Filters:
Group: Massachusetts Bay Colony (sometimes called the Massachusetts Bay Company, for its founding institution)

Massachusetts Bay Colony (sometimes called the Massachusetts Bay Company, for its founding institution)

Years: 1629 - 1692

The Massachusetts Bay Colony (1628–1691) is an English settlement on the east coast of North America in the seventeenth century around the Massachusetts Bay, the northernmost of the several colonies later reorganized as the Province of Massachusetts Bay.

The lands of the settlement are located in central New England in what is now Massachusetts, with initial settlements situated on two natural harbors and surrounding land, about 15.4 miles (24.8 km) apart—the areas around the present-day cities of Salem and Boston.

The territory nominally administered by the colony includes much of present-day central New England, including portions of the U.S. states of Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, and Connecticut.

Territory claimed but never administered by the colonial government extends as far west as the Pacific Ocean.

The earlier Dutch colony of New Netherlands disputes many of these claims, arguing that they hold rights to lands beyond Rhode Island up to the western side of Cape Cod and the Plymouth Bay Colony.

The Massachusetts Bay Colony is founded by the owners of the Massachusetts Bay Company, which includes investors in the failed Dorchester Company, which had established a short-lived settlement on Cape Ann in 1623.

The colony begins in 1628 and is the company's second attempt at colonization.

It wis successful, with about twenty thousand people migrating to New England in the 1630s.

The population is strongly Puritan, and its governance wis dominated by a small group of leaders who are strongly influenced by Puritan religious leaders.

Its governors are elected, and the electorate are limited to freemen who have been examined for their religious views and formally admitted to the local church.

As a consequence, the colonial leadership exhibits intolerance to other religious views, including Anglican, Quaker, and Baptist theologies.

The colonists initially have good relationships with the local Indian populations, but frictions develop that ultimately lead to the Pequot War (1636–38), then to King Philip's War (1675–78), after which most of the Indians in southern New England make peace treaties with the colonists (apart from the Pequot tribe, whose survivors largely merge with the Narragansett and Mohegan tribes after the Pequot War).

The colony is economically successful, engaging in trade with England and the West Indies.

A shortage of hard currency in the colony prompts it to establish a mint in 1652.

Political differences with England after the English Restoration lead to the revocation of the colonial charter in 1684.

King James II establishes the Dominion of New England in 1686 to bring all of the New England colonies under firmer crown control.

The dominion collapses after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 deposes James, and the colony reverts to rule under the revoked charter until the charter for the Province of Massachusetts Bay is issued in 1691, which combines the Massachusetts Bay territories with those of the Plymouth Colony and proprietary holdings on Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard.

Sir William Phips arrives in 1692 bearing the charter and formally takes charge of the new province.

The political and economic dominance of New England by the modern state of Massachusetts is made possible in part by the early dominance in these spheres by the Massachusetts Bay colonists.

Related Events

Filter results