Another superb source! Following the Boston Revolt of April 1689 (when, following the arrival of copies of William Prince of Orange's Declaration, colonists rose up to overthrow the colonial government of King James II and his Governor Edmund Andros) two accounts of the Revolt were published.
• The first was by lawyer John Palmer (bio here) who had been one of those seized and imprisoned by the 'rebels'. While imprisoned, he wrote his An Impartial Account of the State of New England, or the late Government there vindicated - it circulated in manuscript form and was printed in London in 1690 (online here).
• The second account, a response/rebuttal of Palmer entitled The Revolution in New England Justified, and the People there Vindicated was written in 1691 by Edward Rawson (Wikipedia here) and Samuel Sewall (Wikipedia here). Their preface explained what a liberty-oriented 'limited monarchy' was:
"but there are a sort of men, who call those that are for English liberties, and that rejoice in the government of their majesties, king William and queen Mary, by the name of republicans, and represent all such as enemies of monarchy and of the church. It is not our single opinion only, but we can speak it on the behalf of the generality of their majesties subjects in New-England; that they believe (without any diminution to the glory of our former princes) the English nation was never so happy in a king, or in a queen, as at this day. And the God of heaven, who has set them on the throne of these kingdoms, grant them long and prosperously to reign"
and the introduction:
"THE doctrine of passive obedience and non-resistance, which a sort of men did of late, when they thought the world would never change, cry up as divine truth, is by means of the happy revolution in these nations, exploded, and the assertors of it become ridiculous."
It included an appendix entitled A Narrative of the Proceedings of Sir Edmund Androsse and his Accomplices who acted by an Illegal and Arbitrary Commission from the late King James, during his Government in New England - written by five gentlemen who had served under Andros (Wikipedia here). But few revolutions are truly complete, and Andros was made Governor of Virginia by William III and Mary II.
.....................
• Nearly a century later with a new revolution in the air, in April 1773 the 24 year old Boston printer, and member of the Sons of Liberty movement, Isaiah Thomas (Wikipedia here) dusted down the Rawson and Sewell book and reprinted it, to remind the city's readership that there had been a justified revolution before. The Sons of Liberty would occasionally hold meetings in his print shop, and perhaps they imbibed the contents of 1689. Thomas advertised his reprint in the 8 April 1773 edition of his seditious newspaper The Massachussetts Spy or Thomas's Boston Journal.
And just eight months later, tea was floating in Boston Harbour....
• The 1773 Thomas edition is on Archive.org here
• Text is online here
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