How the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay colonies merged into a single royal province

History · Published 3 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: The Province of Massachusetts Bay was not a single entity from the start. It emerged from the forced consolidation of several distinct colonial territories in 1691. This transition shifted the region from a collection of independent, religiously driven settlements into a unified royal province under the British Crown.

The roots of the region lie in the 1620 arrival of Pilgrims at Plymouth, who established a settlement that remained officially unincorporated for decades. By 1633, Plymouth served as the seat of its own colony, while the Massachusetts Bay Colony, founded in 1628, grew rapidly through a major migration of Puritans starting in 1630. For much of the 17th century, these colonies operated with significant political independence from England.

Tensions with the English monarchy escalated after 1660, as Charles II sought tighter economic control through the Navigation Acts. The situation reached a breaking point in 1684 when the first Massachusetts Charter was revoked. James II subsequently formed the Dominion of New England in 1686, placing the territories under the unpopular governor Edmund Andros. Following the 1688 Glorious Revolution, colonial leaders arrested Andros, leading to the collapse of the Dominion and a period of political uncertainty.

In 1691, William III and Mary II issued a new charter that formally merged the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay colonies into the Province of Massachusetts Bay. This new structure fundamentally altered colonial life. Most notably, voting eligibility shifted from religious requirements to land ownership, a change that historian Benjamin Labaree estimates granted voting rights to roughly three-quarters of the adult male population. While the charter guaranteed freedom of worship for non-Catholic Christians, it marked the definitive end of the era of independent Puritan rule.

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