Proprietorships
A colony created through a grant of land from the English monarch to an individual or group, who then set up a form of government largely independent from royal control. (Carolina, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania)
Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina (1669)
In Carolina, they legally established the Church of England and created a manorial system, with serfs governed by nobles.
William Penn
A Quaker who was given the land of Pennsylvania by Charles II and used to it create a neo-European settlement that acted as a refuge for his fellow Quakers.
Quakers
Members of the Society of Friends who were persecuted by the Church of England and opposed by Puritans due to their belief that God spoke to each person individually through an "inner light" and neither ministers nor the Bible was needed to discover God's word.
Penn's Frame of Government (1681)
It applied the Quaker's beliefs to politics by ensuring freedom of religion with no legally established church, and it promoted political equality by allowing all property-owning men to vote and hold office.
The Navigation Acts
English laws passed, beginning in the 1650s and 1660s, requiring that certain English colonial goods be shipped through English ports on English ships manned primarily by English sailors in order to benefit English merchants, shippers, and seamen.
The Revenue Act of 1673
To pay the customs officials who enforced the laws set forth by the Navigation Acts, it imposed a "plantation duty" on American exports of sugar and tobacco.
Lords of Trade
The administrative body of England charged with colonial affairs which chose a less violent approach to enforcing the Navigation Acts in the Massachusetts Bay Colony; it denied the claim of MBC to New Hampshire and eventually established a separate colony there and it also convinced an English court to annul the MBC charter on account of their insubordination. Later, it formed a new royal province: the Dominion of New England.
Dominion of New England
A royal province created by King James II in 1686 that would have absorbed Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, New York, and New Jersey into a single, vast colony and eliminated their assemblies and other chartered rights. James' plan was canceled by the Glorious Revolution in 1688, which removed him from the throne.
Edmund Andros
Made governor of the Dominion of New England by James II, he abolished existing legislative assemblies. In Massachusetts, Andros banned town meetings (angering villagers who prized local self-rule), advocated public worship in the Church of England (offending Puritan congregationalists), and invalidated all land titles granted under the original Massachusetts Bay charter.
Glorious Revolution
A quick and nearly bloodless coup in 1688 in which James II of England was overthrown by William of Orange. Whig politicians forced the new King William and Queen Mary to accept the Declaration of Rights, creating a constitutional monarchy that enhanced the powers of the House of Commons at the expense of the crown.
Two Treatises on Government
Written by John Locke, it rejected the divine-right monarchy celebrated by James II, arguing that the legitimacy of government rests on the consent of the governed and that individuals have inalienable natural rights to life, liberty, and property.
Benedict Calvert
The fourth Lord Baltimore; he converted to the Anglican faith and restored the proprietorship in Maryland to the Calvert family.
Jacob Leisler
A Dutchman in New York who led the rebellion against the Dominion of New England; he was met with support, but he alienated many and became less popular. His execution was an act of ethnic vengeance that corrupted New York politics for a generation.
Constitutional Monarchs
Monarchs limited in their rule by a constitution. (William and Mary in England)
Board of Trade
New body created by Parliament in 1696 to oversee colonial affairs; it pursued mercantilist policies that made the colonies economically beneficial.
Second Hundred Years' War
An era of warfare beginning with the War of the League of Augsburg in 1689 and lasting until the defeat of Napoleon in Waterloo in 1815. In that time, England fought in seven major wars and the longest period of peace lasted only twenty-six years.
Tribalization
The adaptation of stateless peoples to the demands imposed on them by neighboring states.
Covenant Chain
The alliance of the Iroquois, first with the colony of New York, then with the British Empire and its other colonies. The Covenant Chain became a model for relations between the British Empire and other Native American peoples.
Creek Indians
The unity of a large number of Muskogean-speaking communities; it's 15,000 members farmed the fertile lands along the present-day border of Georgia and Alabama and they were armed by the English during the War of Spanish Succession. They later had their own agenda to become the dominant tribe in the region, which led to violent encounters with other tribes.
Treaty of Utrecht (1713)
After a victory in Europe, this treaty granted Britian Newfoundland, Acadia, and the Hudson Bay region of northern Canada from France, as well as access through Albany to the western Indian trade. From Spain, Britain received the fortress of Gibraltar and a thirty-year contract to supply slaves to Spanish America.
South Atlantic System
A new agricultural and commercial order that produced sugar, tobacco, rice, and other tropical and subtropical products for an international market. Its plantation societies were ruled by European planter-merchants and worked by hundreds of thousands of enslaved Africans.
Stono Rebellion
Slave uprising in 1739 along the Stono River in South Carolina in which a group of slaves armed themselves, plundered six plantations, and killed more that twenty colonists. Colonists quickly suppressed the rebellion.
William Byrd II
An example of a planter-merchant who was trapped in Virginia by his inferior social status. His wealth allowed him to rule over white yeoman families and tenant farmers, but he was never able to marry into the English gentry.
Gentility
A refined style of living and elaborate manners that came to be highly prized among well-to-do English families after 1600 and strongly influenced leading colonists after 1700.
Salutary Neglect
A term used to describe British colonial policy during the reigns of George I and George II. By relaxing their supervision of internal colonial affairs, royal bureaucrats inadvertently assisted the rise of self-government in North America.
Robert Walpole
Britain's first Prime Minister; salutary neglect was a byproduct of his policies and his use of patronage undermined the legitimacy of Britain's political system.
War of Jenkins' Ear
A skirmish between Britain and Spain that was initiated by Walpole's subsidizing of George to protect the valuable rice-growing colony of South Carolina. British expansion into Georgia angered the Spanish, and this war became part of the general European conflict, the War of the Austrian Succession. It also proved to colonists that England would act in its own interests, not theirs.
Molasses Act of 1733
In response to American rum distillers buying cheap molasses from French islands, the West Indian sugar lobby in London persuaded Parliament to pass this act, which placed a tariff on French molasses that was so high it would no longer be profitable for American merchants to import it.
Land Banks
An institution, established by a colonial legislature, that printed paper money and lent it to farmers, taking a lien on their land to ensure repayment.
Currency Act (1751)
This barred New England colonies from establishing new land banks and prohibited the use of publicly issued paper money to pay private debts.