men all knew that the law had been passed. If it had been disallowed, of all men they were the ones who would have known it.

The fourth period was the era of confusion. It began under Cranfield early in 1683, and the province did not emerge from it for about thirty-five years.

It is self-evident that Cranfield came here to serve his own and special interests. For a despot at times, he showed commendable tact; but the determination of the squatters, and the cunning and sullen obstinacy of Waldron and his clique, who represented Massachusetts rather than New Hampshire, enraged him. Professing to make the province one governed by English law, he resorted to high-handed and arbitrary measures, star-chamber precedents, and often acted in defiance of his commission. This welded Waldron and the squatters together, and made the province solid against him and the royal authority, and a contemner of the laws and customs of the mother country. Though he repeatedly convened and dissolved the assembly because of the firmness of the deputies in the lower house, but a single law, that against piracy, besides the code referred to, was passed during his entire administration. He made Randolph attorney-general, Mason, chancellor, Barefoote, judge, and filled the other judicial seats with his creatures.

In Gove's case, instead of causing him to be indicted under the Cutt code, or under the common law, if that had existed here, at the instigation probably of Randolph, he caused him to be indicted for high treason under an ancient British statute of questionable application. By a refinement of cruelty, under his power to create courts, he compelled Waldron, who was in the same category with Gove, except that he had a sounder intellect and far greater discretion, to try and sentence the man of whom at heart he was a confederate.

On March 3, 1683, by decree, he prohibited selectmen from calling town-meetings except by leave of the justices of the peace in the town, first appointed in New Hampshire by him under his commission.

He finally, in the name of himself and council, constituted himself a legislative body, and by decree passed the laws which are summarized on page 103 of Farmer's Belknap.

Charges were first preferred against him in 1684. Charles the Second died February 6, 1685, and his bigoted brother James ascended the throne. Hearing was had before the lords' committee, on the new charges, on March 10, 1685. The report against Cranfield, of March 27, 1685, was approved by the king in council, April 8, 1685. He left the country forever about May 15, 1685. Dr. Barefoote took his place, and held it until he was superseded by Dudley's commission, May 25, 1686.

James the Second, arbitrary and without conscience, plotting the subversion of the fundamental institutions of his country and the destruction of the rights of free-born Englishmen at home, was not likely to exhibit over-tenderness toward liberalism in the colonies. Accordingly he created the "Dominion of New England," excluded the people from any share in the government thereof, constituted a president and council, and vested in them the entire executive and legislative authority, and vested in them, or in the members of the council sitting at the county court, substantially the entire judicial power, both original and appellate. John Hincks was the only member of the council who resided in New Hampshire.

On June 10, 1686, the president and council, by a general order, provided that county courts should be held at Great Island on the first Tuesday of October, and at Portsmouth on the first Tuesday of April, in each year; that the president and council at Boston should be the superior court of general assize and the court of appeals for the whole dominion; that in general all writs should be directed to the provost marshal, county marshal, or their deputies, "shall be served 14 days before the sitting of the said court," and that the declaration of the plaintiff should be filed seven days before the session; that no deed should be recorded unless acknowledged before the president or some member of his council; that the president should appoint all judges of probate and clerks; that no man could plead before any court except in person, or by such sworn attorneys as the various tribunals might allow; that no affidavit out of court could be taken except before some member of the council; and that the marshal, with the assistance of an appointed justice, should "prick the panel or panels for the grand or petty

jurors," and provided a few regulations in relation to former judgments, births, burials, marriages, and licenses for the sale of "strong waters."

By a general order, the former bounds of townships, and all contracts between towns and their ministers, schoolmasters, and others, were confirmed. All votes for the raising of money by towns were required to be endorsed by two of the next justices of the peace or one of the members of the council. Provision was also made for the collection of taxes, "and that each town have the same liberty and power of choosing and instructing their selectmen, constables, and other officers for the management of their own affairs, as they have used and exercised; and all such elections to be made by the freeholders in every town."

Dudley failed to meet the expectations of Randolph, and his commission and government were superseded by the commission and government of Andros.

Andros arrived in Boston in December, 1686, and the first meeting of the governor and council was held on December 30, 1686. This commission, like the other, excluded the people from all share in the government. The laws or decrees enacted by the governor and council during the "usurpation" are to be found in the third volume of the Colonial Records of Connecticut. None of these had any special application, or were of exceptional importance, to New Hampshire.

What the people of New Hampshire justly complained of was, not these laws, but that they were excluded from all share in the government, and were ruled by a petty despot and a hostile cabal, without regard to any law. Dr. Belknap (Farmer's Belknap 119, 120) has not stated the misrule and oppression under which we suffered during the time of Andros too strongly. Their position may be summed up in a single sentence. Nobody had any rights except at the will of the Andros cabal.

The British revolution of 1688, which dethroned the fugitive James, came to their relief. On April 18, 1689, the people of Boston revolted, drove Andros and his minions from power, and imprisoned them. This left New Hampshire and Massachusetts without any lawful government. For about two thirds of a year New Hampshire had no recognized central authority,

but the towns and township system remained, and through these the people governed themselves.

Early in 1690, they crept nominally under the wing of the revolutionary government of Massachusetts, but, for all general and practical purposes, were a law unto themselves.

This state of things continued until the governmental machinery of the province was put in operation, under the commission. and instructions of Allen, and the administration of his son-inlaw, Lieutenant-Governor John Usher, on August 13, 1692. As might have been expected, these gave liberty of conscience to all but Papists. Aside from this they were in general fair enough to the province, for they theoretically, at least, restored the right of the freeholders through the assembly to govern the people, subject only to negative of the crown or its representative. But Allen and Usher were but another name for Mason, and, so far as was practicable under the commission, another master for the people had been substituted for Andros.

On the first Tuesday of October, 1692, the first lawful assembly in this province met since that which, under Cranfield, passed the law "punishing privateers and pirates," July 22, 1684, a period of between eight and nine years.

The province had been reduced to sore straits indeed. In less than eight years one king had died, another had been dethroned, and another installed in his place. No two of these had the same general policy, and that of James and that of William were as far apart as the poles. These changes of policy affected not only the mother country, but the Continent, and particularly France, and through the latter the Canadas, and the Indian tribes who hovered by day and by night on the frontier settlements.

The Prince of Orange came to the throne through what was practically a civil war, and the powers of that great statesman were taxed to their utmost to arrest insurrection at home and foreign complications abroad, and so for many years he was unable to give any real attention to the situation of the colonies.

For nearly ten years there had been a constant change in the political succession in this province. Governors, lieutenantgovernors, deputy-governors, and other officials, came and

went.

From early in 1683 to the Andros revolution the peo

ple here had neither civil nor political rights. For months after the revolution there was no government. Then the people, without the pale of law, through an irregular assembly created the form of one, and then they crept under the nominal protection of the insurrectionary umbrella of the Bay colony. The rifle, the fagot, the tomahawk, and the scalping-knife of the red man, had kept the people in constant alarm. They were at times given over to slaughter, pillage, and flames. They had been harassed and impoverished. Trade and business were practically paralyzed. Some of the former laws in which they had believed had fallen into disuse, and others had been practically suppressed, and arbitrary regulations had taken their place.

The

By the act of March 17, 1687, the usurpation had practically reënacted the order of Cranfield in relation to town-meetings. By a provision in the act of March 3, 1686, it had provided for the establishment of a court of chancery in this province, and had also reenacted the provision of the early ordinance of Massachusetts, before referred to, providing that declarations should be filed in courts of law seven days before the term. people here, irritated, sullen, and obstinate, gave no sign, and these laws, as well as others, went unheeded. Usher, a tool of Andros, narrow, bigoted, and ignorant, with the mind of a pea-cock, but endowed with the single faculty of making money, was made governor, and occasionally strayed over the line from Massachusetts for the purpose of scolding the people and their representatives, and of impressing them with the importance of so exalted a person. But from this hour to the advent of Wentworth, in December, 1717, notwithstanding the constant changes. of officials, the people were bent upon reviving their former laws and customs, and reasserting, to some extent at least, the right to govern themselves, of which they had been deprived.

From first to last the lower house invariably stood firm, and the puppets and despots who occupied the seats of the governor could not, as a rule, control, without suspension or expulsion, the strong men who represented the interests of the people in the council. One of the first steps taken by the first assembly was to restore the form of swearing by the uplifted hand (instead of the English practice by the book) which had prevailed