ABSTRACT
In the days when Sir Edmund Andros was seeking to fasten upon Massachusetts Bay the principles and practice of Stuart prerogative, an event occurred that greatly stirred New England. Taxes having been arbitrarily assessed in Council, the several towns were bidden appoint commissioners to collect them. When the order reached Ipswich, John Wise, minister of the second church, gathered the chief members of his flock together, and it was agreed by them to choose no such commissioner at the town meeting—“We have a good God, and a good king, and shall do well to stand for our privileges,” the minister is reported to have argued. Soon thereafter John Wise was summoned before a star-chamber court on the charge of sedition. Upon his plea of colonial privilege, the president of the court, Dudley, is said to have retorted, “You shall have no more privileges left you than not to be sold for slaves.” “Do you believe,” demanded Andros, “Joe and Tom may tell the King what money he may have?” “Do not think,” put in another judge, “the laws of England follow you to the ends of the earth.” Thereupon with five others, John Wise was thrown into Boston jail, where he lay one and twenty days, and whence he was released only after payment of fifty pounds, giving bond in a thousand pounds for good behavior, and suffering suspension from the ministry. “The evidence in the case,” he remarked afterward, “as to the substance of it, was that we too boldly endeavored to persuade ourselves we were Englishmen, and under privileges. 1 The year following, Andros having been driven out, John Wise brought suit against Dudley for having denied him a writ of habeas corpus. 2
