Background
Edward Randolph was one of fifteen children born to Dr. Edmund and Deborah (Master) Randolph of Canterbury, England. The exact date of Edward's birth is unknown, but he was baptized July 9, 1632.
Edward Randolph was one of fifteen children born to Dr. Edmund and Deborah (Master) Randolph of Canterbury, England. The exact date of Edward's birth is unknown, but he was baptized July 9, 1632.
He entered Gray's Inn as a law student, November 12, 1650, and was admitted pensioner at Queens' College, Cambridge, in 1651. He did not take a degree and there is no record of his being called to the bar.
For some years after his marriage he was employed by the Commissioners of the Navy in buying timber.
By 1666 he was in sore financial straits, sold part of his estate, and feared he would have to flee the country to avoid his creditors. He again secured employment, however, this time as agent for the Duke of Richmond in Scotland, in connection with timber speculations which, apparently, were not successful. For a time he was commissary of the Cinque Ports, living near Dover.
In 1672 he had lost much property by fire. During all these years he was in correspondence with influential persons in the Court circle.
In March 1675/76 he was appointed to carry the royal instructions to Massachusetts requiring the colonial government to send agents to England to answer complaints of the Mason and Gorges heirs. His orders also called for a complete report on the colony.
Landing in Boston, June 10, 1676, he received scant courtesy from the government, which ignored the king's command that he carry back their answer. He remonstrated with the Council over certain flagrant violations of the laws of trade, and was told that the laws of England did not apply to Massachusetts.
Receiving only curt replies to his complaints to the government, he next proceeded to investigate conditions on the spot in New Hampshire, Maine, and Plymouth, and left for England on July 30. In his report to the king, September 20, 1676, he denounced the colonists in plain language. A fuller report was made to the Committee for Trade and Plantations on October 12.
Except that he exaggerated the amount of local disaffection toward the colonial government, there was much truth in what he wrote, though it was tinged with the dislike he had conceived for the extreme Puritan party, a dislike they heartily reciprocated. On May 6, 1677, he wrote a paper, "Representation of Ye Affaires of N:England", which was a direct attack on the legality of the Massachusetts charter. Meanwhile, the colony had sent agents to England, with very limited powers, and the heirs of Gorges and Mason were pressing their claims to Maine and New Hampshire.
As a result of many hearings, the administration of these two provinces was withdrawn from Massachusetts and that colony was instructed to enforce the navigation acts, to repeal all laws which were repugnant to those of England, and to make no discrimination against non-church-members in public life. Randolph naturally became a hated figure.
One of the drastic measures taken by the Crown to discipline the unruly colony was Randolph's appointment in 1678 to take charge of all the customs throughout New England. He landed in New York on December 7, 1679, and proceeded to New Hampshire, where he inaugurated the new government. He then settled at Boston to carry out his duties as collector of customs. Although nominally the colonial government voted him assistance, he never received it.
The colonists were determined not to obey the laws of trade, to maintain as great independence of England as possible, and to hamper her efforts and agents in every way they could. On the other hand, Randolph had always been prejudiced against them, and the history of his relations with the people is a long story of bitter and ignoble bickering. He made every effort to have the Massachusetts charter annulled, journeying to England several times to accomplish his purpose. He presented prejudiced accounts, but they always had a sound basis of fact when they dealt with colonial law breaking.
In 1684 the charter was declared forfeit, Randolph was commissioned secretary and register for the Dominion of New England, September 21, 1685, and became a councilor in the new royal government set up six days later with Joseph Dudley as president. Under this government Randolph returned to New England, arriving in May 1686.
He soon had a disagreement with Dudley and urged the speedy sending of a permanent royal governor from England. Under Sir Edmund Andros he retained his councillorship and collectorship, but in May 1687 leased his office of secretary to John West for four years, although, with the addition in 1688 of New York and the Jerseys to the Dominion of New England, he was commissioned secretary of the enlarged jurisdiction. He fell with the rest of the government in the revolution of April 1689, was held prisoner in the common jail for a number of months, and sent to England only when the king ordered it.
Arrived in London, he was at once set at liberty, and in 1691 he was made surveyor general of customs for all North America, including the Bahama and other islands. He reached Virginia in 1692 and traveled through all the colonies to Boston. Everywhere he found violations of the laws of trade and the same difficulty in enforcing them, and came constantly into conflict with the authorities. He returned to England in 1695 to push his plans for reorganizing colonial administration, but was in Maryland by the end of 1697.
He continued to pursue his stormy career and on an official visit to Bermuda was imprisoned from May 16, 1699, to January 3, 1700. He sent constant memorials to England describing conditions and filled with bitterness against the colonials. He had one more trip home, later in 1700, and took part in an attack in Parliament on the charter and proprietary colonies, but returned to America in 1702 and died in April of the following year.
He was temperamentally unfitted for his post. His judgment became less balanced and his temper steadily worse at the constant thwarting he received from judges, juries, and governments in the attempt to carry out his duty. To expect one man to enforce the laws of trade in America was an absurdity and the career of Randolph in all its aspects illustrates the reason why, in time, imperial administration broke down.
Randolph was married three times; his first wife, Jane Gibbon, died in 1679, having borne him four daughters; Grace Grenville, his second, died in 1682; and his third wife, Sarah (Backhouse) Platt, by whom he had one child, in 1684.