71 Facts About Edmund Andros

Sir Edmund Andros was an English colonial administrator in British America.

Edmund Andros was the governor of the Dominion of New England during most of its three-year existence.

At other times, Andros served as governor of the provinces of New York, East and West Jersey, Virginia, and Maryland.

Edmund Andros was considered a more effective governor in New York and Virginia.

Edmund Andros was recalled to England from Virginia in 1698 and resumed the title of Bailiff of Guernsey.

Edmund Andros then served in two winter campaigns in Denmark, including the relief of Copenhagen in 1659.

Edmund Andros remained a firm supporter of the Stuarts while they were in exile.

Edmund Andros served as a courtier to Elizabeth of Bohemia from 1660 until she died in 1662.

Edmund Andros was next commissioned a major in the regiment of Sir Tobias Bridge, which was sent to Barbados in 1666.

Edmund Andros returned to England two years later, carrying despatches and letters.

Edmund Andros was then appointed as the Bailiff of Guernsey, succeeding his father.

Edmund Andros was appointed by the James, Duke of York to be the first proprietary governor of the Province of New York.

Edmund Andros agreed to confirm the existing property holdings and allow the territory's Dutch inhabitants to maintain their Protestant religion.

Edmund Andros was involved in boundary disputes with the neighboring Connecticut Colony.

York's territorial claim did not acknowledge these, and Edmund Andros announced to Connecticut authorities his intentions to reclaim that territory in early 1675.

Connecticut leaders pointed out the later revisions to Connecticut's boundaries, but Edmund Andros pressed his claim, arguing that York's grant had superseded those revisions.

Edmund Andros came ashore, had a brief conversation with the fort commander, read his commission, and returned to New York City.

Edmund Andros was well received and agreed to continue the Dutch practice of supplying firearms to the Iroquois.

Philip was known to be in the Berkshires in western Massachusetts that winter and New Englanders accused Edmund Andros of sheltering him.

An offer by Edmund Andros to send New York troops into Massachusetts to attack Philip was rebuffed based on the idea that it was a covert ploy to assert authority over the Connecticut River again.

When Edmund Andros came to New York, he moved to stabilize the situation.

Edmund Andros befriended the Lenape sachems, convincing them to act as mediators between the English and other tribes.

Edmund Andros extended an offer given by the Mohawk for the Susquehannocks to settle among them.

Edmund Andros responded by urging the Susquehannocks to retreat into New York, where they would be beyond Maryland's reach, and delivering a strongly worded threat to Maryland, that it would either have to acknowledge his sovereignty over the Susquehannocks, or they would have to take them back peaceably.

Edmund Andros offered his services as a mediator, pointing out that the absence of the Susquehannocks now left Maryland settlements open to direct attack by the Iroquois.

Edmund Andros refused the bribe, and Coursey ended up being compelled to negotiate further through Edmund Andros and the Mohawk in Albany.

Possibly based on orders given to him during his visit to England, Edmund Andros began to assert New York authority over East Jersey after George Carteret's death in 1680.

Edmund Andros insisted they had no right to settle there without the duke's permission.

Edmund Andros's commission called for governance by himself, with a council.

Shortly after his arrival, Edmund Andros asked each of the Puritan churches in Boston if its meetinghouse could be used for the Church of England services.

Edmund Andros's council engaged in a lengthy process to harmonize dominion and English laws.

One consequence of the tax protest was that Edmund Andros sought to restrict town meetings since these were where that protest had begun.

Edmund Andros had been instructed to bring colonial land title practices more in line with those in England and introduce quit-rents to raise colonial revenues.

How Edmund Andros approached the issue was necessarily divisive since it threatened any landowner whose title was dubious.

Since all of the existing land titles in Massachusetts had been granted under the now-vacated colonial charter, Edmund Andros essentially declared them void.

Edmund Andros required landowners to recertify their ownership, paying fees to the dominion and becoming subject to the charging of a quit-rent.

Edmund Andros attempted to compel the certification of ownership by issuing writs of intrusion, but large landowners who owned many parcels contested these individually rather than recertifying all of their lands.

Since Edmund Andros' commission included Connecticut, he asked Connecticut Governor Robert Treat to surrender the colonial charter not long after he arrived in Boston.

Edmund Andros then traveled throughout the colony, making judicial and other appointments, before returning to Boston.

Edmund Andros's objective was to disrupt trade between the English at Albany and the Iroquois confederation, to which the Seneca belonged, and to break the Covenant Chain, a peace Andros had negotiated in 1677 while he was governor of New York.

New York Governor Thomas Dongan appealed for help, and King James ordered Edmund Andros to render assistance.

Edmund Andros made an expedition into Maine early in the year, raiding several Indian settlements.

Edmund Andros raided the trading outpost and home of Jean-Vincent d'Abbadie de Saint-Castin on Penobscot Bay.

Edmund Andros returned to Boston amid further attacks on the New England frontier by Abenaki parties, who admitted that they were doing so in part because of French encouragement.

Edmund Andros castigated the Mainers for their unwarranted acts and ordered the Indians released and returned to Maine.

Edmund Andros had his quarters in Fort Mary, a garrison house on the city's south side, where many officials took refuge.

Edmund Andros refused, and instead tried to escape to the Rose, the only Royal Navy ship near Boston at the time.

However, the boat sent from the Rose was intercepted by militia, and Edmund Andros was forced back into Fort Mary.

Negotiations ensued, and Edmund Andros agreed to leave the fort to meet with the rebel council.

Edmund Andros managed to flee to Rhode Island but was quickly recaptured and thereafter kept in virtual solitary confinement.

When Edmund Andros was questioned about the various accusations that had been leveled against him, he pointed out that all of his actions had been taken to bring colonial laws into conformance with English law, or they were specifically taken in pursuit of his commission and instructions.

Edmund Andros was eventually allowed to depart for England; by that point, the Dominion of New England had effectively ceased to exist, with the colonies in the dominion having reverted to their previous forms of governance.

Edmund Andros was well received at court upon his return to England.

The new king, William III, recalled that Edmund Andros had visited his court in the Netherlands and expressed approval of Edmund Andros' service.

In search of employment, Edmund Andros offered his services as a spy, offering the idea of going to Paris, ostensibly to meet with the exiled James, but to actually attempt to acquire French military plans.

Edmund Andros was the widow of Christopher Clapham, who was connected by that marriage to his first wife's family.

Edmund Andros settled at Middle Plantation, where he would live until 1695.

Edmund Andros worked to organize the provincial records, the maintenance of which had suffered since Bacon's Rebellion, and promoted the enforcement of laws designed to prevent slave rebellions.

Edmund Andros encouraged the diversification of Virginia's economy, which was then almost entirely dependent on tobacco.

Edmund Andros encouraged the introduction of new crops like cotton and flax and the manufacture of fabric.

Virginia was the first colonial post where Edmund Andros had to work with a local assembly.

Edmund Andros hired armed vessels to patrol the colony's waters and contributed financially to New York's colonial defenses, which formed a bulwark against the possibility of French and Indian incursions into Virginia.

Blair was working to establish a new college for educating Anglican ministers, and he believed Edmund Andros did not support the idea.

Blair's complaints, many of them vague and inaccurate, went to London, where proceedings into Edmund Andros' conduct began at the Board of Trade and the Church of England ecclesiastical courts in 1697.

Edmund Andros had lost most of his support on the Board of Trade when a Whig faction came to power, and his advocates were unable to sway the board in favor of him.

Edmund Andros returned to England and resumed his post as bailiff of Guernsey.

Edmund Andros divided his time between Guernsey and London, where he had a house in Denmark Hill.

Edmund Andros's wife died in 1717 and was buried nearby.

The historian Michael Kammen states that Edmund Andros failed in all of his roles in the colonies:.

Edmund Andros remains a notorious figure in New England, especially in Connecticut, which officially excludes him from its list of colonial governors, but his portrait hangs in the Hall of Governors in the State Museum across from the State Capitol in Hartford.

Edmund Andros appears in several episodes of The Witch of Blackbird Pond in which his conflict with the Connecticut colonists forms the background to the protagonist's more personal problems.