her New England colonies were
far ahead of their time in giving shape to the principle that a public
official was the servant of those who elected him, but to such men as
Randolph and West and the whole office-holding world of this period,
such an idea was unthinkable. They served the King and for their service
were to receive their reward, and such men in America looked on fees and
grants of land as legitimate perquisites. In New York they had been
able to gratify their needs, but in Massachusetts such a view of office
ran counter to the traditions and customs of the place, and attempts to
apply it caused resentment and indignation. The efforts of these men,
among whom Randolph was the prince of beggars, to obtain grants of land,
to destroy the validity of existing titles, to levy quit-rents, and to
exact heavy fees, were a menace to the prosperity of the colony; while
the further attempt to destroy the political importance of the towns by
prohibiting town meetings, except once a year, was an attack on one of
the most fundamental parts of the whole New England system. Andros
himself, though laboring to break the resisting power of the colony,
never used his office for purposes of gain.

That the Massachusetts people should oppose these attempts to alter the
methods of government which had been in vogue for half a century was
inevitable, though some of the means they employed were certainly
disingenuous. Their leaders, both lay and clerical, were unsurpassed in
genius for argument and at this time outdid themselves. When Palmer was
able to show that, according to English law, their land-titles were in
many cases defective, they fell back on an older title than that of the
Crown and derived their right from God, "according to his Grand Charter
to the Sons of Adam and Noah." More culpable was the revival of the
unfortunate habit of misrepresentation and calumny which had too often
characterized the treatment of the enemy in Boston, and the spreading of
rumors that Andros, who spent a part of the winter of 1688-1689 in Maine
taking measures for defense, was in league with the French and was
furnishing the Indians with arms and ammunition for use against the
English. Such reports represent perhaps merely the desperate and
half-hysterical methods of a people who did not know where to turn for
the protection of their institutions. A wiser and shrewder move was made
in the spring of 1688, when a group of prominent men determine