Background
Edmund Andros was born in London on the 6th of December 1637, the son of Amice Andros, an adherent of Charles I, and the royal bailiff of the island of Guernsey.
Edmund Andros was born in London on the 6th of December 1637, the son of Amice Andros, an adherent of Charles I, and the royal bailiff of the island of Guernsey.
After service in the army, Edmund Andros was appointed by James, Duke of York, to be governor of the colony of New York in 1674. In 1688 he was given a new commission extending his authority to New York and the Jerseys.
But he made many enemies.
With the overthrow of James II by William III, Andros was seized by the people of Boston on Apr. 18, 1689, and sent to England for trial, but he was soon released.
In 1674 Edmund Andros became, by the appointment of the duke of York (later James II. ), governor of New York and the Jerseys, though his jurisdiction over the Jerseys was disputed, and until his recall in 1681 to meet an unfounded charge of dishonesty and favouritism in the collection of the revenues, he proved himself to be a capable administrator, whose imperious disposition, however, rendered him somewhat unpopular among the colonists.
During a visit to England in 1678 he was knighted.
In 1686 he became governor, with Boston as his capital, of the " Dominion of New England, " into which Massachusetts (including Maine), Plymouth, Rhode Island, Connecticut and New Hampshire were consolidated, and in 1688 his jurisdiction was extended over New York and the Jerseys.
But his vexatious interference with colonial rights and customs aroused the keenest resentment, and on the 18th of April 1689, soon after news of the arrival of William, prince of Orange, in England reached Boston, the colonists deposed and arrested him.
In New York his deputy, Francis Nicholson, was soon afterwards deposed by Jacob Leisler (q. v. ), and the inter-colonial union was dissolved.
Andros was sent to England for trial in 1690, but was immediately released without trial, and from 1692 until 1698 he was governor of Virginia, but was recalled through the agency of Commissary James Blair, with whom he quarrelled.
In 1692 Edmund Andros was made governor of Virginia, and in that post he was successful in promoting education and economic development, but he quarreled with the Anglican Church and as a result resigned in 1697.
In 1693-1694 he was also governor of Maryland.
From 1704 to 1706 he was governor of Guernsey.
Edmund Andros was married to Mary Craven, the daughter of Thomas Craven of Burnsall in the West Riding of Yorkshire (now North Yorkshire), the son of a cousin to the Earl of Craven, one of the queen's closest advisors, and a friend who served as his patron for many years. His second wife died in 1703, and he married for the third time in 1707, to Elizabeth Fitzherbert.