Charles' successor, James II, a man of sterner stuff and jealous of his authority in the colonies as well as at home, continued the policy thus inaugurated and enlarged upon it. If he could have kept his throne, he would have bent the Americans under a harsh rule or brought on in his dominions a revolution like that which he precipitated at home in 1688. He determined to unite the Northern colonies and introduce a more efficient administration based on the pattern of the royal provinces. He made a martinet, Sir Edmund Andros, governor of all New England, New York, and New Jersey. The charter of Massachusetts, annulled in the last days of his brother's reign, he continued to ignore, and that of Connecticut would have been seized if it had not been spirited away and hidden, according to tradition, in a hollow oak.
For several months, Andros gave the Northern colonies a taste of ill-tempered despotism. He wrung quit rents from land owners not accustomed to feudal dues; he abrogated titles to land where, in his opinion, they were unlawful; he forced the Episcopal service upon the Old South Church in Boston; and he denied the writ of _habeas corpus_ to a preacher who denounced taxation without representation. In the middle of his arbitrary course, however, his hand was stayed. The news came that King James had been dethroned by his angry subjects, and the people of Boston, kindling a fire on Beacon Hill, summoned the countryside to dispose of Andros. The response was prompt and hearty. The hated governor was arrested, imprisoned, and sent back across the sea under guard.
The overthrow of James, followed by the accession of William and Mary and by assured parliamentary supremacy, had an immediate effect in the colonies. The new order was greeted with thanksgiving. Massachusetts was given another charter which, though not so liberal as the first, restored the spirit if not the entire letter of self-government. In the other colonies where Andros had been operating, the old course of affairs was resumed.
=The Indifference of the First Two Georges.=--On the death in 1714 of Queen Anne, the successor of King William, the throne passed to a Hanoverian prince who, though grateful for English honors and revenues, was more interested in Hanover than in England. George I and George II, whose combined reigns extended from 1714 to 1760, never even learned to speak the English language, at least without an accent. The necessity of taking thought about colonial affairs bored both of them so that the stoutest defender of popular privileges in Boston or Charleston had no ground to complain of the exercise of personal prerogatives by the king. Moreover, during a large part of this period, the direction of affairs was in the hands of an astute leader, Sir Robert Walpole, who betrayed his somewhat cynical view of politics by adopting as his motto: "Let sleeping dogs lie." He revealed his appreciation of popular sentiment by exclaiming: "I will not be the minister to enforce taxes at the expense of blood." Such kings and such ministers were not likely to arouse the slumbering resistance of the thirteen colonies across the sea.