Engaged for the people, by the people, or in the peoples' name
© 2012 Christy K Robinson This article is copyrighted. Copying, even to your genealogy pages, is prohibited by US and international law. You may "share" it with the URL link because it preserves the author's copyright notice and the source of the article.
All rights reserved. This book or blog article, or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
William
Dyer, the son of a yeoman farmer from a village near Boston,
Lincolnshire, was apprenticed as a haberdasher
in London,
where his guild brothers often became mayors, councilmen, or government
officers. After his emigration to New England
in 1635, he held a succession of appointments as surveyor, clerk, Secretary of
State, and General Recorder, and was appointed the first Attorney General of
Rhode Island in 1650. But as I discovered, Dyer was also the first Attorney
General of any colony in North America!
And wait until you read his commission. It’s brilliant. It will make you long
for a return to that ideal of government today!
In
1628, the founders of Massachusetts Bay Colony followed the lead of the
Plymouth Colony, and obtained a royal charter to form a community that was
self-governed but answerable to the King, Parliament, and laws of England.
The Massachusetts Bay Company purchased a huge tract of wilderness that was
later subdivided to become part of New Hampshire
and Connecticut.
In
late 1637, a large group of religious dissidents in the Boston
area, including Anne and William Hutchinson, and William and Mary Dyer, were
given the choice of submitting to the Massachusetts Bay
theocracy, or being banished. They may have been planning to leave anyway, but
the expulsion of Anne Hutchinson for heresy certainly hurried their departure.
While she was under house arrest in the winter of 1637-38, the men were
searching for and purchasing land from the Narragansett Indians, for what would
become the Colony of Providence Plantations and Rhode Island.
The
group may have sent their belongings by ship around Cape Cod, but some of them
walked out of Boston
and through the Indian trails of the forest in hip-deep snow, near the time of
Passover and Easter. They walked 44 miles in what must have been an impressive
Exodus from Egypt.
Upon
their arrival, they immediately began building a town at the top of
Rhode Island, later called Portsmouth. And a year later, a group of them
moved to build a town and harbor called Newport.
William and Mary Dyer were co-founders.
 |
| click to enlarge |
They formed the first democracy in
America—and a secular one at that—
(Massachusetts governors John Winthrop and Thomas Dudley were disdainful of
democracy), and obtained their own charter from the English government in 1643,
after Massachusetts Bay’s Gov. Winthrop implied that Rhode Island would be
annexed to Massachusetts, thus bringing the heretics back under his control.
In
May 1650, the General Assembly, meeting in Newport, created the offices of Attorney
General and Solicitor General. William Dyer and Hugh Bewitt/Buit, respectively,
were immediately engaged.
Notice
the wording in the order and commission for Attorney General below, that he was
“Engaged for the people, by, or in the
peoples name…” Does that sound familiar, like, say, the Gettysburg
Address by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863, when he said that “Government by the people, for the people, shall
not perish from the earth”?
You
won't see many “one people” or “We the People” empowering statements until
1776, in the Declaration of Independence, or 1787, when the United States
Constitution was written. But Rhode
Island was there in 1650, advocating for us—the
People.
How
wise and creative and brilliant were those Rhode Island founders?! Huzzah!
This office of Attorney General was not created for the use of
oligarchs, or "the cutthroat of prosperitie" and commerce, or for preferment of the representatives and executive
officers (feel free to contrast with modern government). It was for the
interests of the people—of any background or social structure or financial
status.
The. Free. People.
The
job description promised protection from criminals, and from officers of the state. These assemblymen were not creating
laws to cover their behinds, they were creating laws for transparency and
accountability. It’s mind-boggling, contrasting what the United States
(and its allies) have come to over the last few decades.
Records of the Colony of Rhode
Island and Providence Plantations
in New England, p. 220 and 225:
Acts
and Orders made at the Generall Courte of Election held at Newport, May the 23d, (1650), for the Colonie
of Providence Plantations.
It is ordered by this Courte, to apoynt an
Atturney Generall for the Colonie, as also a Solicitor. That the Atturney
Generall shall have full power to impleade any transgression of the lawe of
this State in any Courte of this State; but especially to bringe all such
matters of penal lawes to tryall of the Generall Courte of Tryalls, as also for the tryall of the officers in the
State at the Generall Assemblies, and to impleade in the full power and authoritie of the free people of this
State, their prerogatives and liberties; and because envy, the cut throat of
all prosperitie will not faile to gallop with its full careere, let the sayed
Atturney be faithfully ingaged and authorized and encouraged. Engaged for the people, by, or in the
peoples name, and with their full authoritie assisted; authorized, that
upon information of transgressions or transgressors of the lawes, prerogatives
and liberties of the people, and their penal lawes, he shall under hand and
seale take forth summons from the President or Generall Assistants, to command
any delinquent, or vehemently suspected of delinquencie in what kind soever
accordinge to the premises, to appeare at the Generall Courte, if it be thereto
belonginge, or to the Generall Assemblie in those matters proper thereunto; and
if any refuse to apeare at that mandamus in the State of England’s name and the
free people of this State, he shall be judged guiltie; and so proceeded with
according to fine or penaltie.
Mr. William Dyre is deputed Generall Atturney for the Colonie, and ingaged.
First Attorneys-General
of colonial/east-coast America
Year instituted
|
Colony/east coast of America
|
First attorney general
|
1650
|
Rhode Island
|
William Dyer
|
1677
|
North Carolina
|
George Durant
|
1684
|
New York
|
crown appointee
|
1686
|
Pennsylvania
|
David Lloyd
|
1686
|
Massachusetts
|
Benjamin Bullivant
|
1686
|
western New Jersey
|
??
|
1688
|
Maryland
|
Charles Carroll
|
1698
|
South Carolina
|
Nicholas Trott
|
1704
|
Vermont
|
Alexander Griffith
|
1712
|
Virginia
|
Sir John Randolph (deputy
AG)
|
1754
|
Georgia
|
William Clifton
|
1778
|
Delaware
|
Gunning Bedford, Jr.
|
1785
|
New Hampshire
|
Samuel Livermore
|
1820
|
Maine
|
Erastus Foote
|
1897
|
Connecticut
|
Charles Phelps
|
 |
The most famous segment of Abraham Lincoln's 1863 Gettysburg
Address:
"government of the people, by the people, for the people."
Note the similarity to the 1650 commission to the office of Rhode Island attorney general:
"engaged for the people, by, or in the peoples' name."
|
Christy K
Robinson
has written a trilogy (two historical novels based in fact, and a nonfiction book) on Mary and William Dyer. Traditionally, Mary Dyer, who
is known for giving her life in the cause of religious liberty, gets all the
attention because Quaker historians used her story for political and
evangelization purposes. Because he never became a Quaker, William Dyer’s history has been much more difficult to
tease out of archives and records in Rhode Island,
Massachusetts,
and the British Library. But this English farmer's son was a foundation stone of American democracy.
