Massachusetts Bay Colony - Government

Government

The structure of the colonial government evolved over the lifetime of the charter. The colonial charter was one designed for the management of a corporation, and the needs of the colonial government did not always fit well into this model. The result was that the government began with a corporate organization that included a governor and deputy governor, a general court of its shareholders (known as "freemen"), and a council of assistants similar to a board of directors, and ended with a governor and deputy governor, a bicameral legislature that included a representative lower house, and a body of freemen, a subset of the colony's adult inhabitants, who were authorized to vote in elections. The council of assistants sat as the upper house of the legislature, and served as the judicial court of last appeal.

The charter granted the general court the authority to elect officers and to make laws for the colony. Its first meeting in America was held in October 1630, but was attended by only eight freemen. They formed the first council of assistants, and voted (contrary to the terms of the charter) that the governor and deputy should be elected by them, from their number. This was modified in the next session of the general court, in which the governor and deputy were to be elected by the general court.

An additional 116 settlers were admitted to the general court as freemen in 1631, but most of the governing power, as well as the judicial power, remained with the council of assistants. They also enacted a law specifying that only those men who "are members of some of the churches" in the colony were eligible to become freemen and gain the vote. This restriction on the franchise would not be liberalized until after the English Restoration. The process by which individuals became members of one of the colony's churches involved a detailed questioning by the church elders of their beliefs and religious experiences; as a result, only individuals whose religious views accorded with those of the church leadership were likely to become members, and gain the ability to vote in the colony. After a protest over the imposition of taxes by a meeting of the council of assistants, the general court ordered each town to send two representatives, known as deputies, to meet with the court to discuss matters of taxation.

In 1634, questions of governance and representation arose again, and some deputies demanded to see the charter, which the assistants had kept hidden from public view. The deputies learned of the provisions that the general court should make all laws, and that all freemen should be members of the general court. They then demanded that the charter be enforced to the letter, which Governor Winthrop pointed out was impractical given the growing number of freemen. The parties reached a compromise, and agreed that the general court would be made up of two deputies elected by each town. The 1634 election resulted in the election of Dudley as governor, and the general court proceeded to reserve for itself a large number of powers, including those of taxation, distribution of land, and the admission of freemen.

The transformation was complete: a trading company had become a (somewhat) representative democracy. In 1642 there arose a legal case that brought about the separation of the council of assistants into a separate, upper house of the general court. The case, involving a widow's lost pig, had been overturned by the general court, but the assistants, who had sat in judicial decision on the case, voted as a body to veto the general court's act. The consequence of the ensuing debate was that the general court in 1644 voted that the council of assistants would sit and deliberate separately from the general court (they had until then sat together), the concurrence of both bodies being required for the passage of legislation. Judicial appeals were to be decided by a joint session, since otherwise the assistants would be in the position to veto attempts to overturn their own decisions.