between two or more colonies and the return of escaped servants, prisoners and fugitives from justice. As the commissioners had no means of enforcing their orders, their function was chiefly advisory, but it was nevertheless of, considerable importance on several occasions. Although the number of commissioners from each of the colonies was the same, those from Massachusetts exerted the dominant influence.
The commissioners met regularly until 1684—annually until New Haven submitted to Connecticut in 1664, and triennially from 1664 to 1684, when Massachusetts lost its first charter. Upon the downfall of the Puritan Commonwealth in the mother country (1660) numerous grievances were presented to King Charles II. against the Puritan governments of New England, among them Massachusetts’ extension of its jurisdiction over the towns of Maine and New Hampshire, the persecution of the Quakers, and the denial of the right of appeal to the crown, and in 1664 a royal commission, consisting of Richard Nicolls, Samuel Maverick, Robert Carr and George Cartwright, was sent over to settle disputes and secure some measure of imperial control, but Massachusetts, the chief offender, successfully baffled all attempts at interference, and the mission was almost a complete failure. The grievances of English merchants arising from the violation of the navigation laws by the colonies continued, however, to receive the attention of the home government.
In 1676 the Lords of Trade and Plantations sent over Edward Randolph to investigate and gather information which would show the justice and expediency of imposing imperial control, and two years later Randolph was appointed Collector and Surveyor of Customs in New England. Randolph sent back many charges, especially against Massachusetts, with the effect that, in 1684, the charter of that colony was annulled by a decree in Chancery on a writ of quo warranto. This done, the home government set to work to organize the royal domain which should be known as New England, or the Dominion of New England, and its plan for this provided for the annulment of the charters of Rhode Island and Connecticut, and the inclusion in the Dominion of these colonies, and New Hampshire, Maine, New York and the Jerseys, thereby restoring to New England all the territory, with the exception of Pennsylvania, that was included in the grant to the New England Council in 1620. A temporary government was established at Boston in May 1686, with Joseph Dudley as president, and in December of the same year Edmund Andros arrived with a commission and instructions which were a copy of those to the governor of New York and made him governor of all New England except Rhode Island and Connecticut. Rhode Island offered no resistance to the writ against its charter and Andros extended his authority over it immediately after his arrival. Connecticut successfully baffled the royal servants for a time, but when threatened with a division of its territory agreed not to resist the royal purpose, and on the last day of October 1687 it passed under the general government of New England. Finally, a new commission to Andros, issued in April 1688, extended his jurisdiction over New York and the Jerseys, and the whole region over which he was made governor by this instrument was named “Our Territory and Dominion of New England in America.” But the English Revolution of 1688 inspired a revolt in New England by which Andros was deposed in April 1689. Under William and Mary no attempt was made to preserve the Dominion of New England, but Rhode Island and Connecticut were permitted to resume government under their old charters, Massachusetts received a new one, and New Hampshire again became a separate royal province.
New England is prominent in American colonial history as the “Land of the Puritans” and the home of the corporate colony. The chief motive of its founders in coming to the New World was the establishment of a new Christian commonwealth, but subordinate to this there was from the first an economic motive. So long as the religious motive remained dominant, “blue laws” were a prominent feature of the administration, but by a slow transition the economic motive became the dominant one, and, as a consequence of this transition and of the corporate form of government, European institutions were transformed into American institutions and new political ideas were generated more rapidly in New England than in either the Middle or the Southern colonies. Owing to its geographical position, nearer to Canada than any other group of colonies, New England had to stand the brunt of the fighting during the wars between the English and the French (aided by their Indian allies) in America, terminating with the conquest of Canada by the English in 1759–1760, and a sense of common danger helped to create a certain, solidarity, which made easier the union of the colonies for common action against the mother country at the time of the War of American Independence. After that war, New England was long the most essentially commercial and industrial group, of states, and was a stronghold of Federalism; and in the period immediately before and during the War of 1812, when its commercial interests suffered terribly, first from the restrictive measures of the general government and then from warfare, New England was a centre of that opposition to the policy of the National Administration (then Democratic), which culminated in the famous Hartford Convention of 1814–1815 (see Hartford).
See the articles on the separate New England states and the authorities there given; among good general works are J. G. Palfrey, History of New England (5 vols., Boston, 1858–1890); J. A. Doyle, The Puritan Colonies (2 vols., New York, 1889); B. B. James, The Colonization of New England (Philadelphia, 1904); H. L. Osgood, The American Colonies in the Seventeenth Century (3 vols., New York, 1904–1907); John Fiske, The Beginnings of New England, or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relation to Civil and Religious Liberty (Boston, 1896); S. A. Drake, The Making of New England (New York, 1896); W. B. Weeden, Economic and Social History of New England (2 vols., Boston, 1890); and Edward Channing, History of the United States, vols. i. and ii. (New York, 1905, 1908).
NEW FOREST, one of the few woodland regions left in England
covering about 93,000 acres in the south-west of Hampshire,
between the Solent, Southampton Water and the river Avon.
About two-thirds of it is crown property, and is preserved more
or less in its natural condition as open woodland interspersed
with bogs and heaths. The trees principally represented are
oak and beech, with some newer plantations of Scotch fir. The
trees were formerly felled for building the ships of the navy and
for feeding the iron furnaces of Sussex and Hampshire. Pigs
and a hardy breed of ponies find a good living in the forest;
and in spite of an act in 1851 providing for their extermination
or removal, a few red deer still survive. Foxes, squirrels, otters,
snakes (smooth snake, grass snake and adder), butterflies (some
of them peculiar to the district), and an occasional badger range
the forest freely. The tract derives its name from the extensive
afforestation carried through in this region by William the
Conqueror in 1079; and the deaths of two of his sons within
its confines—Richard killed by a stag, and William Rufus by an
arrow—were regarded in their generation as a judgment of Heaven
for the cruelty and injustice perpetrated by their father when
appropriating the forest. Rufus’s stone, near Lyndhurst,
marks the supposed spot where that monarch fell. About one-fourth
of the area is under cultivation by private owners and
tenants. The principal village within the forest is Lyndhurst
(pop. 2167 in 1901); its church contains a fresco by Lord
Leighton, and here is held the verderers’ court, which since
1887 has had charge of the crown portion of the forest. On the
western outskirts lies the town of Ringwood (q.v.). Brockenhurst
and Beaulieu are the villages next in importance. Beaulieu,
at the head of the picturesque estuary of the Beaulieu river,
which debouches into the Solent, is famous for the ruins of
Beaulieu Abbey, founded by King John for Cistercians. The
gatehouse is restored as a residence, and the Early English
refectory as a church. There are considerable remains of the
cloisters, chapter house and domestic buildings. The New
Forest gives name to a parliamentary division of the county.
The New Forest is one of the five forests mentioned in Domesday. It was a hunting-ground of the West Saxon kings, but, as already stated, was afforested by the Conqueror, whose cruelty in the matter is probably exaggerated by the traditional account. One of the chief sources of the wealth of the forest in early times was the herds of pigs fed there. The New Forest
