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The governments of the Thirteen Colonies of British America developed in the 17th and 18th centuries under the influence of the British constitution. The British monarch issued colonial charters that established either royal colonies, proprietary colonies, or corporate colonies.
Unlike in modern America but similarly to the practice of impeachment in England, in at least some of the colonies, impeachment was a process that could also be used to try non-officeholders and give criminal penalties. [1] However, in practice, the colonies primarily limited their impeachments to officeholders and punishment to removal from ...
The Colonial Office was a government department of the Kingdom of Great Britain and later of the United Kingdom, first created in 1768 from the Southern Department to deal with colonial affairs in North America (particularly the Thirteen Colonies, as well as, the Canadian territories recently won from France), until merged into the new Home ...
Sir Robert Peel took the lead for the government in the repeal and collaborated with Anglican Church leaders. [12] The application of the 1828 and 1829 acts to Irish acts was uncertain and so the Test Abolition Act 1867 (30 & 31 Vict. c. 62) repeated the 1829 repeal more explicitly. [13]
In English overseas possessions established from the 17th century onwards, all land in the colonies belonged to the Crown, which held ultimate authority over their management. All English colonies were divided by the Crown via royal charters into one of three types of colony; proprietary colonies, charter colonies and Crown colonies .
In the 18th century, the British government operated under a policy of mercantilism, in which the central government administered its colonies for Britain's economic benefit. The 13 colonies had a degree of self-governance and active local elections , [ a ] and they resisted London's demands for more control over them.
By the mid-18th century, printing took on new proportions with the newspapers that began to emerge, especially in Boston. When the British Crown began imposing new taxes, many of these newspapers became highly critical and outspoken about the British colonial government, which was widely considered unfair among the colonists. [1] [2] [3] [4]
All colonial charters guaranteed to the colonists the vague rights and privileges of Englishmen, which would later cause trouble during the American Revolution. In the second half of the 17th century, the Crown looked upon charters as obstacles to colonial control and substituted the royal colony for corporations and proprietary governments.