The Beginnings of New England | Page 5

... 259
And quarrels with Massachusetts over the settlement of the Gorges
claim to the Maine district ... 260
Simon Bradstreet and his verse-making wife ... 261
Massachusetts answers the king's peremptory message ... 262
Secret treaty between Charles II. and Louis XIV ... 263
Shameful proceedings in England ... 264
Massachusetts refuses to surrender her charter; and accordingly it is
annulled by decree of chancery, June 21, 1684 ... 265
Effect of annulling the charter ... 266
Death of Charles II, accession of James II., and appointment of Sir
Edmund Andros as viceroy over New England, with despotic powers ...
267
The charter oak ... 268
Episcopal services in Boston ... 268, 269
Founding of the King's Chapel ... 269
The tyranny ... 270
John Wise of Ipswich ... 271
Fall of James II ... 271
Insurrection in Boston, and overthrow of Andros ... 272

Effects of the Revolution of 1689 ... 273
Need for union among all the northern colonies ... 274
Plymouth, Maine, and Acadia annexed to Massachusetts ... 275
Which becomes a royal province ... 276
And is thus brought into political sympathy with Virginia ... 276
The seeds of the American Revolution were already sown, and the
spirit of 1776 was foreshadowed in 1689 ... 277, 278

THE BEGINNINGS OF NEW ENGLAND.
CHAPTER I.
THE ROMAN IDEA AND THE ENGLISH IDEA.
It used to be the fashion of historians, looking superficially at the facts
presented in chronicles and tables of dates, without analyzing and
comparing vast groups of facts distributed through centuries, or even
suspecting the need for such analysis and comparison, to assign the
date 476 A.D. as the moment at which the Roman Empire came to an
end. It was in that year that the soldier of fortune, Odovakar,
commander of the Herulian mercenaries in Italy, sent the handsome
boy Romulus, son of Orestes, better known as "little Augustus," from
his imperial throne to the splendid villa of Lucullus near Naples, and
gave him a yearly pension of $35,000 [6,000 solidi] to console him for
the loss of a world. As 324 years elapsed before another emperor was
crowned at Rome, and as the political headship of Europe after that
happy restoration remained upon the German soil to which the events
of the eighth century had shifted it, nothing could seem more natural
than the habit which historians once had, of saying that the mighty
career of Rome had ended, as it had begun, with a Romulus.
Sometimes the date 476 was even set up as a great landmark dividing
modern from ancient history. For those, however, who took such a

view, it was impossible to see the events of the Middle Ages in their
true relations to what went before and what came after. It was
impossible to understand what went on in Italy in the sixth century, or
to explain the position of that great Roman power which had its centre
on the Bosphorus, which in the code of Justinian left us our grandest
monument of Roman law, and which for a thousand years was the
staunch bulwark of Europe against the successive aggressions of
Persian, Saracen, and Turk. It was equally impossible to understand the
rise of the Papal power, the all-important politics of the great Saxon
and Swabian emperors, the relations of mediaeval England to the
Continental powers, or the marvellously interesting growth of the
modern European system of nationalities. [Sidenote: When did the
Roman Empire come to an end?]
Since the middle of the nineteenth century the study of history has
undergone changes no less sweeping than those which have in the same
time affected the study of the physical sciences. Vast groups of facts
distributed through various ages and countries have been subjected to
comparison and analysis, with the result that they have not only thrown
fresh light upon one another, but have in many cases enabled us to
recover historic points of view that had long been buried in oblivion.
Such an instance was furnished about twenty-five years ago by Dr.
Bryce's epoch-making work on the Holy Roman Empire. Since then
historians still recognize the importance of the date 476 as that which
left the Bishop of Rome the dominant personage in Italy, and marked
the shifting of the political centre of gravity from the Palatine to the
Lateran. This was one of those subtle changes which escape notice until
after some of their effects have attracted attention. The most important
effect, in this instance, realized after three centuries, was not the
overthrow of Roman power in the West, but its indefinite extension and
expansion. The men of 476 not only had no idea that they were entering
upon a new era, but least of all did they dream that the Roman Empire
had come to an