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Before Groundhog Day, It Was Candlemas

Candlemas was always about two thing before it was about the groundhog: candles and the weather.

Winter in Connecticut by Childe Hassam

For many Catholics, Candlemas was also about putting away the Christmas decorations. (If you haven’t by now, perhaps you should consider it.)

Groundhog Day started out as a Roman festival and then morphed into a Christian holiday before it turned into an homage to a woodchuck.

The ancient Romans dedicated a festival of light to the divinities of the underworld in early February. According to myth, the goddess Proserpina was kidnapped by Hades. Ceres, her mother, went looking for her in the underworld with a lighted torch. Proserpina brought springtime when she was restored to Ceres, the goddess of agriculture, fertility, grain crops and motherhood.

Candlemas Invented

The early Christian church couldn’t destroy old ties and associations, and so it gave Candlemas a new meaning. The church modified a procession in memory of Ceres into a festival in honor of the Virgin mother. Candlemas marks the 40^th day after Christmas, when Mary went to the temple at Jerusalem to be purified and to present her son to God.

Franco-Americans in New England celebrated a special mass on Candlemas or the following Sunday. They lit candles and held them during parts of the service, then brought them home. They believed the lit candles protected the home during storms, warded off evil and comforted the sick.

On Candlemas night, Franco-Americans often had pancake parties, believed to bring good luck.

Episcopal priests blessing candles on Candlemas Day.

Other Protestants, such as Lutherans and Anglicans, blessed the candles that would be used in religious ceremonies for the rest of the year. Churches stopped using candles at vespers, which they had done during the winter. That gave rise to the old saying,

On Candlemas Day,
Throw candles away.

Candlemas was also a day to eat beans, probably a modification of the pagan custom. The Romans believed beans were sacred to the dead and invoked their presence.

The Puritans, of course, disdained Candlemas Day, which they correctly viewed as a pagan tradition.

Weather Forecasts

Writing in The Standard in 1901, Sophie Bronson Titterington described Candlemas as “the old time tradition.”

“It is a day of religious observance,” she wrote, “but more especially a day remarkable from unknown times for its significance in weather prognostications.”

Punxsatawny Phil held up for all to see

Those predictions heralded Punxsatawny Phil, whose shadow on a sunny day foretells six more weeks of winter:

As far as the sun shines in on Candlemas Day
So far will the snow blow in by the first of May.

Or this:

If Candlemas Day be fair and bright,
Winter will take another flight;
If Candlemas Day be foul and rain,
Winter is gone and won’t come again.

New Englanders who lived in old houses used to watch the cracks and crevices in their walls on February 2. They made a mark where the farthest sun ray penetrated, believing that was how far the snow would drift in before May 1.

Weather prognostication extended to the sea:

When the wind’s in the east on Candlemas Day,
There it will stick till the first of May.

Another saying was viewed as binding by early New Englanders:

The farmer should have on Candlemas Day,
Half his wood and half his hay.

Candle Fads

Titterington was writing during the Colonial Revival Movement, which she called “the modern craze for reviving old fashions.” She described a fad for Candlemas suppers, “where the only lights are candles in prodigal profusion.” Guests were given small, round cakes with lighted candles. The guest whose candle burned the longest would be the luckiest for the year. The parties also included an indoor procession with people bearing lighted candles from room to room to drive away the lurking shadows of evil.

You may also want to read the New England Historical Society stories, What They Say About Snow in New England, and Remembering the Great Snow of 1717.

This story was updated in 2023. With thanks to The New England Kitchen: A Monthly Journal of Domestic Science, Volume 2. Image: Blessing of the candles by Jonathunder – Own work, GFDL 1.2, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=55800233. Punxsatawny Phil By Chris Flook – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=80320762,

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300 Years of New England Christmas

The New England Christmas started out as an ordinary work day for Puritans who frowned on the papist revelry of their Anglican neighbors. Over the years it evolved, with the help of Charles Dickens, into a celebration of charity and goodwill.

Of course, Anglicans and Catholics did celebrate Christmas in New England — only they had to do it quietly if Puritans were around.

A holiday greeting from Currier & Ives, who created so much New England Christmas imagery.

The 1st New England Christmas

In 1604, French Catholics and Huguenots celebrated the first New England Christmas ever — in Maine, with no Puritans in sight.

The previous June they had arrived on St. Croix Island, now on the border between New Brunswick and Maine. They built a small settlement, and during the wintry Christmas that year they attended services in a new chapel. Then they gathered inside next to a roaring fire, told stories, joked and reminisced about France. They had a feast — perhaps roast venison or rabbit stew.

They moved the colony to Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia, because so many of them died during the winter.

No New England Christmas in Plimoth, 1621

Gov. William Bradford famously put down the Christmas celebration at Plimoth Plantation in 1621. He called out his non-Puritan colonists to work, but they told him they couldn’t as a matter of conscience. Bradford let them off the hook, but they had the effrontery to play at sports. At noon he found them, and tells what happens in his diary:

…he found them in ye streete at play, openly; some pitching ye barr, & some at stoole-ball, and shuch like sports. So he went to them, and tooke away their implements, and tould them that was against his conscience, that they should play & others worke. If they made ye keeping of it mater of devotion, let them kepe their houses, but ther should be no gameing or revelling in ye streets. Since which time nothing hath been atempted that way, at least openly.

Illustration of Gov. William Bradford ruining New England Christmas.

Business As Usual in MA and CT

Samuel Sewall

A century later, Salem witch trial judge Samuel Sewall tried to visit an old friend on Christmas. Unfortunately, the friend was ‘goon to h[eaven].’ The old Puritan was no doubt pleased to see business as usual in the streets of Boston that day. He wrote in his diary on Tuesday Dec. 25.

The Shops were open, and Carts came to Town with Wood, Hoop-poles, Hay &c. as at other Times; Being a pleasant day, the street was fill’d with Carts and Horses — visited Mr. Cooper, who is much better.

But even a Puritan like Joshua Hempstead in New London, Conn., couldn’t ignore the significance of Christmas. In 1730 on Christmas Day, a cloudy and windy Friday, Hempstead reported in his diary that he conducted business as usual. A ‘Capt. Douglass’ paid him interest and gave him and other selectmen a supper. Then:

…a Great Concourse of of people at the Church to hear Mr Seabury preach a Christmas Sermon & to See fashions. it being New many went. he hath preachy but 2 Sabath days (Since he Recd orders) here.

The Puritan Hold Loosens

Forty miles north in Newburyport, Mass., Sarah Smith Emery noted the young people weren’t quite as good at following the Puritan strictures on Christmas. The weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas brought plenty of food, a time for feasting and hope before the long, cold winter. It would have been hard for Sarah to ignore the non-Puritan celebration of Christmas. As an old lady she remembered New England Christmas in the late 18th century:

Thanksgiving brought a social season. There was much visiting and distribution of good cheer for a week or two after that holiday. Towards Christmas the fat hogs were killed, the pork salted, the hams hung in the wide chimney to cure, and the sausages made. The women began to comb flax and spin linen thread; the men went daily to cut and haul the year’s firewood. We were too good Puritans to make much account of Christmas, though sometimes the young people at the main road got up a ball on Christmas eve, but at New Year, there was a general interchange of good wishes, with gifts and festivity.

Christmas in Maine, 1791

On the Maine frontier in 1786, Martha Ballard may not have had much choice but to work on Christmas. On Dec. 25, 1791, the midwife made famous by historian Laurel Thacher Ulrich had to help her neighbor deliver a child. In her diary, she wrote:

Snowd & was Cold. mrs Lithgow was very unwell all Day. her women were Calld in towards Evn^g & Shee was Safe Delivrd of a fine Son a^t 10 h Evn, and is Cleverly. mrs Pettee, Stackpool, Thomas & Collar taried all night.

In 1807, Congress Works on Christmas!

John Quincy Adams

Christmas still wasn’t much of a holiday after the turn of the century. Congress worked in Washington, D.C. , on Dec. 25, 1807. It didn’t bother Sen. John Quincy Adams, who came from old Puritan stock:

25th. Christmas day; but the committee of enquiry met at ten this morning. Mr. James Taylor attended, and made his statements in the presence of Mr. Smith, who wished until tomorrow morning to put his questions; which was agreed to. The committee sat until near three o’clock, still discussing the principles of my report. Part of what was yesterday struck out was this day reinserted.

A Merry Christmas at Sea, 1828

Times were changing, though, and the non-Puritan and the non-pious strove for a festive holiday. Capt. Solomon H. Davis, a 24-year-old Gloucester, Mass., sea captain, recorded in his diary in 1828.

Christmas Day — merry one. Rainy weather. Mr F— drinking Merry Christmas and trying to murder the time, conversing on various subjects — very interesting to females, if they could hear it. At meridian, a small stir. passed us with American colors flying. Who knows, says I, but that she will have letters for me?

A Poky Christmas, 1869

Sarah Orne Jewett didn’t get the New England Christmas promised by Charles Dickens.

Charles Dickens left his stamp on Christmas with his 1867-68 U.S. tour reading A Christmas Carol. Another writer, Sarah Orne Jewett, recorded in her diary that Christmas that year didn’t live up to the ideal holiday as envisioned by her British counterpart:

Saturday 25.A very poky Christmas. All my presents except a cushion for Carrie either came before or are to come after today. & that I dont like. Read and was at Grandma’s in the afternoon & also in the evening. Walked with Sara[h] Lord most all the evening.

A Charitable Christmas, 1875

Louisa May Alcott embraced the Dickensian notion of Christmas as a time of charity and gift giving by spending Christmas in 1875 visiting the poor and sick in New York City with Quaker activist Abby Hopper Gibbons. In a letter to her family in Concord, Mass., she wrote:

Louisa May Alcott

Dear Family,– …we drove to the hospital, and there the heart-ache began, for me at least, so sad it was to see these poor babies, born of want and sin, suffering every sort of deformity, disease, and pain. Cripples half blind, scarred with scrofula, burns, and abuse,–it was simply awful and indescribable!

…One poor mite, so eaten up with sores that its whole face was painted with some white salve,–its head covered with an oilskin cap; one eye gone, and the other half filmed over; hands bandaged, and ears bleeding,–could only moan and move its feet till I put a gay red dolly in one hand and a pink candy in the other; then the dim eye brightened, the hoarse voice said feebly, “Tanky, lady!” and I left it contentedly sucking the sweetie, and trying to see its dear new toy. It can’t see another Christmas, and I like to think I helped make this one happy, even for a minute…

A New England Christmas, 1911

By 1911, Christmas in Maine had changed considerably since the days of Martha Ballard. Mrs. A.H. Bowden was a 68-year-old widow living on the farm her husband left her in Cape Neddick. He had extensive land holdings in York. She spent the days leading up to Christmas dressing poultry, doing laundry and redecorating her setting room. On Christmas Day she wrote in her diary (with thanks to Cape Neddick, Maine):

A nice day Wind SW nice day for Chris (Christmas) Moderate And had quite A lot of Presents Went to see my sister found her very low Frank Main Chapman Called this Evening So tired I Can’t Write mailed A letter to A L Whittle And Wife and Also Adeline Gillchrist

Robert Frost Nails It, 1915

New England Christmas trees?

By 1915, Robert Frost captured the nostalgia that was becoming part of Christmas, a yearning for a simpler time. From Franconia, N.H., Frost wrote a letter to a friend that included an early version of the poem Christmas Trees. He wrote,

The city had withdrawn into itself
And left at last the country to the country,
When between whirls of snow not come to lie
And whirls of faded foliage not yet laid
There drove one day a stranger to my door
Who did in country-fashion in that there
He sat and waited till he drew us out,
A-buttoning coats, to ask him who he was.
He proed to be the town come back to look
For something in the country it had left
And could not do without and keep its Christmas.
He asked if I would sell my Christmas trees.

With thanks to the Public Domain Review. This story about the evolution of New England Christmas was updated in 2022.

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Flashback Photo: Ralph Adams Cram, High Priest of Gothic Revival Architecture

Ralph Adams Cram was a renaissance man who believed the Renaissance was an unfortunate detour for western culture.

Ralph Adams Cram. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Cram designed great buildings in his lifetime in both the Gothic Revival and Art Deco styles. He was a talented essayist and an accomplished writer of horror stories. H.P. Lovecraft praised his story, ‘The Dead Valley,’ which appeared in a collection called ‘a classic of weird fiction.’

Cram led a complicated life. He was a high church Anglican who co-founded the Catholic periodical Commonweal. Though married – happily, by most accounts – to a wealthy Virginia woman, he spent summers at a homosexual monastery in Wales.

Once a household name, Ralph Adams Cram is pretty much forgotten today, unlike his contemporary, Frank Lloyd Wright.

All Saints Church, Ashmont

He was born on Dec. 16, 1863 in Hampton Falls, N.H., the son of the Rev. William Augustine, a Unitarian minister, and Sarah Elizabeth Cram.

He grew up during the Gilded Age, a time of stultifying, fussy Victorian art and architecture. Cram sought to return to the glories of the medieval age and to reinvent American church and college architecture.

After graduating from Exeter, he moved to Boston to study architecture for five years in the architectural firm of Rotch & Tilden. He then traveled to Rome to study classical architecture. On Christmas Eve at Midnight Mass he had a dramatic conversion experience. He turned away from his Unitarian roots and from then on practiced as an ardent Anglo-Catholic. Cram’s biographer, Douglas Shand-Tucci, wrote the Anglican church appealed to Cram because of its ‘grand liturgy, its ancient intellectual power, its splendid churches of every period, its virtual identity with English culture.’

In 1889, Ralph Adams Cram set up his firm at No. 1 Park Square in Boston; his first commission was remodeling a tenement house in Brighton. He and his partner, Charles Francis Wentworth, then decided to concentrate on churches. They won commissions for four churches: two in Boston neighborhoods, All Saints Church in Ashmont and Christ Church in Hyde Park,; the Swedenborgian Church in Newtonville, Mass., and St. Paul’s Church in Brockton, Mass.

Princeton University Chapel

In 1900, Cram married Elizabeth Carrington Read, the daughter of a Civil War captain. When he returned from his honeymoon in Italy he almost threw out an invitation to undertake his next project: a building campaign at West Point. From his success there he would go on to become the consulting architect at Princeton, Wheaton, Sweet Briar, Boston University, University of Richmond and Wellesley Colleges. He would also head the architecture department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Cram believed his style, dubbed ‘Collegiate Gothic,’ was the only one that expressed the educational ideals that Princeton and other universities inherited from medieval England.

St. John the Divine

Cram designed great buildings in his lifetime, including the Doheny Library at the University of Southern California, Emmanuel Church in Newport, R.I., and the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City.

His legacy can be found throughout the churches and colleges of the Northeast, especially at Princeton, Phillips Exeter Academy, St. George’s School, St. Paul’s School and Williams College.

Hunt Memorial Library, Nashua, N.H.

He also designed distinctive Art Deco buildings, including the Federal building in Boston.

During the 1920s, he was a household name. He appeared on the cover of Time magazine, and the New York Times called him ‘one of the most prominent Episcopalian laymen in the country.’

Ralph Adams Cram died Sept. 22, 1942. The Episcopal Church honors him on Dec. 16 as a feast day.

First Unitarian Church, Newton, Mass. Ralph Adams Cram designed the building, Frederick Law Olmsted the grounds.

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Plymouth Colony Drafts the First Laws in North America

Democracy formally took root in colonial North America on Oct. 4, 1636, when Plymouth Colony drew up the first written legal code on the continent.

Plymouth Colony was settled in 1620 by Anglicans and Separatists, also known as Brownists, and later known together as the Pilgrims. The Pilgrims believed God commended them to adopt democracy as their form of government. And that government should enforce religious belief.

A typical house in Plymouth Colony, recreated at Plimoth Patuxet.

By 1636, Plymouth Colony had fewer than 3,000 inhabitants. The Massachusetts Bay Colony would eventually eclipse it in wealth and population and absorbed the entire colony.

In the beginning, the laws of Plymouth Colony only carried the weight of a proclamation by the General Court. But in 1636 the court put them into a code known as the “General Fundamentals.”

Plymouth Colony Bill of Rights

The legal code included a rudimentary bill of rights and guaranteed trial by jury. It levied taxes, decreed the distribution of land and set out punishments for specific crimes. Several crimes carried the death penalty: treason, murder, witchcraft, arson, sodomy, rape, bestiality, adultery, and cursing or smiting one’s parents.

The Book of the General Laws of the Inhabitants of the Jurisdiction of New-Plimouth

Plymouth magistrates, however, rarely meted out the death penalty. Only one sex crime ever resulted in an execution: Thomas Granger in 1642 for bestiality.

Edward Bumpus received a death sentence for “striking and abusing” his parents in 1679. But he received only a severe whipping due to his insanity. The alleged killers of a Praying Indian named John Sassamon in 1675, which set off King Philip’s War, also received the death penalty.

Rules for Adultery

Convicted adulterers were to be punished by wearing the letters ‘A’ and ‘D’ sewn on to their garments. Nathaniel Hawthorne, of course, used that in his short story, The Scarlet Letter. Anyone convicted of burglary got the letter ‘B’ branded onto his hand. Profanity got you not more than three hours in the stock. Whipping or a fine of 40 shillings went to those who traveled, worked or participated in sports on the Sabbath.

Watching their language.

The General Fundamentals began with a preamble that declared “the associates of the Colony of New Plimouth” as “free born subjects of the kingdom of England.” As such, they had all the privileges of Englishmen. They didn’t have a charter, but believed that God wanted democratic government.

The first article of the General Fundamentals was a declaration of self-rule, stating,

That no act, imposition, law or ordinance be made or imposed upon us at present or to come, but such as has been or shall be enacted by the consent of the body of freemen or associates, or their representatives legally assembled; which is according to the free liberties of the freeborn people of England.

The second article established the election calendar, including “a free election annually, of governor, deputy governor, and assistants. But only freemen –men of property who belonged to the church — could vote.

Plymouth Colony also drew up laws for preaching the Gospel to indigenous people and for admitting them as preachers.

This story about Plymouth Colony last updated in 2022.

Images: Plymouth Colony house by By Ben Franske – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4459090.

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What They Said About Easter in New England

Easter Sunday traditions in New England have long included dying eggs, wearing new clothes, baking hot cross buns and attending sunrise services. They are based on pagan superstitions, which of course is why the Puritans didn’t celebrate the holiday. (The Puritans didn’t like Christmas, either.) For the early Puritans, celebrating the Lord’s Day 52 times a year was quite enough.

Showing off new Easter clothes in Boston, 1936. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

Others brought traditions from Europe. Germans believed, for example, that rabbits laid beautifully colored eggs on Easter.

Franco-Americans rose before the sun came up to fetch water, which they called Peau de Paques, from a stream. They believed it had miraculous qualities, staying pure indefinitely. They washed with it, drank it and saved it.

Easter usually (though not always) falls later for members of the Greek Orthodox Church than for other Christians. On the holiday itself, Greek Orthodox Christians used to greet each other by saying, “Christ has risen.” The response: “Truly he has risen.”

Italian-Americans have a number of sayings about Easter, including ‘happy as Easter’ (which means someone is happy) or ‘as long as Lent’ (which means something is long).

What They Say

Clifton Johnson in his 1897 book, What They Say in New England: A Book of Signs, Sayings and Superstitions, brings us a saying about new clothes:

Wear three new things on Easter, and you will have good luck all that year.

That comes from an old Anglican belief that bad luck happens from wearing old clothes on the holiday:

At Easter let your clothes be new,
Or else be sure you will it rue.

Here’s another one from Johnson:

The sunlight always dawns on the wall on Easter morning.

That probably stems from an old Irish belief:

The sun dances when it rises on Easter morning.

Johnson includes folklore about eggs:

An egg laid on Easter Sunday will never spoil. It will not rot, though it may dry up. This is equally true of an egg laid on Good Friday.

Here’s another one:

Two yolks in an Easter egg foretell a great gain in wealth.

Quite a lot of lore surrounds hot cross buns, too pagan for the Puritans, but embraced by New England’s Anglicans:

If you hang a hot cross bun from your kitchen ceiling, it won’t get stale.

Taking a hot cross bun to sea will protect against shipwreck.

Hanging a hot cross bun from the ceiling prevents fire.

Sharing a hot cross bun cements friendships if an incantation is uttered with it: “Half for you and half for me, Between us to good luck shall be.

This one came from Salem, Mass.:

Run around a fairy ring twice on Easter Sunday morning, and fairies will arise and follow you. (A fairy ring is a dry spot where there is no dew.)

And this one from Salem, N.H.:

Knit a garter and color it yellow. Don it on Easter Day. Wear it for a year. The wearer will be engaged before the year is out.

This story was updated in 2022.

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The Great Boston Revolt of 1689

Colonists in Boston revolted against a hated English governor 86 years and one day before the the world heard the shot in Concord, Mass.

Only no one did any shooting and the new king of England had no problem with it.

Andros is taken prisoner during the Boston Revolt

The Puritan colonists overthrew Sir Edmund Andros, for some of the same reasons the Protestant William of Orange overthrew the Catholic James II. James’ religious tolerance was as troubling to England’s political leaders as was Andros’ support of the Anglican Church to New England’s Puritans.

Andros’ doom was probably sealed the day he forced the Puritans’ Old South Church to host an Anglican service on Good Friday.

Crackdown

Andros arrived in Boston on Dec. 20, 1686 to enforce the Crown’s crackdown on the colony’s independent ways. King Charles II had learned the colonists were settling land well beyond the boundaries set by the charter. They ignored trade restrictions and they did not tolerate the Church of England. They had refused to take an oath of allegiance for years. Treason wasn’t even a crime anymore.

Charles ordered every male 16 years and older to swear allegiance to the king. Restrictions on trade and navigation were to be obeyed; and no one was to be prohibited from celebrating the ritual of the Church of England. Treason was again a crime.

The king made more demands on the Massachusetts colonists, which they generally evaded. He began to take steps to consolidate his control of the New England colonies, but died before he could finish the job. His successor, the Roman Catholic James II, picked up the task and in 1686 created the Dominion of New England from the New England colonies, New York and New Jersey. It didn’t go well.

James sent Andros to govern the new dominion. He seemed like a good choice, as he had served as governor of the provinces of New York, East and West Jersey, Virginia and Maryland.

‘Bigoted Papist’

The day he set foot in Boston, Andros began talks with the Puritan elders for the better accommodation of the Church of England. The Puritans said no to the man they viewed as a ‘bigoted Papist.’

The Puritans were pretty bigoted themselves. They objected to the Church of England’s embrace of Catholic traditions. The Puritans banned Christmas and viewed Easter with the same disdain. They had no use for hot cross buns, ashes on foreheads, handing out palms or creeping to the cross on Good Friday. Boston’s Anglicans were forced to hold services in the open air, even as Puritans tried to disrupt them. Anglican ministers couldn’t wear a surplice in public, and to recite the Church of England’s burial service at a gravesite was to risk a brawl.

Andros asked for a donation of a small spot of land on which Anglicans could build a church. The Puritans refused. So Andros asked for the Puritan meetinghouse be used for Anglican services. They wouldn’t agree to that either.

Edmund Andros by Mary Beale

On March 23, 1687, the Wednesday of Passion Week, Andros ordered his agent to ask for the keys to the Old South Church (then the Third Church) for Anglican services. He was rebuffed. A Puritan delegation visited him to explain why they couldn’t allow it. On Good Friday, he ordered the sexton to throw open the doors of Old South and ring the bell for ‘those of the Church of England.’ Whether the sexton was persuaded or coerced is not known, but the doors were open, the bell rung and the service held.

An Affront

It was an affront the Puritans would not forgive.

Andros wife, Mary Craven Andros, died soon after arriving in Boston. Andros added insult to injury by holding her funeral service at Old South on Feb. 10, 1688, with the pomp and ritual so abhorrent to Puritans.

Andros continued to vex the Massachusetts Puritans. He refused to recognize some of their property deeds, restricted town meetings, enforced the Navigation Acts and continued to promote the Anglican Church.

James II

As anger grew against Andros in the colonies, so did it fester against James II in England. English Parliamentarians overthrew his government and invited William of Orange to take his place. William landed in England on Nov. 5, 1688, and by December the bloodless coup known as the Glorious Revolution was over.

The news reached Boston in late March. Andros wouldn’t last much longer.

Vile Person

Early on the morning of April 18, 1689, the inhabitants of Boston took up arms. Militias from neighboring towns streamed into the city. They first arrested the captain of the British frigate The Rose, moored in Boston Harbor. Two thousand Massachusetts militia then marched against Andros’ garrison of a dozen or so redcoats. Andros had no choice but to surrender.

The rebels issued a declaration,

We have been quiet, hitherto, but now the Lord has prospered the undertaking of the prince of Orange, we think we should follow such an example. We therefore, seized the vile persons who oppressed us.

Andros and his agents spent nearly a year in prison, then shipped back to England.

The colonists revived their old charter, and elected Simon Bradstreet governor, the position he held before King Charles revoked the charter. They pledged their loyalty to the new British king, who supported their rebellion.

Peace would reign between the colony and the Crown, at least for a little while.

With thanks to The Puritan Commonwealth, an historical review of the Puritan government in Massachusetts in its civil and ecclesiastical relations, from its rise to the abrogation of the first charter, etc., edited by F.E. Oliver. This story about the Boston revolt was updated in 2022.

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