Province of Massachusetts Bay

The Province of Massachusetts Bay was a British colony in New England and one of the thirteen colonies that became the United States. It was chartered on 7 October 1691 by William III and Mary II and took effect in May 1692, merging the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Plymouth Colony, the Province of Maine, Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket and, briefly, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. Boston was its capital and chief port. A royal governor represented the crown, while an elected assembly controlled taxation, and the franchise was tied to property. The new charter followed the revocation of the earlier Massachusetts charter and the turmoil of the Dominion of New England. In 1692 the Salem witch trials convulsed the colony, and warfare with French Canada and Native nations repeatedly strained its frontier. During the eighteenth century Boston became a centre of shipping, shipbuilding and Atlantic trade, as well as of political resistance to British taxation. The Boston Massacre of 1770, the Tea Party of 1773 and the battles of Lexington and Concord in 1775 opened the American Revolution. The province was superseded by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts under its 1780 constitution, and independence was confirmed by the Treaty of Paris in 1783.