City of Cambridge Extends Restrictions on Public Events and Announces Temporary Suspension of In-Person Appointments.
The City of Cambridge is extending the current prohibition on City-sponsored community events, events permitted for the use of City parks, or other City-sponsored public gatherings through March 31, 2021. Additionally, to ensure the safety of the public and City staff, in-person appointments at City buildings, including contactless holds pick-up at the Cambridge Public Library, will be suspended from Saturday, January 2, 2021, through Monday, January 18, 2021.
RESCHEDULED Defying the Crown in Early Cambridge: The 1664 Petition Campaign and Grassroots Constitutionalism
This event was rescheduled from May 22 and will now take place on May 28.
The new king Charles II sent royal commissioners to New England in 1664 in order to pressure colonists into compliance with his metropolitan agenda. When these royal commissioners tried to claim full authority over local courts and militias, Cambridge inhabitants were among the first to act in defiance. Their grassroots petition campaign drew on the experience of the English civil wars and pointed the way forward to the American Revolution.
Adrian Chastain Weimer is a Professor of History at Providence College and is currently a Long-term Fellow at the John Carter Brown Library. She is the author of A Constitutional Culture: New England and the Struggle against Arbitrary Rule in the Restoration Empire (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023) and Martyrs' Mirror: Persecution and Holiness in Early New England (Oxford University Press, 2011).