Boston Declaration: the announced arrestsGentlemen, merchants and inhabitants of Boston and the country adjacent · April 18, 1689
Randolph on responsibility for the lost charterEdward Randolph · 1689
II · The Rules 1651–1676
Ten weeks to BostonEdward Randolph · September 20, 1676
Mun’s rule for national treasureThomas Mun · published 1664
An Act for increase of Shipping, and Encouragement of the Navigation of this Nation (the Navigation Act of 1651)Parliament of the Commonwealth of England · October 9, 1651
An Act for the Encourageing and increasing of Shipping and Navigation (the Navigation Act of 1660, 12 Car. II c. 18)Parliament of England · 1660
Randolph complains that the trade laws are ignoredEdward Randolph · October 12, 1676
Cargo, destination, and qualifying shipsEnglish Parliament · 1660
Cargoes and colonial shipbuilding in Randolph’s reportEdward Randolph · October 12, 1676
The Life Guard sent to spoil Winchcombe's tobaccoSamuel Pepys · September 19, 1667
The governor’s view, in Randolph’s reportEdward Randolph · September 20, 1676
III · The Mart Town 1676
Keeping the ships movingEdward Randolph · October 12, 1676
The labour behind the sugar and provisionsRichard Ligon; Edward Randolph · Ligon’s observations 1647–1650
Randolph surveys New England tradeEdward Randolph · 1676
The people beneath the sugar accountAnonymous; attributed to Edward Littleton · 1689
Randolph calls the colony a “free state”Edward Randolph · October 12, 1676
IV · Within the Four Seas 1678–1687
Within the four seas: answer to objection sevenMassachusetts General Court · October 2, 1678
Randolph’s own seizure listEdward Randolph · 1680–1681
St John of Dublin: four shots at the royal jackEdward Randolph · Listed with seizures, 1680–81
The jury in the Expectation caseEdward Randolph · June 9, 1680
Garangula’s answer to La BarreGarangula (Onondaga), transmitted through Lahontan and Cadwallader Colden · 1684 · via Lahontan/Colden
The old charter vacatedEnglish Crown and courts; recalled in the 1691 charter · 1684
Andros and the Dominion governmentRoyal administration; Boston Declaration and official council records · 1686–1689
Complaints of great wrongs done under the ill Government of Sir Edmund Androsse Governour in N. E. in the year 1687John Wise, John Andrews sr., Robert Kinsman, William Goodhue jr. and Thomas French, of Ipswich (sworn before Samuel Appleton) · sworn December 20–21, 1689
V · Liberty and License 1689–1696
The Boston Declaration: seizure of the officersBoston revolutionaries; drafting traditionally credited to Cotton Mather · April 18, 1689
James II displacedConvention Parliament · 1688–1689
Liberty and license to tradeEdward Randolph · May 16, 1689
Boston’s food and supplies for the sugar islandsEdward Randolph · Report of 1676
Commanded as subjects, crushed as aliensAnonymous Barbados planter pamphlet, attributed to Edward Littleton · 1689
The mill-feeder sentenceAnonymous; attributed to Edward Littleton · 1689
A royal governor and an elected assemblyWilliam III and Mary II · October 7, 1691
The new Board of TradeWilliam III · May 15, 1696
An Act for preventing Frauds and regulating Abuses in the Plantation Trade (7 & 8 Will. III c. 22)Parliament of England · 1696
Randolph urges a wider admiralty networkEdward Randolph; Commissioners of Customs and Board of Trade · 1696
VI · The Smuggler 1733–1743
Orders to Captain Simon Gross: avoid a warshipThomas Hancock · December 20, 1743
Why imperial enforcement was unevenGeorge Louis Beer; Rhode Island Assembly · 1907
The Molasses ActParliament of Great Britain · 1733
Molasses duties paid, 1734–1755George Louis Beer, using Treasury revenue accounts · 1734–1755 accounts
Sixpence was a statutory rateBritish Parliament · 1733
Orders to Gross: buy and sell enslaved peopleThomas Hancock · September 11, 1741
VII · Every Necessary Thing 1700–1754
Deerskins, manufactured goods and Native captivityNational Park Service, Southeast Archeological Center
The first horse the Piikani saw up closeSaukamappee, a Cree man living among the Piikani, told to David Thompson · told in the winter of 1787–88
Skiagunsta addresses the governor at Charles TownSkiagunsta, Lower Cherokee headman, in an English colonial record · July 7, 1753
Smallpox among the CherokeeJames Adair · About 1738
The Company goes inland; a leader declines the BayAnthony Henday; Clifford Wilson · 1754–1755
The trading captain demands good measureJames Isham, recording trading leaders · 1743
VIII · Loyal Smugglers 1750 · coda
Burke names salutary neglectEdmund Burke · March 22, 1775
Randolph’s demand from prisonEdward Randolph · 1689
Exam Room only
Within the four seas: answer to objection sevenMassachusetts General Court · October 2, 1678
Who says the colony needs molasses?Rhode Island General Assembly · January 24, 1764
The 1676 cargo networkEdward Randolph · October 12, 1676
An Act for the Encouragement of Trade (the Staple Act, 15 Car. II c. 7)Parliament of England · 1663
Background
Henday’s inland journey and competing trade routesAnthony Henday; Andrew Graham’s retrospective note; edition by L. J. Burpee · 1754–1755
A trading captain’s demands, as Isham reports themAn unnamed trading leader, reported in English by James Isham · 1743
Good Measure: reconstructed actions and Company dialogueTHE COLLECTOR scene writers · Modern reconstruction of 1754
Gifts, standards and overplus in the later Bay tradeEdward Umfreville · 1790 · later comparative evidence
The coda’s April 18 comparisonPaul Revere; Boston declaration signers · 1689 and 1775
Enforcement and revenue before the Sugar ActGeorge Louis Beer · 1907
Boston asks about taxation and representationBoston town meeting; draft by Samuel Adams for the appointed committee · May 24, 1764
An Account of the Late Revolution in New-EnglandNathanael Byfield, merchant of Bristol, New England · April 29, 1689
Obedience by the colony’s own authorityMassachusetts General Court · October 10, 1677
Governor Day’s insult, as reported by SpofforthSamuel Spofforth, reporting Governor Samuel Day · 1699
A tumbler traded between islandsOlaudah Equiano · 1760s, recollected in 1789
Lexington birth register: Thomas HancockTown of Lexington · July 13, 1703
Thomas and Lydia raise John HancockW. T. Baxter; Massachusetts Historical Society · 1740s
John Hancock inherits Thomas’s businessNational Park Service · 1764
From bookbinding to overseas commerceW. T. Baxter; Hancock family papers · 1720s–1730s
Jumonville Glen, May 28, 1754National Park Service, Fort Necessity National Battlefield · May 28, 1754
What removing the jury changedNew York State Archives
A retrospective phraseEdmund Burke · March 22, 1775
Shipping before the RestorationEnglish Parliament · 1651
Intercolonial trade did not disappearEnglish Parliament · 1673
An admiralty route for enforcementEnglish Parliament · 1696
European goods via England—with exceptionsEnglish Parliament · 1663
A lower rate and stronger collection machineryBritish Parliament · 1764
Leverett acknowledges Randolph’s arrival during warJohn Leverett, with the Massachusetts council · June 13, 1676
The seizure of Liberty and the separate case against HancockBoston customs officials; legal records edited by L. Kinvin Wroth and Hiller B. Zobel · June 10, 1768–March 25, 1769
Enslavement and forced removal during the warMassachusetts Historical Society, presenting seventeenth-century colonial records · War of 1675–1678
An Act for the encouragement of the Greeneland and Eastland Trades, and for the better secureing the Plantation Trade (the Plantation Duty Act, 25 Car. II c. 7)Parliament of England · 1673
Randolph’s customs deputationCommissioners of the Customs · July 9, 1678
Who was Mr. Coventry?Edward Randolph · September 20, 1676
Last seizure and death on Virginia’s Eastern ShoreRobert Quarry and Francis Nicholson, quoted by Toppan · 1703
Who uncovered for the King’s letter?Edward Randolph · September 20, 1676
A seventeenth voyage in Toppan’s countRobert Noxon Toppan, using Randolph’s will and Board of Trade records · 1702
Boston as the West Indies’ market centreEdward Randolph · October 12, 1676
Randolph asks the Navy to pay himEdward Randolph · February 2, 1666
Ten seizures, seven jury clearancesEdward Randolph · March 1680–April 1681
Rhode Island’s remonstrance on molassesRhode Island General Assembly · January 24, 1764
Sarah Randolph’s petition to the KingSarah Randolph · 1689
The Sugar Act: revenue and jurisdictionParliament of Great Britain · 1764
I · April 18
1689
Broadside
Boston Declaration: the announced arrests
Gentlemen, merchants and inhabitants of Boston and the country adjacent · April 18, 1689
We do therefore seize upon the persons of those few Ill men which have been (next to our sins) the grand authors of our miseries.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Boston opponents of the Dominion seized royal officials after news of political upheaval in England. The declaration claims English and Protestant loyalty while justifying resistance.
Intended audience
New England inhabitants and the authorities in England.
Purpose
Legitimate the arrests and recruit support.
Point of view
The victors accuse their opponents; these charges are an argument, not a neutral account. The identity of our pictured reader is unknown.
The Declaration of the Gentlemen, Merchants, and Inhabitants of Boston (Boston: Samuel Green, 1689), §XII; scholarly transcription in Robert E. Moody, Massachusetts Documents, 1689–1692. Capitalization normalized; line break and terminal punctuation supplied; words unchanged. Capitalization is normalized to the performed excerpt; the cited transcription capitalizes Persons, Men, Sins, Authors and Miseries. No words are changed.
All the blame lyes upon me, who first attacked and overthrew their Charter.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Following the April 1689 overthrow of the Dominion, Randolph was confined in Boston. His thirteen-year confrontation began with the 1676 mission.
Intended audience
His correspondents outside Massachusetts; the memoir extracts his prison correspondence.
Purpose
Explain hostility toward him and seek relief.
Point of view
An imprisoned royal official presents himself as the principal target. His claim to have overthrown the charter is his own allocation of credit and blame.
Robert N. Toppan, ed., Edward Randolph, vol. II (Boston: Prince Society, 1898), p. 97, quoting Randolph. Long s normalized, opening capital and terminal full stop supplied; excerpt ends before “and was made the officer”. Metadata independently inspected printed p. 97 on 2026-10-04: https://archive.org/download/edwardrandolphin02rand/page/n110.jpg. The page confirms the words; the letter date is not April 18. Toppan p. 98 note 221 identifies the Barbados letter as 16 May 1689; this date is not the April 18 arrest date.
Randolph reported his first royal mission to Massachusetts to Charles II in September 1676, after his June arrival.
Intended audience
Charles II and his ministers.
Purpose
Describe the colony’s response to the King’s demands.
Point of view
A royal messenger and opponent of Massachusetts autonomy. His descriptions select affronts and legal conflicts that justify stronger royal intervention.
Edward Randolph to Charles II, September 20, 1676, in Robert N. Toppan, ed., Edward Randolph, vol. II (1898), p. 216. Long s normalized; line breaks and opening capitalization editorial. Departure stated as March 30. The source names the King’s letters and Coventry’s instructions; Randolph is not yet appointed collector.
An Act for increase of Shipping, and Encouragement of the Navigation of this Nation (the Navigation Act of 1651)
Parliament of the Commonwealth of England · October 9, 1651
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
On screen: II · The Rules
For the Increase of the Shipping and the Encouragement of the Navigation of this Nation, which under the good Providence and Protection of God, is so great a means of the Welfare and Safety of this Common wealth; Be it Enacted by this present Parliament, and the Authority thereof, That from and after the First day of December, One thousand six hundred fifty and one, and from thence forwards, no Goods or Commodities whatsoever, of the Growth, Production or Manufacture of Asia, Africa or America … shall be Imported or brought into this Commonwealth of England, or into Ireland, or any other Lands, Islands, Plantations or Territories to this Commonwealth belonging, or in their Possession, in any other Ship or Ships, Vessel or Vessels whatsoever, but onely in such as do truly and without fraud belong onely to the People of this Commonwealth, or the Plantations thereof, as the Proprietors or right Owners thereof; and whereof the Master and Mariners are also for the most part of them, of the People of this Commonwealth, under the penalty of the forfeiture and loss of all the Goods that shall be Imported contrary to this Act…
Sourcing
Historical situation
Parliament built a series of shipping, destination and customs rules during the seventeenth century; this act is one distinct step, not a summary of all four.
Intended audience
Merchants, shipowners, port officers and colonial governors, who had to obey it, and the Dutch, who were its real target.
Purpose
Protect English shipping, commerce and customs receipts through the specific ownership, route or duty provisions described in the citation.
Point of view
The Rump Parliament of the Commonwealth, a merchant-friendly government that saw shipping as national strength. It wrote for English shipowners and paid no attention to what colonists wanted.
Firth, C. H., and R. S. Rait, eds. Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum, 1642–1660. London: His Majesty's Stationery Office, 1911. Sections beginning “For the Increase…” and “And it is further Enacted…”, pp. 559–560. Commonwealth/colonial ownership; master and most crew of the Commonwealth. The European exception also names usual first-shipment ports; bullion, prizes and other provisos appear later. Not a ban on all foreign trade.
An Act for the Encourageing and increasing of Shipping and Navigation (the Navigation Act of 1660, 12 Car. II c. 18)
Parliament of England · 1660
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
On screen: II · The Rules
I. … the Master and three fourthes of the Marriners at least are English … XVIII. … from and after the first day of April which shall be in the yeare of our Lord One thousand six hundred sixty one noe Sugars Tobaccho Cotton Wool Indicoes Ginger Fustick or other dyeing wood of the Growth Production or Manufacture of any English Plantations in America Asia or Africa shall be shiped carryed conveyed or transported from any of the said English Plantations to any Land Island Territory Dominion Port or place whatsoever other then to such English Plantations as doe belong to His Majesty His Heires and Successors or to the Kingdome of England or Ireland or Principallity of Wales or Towne of Berwicke upon Tweede there to be laid on shore under the penalty of the Forfeiture of the said Goods or the full value therof, as alsoe of the Ship with all her Guns Tackle Apparel Ammunition and Furniture…
Sourcing
Historical situation
Parliament built a series of shipping, destination and customs rules during the seventeenth century; this act is one distinct step, not a summary of all four.
Intended audience
Shipowners, merchants, customs officers and colonial governors, who had to obey it or lose ship and cargo.
Purpose
Protect English shipping, commerce and customs receipts through the specific ownership, route or duty provisions described in the citation.
Point of view
Parliament and the restored Crown, writing for the English home economy. Planters in Virginia and Barbados, who were paying the cost of these rules, had no say in the drafting.
Raithby, John, ed. Statutes of the Realm: Volume 5, 1625–80. London: Record Commission, 1819. II c. 18, pp. 246–50. §I: English or colonial ownership and English master plus at least three-quarters English crew. §§XVIII–XIX: enumerated commodities and bond requirements. English plantations are permissible destinations; cod is not enumerated. The original statute names England, Ireland, Wales and Berwick, with subsequent changes to Ireland in 1670/71.
There is no notice taken of the act of navigation, plantation, or any other lawes made in England for the regulation of trade.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Randolph had returned from investigating New England and was describing its government, population and commerce.
Intended audience
Lords of Trade and Plantations in London.
Purpose
Explain how Boston’s commerce and political autonomy obstructed English imperial aims.
Point of view
A Crown agent interprets colonial success as a challenge to royal control. The report is not an exhaustive shipping register or neutral survey.
Randolph’s answers to enquiries from the Lords of Trade and Plantations, in Toppan, Edward Randolph, vol. II (1898), p. 250. An extract from his accusation, not a Massachusetts declaration. The narrator’s turn toward the charter anticipates his later campaign, not an invented quotation or a dated decision on board ship.
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
On screen: II · The Rules
The Act admits qualifying colonial-built and colonial-owned ships. Its enumerated exports include sugar and tobacco, but not cod; it permits trade between English colonies subject to its conditions.
Sourcing
Historical situation
The restored monarchy regulated colonial shipping and enumerated exports.
Intended audience
Merchants, shipowners, colonial governors.
Purpose
Favor English imperial shipping and trade.
Point of view
Legal categories are conditional; neither all exports nor all ships required construction in England.
12 Car. II c. 18, opening clause and §§ XVIII–XIX; Statutes of the Realm, V, pp. 246–250.
She tells me how the lifeguard ... was sent to Winchcombe, to spoil the tobacco there, which it seems the people there do plant contrary to law, and have always done ... and yet they will continue to plant it.
Sourcing
Historical situation
England banned tobacco growing at home (1619 proclamation; Acts of 1652 and 1660) to protect the colonial crop and the customs revenue; Gloucestershire growers kept planting.
Intended audience
Pepys's private diary.
Purpose
A record of news he heard; not an official report.
Point of view
Hearsay: Pepys repeats what a visitor told him, so the narration says 'Pepys heard'.
Samuel Pepys, Diary, Thursday 19 September 1667 (ed. Latham and Matthews).
He freely declared to me that the lawes made by your Majestie and your parliament obligeth them in nothing but what consists with the interest of that colony,
Sourcing
Historical situation
Randolph reported his first royal mission to Massachusetts to Charles II in September 1676, after his June arrival.
Intended audience
Charles II and his ministers.
Purpose
Describe the colony’s response to the King’s demands.
Point of view
A royal messenger and opponent of Massachusetts autonomy. His descriptions select affronts and legal conflicts that justify stronger royal intervention.
Edward Randolph to Charles II, September 20, 1676, in Robert N. Toppan, ed., Edward Randolph, vol. II (1898), p. 219. Long s normalized; line breaks and opening capitalization editorial. Pronouns are unchanged. The sentence continues with the colony’s claim of legislative power under the charter; the excerpt ends at the printed comma. The visit is to Leverett’s house.
It is the great care of the merchants to keep their ships in constant imploy, which makes them trye all ports to force a trade, whereby they abound with all sorts of commodities, …and Boston may be esteemed the mart town of the West-Indies.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Randolph had returned from investigating New England and was describing its government, population and commerce.
Intended audience
Lords of Trade and Plantations in London.
Purpose
Explain how Boston’s commerce and political autonomy obstructed English imperial aims.
Point of view
A Crown agent interprets colonial success as a challenge to royal control. The report is not an exhaustive shipping register or neutral survey.
Randolph’s answers to enquiries from the Lords of Trade and Plantations, in Toppan, Edward Randolph, vol. II (1898), p. 249. Three consecutive clauses.
Richard Ligon; Edward Randolph · Ligon’s observations 1647–1650
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
On screen: III · The Mart Town
Enslaved Africans grow the sugar. New England supplies the plantations.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Sugar plantations required coerced labour and imported supplies; New England provisioning connected northern economic activity to Caribbean slavery.
Intended audience
English readers interested in plantation wealth and management; imperial trade officials.
Purpose
Ligon describes plantation organisation, while Randolph inventories supplies and trade.
Point of view
Ligon writes from the planter’s perspective and often treats people as property. Our interpretation makes the workers visible and does not adopt his dehumanising comparisons.
Richard Ligon, A True & Exact History of the Island of Barbadoes (1657; second edition 1673), pp. 43–51, 54–55 (social hierarchy, enslaved labour and plantation work); Randolph, Toppan II:248–249 (provisions and plantation produce). Directly consulted the digitized Ligon text and Randolph’s page images. Narration and labour view are synthesis, not quotation.
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
On screen: III · The Mart Town
Randolph lists provisions for English plantations, fish and timber for southern Europe, and naval supplies and peltry for England. He describes imported plantation goods being traded onward and names ships sent to Guinea and Madagascar without supplying their manifests here.
Sourcing
Historical situation
A royal investigator assessed Massachusetts trade and government.
Intended audience
The Crown and English officials.
Purpose
Demonstrate the need for stronger royal supervision.
Point of view
An adversarial imperial report; its generalized exchanges are not a ship-by-ship voyage database.
Randolph, response to the Ninth Enquiry, 1676; Robert Noxon Toppan, Edward Randolph, II (1898), pp. 247–250.
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
On screen: III · The Mart Town
A Barbados planter describes the deaths of purchased enslaved people and lethal work around sugar mills and stills as losses to the owner. This reveals coercion while withholding the workers’ own voices.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Barbados planters protested imperial costs and sugar duties.
Intended audience
English policymakers and readers.
Purpose
Seek relief for plantation proprietors.
Point of view
A slaveholder’s accounting of human losses; not testimony from enslaved people.
The Groans of the Plantations (London: M. Clark, 1689), pp. 19–20.
…that government would make the world believe they are a free state,
Sourcing
Historical situation
Randolph had returned from investigating New England and was describing its government, population and commerce.
Intended audience
Lords of Trade and Plantations in London.
Purpose
Explain how Boston’s commerce and political autonomy obstructed English imperial aims.
Point of view
A Crown agent interprets colonial success as a challenge to royal control. The report is not an exhaustive shipping register or neutral survey.
Randolph’s answers to enquiries from the Lords of Trade and Plantations, in Toppan, Edward Randolph, vol. II (1898), p. 250. An extract from his accusation, not a Massachusetts declaration. The narrator’s turn toward the charter anticipates his later campaign, not an invented quotation or a dated decision on board ship.
the lawes of England are bounded w"'in the fower seas, and doe not reach Amerrica. The subjects of his majestie here being not represented in Parljament, so wee haue not looked at ourselues to be impeded in our trade by them.
Sourcing
Historical situation
The Court approves instructions and answers for its agents in London, after enacting its own navigation law in 1677.
Intended audience
The colony’s agents answering the Lords of Trade.
Purpose
Defend colonial legislative authority and explain why English trade statutes were not thought directly binding.
Point of view
The colony’s assertion, not a judgment accepted by England. Speech modernizes spelling only (lawes/laws, w"'in/within, fower/four, doe/do, Amerrica/America, majestie/majesty, Parljament/Parliament); words retained, last clause omitted with ellipsis. No tax quotation from 1765 is projected backwards. An unnamed magistrate performs the institution’s words.
Shurtleff, Records of Massachusetts Bay, V (1854), pp. 200–201, addition to objection seven; verify2 §2 corrects majestie and the printed within abbreviation.
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
On screen: IV · Within the Four Seas
The list contains ten entries, seven explicitly marked cleared by jury. Industry, Expectation, and Maidenhead are three of those seven. The Kittery Gift of God, Two Sisters, and St John of Dublin have different recorded dispositions.
Sourcing
Historical situation
The customs collector reported his seizures and their frustrating outcomes.
Intended audience
Imperial officials.
Purpose
Document obstruction of customs enforcement.
Point of view
The seizing officer’s account, not independent verdict transcripts or a representative enforcement rate.
A List of Severall Ships and Goods Seized, State Papers, Colonial, Bundle 53 (206), in Toppan, Edward Randolph, III (1899), pp. 84–86. Entries mainly 1680; torn endorsement extends to April 1681.
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
On screen: IV · Within the Four Seas
Seized Peter Lawrance Master of the Ship St John of Dublin for riding out of Comand and trading contrary to Law and for firing 4 Shott at his Majesties Jack for which he was imprisoned afterwards fined 10li to the Country and soe dismissed.
Sourcing
Historical situation
The seizure list records Peter Lawrance, master of St John of Dublin.
Intended audience
Customs authorities in England.
Purpose
Record defiance of customs authority and punishment.
Point of view
Narration paraphrases the list. It records imprisonment, then a £10 fine to the colony and dismissal; it does not say acquitted by jury. The actual jack is not painted, and no gunfire victim is invented.
Toppan, Edward Randolph, III (1899), p. 86; SP Colonial, Bundle 53 (206).
the Jury consisting of either Merchants or Masters of Ships leap'd over all, and found for the Defendant.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Randolph reports the failure of his seizure of the pink Expectation, arrived from Cork.
Intended audience
English officials supervising customs and colonial affairs.
Purpose
Explain a defeat and demand stronger enforcement.
Point of view
The losing prosecutor describes commercial jurors as biased. Verbatim. Masters expands the printed occupational abbreviation. The recreated wharf delivery is staging, not an eyewitness account of where he said it.
Robert Noxon Toppan, ed., Edward Randolph, vol. III (Prince Society, 1899), pp. 73–75, Randolph's report of the June 8 trial; quoted words p. 75.
We carried the English into our Lakes, to trade there with the Utawawas and Quatoghies, as the Adirondacks brought the French to our Castles, to carry on a Trade which the English say is theirs. We are born free, we neither depend on Yonnondio nor Corlear. We may go where we please, and carry with us whom we please, and buy and sell what we please: If your Allies be your Slaves, use them as such, command them to receive no other but your People. This Belt preserves my Words.
Sourcing
Historical situation
La Barre’s 1684 campaign meets an Onondaga diplomatic response at La Famine.
Intended audience
The governor of New France in the narrative; later English readers of Colden’s history.
Purpose
In the transmitted address, reject dependence and assert freedom of movement and trade.
Point of view
It is not an Onondaga-language transcript. Lahontan’s literary account and Colden’s English presentation intervene; Colden advocates English trading interests. No synthetic Indigenous-language performance.
Cadwallader Colden, The History of the Five Indian Nations of Canada (London: T. Osborne, 1747), Part I, chapter IV, “Garangula’s Answer,” paragraphs beginning “We carried the English” and “We may go”; Project Gutenberg 35719. Page reference for the parallel 1727 edition in the supplied pitch: p. 87.
English Crown and courts; recalled in the 1691 charter · 1684
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
On screen: IV · Within the Four Seas
London voided the Massachusetts charter in 1684. Disputes over colonial authority, including trade enforcement, helped bring the confrontation.
Sourcing
Historical situation
The Crown replaces the old charter government following litigation and imperial-colonial disputes.
Intended audience
The new provincial government and its inhabitants.
Purpose
Establish the legal basis for the replacement province.
Point of view
Narration is an editorial synthesis, marked adapted. Trade is a contributing cause, not the sole legal ground. Other charges included unlawful taxation, coinage, allegiance oaths and laws; we omit an unsupported exact judgment day.
Charter of Massachusetts Bay (October 7, 1691), opening recital of the judgment in Trinity term, 36 Charles II (1684); Toppan, Edward Randolph, II (1898), p. 103, quoted Committee of Trade account of charter violations.
Royal administration; Boston Declaration and official council records · 1686–1689
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
On screen: IV · Within the Four Seas
Andros arrived in December 1686. The Dominion had no elected assembly; governor and council imposed taxes. Randolph served as secretary.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Several colonies were placed under a royal Dominion; Andros succeeded the earlier presidency.
Intended audience
Royal officials and inhabitants; subsequently readers of the rebels’ justification.
Purpose
The Declaration condemns arbitrary authority; council records describe appointments and operation.
Point of view
Narrative synthesis cross-checks the hostile Declaration against official records. The narration says December, avoiding conflicting arrival-day descriptions. It does not claim the Dominion was first created on his arrival, and it omits an unverified eighth-voyage counter.
Boston Declaration (April 18, 1689), §§ II and IV; Toppan, Edward Randolph, II (1898), pp. 5–8 (arrival), 12–14 (secretary’s fees and office).
Complaints of great wrongs done under the ill Government of Sir Edmund Androsse Governour in N. E. in the year 1687
John Wise, John Andrews sr., Robert Kinsman, William Goodhue jr. and Thomas French, of Ipswich (sworn before Samuel Appleton) · sworn December 20–21, 1689
We John Wise, John Andrews, senior, Robert Kinsman, William Goodhue, junior, all of Ipswich in New-England … We the complainants with Mr. John Appleton and Thomas French all of Ipswich were brought to answer for the said vote out of our own County, thirty or forty miles into Suffolk, and in Boston kept in Goal, only for contempt and high misdemeanors as our Mittimus specifies, and upon demand, denied the priviledge of an Habeas Corpus … In our defence was pleaded the repeal of the Law of Assessment upon the place. Also the Magna Charta of England, and the Statute Laws that secure the Subjects Properties and Estates, &c. To which was replied by one of the Judges, the rest by silence assenting, that we must not think the Laws of England follow us to the ends of the Earth, or whither we went. And the same person (John Wise abovesaid testifies) declared in open Council upon examination of said Wise; Mr. Wise you have no more priviledges left you, than not to be sold for Slaves, and no man in Council contradicted.
Sourcing
Historical situation
In August 1687 the town of Ipswich, Massachusetts, voted not to choose a tax commissioner, because Governor Andros and his council had taxed without an elected assembly. Wise and five others were jailed, tried and fined. They swore this account in December 1689, after Andros had fallen.
Intended audience
The new Massachusetts government and the agents sent to London, who used sworn statements like this one to justify the revolt. It was printed in The Revolution in New-England Justified (Boston, 1691).
Purpose
To show that the Andros government took away the rights of Englishmen, and that its own judges said so out loud.
Point of view
The victims, swearing after the fact and on the winning side. The statement names no speaker: "one of the Judges." Whitmore's note, citing Palfrey, says Joseph Dudley. A colonial petition on record in the Massachusetts Archives credits similar words to John West "or to like Effect." So the wording is Wise's report of what was said.
Whitmore, William H., ed. The Andros Tracts. Vol. 1. Boston: Prince Society, 1868. Pp. 82–86, quoted words on p. 84. Reprinting The Revolution in New-England Justified (Boston: Joseph Brunning, 1691).
Boston revolutionaries; drafting traditionally credited to Cotton Mather · April 18, 1689
Verbatim. The original words, unchanged.
On screen: V · Liberty and License
We do therefore seize upon the persons of those few Ill men which have been (next to our sins) the grand authors of our miseries.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Boston’s armed rising follows news of upheaval in England.
Intended audience
The crowd, other New England towns, and readers in England.
Purpose
Justify taking the governor and his associates into custody.
Point of view
A victorious faction’s justification, not a neutral charge sheet. The excerpt stops mid-sentence without adding words. The reader is unnamed; we don't identify him as Cotton Mather.
The Declaration of the Gentlemen, Merchants, and Inhabitants of Boston, and the Countrey Adjacent (Boston: Samuel Green, 1689), § XII, Evans 397.
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
On screen: V · Liberty and License
James II fell after William’s invasion in 1688; William and Mary accepted the crown in 1689.
Sourcing
Historical situation
William landed in 1688; James fled and the Convention settled the crown in 1689.
Intended audience
The new monarchs, Parliament and the kingdom.
Purpose
Justify the change of rulers and specify constitutional conditions.
Point of view
The successful regime’s legal justification. Narrative summary is adapted; the date card is the invasion year, and the keyterm states the ensuing settlement.
Declaration of Rights, February 13, 1689, recited in the Bill of Rights, 1 William & Mary sess. 2 c. 2 (1689), preamble and crown settlement clauses.
I am confident they will never part with me, unlesse demanded by a force or their ships stoped in the plantations till I am delivered up for their liberty and license to trade.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Randolph is imprisoned after Boston’s revolt against the Dominion.
Intended audience
The governor of Barbados, with a request to communicate his plight to English patrons.
Purpose
Seek release by armed intervention or pressure on New England’s plantation trade.
Point of view
A prisoner’s strategic appeal. His phrase supplies our title, but his explanation is a partisan interpretation of Boston’s motives. The letter is performed on camera, not presented as a transcript of a courier conversation.
Toppan, Edward Randolph, II (1898), p. 97, letter from Boston jail to the governor of Barbados, May 16, 1689. Exact day confirmed by p. 98, note 221: Boston jail, 16 May 1689.
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
On screen: V · Liberty and License
Barbados depended on provisions and other supplies carried from New England. The same shipping linked Boston to the plantation economy.
Sourcing
Historical situation
New England ships carry provisions, animals, wood products and framed houses to sugar islands.
Intended audience
The King and English trade officials.
Purpose
Describe colonial commerce and argue that it escaped effective imperial supervision.
Point of view
Adapted summary; no invented cargo quantity or claimed particular 1689 shipment. The wharf painting is representative. Linking this supply trade to Randolph’s embargo request is an editorial causal inference.
Randolph’s report of New England, in Toppan, Edward Randolph, II (1898), pp. 249–250, West Indies trade paragraph beginning “To Barbadoes, Nevis, St. Christopher”.
Anonymous Barbados planter pamphlet, attributed to Edward Littleton · 1689
Verbatim. The original words, unchanged.
On screen: V · Liberty and License
We are commanded as Subjects, and we are crusht as Aliens.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Barbados planters oppose metropolitan sugar duties and restrictions.
Intended audience
English policymakers and readers interested in plantation trade.
Purpose
Argue that the islands bear burdens without equal commercial treatment.
Point of view
The anonymous planter speaks as a representative of the pamphlet, not a documented named sitter. His claim about colonial liberty must be read beside the enslaved workers whose lives the pamphlet counts as property losses.
The Groans of the Plantations (London: M. Clark, 1689), p. 20 (scan leaf n21).
If a Mill-feeder be catch't by the finger, his whole body is drawn in, and he is squeez'd to pieces.
Sourcing
Historical situation
A pamphlet protesting sugar duties lists plantation expenses, casualties and losses.
Intended audience
English readers and policymakers asked to sympathize with plantation owners.
Purpose
Make an economic case about the costs of owning a plantation.
Point of view
These words are not Richard Ligon’s. The narrator reads it flat in two consecutive lines, with no dramatized accident or human injury. Six seconds without speech or music follow.
The Groans of the Plantations (London: M. Clark, 1689), pp. 19–20 (scan leaves n20–n21).
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
On screen: V · Liberty and License
The new Massachusetts charter restored an elected assembly while reserving appointment of the governor to the Crown.
Sourcing
Historical situation
The settlement after the Dominion’s collapse creates a royal province.
Intended audience
The provincial governor, council, assembly and inhabitants.
Purpose
Define institutions and distribute authority in the new province.
Point of view
Adapted explanatory summary. The 1691 date labels the charter; the painting is an illustration of the settlement, not a claim that the new assembly was sitting before the charter’s implementation.
Charter of Massachusetts Bay (1691), clauses beginning “there shall be one Governour” and “a Great and Generall Court or Assembly”. Avalon Project transcription.
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
On screen: V · Liberty and License
In 1696 the Crown commissioned a Board of Trade to supervise trade and plantations.
Sourcing
Historical situation
The Crown reorganizes oversight of colonial trade during war with France.
Intended audience
The appointed commissioners and royal administration.
Purpose
Promote trade and inspect and improve the plantations.
Point of view
Narration summarizes the commission. Earlier trade councils existed: this is a reorganization with a new commission, not the first English interest in regulating trade.
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial, America and West Indies, vol. XV (1696–1697), item 1, p. 1, Commission of May 15, 1696; scholarly transcription at Slavery, Law & Power.
And itt is hereby further enacted That all the Penalties and Forfeitures before mentioned not in this Act particularly disposed of shall bee One third Part to the Use of His Majesty His Heires and Successors and One third Part to the Governour of the Colony or Plantation where the Offence shall bee committed and the other Third Part to such Person or Persons as shall sue for the same To bee recovered in any of His Majesties Courts att Westminster or … in the Court of Admiralty held in His Majesties Plantations respectively where such Offence shall bee committed att the Pleasure of the Officer or Informer … And that where any Question shall arise concerning the Importation or Exportation of any Goods into or out of the said Plantations in such Case the Proofe shall lye upon the Owner or Claymer, and the Claymer shall bee reputed the Importer or Owner thereof.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Passed in 1696, during King William's War, after years of complaints that colonial merchants were dodging the earlier Navigation Acts. The same year the Crown set up the Board of Trade.
Intended audience
Customs officers, informers, colonial governors and merchants, who now faced stricter rules and new ways to be prosecuted.
Purpose
To close loopholes in the trade laws: it lets officers bring penalty cases in colonial courts of admiralty, and it puts the burden of proof on the shipper.
Point of view
Parliament, writing in a hurry and in wartime, from the view of customs revenue and English shipping. Colonists who saw a court without a jury as unfair are not part of the text. This clause permits the officer or informer to select an admiralty forum for trade penalties; it does not originate admiralty courts. The resulting expansion of the colonial vice-admiralty network supported jury-less proceedings. It does not establish an automatic condemnation or require that every customs case use admiralty.
Raithby, John, ed. Statutes of the Realm: Volume 7, 1695–1701. London: Record Commission, 1820. 7 & 8 Will. III c. 22, § 6.
Edward Randolph; Commissioners of Customs and Board of Trade · 1696
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
On screen: V · Liberty and License
Randolph pressed for the establishment and staffing of colonial admiralty courts and attorneys general.
Sourcing
Historical situation
The government seeks revenue and stronger execution of trade laws.
Intended audience
The Board of Trade, customs commissioners and Crown.
Purpose
Create effective prosecution and enforcement in colonies where local officials resisted.
Point of view
Adapted historical summary of proposals and correspondence. He advocated a network and officials; he did not invent admiralty jurisdiction, personally create every court, or author the entire 1696 statute.
Toppan, Edward Randolph, II (1898), pp. 145–147, especially p. 146 and notes citing the Customs presentment of July 17, 1696, and Randolph’s recommendations; compare CSP Colonial XV, item 198, pp. 98–99, September 1696.
proceed direct to St. Eustatia where you will hear how the Marketts Govern … I'd have you unload at Nantaskett if no man of War there.
Sourcing
Historical situation
A merchant directed a voyage through the Dutch Caribbean and its return to Massachusetts.
Intended audience
Captain Simon Gross.
Purpose
Direct trading decisions and avoid interception when unloading.
Point of view
Private profit-seeking instructions, not later revolutionary rhetoric. On-camera delivery performs a written order; no recorded dialogue is claimed.
Thomas Hancock to Captain Simon Gross, Boston, December 20, 1743, Charming Lydia; Hancock MSS (1) 1; Baxter, The House of Hancock (1945), appendix to chapter VI, pp. 86–87. The letter heading is on p. 86. These are separate excerpts, not a continuous sentence. Written instructions are performed.
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
On screen: VI · The Smuggler
Distance, French wars, dependence on colonial and Native support, locally controlled salaries, absentee officeholders and evasion limited imperial control.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Britain reconsidered imperial administration after a costly war.
Intended audience
Historians; the Assembly’s original appeal addressed Parliament.
Purpose
Explain enforcement failures and the colonial case for relief.
Point of view
Beer explains administration largely through British official records; colonial memorialists emphasized their sacrifices.
Beer, British Colonial Policy, 1754–1765 (1907), pp. 162–63 (assembly control of salaries), 230–33 (customs deputies and evasion), 249–50 (courts); Rhode Island remonstrance, January 24, 1764, Bartlett VI, pp. 379–83 (colonial war service and expense). Native allies illustrated by NPS, Jumonville Glen. Causal synthesis, not a claim that every official was corrupt.
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
On screen: VI · The Smuggler
Whereas the Welfare and Prosperity of Your Majesty's Sugar Colonies in America are of the greatest Consequence and Importance to the Trade, Navigation, and Strength of this Kingdom … from and after the Twenty-fifth Day of December, One thousand Seven hundred and thirty three, there shall be raised, levied, collected, and paid … upon all Rum or spirits of the Produce or Manufacture of any of the Colonies or Plantations in America, not in the Possession or under the Dominion of His Majesty … the Sum of Nine pence, Money of Great Britain … for every Gallon thereof … and upon all Molasses or Syrups of such Foreign Produce or Manufacture, as aforesaid … the Sum of Six pence of like Money, for every Gallon thereof … and upon all Sugars and Paneles of such Foreign Growth, Produce or Manufacture, as aforesaid … a Duty after the Rate of Five shillings, of like Money, for every Hundred Weight, Avoirdupois…
Sourcing
Historical situation
British West Indian planters sought protection from foreign colonial competition.
Intended audience
Merchants, customs officers and British colonial importers.
Purpose
Protect the sugar colonies through import duties.
Point of view
The preamble argues the planters’ case; a statute’s rate does not establish how much was collected.
II c. 13 (1733), preamble and section I. Six pence applies to foreign molasses; nine pence is the rum duty. Supporting primary extract in full, with explicit ellipses. II c. 13 (1733), in The Statutes at Large, ed. Danby Pickering, vol. 16. Text as published by The Statutes Project.
George Louis Beer, using Treasury revenue accounts · 1734–1755 accounts
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
On screen: VI · The Smuggler
£5,686 in molasses duties paid over twenty-two years, 1734–1755; Beer reports an average £259 per year.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Parliament sought stronger collection of colonial customs revenue after the Seven Years’ War.
Intended audience
Readers of British imperial and colonial history.
Purpose
Reconstruct the administrative and revenue setting for policy change.
Point of view
Beer interprets British administrative accounts. Duties paid measure recorded receipts, not unrecorded traffic or total liability.
George Louis Beer, British Colonial Policy, 1754–1765 (1907), p. 115. Independently page-. 5686 / 22 = 258.4545; £259 is Beer’s rounding. This is molasses duties only, not the other Act duties, not the combined 1673/1733 revenue series, and not a denominator for any collection percentage. Beer does not explicitly delimit this series’ geography; no all-colonies claim is added.
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
On screen: VI · The Smuggler
From 25 December 1733, the Act charged sixpence in British money per gallon of foreign-colonial molasses or syrup imported into British American colonies. That rate is not a total of money actually received.
Sourcing
Historical situation
British sugar planters sought protection against foreign colonial competitors.
Intended audience
Customs officers, importers, and planters.
Purpose
Advantage British sugar colonies through import duties.
Point of view
The duty targets foreign-colonial produce; it is not a tax on every gallon produced or consumed everywhere.
6 Geo. II c. 13, § I (rate and commencement); Ohio State University History Teaching Institute transcription, pp. 1–2.
buy you Eight or Ten Good Negro Slaves …proceed to the Bay of Honduras, where dispose of them.
Sourcing
Historical situation
A separate voyage order predates the December 1743 instructions.
Intended audience
Captain Gross.
Purpose
Acquire enslaved people for sale in the Bay of Honduras.
Point of view
The merchant’s dehumanizing commercial language is quoted to expose the instruction to buy and sell enslaved people. The document does not prove that the order was carried out.
Thomas Hancock, orders to Gross, September 11, 1741, Hancock MSS (13) 4; W. T. Baxter, The House of Hancock (1945), p.84 note21. The footnote identifies date and recipient, and prints both the purchase instruction and Honduras continuation. The explicit ellipsis omits the uncertain bracketed rum expansion and conjunction; terminal full stop supplied because the instruction continues.
Deerskins, manufactured goods and Native captivity
National Park Service, Southeast Archeological Center
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
On screen: VII · Every Necessary Thing
Trade supplied guns, tools and cloth in exchange for deerskins and Native captives. Imported goods altered hunting and work and created reliance on merchants.
Sourcing
Historical situation
English traders cultivated relationships with inland Native nations from the late seventeenth century.
Intended audience
Public-history readers and researchers.
Purpose
Explain the trading relationships and conflicts underlying the historic site.
Point of view
An archaeological/historical synthesis; describes regional developments, not a particular transaction in the reconstructed painting.
NPS, Southeast Chronicles: Ninety Six National Historic Site, section on early Cherokee–British trade and the Indian slave trade; underlying references include Crane (1929), pp. 24, 40, 109–20, 138–39. No Gallay count or Skiagunsta quotation used.
numbers of us went to see him, and we all admired him, he put us in mind of a Stag that had lost his horns; and we did not know what name to give him. But as he was a slave to Man, like the dog, which carried our things; he was named the Big Dog.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Horses spread north from Spanish New Mexico; about 1730 the Piikani (Blackfoot Confederacy) met a horse after a fight with Shoshone riders.
Intended audience
David Thompson, a fur trader who wrote the account down in English.
Purpose
An old man's memory of his youth, recorded decades later.
Point of view
Thompson's English, not Saukamappee's own words; a CED optional source for KC-2.1.III.B (horses on the Plains).
David Thompson's Narrative of his Explorations in Western America, 1784–1812, ed. J. B. Tyrrell (Toronto: Champlain Society, 1916), ch. XXII, p. 334.
Recorded English rendering · shortened
Skiagunsta addresses the governor at Charles Town
Skiagunsta, Lower Cherokee headman, in an English colonial record · July 7, 1753
What are we red People? The Cloaths we wear, we cannot make ourselves, they are made to us. We use their Amunition with which we kill Dear [sic]. We cannot make our Guns, they are made to us. Every necessary Thing in Life we must have from the white People.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Upper and Lower Cherokee visitors conclude talks with Governor James Glen at Charles Town, July 7, 1753; James Beamer is identified as sworn interpreter.
Intended audience
The governor and the colonial council.
Purpose
Describe dependence on imported necessities while pursuing relations and material support.
Point of view
A Lower Cherokee headman’s argument survives through an interpreter and English colonial record. It does not establish that Cherokee people lacked agency or every form of self-sufficiency.
William L. McDowell Jr., ed., Documents Relating to Indian Affairs, 1750–1754 (Columbia: South Carolina Archives Department, 1958), pp. 449 (date/audience heading),452–453(speech; named SKIAGUNSTA continuation on453). Official South Carolina Archives PDF. Ellipsis omits the clothing continuation and the ammunition/guns sentences. English documentary mediation is explicit; no Cherokee-language original or exact voice is claimed.
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
On screen: VII · Every Necessary Thing
Smallpox devastated Cherokee communities in the late 1730s.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Adair described an epidemic within a retrospective account of Southeastern Native societies.
Intended audience
Eighteenth-century British readers.
Purpose
Present his observations and arguments about Indigenous societies.
Point of view
A trader writing decades afterward; his account is mediated and his estimate is not a counted total.
Adair, The History of the American Indians (1775), p. 232. We omit his mortality estimate and his claimed chain of transmission; neither is treated as a modern census or settled epidemiology.
The Company goes inland; a leader declines the Bay
Anthony Henday; Clifford Wilson · 1754–1755
Verbatim. The original words, unchanged.
On screen: VII · Every Necessary Thing
he answered, it was far off, & they could not live without Buffalo flesh; and that they could not leave their horses
Sourcing
Historical situation
The Company sought customers whose inland networks and French alternatives reduced travel to Hudson Bay.
Intended audience
Company superiors; modern readers of Canadian biography.
Purpose
Report an inland journey and explain its trading purpose.
Point of view
Henday needed Cree guidance and interpretation. His recorded English account is performed by Henday, not placed in a Blackfoot speaker’s mouth. Journal copies disagree; refusal is not ignorance or powerlessness.
Henday journal in Lawrence J. Burpee, “York Factory to the Blackfeet Country,” Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, third series, I (1907), section II: June 26 departure; p. 338, October 14–15 refusal. Clifford Wilson, “Henday, Anthony,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 3. Biography directly retrieved in this pass; surviving journal versions disagree in details. Performed excerpt is the October15entry onp338; opening But and trailing &c are omitted. It is Henday reporting a leader’s reply in English, not that leader’s direct English speech. Wilson’s DCB biography also records that Henday was outlawed as a smuggler in1748, unknown to the HBC officials who hired him. The narration does not claim that the Company never learned it. Other journal copies differ.
tell your Servants to fill the measure and not to put their finger's within the Brim
Sourcing
Historical situation
The Company depended on trading parties who evaluated measures, goods and alternative suppliers.
Intended audience
Company readers; the represented speech addresses a factor.
Purpose
Record the substance of trading leaders’ demands and trading customs.
Point of view
Isham supplies an English record of the speech’s subject, not an Indigenous-language transcript. The 1754 staging and fallback choices are reconstructions.
James Isham’s Observations on Hudsons Bay, 1743, ed. E. E. Rich, Hudson’s Bay Record Society 12 (1949), pp. 85–87, especially pp. 85–86.
Boston had imprisoned imperial officials after the overthrow of the Dominion.
Intended audience
The governor of Barbados, whom Randolph asks to seek pressure on Boston and help obtain his release.
Purpose
Seek pressure on Boston’s shipping to obtain release.
Point of view
Randolph, the imprisoned officer, connects the colonists’ liberty claims to commerce; he is an interested adversary, not a neutral observer.
Edward Randolph, letter from Boston confinement concerning Barbados and colonial shipping, quoted in Robert Noxon Toppan, Edward Randolph, II (1898), p. 97. This short recall retains the original words. Metadata independently inspected printed p. 97 on 2026-10-04: https://archive.org/download/edwardrandolphin02rand/page/n110.jpg. The page confirms the words; the letter date is not April 18. Toppan p. 98 note 221 identifies the Barbados letter as 16 May 1689; this date is not the April 18 arrest date.
the lawes of England are bounded w"'in the fower seas, and doe not reach Amerrica. The subjects of his majestie here being not represented in Parljament, so wee haue not looked at ourselues to be impeded in our trade by them.
Sourcing
Historical situation
The Court approves instructions and answers for its agents in London, after enacting its own navigation law in 1677.
Intended audience
The colony’s agents answering the Lords of Trade.
Purpose
Defend colonial legislative authority and explain why English trade statutes were not thought directly binding.
Point of view
The colony’s assertion, not a judgment accepted by England. Original transcription follows verify2; w"'in is its plain-text representation of the printed superscript abbreviation. No tax quotation from 1765 is projected backwards. An unnamed magistrate performs the institution’s words.
Shurtleff, Records of Massachusetts Bay, V (1854), pp. 200–201, addition to objection seven; verify2 §2 corrects majestie and the printed within abbreviation.
The Governor and Company of the English colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, in New England, in America, convened at South Kingstown, the 24th day of January, A. D., 1764 … Of these foreign vessels, about one hundred and fifty are annually employed in the West India trade, which import into this colony about fourteen thousand hogsheads of molasses; whereof, a quantity, not exceeding twenty-five hundred hogsheads, come from all the English islands together. It is this quantity of molasses which serves as an engine in the hands of the merchant to effect the great purpose of paying for British manufactures…
Sourcing
Historical situation
Before passage of the Sugar Act, Rhode Island argued against the molasses duty.
Intended audience
British policymakers, through the colonial agent.
Purpose
Protect the colony’s commerce and distilling interests.
Point of view
A lobbying document with rounded quantities; it is not a matched tax ledger.
Representation/remonstrance adopted at South Kingstown, 24 January 1764; John Russell Bartlett, Records of Rhode Island, VI (1861), pp. 379–383; quantities p. 380, distillery argument p. 381. Supporting primary extract in full, with explicit ellipses. Providence, 1861. 378 ff. (quoted passage on p. 380).
To Barbadoes, Nevis, St. Christopher and other islands, the above commodities, together with horses, dealboards, pipestaves, and houses ready framed. To Spain, Portugall and the Straights, Maderas and Canary islands, fish and timber, pipestaves and dealboards. To England, masts and yards for ships, firre and oake plankes, with all sorts of peltry.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Randolph reported the trade linking mainland colonies, English sugar islands, European ports and other coasts.
Intended audience
Lords of Trade and Plantations.
Purpose
Make colonial trade visible to metropolitan officials and demonstrate lost English trade.
Point of view
He stresses the injury to English merchants. The interactive network is a synthesis of route lists, not a reconstruction of each ship’s itinerary.
Randolph, answers to enquiries, Toppan, Edward Randolph, vol. II (1898), pp. 248–250. Narration and interactive explanations paraphrase his commodity and destination lists; no named ships or measured traffic volumes are asserted.
For the maintaining a greater correspondence and kindnesse betweene them and keepeing them in a firmer dependance upon it … makeing this Kingdome a Staple not onely of the Commodities of those Plantations but alsoe of the Commodities of other Countryes and Places for the supplying of them … Be it enacted and it is hereby enactted That from and after the Five and twentyeth day of March One thousand six hundred sixtie fower noe Commoditie of the Growth Production or Manufacture of Europe shall be imported into any Land Island Plantation Colony Territory or Place to His Majestie belonging … in Asia Africa or America (Tangier onely excepted) but what shall be bona fide and without fraude laden and shipped in England Wales … the Towne of Berwicke upon Tweede and in English built Shipping…
Sourcing
Historical situation
Parliament built a series of shipping, destination and customs rules during the seventeenth century; this act is one distinct step, not a summary of all four.
Intended audience
Colonial governors and customs officers, who had to check where each cargo was loaded, and the merchants who wanted to buy Dutch and other European goods directly.
Purpose
Protect English shipping, commerce and customs receipts through the specific ownership, route or duty provisions described in the citation.
Point of view
Parliament, writing to keep the plantations "in a firmer dependance" on England. Colonial buyers, who paid higher prices for goods that had to detour through England, were not consulted.
Raithby, John, ed. Statutes of the Realm: Volume 5, 1625–80. London: Record Commission, 1819. II c. 7, pp. 449–52. §§IV–VI. Loading in England, Wales or Berwick, in qualifying English shipping. §V excepts salt for the fisheries, Madeira/Western Islands wines and specified Scottish/Irish provisions, servants and horses. The teaching case is French wine, not an island-wine exception. §VI treats colonial-built ships as English-built for this purpose.
Journal and editorially identified retrospective note
Henday’s inland journey and competing trade routes
Anthony Henday; Andrew Graham’s retrospective note; edition by L. J. Burpee · 1754–1755
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
Background: not shown on screen.
Henday left York Fort on June 26, 1754 and paddled up the Hayes River. Graham’s retrospective note says he volunteered to go inland with Native travelers. Henday’s journal records French houses inland, Indigenous trading networks, and French traders exchanging watered brandy for furs in May 1755.
Sourcing
Historical situation
The Company sought trade from inland communities beyond its coastal posts.
Intended audience
Company officers reading the journal; later readers of Graham’s note and Burpee’s edition.
Purpose
Record the journey, encounters, and prospects for drawing trade toward the Bay.
Point of view
An English Company employee describes Native decisions and rival trade. His interpretation and an editor’s identifications must be distinguished from others’ own words.
L. J. Burpee, “York Factory to the Blackfeet Country: The Journal of Anthony Hendry, 1754–1755,” Proceedings and Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, series 3, vol. 1 (1907), pp. 321 (Graham note), 322 (June 26 departure), 324–325, 338 (October reported response), 350–353 (May trading networks and French posts). The performed request to Isham is a separate dramatization, not journal speech. No exact 1754 encounter, tariff, or outcome follows from the 1755 observations.
A trading captain’s demands, as Isham reports them
An unnamed trading leader, reported in English by James Isham · 1743
Verbatim. The original words, unchanged.
Background: not shown on screen.
English translation by James Isham (1743 edition)
You told me last year to bring many Indians; you see I have not lied. Here is a great many young men come with me. Use them kindly! Use them kindly, I say! Give them good goods, give them good goods, I say! We lived hard last winter and in want, the powder being short measure and bad, I say! Tell your servants to fill the measure and not to put their fingers within the brim. Take pity of us, take pity of us, I say! We come a long way to see you. The French sends for us, but we will not hear. We love the English. Give us good black tobacco, moist and hard twisted. Let us see it before opened. … The guns are bad. Let us trade light guns small in the hand, and well shaped, with locks that will not freeze in the winter, and red gun cases. … Let the young men have roll tobacco cheap; kettles thick, high for the shape and size, strong ears, and the bail to lap just upon the side. Give us good measure in cloth. Let us see the old measures. Do you mind me? The young men loves you by coming to see you. Take pity, take pity, I say! And give them good; they love to dress and be fine. Do you understand me?
Sourcing
Historical situation
Isham describes customary trade negotiations and the subject of a leader’s speech in 1743.
Intended audience
In the reported speech, the Company factor; in the written account, Company and English readers.
Purpose
Demand honest measures, usable goods and favorable terms while invoking rival French traders.
Point of view
Native bargaining is mediated by a Company observer’s English record, not an Indigenous-language transcript. The reconstructed captain is not a documented individual at an identified 1754 meeting.
James Isham, Observations on Hudsons Bay (1743), ed. E. E. Rich, Hudson’s Bay Record Society XII (1949), pp. 85–87. Page images independently inspected by metadata. Verbatim to Isham’s reported English words, with spelling, capitalization, punctuation and contractions modernized (including finger’s → fingers, here → hear, Baile → bail). The marginal heading ending in factor is not part of the speech. Isham’s parenthetical brazl. tobacco gloss and gun-case aside are omitted; an intervening refrain is cut. The source card preserves passage order; the scene moves the long-way/French/English sentence to the close, splits it from the tobacco continuation, and repeats a printed refrain.
Good Measure: reconstructed actions and Company dialogue
THE COLLECTOR scene writers · Modern reconstruction of 1754
Dramatization. Dramatized, based on the record.
Background: not shown on screen.
York Fort, Hudson Bay. Summer 1754. You are James Isham. The man at your window can take his furs elsewhere.
Look at what they brought, or address the captain.
A short measure keeps powder in our store, sir. Fill it honestly, and there is less left in the account.
Fill it level. No fingers.
Keep the customary measure.
He checks the full measure. The powder leaves your store in plain sight.
Then we must account for all that powder, sir.
He pours it beside a full measure. The smaller heap exposes the shortage.
She lays the cloth along the old measure and waits.
Overplus means demanding more furs than the Company’s Standard. It increases the post’s return. Will you ask for more?
Keep the Company’s Standard.
Ask one pelt more.
The cloth is folded for her. No extra pelt is demanded.
The gifts still cost us, sir. There is no extra return to cover them.
The extra pelt slides forward. She draws it back. Your asking price is still unsettled.
And the gift? Brandy is costly. Withhold it, and we offer less than rivals who pour it.
One customary keg to share.
Three kegs. Match the rivals.
Tobacco, bread and prunes. No brandy.
One keg goes to his side of the sill. He decides how it is shared.
Three kegs fill the sill. The price of competing is visible.
Bread, tobacco and prunes replace the brandy. The river route to other traders remains open.
He looks back at you.
He turns toward the landing. His lieutenant follows.
Let me go inland with them, sir. I will ask their trading partners to come down to the Bay.
Go with them, Henday.
Sourcing
Historical situation
An interactive reconstruction sets competing commercial demands at a trading window in 1754.
Intended audience
The student playing the Company factor.
Purpose
Make choices about quality, measurement, prices and competition tangible.
Point of view
Modern teaching interpretation. The URL points to historical context, not a source for invented words. Native speech is separately sourced to Isham.
Historical basis: Isham (1743), pp. 85–87. Henday journal, Burpee edition (1907), pp. 321–322, 350–353. Umfreville (1790), pp. 57–64, 84–88. The exact Company dialogue, Henday request, physical reactions, prices, gift quantities and player choices are invented. They are not quotations or documented consequences of an actual meeting.
Gifts, standards and overplus in the later Bay trade
Edward Umfreville · 1790 · later comparative evidence
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
Background: not shown on screen.
Umfreville describes gifts in trade and prices reckoned in beaver. He distinguishes a trading standard from overplus, an additional return obtained in exchange. This later account informs the scene’s explanation; it does not establish an exact price or gift allowance at York Fort in 1754.
Sourcing
Historical situation
A later eighteenth-century writer assesses Company trade and its practices.
Intended audience
British readers concerned with Hudson Bay commerce and the Company.
Purpose
Describe and evaluate trading practices, including goods, presents and returns.
Point of view
A European commercial account from a later period. It gives comparative context, not direct evidence of the reconstructed 1754 decisions.
Edward Umfreville, The Present State of Hudson’s Bay (London, 1790), pp. 57–64 (trading ceremony and presents), 84–88 (standard and overplus). No later “thumbs” wording is substituted for Isham’s finger’s. The one-pelt and keg choices are invented quantities, not a historical tariff.
Paul Revere; Boston declaration signers · 1689 and 1775
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
Background: not shown on screen.
The coda pairs Boston’s April 18, 1689 uprising, dated Old Style, with the evening of April 18, 1775 described by Revere. It does not date the battles to April 18.
Sourcing
Historical situation
We link an earlier conflict over imperial authority to the eve of the fighting at Lexington and Concord.
Intended audience
Revere wrote to historian Jeremy Belknap; the earlier declaration addressed colonial inhabitants and English authorities.
Purpose
Document the two dates used in our interpretive comparison.
Point of view
Revere’s account is retrospective. The comparison is editorial.
Paul Revere to Jeremy Belknap, circa 1798, Gilder Lehrman Institute transcription, PDF p. 1, paragraph describing Tuesday evening the 18th; Boston Declaration, April 18, 1689, heading and conclusion, Colonial Society of Massachusetts, node/1786.
Boston town meeting; draft by Samuel Adams for the appointed committee · May 24, 1764
Verbatim. The original words, unchanged.
Background: not shown on screen.
If Taxes are laid upon us in any shape without our having a Legal Representation where they are laid, are we not reduced from the Character of Free Subjects to the miserable state of tributary Slaves?
Sourcing
Historical situation
Boston instructed its representatives amid the dispute over imperial taxation.
Intended audience
Royal Tyler, James Otis, Thomas Cushing and Oxenbridge Thacher.
Purpose
Defend colonial consent and representation in taxation.
Point of view
Town voters invoked figurative slavery while Atlantic commerce involved actual enslavement. We let the earlier Hancock order supply that contrast. Adams’s role as drafter does not make the instructions his private letter; the town adopted the committee document.
A Report of the Record Commissioners of the City of Boston containing the Boston Town Records, 1758–1769 (Boston, 1886), pp. 120–23, May 24, 1764 instructions to representatives. Venue not established for this sitting. Attribution corroborated by H. A. Cushing, ed., The Writings of Samuel Adams, I (1904), pp. 1–5, opening document and p. 1 committee note (Richard Dana, Samuel Adams, John Ruddock, Nathaniel Bethune, Joseph Green). The Old South Leaflets No. 173 editorial note, p. 12, explicitly attributes the May24 instructions to Adams. The painting performs the adopted document, not an independently documented speech. Terminal question punctuation is normalized for the interrogative performance; the Town Records transcription prints a period. No words are changed.
Nathanael Byfield, merchant of Bristol, New England · April 29, 1689
Verbatim. The original words, unchanged.
Background: not shown on screen.
…The next day Letters came to him, advising him not to come home … We have also advice, that on Fryday last towards evening, Sir Edmond Andross did attempt to make an escape in Womans Apparel, and pass'd two Guards, and was stopped at the third, being discovered by his Shoes, not having changed them. … Your Most Humble Servant at Command, NATHANAEL BYFIELD. Bristol, April 29, 1689.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Eleven days after the Boston revolt, Byfield wrote from Bristol, New England (today Bristol, Rhode Island), to friends in London, while a ship waited for wind. New England had not yet heard how England itself had settled after the Glorious Revolution.
Intended audience
Merchant friends in London, who had it printed there in 1689 with the Boston Declaration, where it shaped what English readers knew.
Purpose
To give London a first news report of the revolt, and to ask for word of the changes in England.
Point of view
A merchant sympathetic to the revolt, passing on news he did not see. He writes "we have also advice": this is a rumor at second hand. An Anglican account of the revolt, written that year, called such stories false. The narration explicitly calls the disguise a rumour; the painting shows ordinary custody only. It does not claim that the costume story is the established escape narrative.
Byfield, Nathanael. An Account of the Late Revolution in New-England. London: Richard Chiswell, 1689. Reprinted in Whitmore, William H., ed. The Andros Tracts. Vol. 1. Boston: Prince Society, 1868. Pp. 7–8.
It is therefore hereby ordered, and by the authority of this Court enacted, that henceforth all masters of ships, ketches, or other vessells … doe, without covin or fraud, yeild faithfull and constant obedience unto and observation of all the sajd acts of nauigation and trade.
Sourcing
Historical situation
The colony enacts obedience to the Navigation Acts after royal demands.
Intended audience
Masters of ships trading with the colony and royal officials scrutinizing compliance.
Purpose
Require obedience while asserting that the General Court enacts the obligation.
Point of view
The institution speaks collectively; the on-camera magistrate is an unnamed representative reader. The1677Court order now precedes the1678answer and the1680seizure return, in chronological order.
Nathaniel B. Shurtleff, ed., Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay, V (Boston, 1854), p. 155 (manuscript p. 147).
Samuel Spofforth, reporting Governor Samuel Day · 1699
Verbatim. The original words, unchanged.
Background: not shown on screen.
old Dogg, old Rogue
Sourcing
Historical situation
Randolph’s effort to install a customs collector brings conflict and imprisonment in Bermuda.
Intended audience
Officials considering Randolph’s treatment.
Purpose
Document abuse of a customs officer by a governor.
Point of view
The quoted words belong to Governor Day in Spofforth’s account, not Sheriff Crane. They remain a silent overlay and receive no comic voice or reaction. Physical threats in the longer account are omitted.
Toppan, Edward Randolph, II (1898), pp. 164–166, quotation on p. 165, reporting Spofforth’s testimony about the Bermuda governor.
I bought a glass tumbler with my half bit, and when I came to Montserrat I sold it for a bit, or sixpence.
Sourcing
Historical situation
While enslaved, Equiano undertook small trading ventures on voyages between Caribbean islands.
Intended audience
British readers, subscribers and legislators during the abolition campaign.
Purpose
Tell his experience and establish his agency within a system of enslavement.
Point of view
A retrospective autobiographical account; this beat concerns the island trade only, not his later purchase of freedom.
Equiano, The Interesting Narrative (1789), vol. I, chapter VI, pp. 233–34; DocSouth edition and Project Gutenberg #15399, paragraph beginning “After I had been sailing for some time with this captain”.
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
Background: not shown on screen.
Thomas Hancock was born on July 13, 1703 in Cambridge Farms, then part of Cambridge and later incorporated as Lexington in 1713.
Sourcing
Historical situation
A town compilation preserves the birth and baptism as different dates.
Intended audience
Town residents and record researchers.
Purpose
Preserve vital records.
Point of view
Compiled municipal record; preferable to Baxter’s erroneous July 17. Narration paraphrases the birth only.
Lexington Record of Births, Marriages and Deaths to January 1, 1898 (1898), p. 31, Hancock entry. Jul. 13, bp. Place name corrected from the retrospective register title: Town of Lexington, First Settlement (lexingtonma.gov/809/First-Settlement), identifies Cambridge North Precinct/Cambridge Farms before incorporation in 1713. State historical compilation gives March20,1713.
W. T. Baxter; Massachusetts Historical Society · 1740s
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
Background: not shown on screen.
Thomas and Lydia had no children of their own. After John’s father died, they took him into their household and provided his upbringing and education.
Sourcing
Historical situation
A prosperous childless household took responsibility for Thomas’s brother’s son.
Intended audience
Biographical readers and archive users.
Purpose
Explain the family relationship behind John’s later inheritance.
Point of view
A documented family relationship supports warmth in narration; gestures are visual reconstruction, not recorded incidents.
Baxter, The House of Hancock (1945), pp. 67–68, 75–76 (house), p. 146 (family); Massachusetts Historical Society, Hancock Family Papers, biographical sketches (education by uncle). No precise adoption date or age claimed.
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
Background: not shown on screen.
Born in1737, John Hancock was27 when his uncle Thomas died in1764. He inherited Thomas’s business and wealth.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Inherited merchant wealth supported John’s later political prominence.
Intended audience
Public-history readers.
Purpose
Explain Hancock’s position within Boston.
Point of view
A concise biography emphasizing the material advantages underlying his rise.
NPS, “John Hancock,” paragraph beginning “Rising to such prominence”; corroborating MHS Hancock Family Papers biographical sketch. NPS birth date is January23,1737 (New Style), so John was27 at the1764inheritance; no exact death day is asserted.
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
Background: not shown on screen.
Thomas Hancock trained as a bookbinder, opened his own business, married Lydia Henchman, and developed an overseas mercantile business.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Boston trade offered merchants multiple routes from crafts into overseas commerce.
Intended audience
Business historians and archive users.
Purpose
Describe the family business and its surviving records.
Point of view
Historical synthesis based on mercantile records; not Hancock’s own speech.
Baxter, The House of Hancock (1945), opening biographical chapters; corroborating collection description, Harvard Business School, Hancock Family Papers.; no exact apprenticeship age or marriage day asserted.
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
Background: not shown on screen.
Colonial vice-admiralty procedure did not employ juries. Trade-law cases could therefore be heard without the local jury used in common-law proceedings.
Sourcing
Historical situation
An archival description explains the institution that produced surviving court records.
Intended audience
Researchers.
Purpose
Describe jurisdiction and record provenance.
Point of view
Authoritative institutional explanation; it does not say every customs case used that court.
New York State Archives, creator authority: New York (State). Court of Admiralty, institutional history, paragraphs on vice-admiralty jurisdiction and procedure.
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
Background: not shown on screen.
Burke praised earlier colonial growth using the phrase “wise and salutary neglect.” He was arguing for conciliation in 1775, not reading the title of a law enacted in the 1720s.
Sourcing
Historical situation
The imperial crisis had reached the eve of war.
Intended audience
The House of Commons.
Purpose
Persuade Parliament to reconcile with the colonies.
Point of view
A later political judgment about earlier experience, not a uniform administrative program.
Speech on conciliation with America, 22 March 1775, paragraph beginning “When I contemplate these things”; The Works of Edmund Burke, II, Project Gutenberg transcription.
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
Background: not shown on screen.
The plantation duties applied to enumerated goods loaded without the required bond for England or Wales. Payment did not make a forbidden foreign-European destination lawful.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Intercolonial shipments could be diverted to foreign European markets.
Intended audience
Customs officers and traders.
Purpose
Close a customs loophole while retaining conditional intercolonial trade.
Point of view
A duty, a bond, and permission to use a destination are different legal requirements.
25 Car. II c. 7, plantation-trade clauses; University of Wisconsin transcription, heading 1673. Read with 1660 §§ XVIII–XIX and the clarification in 1696 § VII.
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
Background: not shown on screen.
The Act provides for recovery of penalties through specified courts including plantation admiralty courts, and clarifies that paying plantation duties does not license exports of enumerated goods to foreign Europe.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Parliament reinforced enforcement of the plantation trade laws.
Intended audience
Customs officers, governors, and merchants.
Purpose
Prevent evasion and strengthen enforcement procedures.
Point of view
Statutory jurisdiction establishes a forum, not an automatic conviction or a measured success rate.
7 & 8 Will. III c. 22, §§ VI–VII; Statutes of the Realm, VII, pp. 103–107. Commonly called the Navigation Act 1696; modern short title Plantation Trade Act 1695.
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
Background: not shown on screen.
European goods generally had to be laden in England, Wales, or Berwick and shipped directly to the colonies. Exceptions included European salt for New England and Newfoundland fisheries, and wines grown in Madeira or the Azores.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Parliament sought an English staple for European goods supplying its colonies.
Intended audience
Shippers and colonial governors.
Purpose
Channel commerce through the metropolitan economy.
Point of view
The general rule concerns European goods and contains named exceptions; London is not the only permitted port.
15 Car. II c. 7, §§ IV–VI; Statutes of the Realm, V, pp. 449–452.
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
Background: not shown on screen.
The Sugar Act substituted threepence per gallon for the previous molasses rate after 29 September 1764. Its preamble sought American revenue for defense; § XLI permitted prosecution in a local court of record or an admiralty court at the prosecutor’s election.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Britain sought colonial revenue after imperial war and expansion.
Intended audience
Colonial importers, officers, and courts.
Purpose
Raise and secure revenue and enforce trade rules.
Point of view
A lower statutory rate is compatible with stronger collection efforts; the Act alone supplies no realized collection percentage.
III c. 15, preamble and §§ IV–VI, XLI; Teaching American History transcription.
Leverett acknowledges Randolph’s arrival during war
John Leverett, with the Massachusetts council · June 13, 1676
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
Background: not shown on screen.
Boston, June tenth, 1676. Metacom's war is still burning inland.
Sourcing
Historical situation
The Crown’s demands arrived while the colony was fighting Native communities and contending with sickness.
Intended audience
Secretary Coventry and the Crown.
Purpose
Acknowledge receipt and explain why convening the General Court would be delayed.
Point of view
Colonial officials defending their government. Their account gives the colonial military emergency, not Native explanations of the war.
Leverett’s acknowledgement, June 13, 1676, in Toppan, Edward Randolph, vol. II, pp. 201–202; State Papers Colonial, Bundle 52 (168). The letter says the King’s letter arrived on June 10 and cites “the heavy pressure of the Indian war”. Narration is a paraphrase.
The seizure of Liberty and the separate case against Hancock
Boston customs officials; legal records edited by L. Kinvin Wroth and Hiller B. Zobel · June 10, 1768–March 25, 1769
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
Background: not shown on screen.
Customs officers seized John Hancock’s sloop Liberty on June10,1768 over allegedly unentered Madeira wine. The sloop was forfeited in vice-admiralty proceedings. A separate personal penalty prosecution against Hancock was also heard without a jury and was later dropped; seizure did not establish his guilt.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Customs enforcement after the Sugar Act produces an admiralty dispute over Hancock’s vessel and a separate personal penalty suit.
Intended audience
Admiralty officials and litigants; modern readers of the legal edition.
Purpose
Reconstruct the cases and distinguish the legal proceedings.
Point of view
Customs allegations, testimony and adjudication are distinct; the narrative does not turn seizure into proof of smuggling.
The Legal Papers of John Adams, II (1965), Sewall v. Hancock, editorial note and note20 (contemporary Boston Chronicle and Boston Post-Boy reports of seizure June10and forfeiture August17). The editors separately identify Hancock’s personal case, a judge sitting without a jury, and its discontinuance March25,1769. The two proceedings must not be conflated.
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
Background: not shown on screen.
Randolph pursued Increase Mather, who escaped to a ship after changing his clothes.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Randolph’s defamation process threatened Mather’s mission to England.
Intended audience
Private diary; later readers of Cotton Mather’s biography of his father.
Purpose
Record local news; in Parentator, vindicate and celebrate Increase Mather.
Point of view
Narration paraphrases the flight, corroborated by the diary entries cited in the people research. Exact boat action is illustrative. No invented words are assigned to Increase Mather; the later family biography is interested evidence.
Toppan, Edward Randolph, II (1898), pp. 64–65 and notes, quoting Samuel Sewall’s diary entries March 30 and April 7, 1688, and Cotton Mather, Parentator (1724), p. 105.
(as it is said) he had only Two or Three Negroes to carry him unto his Grave.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Twenty-one years after Randolph’s death, Mather’s biography of his father concludes its attack on their old antagonist.
Intended audience
Readers of a filial, religious biography of Increase Mather.
Purpose
Portray Randolph’s fate as divine punishment.
Point of view
Explicit hearsay from a hostile author, not independent evidence of a burial or the identity or legal status of any carriers. Both narration and overlay qualify the claim. No painted funeral, coffin, carriers or joke. The quoted racial terminology is Mather’s.
Cotton Mather, Parentator (Boston, 1724), p. 107, quoted in Toppan, Edward Randolph, II (1898), pp. 182–183.
Massachusetts Historical Society, presenting seventeenth-century colonial records · War of 1675–1678
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
Background: not shown on screen.
New England also sells Native war captives overseas.
Sourcing
Historical situation
English colonial forces enslaved Native combatants and non-combatants during the war in the Dawnland and transported captives abroad.
Intended audience
Colonial and overseas authorities to whom certificates claimed a right to sell captives.
Purpose
The original certificates justified enslavement through claims of rebellion and colonial jurisdiction; the MHS source set exposes those claims.
Point of view
Colonial legal language attempts to legitimate violence and forced removal. It is not the captives’ testimony. Source-set generalisation supports this brief narrated context, not an invented itinerary.
Massachusetts Historical Society, War for the Dawnland: Reimagining King Philip’s War, source 7, “Certificates of enslavement, August and September 1676,” and historical context. Primary item: Josiah Winslow certificate, August 9, 1676, MHS database 3527. Use only for the regional fact of enslavement and overseas removal; no vessel, count, named captive, specific sale or Leverett certificate staged.
An Act for the encouragement of the Greeneland and Eastland Trades, and for the better secureing the Plantation Trade (the Plantation Duty Act, 25 Car. II c. 7)
Parliament of England · 1673
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
Background: not shown on screen.
And whereas by one Act passed in this present Parlyament in the twelfth yeare of your Majestyes Raigne … it is permitted to shipp, carry, convey and transport Sugar, Tobacco, Cotton-wooll, Indicoe, Ginger, Fusticke and all other Dying wood … from the places of their Growth Production and Manufacture to any other of your Majestyes Plantations … and that without paying of Custome … the Inhabitants of diverse of those Colonies … contrary to the express Letter of the aforesaid Lawes have brought into diverse parts of Europe great quantities thereof … If any Shipp or Vessell which by Law may trade in any of your Majesties Plantations shall come to any of them to shipp and take on board any of the aforesaid Commodities, and that Bond shall not be first given with one sufficient Surety to bring the same to England or Wales or the Towne of Berwicke upon Tweede and to noe other place … there shall be answered and paid to your Majestie … these following Rates and Dutyes … For Tobacco the pound one penny…
Sourcing
Historical situation
Parliament built a series of shipping, destination and customs rules during the seventeenth century; this act is one distinct step, not a summary of all four.
Intended audience
Customs officers, ship captains and colonial merchants, who now had to give bond or pay a duty every time enumerated goods left a colony.
Purpose
Protect English shipping, commerce and customs receipts through the specific ownership, route or duty provisions described in the citation.
Point of view
Parliament, which describes colonists as breaking "the express Letter" of the law and protects English customs revenue. Colonial shippers would have described their trade as ordinary commerce between English colonies.
Raithby, John, ed. Statutes of the Realm: Volume 5, 1625–80. London: Record Commission, 1819. II c. 7, pp. 792–93. §V imposes specified plantation duties when the bond for England/Wales/Berwick is not first given; §VI places collection under English customs commissioners and their appointees. Payment is not a blanket license for foreign export.
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
Background: not shown on screen.
Randolph became a customs collector in1678, after his first royal mission to Boston in1676.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Randolph’s first Boston mission was in 1676; appointment to enforce customs followed in 1678.
Intended audience
Randolph as the commissioned officer.
Purpose
Specify powers and duties under the plantation-trade system.
Point of view
Imperial customs commissioners extending practical enforcement into colonial ports.
Instructions and deputation to Edward Randolph, July 9, 1678, Toppan, Edward Randolph, vol. III (1899), pp. 19–30; signed Ed. Dering at p. 30. “we have deputed you to be Collector, Surveyor and Searcher”. Narration paraphrases the appointment; no Downing signature is asserted.
Randolph reported his first royal mission to Massachusetts to Charles II in September 1676, after his June arrival.
Intended audience
Charles II and his ministers.
Purpose
Describe the colony’s response to the King’s demands.
Point of view
A royal messenger and opponent of Massachusetts autonomy. His descriptions select affronts and legal conflicts that justify stronger royal intervention.
Edward Randolph to Charles II, September 20, 1676, in Robert N. Toppan, ed., Edward Randolph, vol. II (1898), p. 217. Long s normalized; line breaks and opening capitalization editorial. The next sentence identifies Coventry as the King’s principal secretary of state. This is Randolph’s indirect report, not a surviving verbatim question in Leverett’s voice.
Last seizure and death on Virginia’s Eastern Shore
Robert Quarry and Francis Nicholson, quoted by Toppan · 1703
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
Background: not shown on screen.
“the other a little before his death on yᵉ Eastern Shore in Virgᵃ” … “Edward Randolph, Esq. dyed in April last on yᵉ eastern shore”
Sourcing
Historical situation
Reports reach London after Randolph’s final American assignment.
Intended audience
Customs commissioners and the Board of Trade.
Purpose
Report seizures and the death of the surveyor.
Point of view
The death month and Eastern Shore location are supported by official correspondence independently of Mather’s hostile funeral story. Narration is an adapted summary.
Toppan, Edward Randolph, II (1898), p. 182: Quarry to Customs, October 15, 1703 (SP Board of Trade, Plantations General, VII, F.38), and Nicholson’s report received October 5, 1703 (Virginia X, K.1).
I put off my hat; whereupon three of the magistrates tooke off their hats and sate uncovered; but the governor with the rest continued to keep their hats on.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Randolph reported his first royal mission to Massachusetts to Charles II in September 1676, after his June arrival.
Intended audience
Charles II and his ministers.
Purpose
Describe the colony’s response to the King’s demands.
Point of view
A royal messenger and opponent of Massachusetts autonomy. His descriptions select affronts and legal conflicts that justify stronger royal intervention.
Edward Randolph to Charles II, September 20, 1676, in Robert N. Toppan, ed., Edward Randolph, vol. II (1898), p. 217. Long s normalized; line breaks and opening capitalization editorial.
Robert Noxon Toppan, using Randolph’s will and Board of Trade records · 1702
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
Background: not shown on screen.
Toppan counts a seventeenth voyage.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Randolph prepares to leave England once more while asking for a post that could support him at home.
Intended audience
The Board of Trade; later readers of the documentary biography.
Purpose
Record the departure and Randolph’s request for employment.
Point of view
The count is explicitly Toppan’s. It is not a reconstructed count independently assigned to each earlier crossing, and the script therefore omits an unsupported Voyage 8 label in c03.
Toppan, Edward Randolph, II (1898), p. 181; will of June 15, 1702, and Board of Trade Journal entry June 24, 1702 (vol. XV, p. 100), cited there.
Boston may be esteemed the mart town of the West-Indies.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Randolph had returned from investigating New England and was describing its government, population and commerce.
Intended audience
Lords of Trade and Plantations in London.
Purpose
Explain how Boston’s commerce and political autonomy obstructed English imperial aims.
Point of view
A Crown agent interprets colonial success as a challenge to royal control. The report is not an exhaustive shipping register or neutral survey.
Randolph’s answers to enquiries from the Lords of Trade and Plantations, in Toppan, Edward Randolph, vol. II (1898), p. 249. Excerpt begins after “and”; no words inside the excerpt altered.
Money due from naval business had not arrived; Randolph describes selling land and fleeing his own creditors. This is ten years before the Boston mission.
Intended audience
Commissioners of the Navy, from whom he seeks payment.
Purpose
Obtain money urgently by describing the consequences of delay.
Point of view
A distressed creditor pleading his case. We neither invent a bankruptcy nor claim he was still penniless in 1676.
Randolph to the Navy Commissioners, February 2, 1666, State Papers Domestic 190, no. 25, quoted in Toppan, Edward Randolph, vol. I (1898), pp. 6–7, especially p. 7. Spelling only modernized: “starue” → “starve”; long s normalized. “goale” retained.
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
Background: not shown on screen.
Seven of ten entries explicitly say Cleared by Jury or Cleered by Jury.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Customs enforcement encounters local courts and juries.
Intended audience
The Crown’s customs administration.
Purpose
Document seizures and their dispositions.
Point of view
Editorial count of Randolph’s list, not an empire-wide acquittal rate. Seven jury clearances: Industry, Expectation, tobacco with two sloops (one entry), Gift of God of Guernsey, Maidenhead, Irish yarn, Expedition.
Toppan, Edward Randolph, III (1899), pp. 84–86. SP Colonial, Bundle 53 (206).
the main hinge upon which the trade of the colony turns.
Sourcing
Historical situation
The colony depended on molasses distilling and feared effective enforcement of the existing duty.
Intended audience
British Parliament.
Purpose
Persuade Parliament to relieve rather than enforce the trade restriction.
Point of view
Colonial advocacy emphasizing commercial dependence and potential injury; not a disinterested economic survey.
John Russell Bartlett, Records of the Colony of Rhode Island, VI (1861), pp. 379–83; quoted phrase p. 381. This January petition precedes the Sugar Act and opposes renewal/enforcement of the Molasses Act.
That he has no other meanes to maintain himselfe, your Petitioner & 5 Children, but by his said Imployment, so that unless he be set at liberty, they must inevitably perish.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Randolph’s imprisonment cuts off his employment and the family’s means of support.
Intended audience
The King, not an identified Boston council hearing.
Purpose
Secure her husband’s liberty and restore the family’s support.
Point of view
They includes Edward Randolph, Sarah and five children. The script establishes that referent before Sarah speaks. The promise of inevitable ruin is her plea, not an omniscient forecast. The room is explicitly a staged reading; no documented audience or location is asserted. Long-s normalized to s. Printed p. 105, IA leaf n119, independently opened as a page image 2026-10-04; Petitioner expands the printed Petitionʳ abbreviation.
Toppan, Edward Randolph, II (1898), p. 105, quoting Sarah’s petition; footnote identifies State Papers, Board of Trade, New England, vol. V, no. 5, “Petition of Sarah Randolph to the Kings most Excellent Majesty”.
Adapted. Shortened, or spelled the modern way. Same meaning.
Background: not shown on screen.
The act reduced the foreign-molasses rate to threepence per gallon, sought colonial revenue for defense, and allowed customs prosecutions in admiralty courts.
Sourcing
Historical situation
Britain sought colonial revenue and stronger trade enforcement after the Seven Years’ War.
Intended audience
Customs officers, merchants, judges and colonial subjects.
Purpose
Raise revenue and strengthen enforcement of imperial commercial rules.
Point of view
Parliament states the imperial defense case; legal jurisdiction does not mean every prosecution used admiralty.
III c. 15 (1764), preamble; section VI (threepence per gallon); section XLI (court of record or admiralty, at informer/prosecutor’s election). Admiralty’s lack of juries: Beer (1907), pp. 249–50. Rate effective September 29, 1764.
Advanced Placement