territories initially included mainland Massachusetts, western Maine, and portions of New Hampshire; this territory was expanded to include Acadia or Nova Scotia (then encompassing Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and eastern Maine), as well as what was known as Dukes County in the Province of New York, consisting of Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard, and the Elizabeth Islands.

In the aftermath of the revolt against Andros, colonial defenses had been withdrawn from the frontiers, which were then repeatedly raided by French and Indigenous forces from Canada and Acadia.

Dudley also organized expeditions in 1704 and 1707 against Acadia, a haven for French privateers, and he requested support from London for more ambitious efforts against New France.

This led to proposals to create a bank that would issue notes backed by real estate, but Governor Dudley and his successor Samuel Shute both opposed the idea.

[19] In the early 1720s, the Indigenous Abenaki people of northern New England resumed raiding frontier communities, encouraged by French intriguers but also concerned over English encroachment on their lands.

In the 1730s, Governor Jonathan Belcher disputed the power of the legislature to direct appropriations, vetoing bills that did not give him the freedom to disburse funds as he saw fit, and this meant that the provincial treasury was often empty.

This turned a number of important colonists against crown and Parliament, including the father of American Revolutionary War political leader Samuel Adams.

King George's War broke out in 1744, and Governor William Shirley rallied troops from around New England for an assault on the French fortress at Louisbourg which succeeded in 1745.

The French and Indian War broke out in 1754, and Shirley was raised to the highest military command by the death of General Edward Braddock in 1755.

Both Francis Bernard and Thomas Hutchinson, the last two non-military governors, were widely disliked over issues large and small, notably Parliament's attempts to impose taxes on the colonies without representation.

The Sons of Liberty stated that they were prepared to take up armed resistance to the Royal Authorities, while more conservative elements of society desired a peaceful political solution.

Many Patriot leaders were calling for armed resistance by this time, but the more moderate factions of the convention won out and military action was voted down.

[26] Governor Gage continued an essentially military authority in Boston, but the provincial congress governed the rest of Massachusetts.

They declared that they would resist with force if those rights were not restored, and this included the total boycott of British goods, the disruption of local courts, and the kidnapping of royal officials.

The congress selected John Hancock as its first president (then called chairman) and Benjamin Lincoln as clerk, and they installed judges, tax collectors, constables, and other officials.

The General Court, which consisted of the Governor's Council and House of Representatives, decided to form a committee which would be tasked to write a constitution.

In the winter of 1778 the General Court decided that the draft formulated from the constitutional committee would be put before the electorate of Massachusetts Bay and it would need to be accepted by 2/3rds of voters.

Non-expansionists were more circumspect, preferring to rely on a strong relationship with the mother country; they were exemplified by Hutchinson and the Oliver family of Boston.

The third force in Massachusetts politics was a populist faction made possible by the structure of the provincial legislature, in which rural and lower class communities held a larger number of votes than in other provinces.

[44] Religion did not play a major role in these divisions, although non-expansionists tended to be Anglican while expansionists were mainly middle-of-the road Congregationalist.

They were joined by wealthy landowners in the Connecticut River valley, whose needs for defense and growth were directly tied to property development.

Most of the towns in 1695 were within one day's travel of Boston, but this changed as townships sprang up in Worcester County and the Berkshires on land that had been under Indian control prior to King Philip's War.

Nova Scotia, then including New Brunswick, was occupied by English forces at the time of the charter's issuance, but was separated in 1697 when the territory, called Acadia by the French, was formally returned to France by the 1697 Treaty of Ryswick.

Its principal predecessor colonies, Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth, had established boundaries with New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, but these underwent changes during the provincial period.