I once started a timeline that went like this:
In 1653, the colonies of Connecticut and New Haven began planning for a war against the Dutch colony of New Netherland. Both belonged to the military alliance called the United Colonies of New England (which we commonly refer to as the Confederation of New England). Despite its obligations by treaty, the colony of Massachusetts Bay refused to send troops. Although nothing ever came of the war, the CoNE never regained the cohesion it lost with Massachusetts Bay's refusal (except for a small time during King Phillip's War). I'll write a brief summary of what I had before I stopped.
1653: Massachusetts Bay pledges troops to the projected war against the New Netherlands. Nothing ever comes out of the threat, however, and war, for the time, does not occur.
1660: Charles II reclaims the throne of England. England begins to pay attention her American colonies for the first time in almost 25 years, albeit almost entirely, for the moment, to the southern colonies.
1663:James, the Duke of York, and brother to King Charles, asserts his claim to the Hudson river valley, the area occupied by the Dutch colony of New Netherland. James convinces his brother to authorize a military expedition against the city of New Amsterdam, the capital of the colony. In the Confederation, the colonists became increasingly worried about England sticking its nose once again into the business of the Confederation. By the end of the spring, they were in agreement: Attack New Netherland before the Crown.
1664: With English troop ships carrying 400 soldiers still a month and a half out of New Amsterdam, en make-shift CoNE ships out of New Haven arrived in New Amsterdam. As Governor Peter Stuyvesant of New Netherland bellows orders to the citizens regarding the defense of the city, the citizens, tired of his tyrannical rule, refuse to listen. The six hundred troops from the CoNE take control of the colony in June. Three weeks later, Colonel Nicolls arrives to find the CoNE in control of the colony.
The CoNE colonies divide the New Netherlands between them. The colony of Connecticut (New Haven and Connecticut have recently merged) receive all New Netherland lands south of the Dutch town of Wiltwyck (OTL Kingston, New York), which is renamed Eaton, and including New Amsterdam(OTL New York City), renamed Winthrop after the Connecticut Governor. The colony of Massachusetts Bay receives all land north of Wiltwyck, including Ft. Orange (OTL Albany, New York), renamed Bellingham after the current Massachusetts Bay Governor.
James, back in England, is understandibly infuriated but his brother, the King, refuses to take a stand. James' force in Winthrop is smaller than that of the CoNE and the residents appear willing to fight to prevent another change of power. James' force returns to England the next year, dissappointed and frustrated with the failure. Meanwhile, the king’s agents attempted to separate New Hampshire from Massachusetts, but within three years the regions were again dominated by the colony. With the incorporation of New Hampshire, the struggle against English control in the Confederation of New England began.
1673: In the ten years following the capture of New York and its de facto annexation, colonists from New England began swarming into the region. From there, many moved south into the Wyoming Valley of the Susquehanna River. The Crown, despite its reservations over the spread of colonial control, continued to ignore the New England colonies. A new colony, which joins the CoNE, is founded further to the south, which they name Allegheny (OTL northern Pennsylvania.During the days of Massasoit, the sachem (chief) of the Wampanoag, the tribe occupied the lands from the eastern side of Narragansett Bay to Cape Cod, including Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket. Massasoit had cultivated harmonious relations with the colonists, being especially helpful to the Pilgrims in their early travails, but tribal lands diminished sharply as the colonists expanded. In 1662, Metacom, a son of Massasoit and known to the colonists as King Philip, became the sachem.
1675:In the years since the founding of Plymouth, the Wampanoag Indians' growing dependence upon English manufactured goods led them into ever-increasing land sales, resulting in further resentment and tension. In 1675, three tribal members were tried and executed by the Confederation for the murder of a converted Wampanoag, touching off more than a year of hostilities that became known as King Phillip's War. Beginning in June 1675, the Wampanoag Indians, outfitted with English-made rifles and armor, attacked a series of settlements in Plymouth, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island, taking the lives of dozens of colonial men, women and children. Confederation forces retaliated in kind by destroying native villages and slaughtering the inhabitants. Soon other tribes, including the Narragansett, joined the fray and the entire region fell into conflict. With the addition of the Narragansett into the war, the colony of Rhode Island is admitted into the Confederation to help combat the Indians living within that colony.
1676: The tide turned in April 1676, when the Narragansett were decisively defeated and their chief killed. Hostilities ground to a halt a few months later when Philip was betrayed, captured and killed. His corpse was drawn and quartered and his severed head placed on a stake to be paraded through Plymouth Colony. Philip's son was sold into slavery in Bermuda and many other captives were forced into servitude in homes throughout New England. The colonists prevailed in King Philip's War, but the cost was tremendous. It would more than two decades before all of the devastated frontier settlements could be reoccupied, and longer still before they began further expansion in the West. The New England Native Americans had been decimated to the extent that their impact on future events would be almost nonexistent. Also, with its victory in King Phillip's War, the Confederation, consisting of six colonies (Allegheny, Connecticut, Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay, and Rhode Island), finally drew the attention of the Crown.
Post-1676: After 1674 England began new attempts to subdue the rebellious Massachusetts Bay Colony. The principal charges leveled against the colony were continuing violations of the trade restrictions of the Navigation Acts; severe religious intolerance, specifically against Anglicans, which led to English citizens being persecuted and even killed; and the colony’s assumption of virtual independence.
In 1677, the Puritan leaders sent agents to England to answer these charges, but they did little to satisfy the royal government, and added to past offenses by purchasing the grant governing Maine from the heirs of the original owner, Ferdinando Gorges. In the face of this defiance England attempted to once again separate Maine from the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1677, and, in 1684, England revoked the Charter of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
With the revocation of the Massachusetts Charter, and the dissolution, on paper, of the Confederation's most powerful member, the Confederation of New England, which had begun suffering under the inadequacies of its own design, finally collapsed after forty years of virtual independence. That same year, Charles II, King of England, died. His brother, James, ascended to the throne that year, still bitter over what he sees as the theft of New York from him...
Following the death of King Charles II of England, his brother, James, ascended to the throne as King James II. The last surviving son of Charles I, who was executed by Oliver Cromwell during the English Civil War, James was a small, bitter man. In 1664, twenty years before his ascension, while forces under the command of a personal aide were travelling to North America, the Confederation of New England "stole" his colony from him in order to ensure it would stay under the influence of the Confederation and not under the influence of the Crown.
Then, in 1684, after his brother's death, James is crowned, an angry man bent on destroying the Confederation and loathing of the freedom afforded its citizens. Within six months of his coronation, he has already succeeded in breaking apart the Confederation with the revocation of the Charter of Massachusetts. The Confederation collapses and the colonists become enraged, not over the death of the Confederation, but over the fact that it was the King, and not the colonists, who killed it.
King James forces another new Navigation Act through the Parliament, this one placing a tax on foreign molasses. Although not an enormous tax, it is nonetheless a costly one to the New Englanders, who are the main importer of the molasses in North America. Just as with the previous two Navigation Acts, it appears as if, other than being enraged over it, New England seems not to hear. They keep importing foreign molasses and not paying the tax.
When the first economic reports come in, it becomes apparent to the King and his aides that the New Englanders are smuggling all the items covered by the three Acts, regardless of what the English government had to say on the matter. Although his aides and ministers advise restraint, James, with what he sees as a personal grudge, orders that any New England ship caught running a product in defiance of the Navigation Acts be put on public display and destroyed...
I'm getting sick of typing so I'll wrap it up. Come the Glorious Revolution, the old CoNE has had enough with English rule (especially after the Dominion of New England) and declares itself independent as the RoA (Republic of America, as it no longer includes just New England, but OTL New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and P.E.I., as well). After a brief period of small skirmishes, William and Mary allow the independence in order to preserve their shaky grasp on rule, at least until they completely consolidate power underneath them.