Page:The works of Anne Bradstreet in prose and verse.djvu/78

 IXX INTRODUCTION.

Upon the death of Mr. Sj^monds, in October, 1678, Mr. Bradstreet succeeded him as Deputy-Governor, and the Governor himseh", John Leverett, dying in the following March, he was elected Governor in May, 1679, being then about seventy-six years of age.* He continued to be Gov- ernor until the dissolution of the Charter and the establish- ment of the Provisional Government in Mav, 1686, under his brother-in-law, Joseph Dudley, as President. f Governor Bradstreet and his son, Dudley Bradstreet, were named as Counsellors in the royal commission, but they both refused to act. j On the 20th of December of that year, Sir Ed- mund Andros landed in Boston, and on the same day his commission was read as " Governor in Chief in and over the territory and dominion of New England." § After a little more than two years of oppression under his admin- istration, on the receipt of the news of the landing of the Prince of Orange in England, there was a rising in Boston in April, 1689. On the morning of the i8th, the Royal Governor and his adherents were made prisoners, and the officers who had been elected under the charter in 1686, wdth the venerable Bradstreet at their head, were called upon to act as a "Council of Safety." On the assembling of the representatives of the towns a month later, he was contirmed in his position, and acted as Governor -under the temporary re-establishment of the old charter government until the 14th of May, 1692. On that day Sir William Phipps arrived in Boston with the new charter and a com- mission as Governor of the Province of the Massachusetts


 * Mass. Colony Records, Vol. v. pp. 209-10; Hutchinson's History,

\^ol. i. p. 291.

t Hutchinson's History, Vol. i. pp. 306-S.

X //>,'(/.. p. 314, note. § /l>id, p. 316.

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