Religious passions in those days ran high; and Andros, who was a strong churchman, soon found himself on worse terms with the puritanical population of Boston than he had been with the more heterogeneous and less rigid inhabitants of New York. The circumstances of the time, it must be confessed, were such as to excuse a somewhat sensitive condition of public feeling. Two years before the arrival of Andros, the Court of Chancery of England had declared null and void the charter granted to the colony of Massachusetts in the year 1629, which, from that date onwards, had been the basis, not only of all government, but of all land grants, transfers of property, and popular liberties generally. A provisional government, under one Joseph Dudley had succeeded. Then had come Andros, commissioned by a king who was far from commanding the unlimited confidence of his subjects at home, and who was looked upon with at least equal distrust by the ultra-Protestants of his American dominions. How long they were going to be deprived of legally guaranteed liberties there was no knowing, nor what the intentions of James II might be in regard to their beloved commonwealth. They did not think it impossible he might wish to hand them over to his close ally the King of France; and in Andros they feared they saw only too meet an instrument for stratagems and spoils. The instructions given to him as governor contained a special injunction to favour by all means in his power the rites and doctrines of the Church of England; and the colonists, with the exception of a small minority, were maddened to see public taxes applied to this hateful object. As the Indians were giving trouble, the governor made a campaign against them in the summer of 1688, which was not very successful; hence more odium gathered on his head. Having failed in his measures of offence he thought he would at least provide for defence, and garrisoned the forts on the frontier with six hundred men, chiefly militia. More discontent: the garrisons served unwillingly, and the people at home professed to believe that such measures were unnecessary. A small detachment of soldiers had come out with Andros. Their conduct, according to contemporary accounts, was most unedifying and in shocking contrast to the unrelenting rigour and formality of colonial piety. It is not surprising therefore that, when, in April 1689, news was brought that James II, whose commission Andros bore, was no longer king, but that the leader of European Protestantism reigned in his stead, there should have been an instant uprising of the populace against his representative. Andros was seized and imprisoned with fifty of his followers. "For seven weeks," says a contemporary writer, "there was not so much as the face of any government." A vessel having arrived towards the end of May with instructions to proclaim William and Mary, certain of the members of the former General Council assumed to act, and