a small, low faction of his council, in whose election they had no vote; over whose proceedings they had no control; to whom their rights and interests and lives were all as nothing compared with the lightest wish of the Papist and tyrant James whom they served. A majority of the council, although appointed by the king, were yet true hearts of New England in their bosoms, and resisted with all their might the tyranny which the government was riveting upon her. One of these, Major Samuel Appleton, was an inhabitant of Ipswich, a son of one of the earliest settlers of the town, the ancestor of a long line of learned, energetic, and most respectable descendants. He had the high honor to be arrested in October, 1689, by Andros and his faction in the council, as being a factious member of the board and disaffected to the government, and was obliged to give bonds in the sum of £1000 to be of good political behavior. But the efforts of this gentleman, and of such as he in the council, could avail nothing; and the arbitrary tyranny of the creatures of the Stuarts became the only government of Massachusetts. In this the darkest day that New England ever saw, it is grateful to pause and commemorate an act of this town of Ipswich which deserves, I think, an honorable place in the universal history of liberty. Sir Edmund Andros and his faction had, without the intention of the colonial legislature, or any representatives of the people, made a decree imposing a State tax on the people, against that fundamental principle of liberty, that the people alone can tax themselves. They had assessed in several towns quotas of it, and had commanded them to choose each a commissioner, who, with the boards of the selectmen, should assess the quota of the town on its inhabitants and estates respectively. A meeting of the inhabitants of Ipswich was warned to be holden on the 23d August, 1687, to choose a commissioner to aid the selectmen in assessing the tax. The evening before the meeting the Rev. John Wise, the minister of the parish now Essex, a learned, able, resolute, and honest man,—worthy to preach to the children of Puritans,-—Robert Kinsman, William Goodhue, Jr., and several other principal inhabitants of Ipswich, held a preparatory caucus at the house of John Appleton, brother of Major Samuel Appleton, which stood, or stands, on the road to Topsfield, and there “discoursed, 11
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