In 1676, the Lords of Trade in England issued a decision denying the Massachusetts land claims in Maine. Massachusetts then purchased the claims of the Gorges heirs (as reduced by the 1646 decision separating Lygonia) in 1677, and in 1680 constituted a new government in this territory. Thomas Danforth, the Massachusetts deputy governor, was elected president of the territory, a post he occupied until 1686, when the Dominion of New England took over all Massachusetts territory. The dominion collapsed after the arrest of its governor, Sir Edmund Andros, and the previous government was restored until the inception of the Province of Massachusetts Bay in 1692, which claimed all of present-day Maine as part of its territory.