Editing Cotton Mather (section)

== Revolt of 1689 ==
{{main|1689 Boston revolt}}

On May 14, 1686, ten days after Cotton Mather's marriage to Abigail Phillips, [[Edward Randolph (colonial administrator)|Edward Randolph]] disembarked in Boston bearing letters patent from King [[James II of England]] that revoked the [[Charter of the Massachusetts Bay Company]] and commissioned Randolph to reorganize the colonial government. James's intention was to curb Massachusetts's [[English Dissenters|religious separatism]] by incorporating the colony into a larger [[Dominion of New England]], without an elected legislature and under a governor who would serve at the pleasure of the Crown.  Later that year, the King appointed Sir [[Edmund Andros]] as governor of that new Dominion. This was a direct attack upon the Puritan religious and social orders that the Mathers represented, as well as upon the local autonomy of Massachusetts. The colonists were particularly outraged when Andros declared that all grants of land made in the name of the old Massachusetts Bay Company were invalid, forcing them to apply and pay for new royal patents on land that they already occupied or face eviction. In April 1687, Increase Mather sailed to [[London]], where he remained for the next four years, pleading with the Court for what he regarded as the interests of the Massachusetts colony.{{sfn|Silverman|2002|p=65}}

The birth of a [[James Francis Edward Stuart|male heir]] to King James in June 1688, which could have cemented a [[Catholic Church|Roman Catholic]] dynasty in the English throne, triggered the so-called [[Glorious Revolution]] in which [[Parliament of England|Parliament]] deposed James and gave the Crown jointly to his Protestant daughter [[Mary II of England|Mary]] and her husband, the Dutch [[William III of England|Prince William of Orange]].  News of the events in London greatly emboldened the opposition in Boston to Governor Andros, finally precipitating the [[1689 Boston revolt]]. Cotton Mather, then aged twenty-six, was one of the Puritan ministers who guided resistance in Boston to Andros's regime. Early in 1689, Randolph had a warrant issued for Cotton Mather's arrest on a charge of "scandalous libel", but the warrant was overruled by [[Wait Winthrop]].{{sfn|Silverman|2002|p=68}}

According to some sources, Cotton Mather escaped a second attempted arrest on April 18, 1689, the same day that the people of Boston took up arms against Andros.{{sfn|Silverman|2002|p=69}} The young Mather may have authored, in whole or in part, the "Declaration of the Gentlemen, Merchants, and Inhabitants of Boston and the Country Adjacent", which justified that uprising by a list of grievances that the declaration attributed to the deposed officials.  The authorship of that document is uncertain: it was not signed by Mather or any other clergymen, and Puritans frowned upon the clergy being seen to play too direct and personal a hand in political affairs.  That day, Mather probably read the Declaration to a crowd gathered in front of the [[First Town-House, Boston|Boston Town House]].{{sfn|Silverman|2002|p=71}}

In July, Andros, Randolph, [[Joseph Dudley]], and other officials who had been deposed and arrested in the Boston revolt were summoned to London to answer the complaints against them.  The administration of Massachusetts was temporarily assumed by [[Simon Bradstreet]], whose rule proved weak and contentious.{{sfn|Silverman|2002|p=74}}  In 1691, the government of King William and Queen Mary issued a new [[Massachusetts Charter]].  This charter united the Massachusetts Bay Colony with [[Plymouth Colony]] into the new [[Province of Massachusetts Bay]].  Rather than restoring the old Puritan rule, the Charter of 1691 mandated religious toleration for all non-Catholics and established a government led by a Crown-appointed governor.  The first governor under the new charter was Sir [[William Phips]], who was a member of the Mathers' church in Boston.