A Constitutional Culture: New England and the Struggle Against Arbitrary Rule in the Restoration Empire

"In this book, Adrian Chastain Weimer uncovers the story of how, more than a hundred years before the American Revolution, colonists pledged their lives and livelihoods to the defense of local political institutions against arbitrary rule. When royal commissioners came to enforce the demands of the newly restored King Charles II, many New Englanders chafed against what they saw as arbitrary rule. Under immense metropolitan pressure, they mobilized to defy the crown, forming a robust and longstanding constitutional culture"--