Massachusetts and East New York

The Massachusetts Bay Colony worked out its problems without interference from across the sea until 1660, when the Stuarts were restored to the throne. Massachusetts resisted all attempts at regulation from abroad, and consequently lost its charter in 1684, becoming a part of the Dominion of New England under the administration of Sir Edmund Andros. For four years Massachusetts continued to oppose the will of the Crown. When James II fled in 1688 the Puritans failed in their attempt to revive the Massachusetts Bay Company, and Massachusetts, in 1691, became a Royal Province under a Governor appointed by the Crown (New France).
Two legislative houses were permitted, however, and the requirement that every voter must be a church member was abolished. The Church of New Plymouth, the name that the English colonists who had separated from the Church of England assigned to their congregation in Plymouth Colony. This followed the New Testament model of identifying a church by its location such as the Westcountry. Thus, Pilgrim is not a name that the English people at Plymouth called themselves, but one that became popular many years later, in the 1800s. Historians at Plimoth Plantation call these people English colonists, a more precise term.

The main tribes living in the area were the Alongonquin tribes, specifically the Wampanoag, Massachusett, Nauset, Machian, Nipmuck, Pennacook, and Pocumtuck. Contact with European explorers began in the late 15th Century, with the main results being exchange of goods and diseases.
John Cabot explored the area in 1497 and 1498, and sporadic travelers followed during the next century. Bartholemew Gosnold came through in 1602 and named Cape Cod for the fish that were plentiful in the bay.
Samuel de Champlain passed by two years later, on his way to bigger and better things in what is now the Midwest. The European diseases since the 1300s were especially deadly to the Native Americans, with an epidemic wiping out 90 percent of coastal tribes by the time the Pilgrims arrived, in 1620.

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