USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > The memorial history of Boston : including Suffolk County, Massachusetts. 1630-1880, Vol. II > Part 13
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The long interval during which Stoughton exercised, temporarily, the office of Governor was one of continued suspense to him and to the people, as through the whole of it they were looking anxiously for a new appoint- ment by the Crown; and when they learned that such had been made, were waiting for the long-deferred arrival of the incumbent of office. Joseph Dudley, then in England, as Deputy-Governor of the Isle of Wight, made strenuous efforts to secure his appointment as the successor of Phips; but his time had not yet come. Richard Coote, Earl of Bellomont, an Irish peer, was first named for the office in 1695, received his commission in 1697, and after a long and dangerous voyage arrived in New York, April 2, 1698, as Governor of that Province, of Massachusetts, and of New Hampshire and New Jersey. He was the first person, not native-born, to represent the royal authority here by kingly commission. It was more than a year before he visited Boston, finding enough to occupy all his time and to test his spirit and fidelity in the vexations and corruptions which engaged him in New York. It is estimated that there was then a population of about 200,000 Europeans in the English colonies in America, of which 75,000 were in New England, and 25,000 in New York. Bellomont set himself vigorously, yet with but poor success even as regarded support by members of his own council, to repress and amend the illegal practices which made the British laws of trade a dead-letter. They could not be enforced, as they were regarded as being radically oppressive, unjust, and tyrannical, - ruin- ous also to the best interests of Englishmen here and at home. They imposed duties of five per cent both on imports and exports, and restricted all trade to English ships trading directly to English ports.
Bellomont had hesitated in which of the provinces to take up his resi- dence. He was warmly and kindly received on his coming to Boston, May 26, 1699, to remain, as it proved, only fourteen months. On a return visit
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THE ROYAL GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS, ETC.
to New York he died there after a brief illness, March 5, 1701. Personally he was popular in Massachusetts, - a vigorous man of sixty-three years of age, fine looking, with elegant manners and courtly ways, affable, gracious, and conciliatory. He tried to please all sorts of people, and especially to ingratiate himself with the stiffer religionists of the old stock. He had some trouble with the Court as to judicial appeals to England, but contrived to pacify the matter. The Earl took care earnestly to impress upon the Court the purpose of the King that there should be a becoming salary settled upon his Governor. This, of course, it was never the intention of the Court, under any circumstances, to comply with. But, pleased with his easy sway, " presents " were made to him, amounting for his fourteen months here to £1,875 sterling, which was more than the predecessor or any royal successor of his received in any form. He had set his own estimate at £1,200 a year. In meeting the Court, he introduced the custom of formal addresses to the two branches. These utterances were shrewdly conceived, complimentary, and evidently ad captandum. He had to try to rectify some slips or oversights of Phips, in administering by the Charter. He made an effort to gather, for sending home to King and Council, statis- tics and other information concerning the country, which information, of course, was superficial and erroneous, - those who thought that such scrutiny and espionage was simply a matter of impertinent curiosity on the part of the home government, not interesting themselves in securing either fulness or accuracy in details. Bellomont would not have been so popular here, had he lived long enough for the people to have learned the tenor of his despatches to the Board of Trade, the Council, and the Bishop of London. Boston had at that time between seven and eight thousand inhabitants, and even an Earl could find in it congenial society and considerable festivity in life.
A main object which the King had had in view in his commission to Bellomont was to engage his energy and activity in the suppression of piracy on' the high seas, which then had a scandalous license and an almost unchecked riot. The notorious Kidd, who had been employed to circum- vent these freebooters of the ocean, turned out to be the most wily and greedy of them all. Bellomont accomplished something, but there are still some unexplained facts and some dark intricacies about this subject, involv- ing the character and repute of some public and noble as well as private persons ; nor did the Governor himself stand clear of suspicion or reproach. The subject finds a treatment in another chapter of this volume.1
One of many ineffectual attempts was made under Bellomont to secure a new charter for the incorporation of Harvard College. It failed then, because in the draft which was proposed by those who wished to retain for the college its early and special method of oversight and management no provision was made for its visitation by the king, and because only Congre- gational ministers were to be allowed on its boards: yet Increase Mather
1 By the Rev. E. E. Hale, D.D.
VOL. II. - 6.
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
afterward charged Joseph Dudley, then in England, with preventing this proposed charter. Though Bellomont had personally found favor and en- joyed peace here in this portion of his government, it cannot be judged that he accomplished anything toward familiarizing the people with the habit of dependency upon foreign dictation, or reconciling them to the with- drawal of any of the. privileges which they had formerly exercised. The people were uneasy and antagonistic in every phase of the public troubles presenting themselves in the attempt to adjust the relations and the legisla- tion of the Province to the measures of the King and Council. The English Acts of Navigation, never held in respect, were but slightly regarded, and the Lords of Trade kept prompt- ing the Governor to administer their discipline. The people claimed rights as Englishmen which they insisted were in- Lexington . fringed. And here we trace the first manifestations of that blun- der on the one side and that resentment on the other which, festering on to their full results, underlaid the opening struggle of the Revolution. The colonists were reminded, in ways often of- fensive and galling to them, that they were held to all the depend- ence and obligation of subjects, while they insisted that their privileges were abridged below those enjoyed by Englishmen at home. For reasons satisfacto- ry to our own popular branch in the Assembly, appeals to England were denied or embar- rassed. Alarms from the Indians required constant alertness from the Governor and his Council, Mat Prior while the New England charters were in peril from the threats of the Lords of Trade. In the SIGNERS OF INSTRUCTIONS.1 meanwhile, the King himself had troubles of his own, especially from the proposed impeachment of his advisers. He was released by death, March 16, 1702.
The Matos A. flashwayP John Poller gen
1 [These are the signatures to the royal in- structions sent to Stoughton, May 15, 1701, on his assuming the chair after the death of Bello-
mont. Students of English poetry will see a familiar name in the last signature. The original paper is in the Massachusetts Archives. - ED.]
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THE ROYAL GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS, ETC.
Lieut .- Governor Stoughton, on the decease of Bellomont, again took the chair, which he filled till his own life closed, July 7, 1701, when, by provision of the Charter, the Council became the Executive. In the death of Stough- ton, son of the stout old Puritan soldier, the commander in our first Indian wars, there passed away one of the sturdiest and most rigid of the native stock. Educated for a preacher, exhibiting marked abilities and winning great admiration as such, and holding the stern faith unqualified and unsoftened to the end of his days, he resolutely declined the work of the ministry. Though he had had no legal training, his long and full experience as a magistrate and councillor qualified him as well as any in a community where there were no educated lawyers for the offices which he filled, among them the highest on the bench. It was as chief-justice in a special court that he sentenced the reputed witches at Salem, and when in a few years the community, distressingly conscious of probable wrong in the dread panic of that stark delusion, made confession in penitential observances, he would offer no sign of humiliation or regret, having, as he averred, faithfully followed the light which God had given him. Childless and unwedded, he led a solitary life at Dorchester.1 But his grimness and austerity were offset by devoted fidelity to his fellows, and by generous public favors to college and school.2
Among the royal Governors of this province, he whose name, rightly or wrongly, is burdened with the heaviest reproach - not even excepting that of Andros, who was neither of Massachusetts birth nor of Puritan lineage - is Joseph Dudley. If judicial impartiality in dealing with public characters is desirable in these pages, it can be approached in this case only by presenting fairly the estimates, dark or bright, which abundant contem- porary authorities offer us. As Dudley's character and career, when in course of manifestation before those who may be thought to have known him for what he was, were severely censured and condemned, even to the heaping upon him of the darkest reproaches and stinging obloquy, it may be just, before tracing his course among living friends and foes, to relieve censoriousness by reading what ought to have been considerately truthful, even if indulgently kind, as said of him after his death and burial. Benja- min Colman, minister of the Brattle-Street Church, the most able, judicious, and highly esteemed among the divines of the town at that time, preached a funeral sermon, at a crowded Thursday lecture, on Governor Dudley, im- mediately after his decease. The Mathers, who had been the bitterest and most distrustful opponents of Dudley, may have been in the pulpit with Colman, while in the pews were seated all the chief in place and influence. The discourse, without extravagance, adulation, or fulsomeness in its en- comium or estimate, gives to Dudley an honorable tribute for integrity, fidelity, and excellence. What is most to the point, the discourse contains
1 [He lived on the northeast corner of Savin- Sibley's Harvard Graduates, vol. i. His por- trait is given in the chapter on Witchcraft in Boston. See the chapter on Dorchester. - ED.]
Hill Avenue and Pleasant Street. - ED.]
2 [There is a good account of Stoughton in
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
this sentence: " The Publick has had already this week a short and just Account ... of his personal worth and Character." The reference is to an obituary in the Boston News-Letter, No. 834, Monday, April 11, 1720. After noting the decease of Dudley and his interment "in the sepulchre of his Father, with all the Honour and respect his Country was capable of doing him," and giving a brief sketch of his life, with the various offices he had filled, we read : -
" He was a Man of rare Endowments and shining Accomplishments, a singular Honour to his Country, and in many Respects the Glory of it. He was early its Darling, always its Ornament, and in his Age its Crown. The Divine, the Philoso- pher, and the Statesman, all met in him. He was visibly formed for Government, and under his Administration (by God Almighty's Blessing) we enjoyed great quietness, and were safely steer'd thro' a long and difficult Indian and French War.
" His Country have once and again thankfully acknowledged his Abilities and Fidelity in their Addresses to the Throne. He truly Honoured and Lov'd the Reli- gion, Learning, and Vertue of New England, and was himself a worthy Patron and Example of them all. Nor did so bright a soul dwell in a less amiable Body, being a very Comely Person, of a Noble Aspect, and a graceful Mien, having the Gravity of a Judge, and the Goodness of a Father. In a word, he was a finisht Gentle- man, of a most polite Address, and had uncommon Elegancies and Charms in his Conversation." 1
How far listeners and readers accorded with those tributes to Dudley must be inferred from what else there is on record about him. There were those who regarded him as a recreant and a parasite, a fawner to royalty, a cunning courtier, self-secking, unscrupulous, and not true, even to friends. If we summarize the matter and the grounds of Joseph Dudley's ill-esteem, we might refer it, first, to the regret that he had fallen from the grace of a noble and revered lineage, and then to the belief that he had not been faithful to a people who had generously advanced him. In another place in this volume will be found his record before he becomes a subject of notice here as one of our royal Governors.2 His father, Thomas Dudley, one of the most distinguished among the first exile colonists, associate and alternate with the revered Winthrop in the highest places of magistracy, dying July 31, 1653, at the age of seventy-five, had left as the child of his old age, born July 23, 1647, this son Joseph, a youth of six years. Mr: Allen, minister of Dedham, marrying the widowed mother of Joseph, had the charge of him in his boyhood. Graduating at Harvard in 1665, he had
1 Dr. Palfrey suggests, "This is what would be called in our day the testimony of 'the press' to Dudley's merit. More precisely stated, it is the testimony of the Scottish adventurer, John Campbell, postmaster " to one from whom he had received official and personal favors. Our ablest and most faithful historian, whose own discriminating estimate of Dudley led him to regard the Governor as on the whole a mean, unscrupulous, and wily self-seeker, also expresses
his regret that the excellent Dr. Colman should have adroitly appeared to praise a man whom he could not truly have honored.
2 [See Mr. Whitmore's chapter, preceding this in the present volume, for an account of his presidency. Mr. Drake epitomizes his career in his chapter on Roxbury, where his portrait is given. The index to Vol. I. will lead to inci- dents in his life during the colonial period. - ED.]
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THE ROYAL GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS, ETC.
as a classmate the only Indian youth, out of many that had been students, who received a degree. In the embittered correspondence which passed in 1707-08 between the Mathers and Dudley, then governor, Increase Mather reminds him that he, Dudley, had given him, as his "spiritual father," the credit of his religious awakening; and adds, "There was a time when I en- couraged the church with whom I have been laboring in the work of the Lord these forty-six years and more, to call you to be my assistant in the ministry," - Dudley having for a while been a preacher.
The letters of the Mathers, father and son, to Governor Dudley, and Dudley's single reply to both of them, -always excepting some of the documents relating to the troubles with the Quakers, - are the most em- bittered in their personalities and invectives of the whole mass of highly- seasoned papers which have been preserved in our cabinets. The Mather letters are dated on the same day, Jan. 20, 1707-8. The father contented himself with what covers, in print, two pages of octavo; the son wrote at three times that length. Perfidy, hypocrisy, bribery, cruelty, and corrupt dealing in divers forms are the burden of the charges against the Governor. The reply is to a degree dignified and moderate, with something of caustic sarcasm in its tone and tenor, especially in its galling reminder to the Mathers that their conceit and assumption of clerical power were well ob- served by their brethren, and by the people generally; and that their glory was for the future to fade. The Governor allowed a fortnight to pass before he sent this answer, and thus gave his wrath a space for cooling, while he had the advantage of deliberation. During this interval the fact that the Mathers had written to Dudley in a somewhat pointed way had become noised abroad by one or another of the parties having divulged it, and those most concerned, especially Cotton Mather, were waiting the result. Sewall writes in his Diary, on January 23, that, on returning with him from a funer- al, Cotton Mather gave him a copy of his and his father's letters, and added : "I wait with concern to see what the issue of this plain dealing will be!" Again, January 30, Sewall writes: "To the Funeral of my Neighbour, Sam. Engs. Walked with Mr. Pemberton [his minister at the South Church], who talked to me very warmly about Mr. C. M.'s Letter to the Governour; seemed to resent it, and expect the Gov' should animadvert upon him. The Lord appear for the help of his people! Said if he were as the Governour he would humble him [Cotton Mather], though it cost him his head ! - speak- ing with great vehemency, just as I parted with him at his Gate." Again : "February 5. Mr. Colman preached the [Thursday] Lecture; Gal. v. 25. Spoke of other walking (than in the Spirit) ; it blotted our Sermons, blotted our Prayers, blotted our Admonitions and Exhortations. 'Tis reckoned he lashed Dr. Mather, and Mr. Cotton Mather, and Mr. Bridge [minister of the First Church], for what they have written, preached, and prayed about the present contest with the Governour." Again : " Election, May 26, 1708. Mr. John Norton preaches a Flattering Sermon as to the Governour." Meanwhile Sewall himself was often placed in an embarrassing position in
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
this sharp feud. He was very intimate with the Mathers, revered the father, though he occasionally dealt tartly with the son. Sewall's convictions and sympathies were with those who mistrusted Dudley. But Sewall's oldest son was husband of the Governor's daughter, - an unhappy connection. The Diary is cautious and reserved on all these delicate matters, but the writer puts down enough to enable us to give him his place and thought about Dudley.1
It was evident that those who at first looked to the young man as one whom they might trust as a strong representative of the principles identified with his lineage, and whom under that expectation they rap- idly advanced in places and honors, were grievously disappointed in him. To them he seemed to waver, trim, and calculate chances in patronage. He cast in his lot with the prerogative. He was regarded by them as a tool of . Andros, and was among those seized and imprisoned with that "usurper," in the great uprising of the people. The reason given to him for his being put under guard in his own house, and afterward committed to the jail, was "lest the outraged people should set upon him in their rage." Dudley was sent to England with his principal. Commissioned afterward to the Province of New York as chief-justice, he had there roused new enmities by condemning to death the patriot Leisler. On another return to England, his efforts to succeed Phips as Governor of Massachusetts were thwarted by the Agents of the Province, - Constantine Phips, and Sir Henry Ashurst. He had to content himself for the while with a seat in Parliament and the Lieut .- Governorship of the Isle of Wight. With the aid of Randolph and some court influence, he finally succeeded in securing the coveted commission from King William, whose death soon afterward made it necessary that the commission should be renewed by Queen Anne. It must have been with mingled and conflicting emotions that Dudley, on June 1I, 1702, arrived in a frigate in Boston harbor, after ten or eleven years' absence. He had left it after an imprisonment of five months. He came now as the chief magis- trate, representing royalty. He met the Council on the same day, and published his commission, with that of John Povey as Lieut .- Governor, - an entire stranger here. Dudley was ceremoniously received, though the Council, chosen a fortnight before according to the Charter, contained many of his enemies, who had imprisoned him and sought to prevent his new appointment. He avowedly committed himself to the side of the pre- rogative, and spoke patronizingly to those who looked upon him with worse than distrust. Hutchinson, whose experiences fifty years afterward were to be similar to Dudley's, says, "The people were more jealous of him than they would have been of any other person." He at once set himself to accomplish the objects of shrewd English politicians, which, of course, made the interests of New England secondary. Massachusetts was to be held under a stiff hand. She was to be put to use against France, and
1 The correspondence of the Mathers and Dudley is printed in I Mass. Hist. Coll., iii. 126-137.
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THE ROYAL GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS, ETC.
made serviceable to English commerce and revenue. The French king having recognized the pretender to the English crown, of course a declara- tion of war by Queen Anne was the necessary consequence; and that meant another savage inroad upon Massachusetts. The twelve years' reign of the Queen, with such a Governor in her interest, was necessarily irritat- ing and troubling to Massachusetts. Dudley announced three special
JARnek By Her majesties Command Sunderland
instructions imposed upon him by the monarch: (1) Positively requiring of the Court to provide for rebuilding the fort at Pemaquid, which the Court, for reasons satisfactory to itself, refused to do; (2) That a suit- able official residence should be assigned to him,-this also was refused; and (3) That a proper salary should be settled upon himself, the lieut .- governor, and the judges, "as was done in all the other colonies." Of course this last demand was wholly inadmissible, involving, as it did, the payment of another person's servant by those who really had no desire or use for him. The alternative which the Court adopted and consistently fol- lowed, so long as these unwelcome royal representatives were harbored here, was to make, from time to time, generally half yearly, " presents," varying in stinginess or generosity according as the Governor more or less pro- voked opposition, or gave proof of an unfriendly or kindly spirit. It was under Dudley's administration that the people first really felt the full mean- ing of the substitution among them of subjection to foreign espionage and dictation for self-government. Dudley refused the money grants, or " pres- ents," till his Council advised him to be content with them as better than nothing. He got hardly more than £600 in any year, - not half of what had been "given" to Bellomont. He was in constant bickering with the House of Representatives. He used his negative against each and all of those nominated by the House for the Council, if in any way obnoxious to himself. One of these rejected councillors, Mr. Oakes, a determined oppo- nent of Dudley, was chosen as Speaker of the House. Dudley assumed that as a prerogative right, though not recognized by the Charter, he could also veto the Speaker; but after much dissension he was compelled to yield the point. Conferences were held between the House and Council
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
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about the required building of the fort at Pemaquid. But these were futile, as the proposition was considered at the time by those who under- stood the matter as not judicious. Dudley visited Pemaquid in 1703, with an escort of his own choosing; not asking, as had been usual, a committee of House and Council.
A second letter of instructions to him from the Queen, which Dudley communicated, insisted upon the matter of a fixed and proper salary for her governor and his deputy. This too was wholly ineffectual. The House evaded the demand, and the ill-feeling deepened.
And now, consequent upon the declaration of war with France, came a renewal of the horrors of savage warfare, with desolations and costly ex- peditions, killing the flower of our population, and burdening the Province with debt and paper money. In February, 1703, three hundred French and Indians, under De Rouville, perpetrated their massacres in Deerfield, and all our frontiers were threatened. After several fruitless expeditions, an army and fleet were raised to sweep the coast of Maine all the way to Nova Scotia,-Colonel Church being in command, aided by transports, whale- boats, and armed vessels. He went up the Passamaquoddy and to Mount Desert, plundering, depredating, and desolating all the way; and though he reached Port Royal, which was in a defenceless state, much to the disgust of our people he made no attack upon it. The Indians meanwhile, in marauding upon our border towns, came within twenty miles of Boston.1 To aggravate and inflame the sharp antagonisms and animosities of the times, some merchants and traders were, on reasonable grounds, suspected, accused, and then prosecuted by the General Court, instead of by the regular judicial tribunals, as guilty of trafficking in arms and goods with the enemy who was working so much mischief. The Governor himself was boldly and bitterly charged with connivance in, and sharing the profits of, this vile business. A pamphlet of stinging reproaches and invectives, evidently in the main prepared in Boston, was published against him in London. To this there was a reply, followed by a rejoinder.2 The House, without sub- mitting the measure to the Council, addressed the Queen, seeking the re- moval of the Governor for reasons strongly stated and vouched, as proving his unworthiness and unfitness as her representative, and his unreconcil- William Tailer able enmity to the best interests of this com- munity. Meanwhile his lieutenant, Povey, to whom a grant of £200 had been made in consideration of his being Captain of the Castle in the harbor, in disgust at the meanness of the sum, on which he could not subsist, moved himself off in 1711, and William Tailer, appointed to fill the place, took the oaths in October of that year.
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