A majority of the citizens decided to secure by peaceful means if possible, a change in the existing form of government and an adhesion to a democratic system of elections of officers. Desiring to spare the aged head of the government any unnecessary personal humiliation, they addressed a letter to him which stated “First our wish for you is that you would be pleased to lay aside your government and act with us so we shall choose you to be in place this year, and afterward as the yearly choice by election shall fall.”

The head of the government, wedded to his power, gave this letter a curt reply: “No, he would not.” His whole purpose was to pursue a plan to establish an hereditary aristocracy, an attitude that almost dominated his last official and personal acts even in the shadow of death.

Is this report (slightly edited) an account of what is happening in Egypt today?

No, it appears in Volume 1 of Charles Banks’ History of Martha’s Vineyard, published in 1911, to describe the struggle to achieve democracy on our Island in a citizen’s rebellion that occurred in 1673, called the Dutch Rebellion.

The event was precipitated first of all at the return of Thomas Mayhew from a visit to New York in 1671, where its Governor Lovelace had granted him the title of Governor for Life. This presumptive act of power was followed by the capture of New York by a Dutch warship in 1673 to reclaim New Amsterdam. This temporary removal of English authority from that city gave the local majority, of one, license to abrogate its governor’s decree, and ask their governor to consider stepping down in favor of a more democratic process of selection. Such had been the presumed form of government, the protestors argued, set forward in the Royal Patent to the Island of Martha’s Vineyard acquired by Thomas Mayhew in 1642.

Importantly, all of the older members of the English settlement on the Island had crossed the Atlantic Ocean and lived for some years in either the Massachusetts Bay or Plymouth colonies before moving here, in the expectation of less royalist (and established church) domination in their lives.

The delicacy of their petition for change was the handiwork the oldest participant, Thomas Burchard, just two years younger than Governor Mayhew, at 78 years. He was born in England. After crossing the Atlantic in 1635, he settled initially in Boston, then Hartford and Saybrook, before following his eldest son, John, to Martha’s Vineyard around 1653. Eight years later, John returned to Connecticut.

Goodman Burchard learned early on the privileges of Mayhew rule, appointed as assistant to the chief magistrate in 1653, and elected the first town clerk of Edgartown in 1654. He endured this service for a few years before he became, in Bank’s words, “disaffected with the Mayhew regime.” 1n 1673, in Simon Athearn’s words, he became “the primary instigator” of the rebellion. In 1683 he also returned, perhaps discouraged of seeing any change in his lifetime, to join his family in Connecticut.

The strongest case for a more democratic alternative was brought by Nicholas Norton, then 62. He was also born in England, but had lived for more than 20 years in Weymouth before settling in Edgartown in 1659.

One of the unique facts about early Weymouth was that it was governed by the people themselves. Unlike Plymouth, Boston and Salem, all of which had governors, Weymouth had none. So all decisions were made by the settlers gathering together in town meeting style. . . . It all started here, when Weymouth was incorporated as a town in 1635.

According to historian Charles Francis Adams: “ . . . for those Towns there was no prophet, no chief, no lord, no bishop, no King. Those dwelling in them were all plain people. They stood on their own legs, such as they were; and there was no one to hold them up.” From Weymouth —The First Hundred Years, by Ted Clarke.

The threat of this precedent, combined with the size of the Norton contingent connected by blood or marriage as participants in the rebellion, almost equal to the Mayhew contingent on the other side, probably accounts for Nicholas receiving the largest sentence of those implicated in the rebellion. Their peaceful protest failed when the Dutch returned New York to the English in 1675. The restored governor of New York then fined Nicholas 51 pounds sterling for his transgressions, which was commuted after he had twice made public apology.

A third participant in the rebellion was John Pease, 66, who, around 1637, settled initially in Salem. He moved from there in 1644 because of the religious persecution and accusations of witchcraft there, and finally settled in Edgartown in 1653. His wife committed a singular act of defiance during the rebellion by grabbing the warrant for his arrest from the Marshall charged with its delivery and tearing it up.

Although the rebellion was put down, the quest of the “Dutch” rebels did finally succeed. In 1691, William and Mary established a new royal charter for their colonies that included Martha’s Vineyard in a combination of the Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth colonies into the commonwealth of Massachusetts. And Joseph Norton, Esq., son of Nicholas, born in Weymouth, and also a Dutch rebel, was elected to be the first representative from the Island to the General Court convening in Boston in 1692.

It is our fond hope, aware of the example of our own struggle, that the model of respect, freedom, and justice contained in the democratic rule of and by the people will prevail not only in Egypt, but throughout all the nations of the world.

James H.K. Norton lives in Vineyard Haven.