USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > The memorial history of Boston : including Suffolk County, Massachusetts. 1630-1880, Vol. II > Part 14
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75 | Part 76
1 [See Col. Higginson's ch. in this vol .- ED.] the second volume of the Sewall Papers, have
2 The three pamphlets, recently reprinted in fire in them, even to this day.
49
THE ROYAL GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS, ETC.
It is a curious fact that, in the efforts to rid the Province of Dudley, the Agents of Massachusetts in England, with the help of some Dissenting ministers and the accord of Cotton Mather, tried to procure a commission as Governor for Sir Charles Hobby. He was, indeed, a Boston boy, son of a merchant here. He had been a colonel of one of our regiments, and for bravery at Jamaica - possibly backed by a money douceur-had been knighted. But he was well known as a man of fashion and a rake. He failed of the honor sought for him.
On Sept. 15, 1714, news came to town of the death of Anne and the accession of George I. A sloop sent George express from England with govern- ment orders was wrecked on Cohasset rocks on the 12th of November, and the dispatches, with all on board, were lost. Six months having elapsed with- out new commissions or official orders, the Council, according to pro- vision of the Charter, assumed the executive. On March 21, 1715, Dudley occupied the chair again for a short time, till the 9th of November, when the recently-commissioned Lieut .- Governor Tailer took the place, waiting for the arrival of his principal. Dudley retired from all public affairs to his fine estate and mansion at West Roxbury, where he died, April 2, 1720, aged seventy-two. His distinguished son, Paul Dudley, chief-justice of the province, did many things for his own and after times which give him a grateful memory. In the judgment of charity, stretched to its uttermost strain, it is barely possible that Governor Dudley may have been harshly disesteemed and reproached by his contemporaries, and so by historians. It is certain, however, that he came back here twice from England to rep- resent and enforce the very policy judged malign and offensive to his own people, which he, in their trust and confidence, had been sent thither to thwart. His townsmen and former friends could not find an explanation for his course which was consistent with simplicity, integrity, and unselfish- ness. The Providence which set him in power here was a dark one, re- quiring, as some one said, like a Hebrew scroll, to be read backwards.
Under the reign of the German prince elevated by election to the throne of Great Britain as George I., a stupid incompetent as he was, Massachu- setts waited awhile, after proclaiming him, to see through what channel his prerogative was to be administered here. The matter that wears most the appearance of jobbery in connection with the office of Governor of Massa- chusetts under the Crown was the commission to it, through court influence, obtained March 17, 1715, by Colonel Elisha Burgess. By what light or standard he estimated what might be its pecuniary value, we are ignorant. We can draw our inference only from the fact that under the negotiations of friends of the Province then in London, - Ashurst, Belcher, afterward Governor, and Dummer the Agent, - he parted with his commission for a
VOL. II. - 7.
51
THE ROYAL GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS, ETC.
of the paper issues incurred in the exhausting hostilities with the Indians. Shute was a man of fair abilities, honest, and well-intentioned, but some- what self-indulgent and passionate. After a year's experience of him, Cotton Mather wrote to Shute's brother, Lord Barrington, a most fulsome letter in his commendation. 'He realized to the full the inherent and prac- tically insurmountable difficulties of an office which, under the circum- stances, no man living could have filled to the satisfaction of the king and people. Those difficulties were, on the part of the king, actual ignorance, prejudiced opinions, and mistaken judgments as to the real condition and the best interests of his colonies in points in which there might be mutually common interests between them and the mother country, together with an assuming and disdainful spirit in turning the colonists, as an inferior party, simply to the advancement of their fellow-subjects across the water. On the part of the colonists the difficulties were a painful and irritating sense of these foreign prejudices and wrongs, and a profound conviction that they had a right to manage their own affairs, as they had been wont to do.
Shute's administration was one continuous quarrel with the House of Representatives, changing its form and subject-matter only to be raised more intensely upon a new point before a previous one had been disposed of. Sometimes the Council took his side; at others a majority sided with the House,-in either case embarrassing and crossing him. He joined with the opposers of the banking scheme, but seemed utterly incompetent with his own judgment to devise any financial policy for relieving the bur- dens of the Province. Another emission of bills for £100,000, to run for ten years, only increased the existing perplexities. The Governor earnestly engaged in efforts for pacific treaties with the Eastern Indians in order to thwart the influence and plottings of the Jesuit Father Rasle, who was known to be instigating them to continued hostilities. This active and zealous priest continued for the next eight years to be the object of intense detestation by our people. His papers were seized, while he escaped, when an expedition was sent, in 1721, against his savage disciples. As these papers gave full proof of his plottings, he was at last killed, in another ex- pedition, Aug. 12, 1724, and his chapel and village at Norridgewock were destroyed. It does not appear, however, that he had any less right to serve the supposed interest of his own savage disciples, as allies of the French in the long and bloody struggle for dominion on this continent, than had the English to take their own chaplains with them in their war parties.1
Besides this Indian war, Shute had four distinct controversies with the delegates of the people, neither of which could he bring to a satisfactory settlement. The first was a strife in which he took side with John Bridger, the king's Surveyor of Forests, against the people of Maine and their sym- pathizers here, led on by Cooke of the Council, in evading the law which reserved certain trees for ship-timber for the king. The second was a
1 [See Colonel Higginson's chapter in this volume. - ED.]
.
52
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
quarrel on the Impost Bill. The third was a renewal of the claim, raised by Dudley, of a right to negative the Speaker, - his resource being to dissolve the Court when the House stood out against him. The fourth arose from his persistency in demanding a fixed salary, to which the House, so far from yielding, expressed its resentment by reducing the "present " to him to £500. A candid reader of the records of these bitter altercations can hardly fail to divide the blame of what was personal in feeling - inde- pendent of the merits of the issues contested -between the two parties. But when the Agent of Massachusetts in London, the excellent and ser- viceable Jeremy Dummer, besides nobly defending the charter when it was perilled, wrote over to the Court that their hectoring of the Governor was unreasonable and mischievous, the House discharged him from his trust. In this measure the Council refused to concur; but the House, holding the purse, stopped his pay. The royal attorney-general wrote over to Shute that he had a right of negative on the Speaker; and the Lords Commis- sioners of Trade and Plantations approved his course. He had been in- structed to demand £1,000 salary ; but the House voted him what, allowing for depreciation in the currency, was worth £360. Beyond the feeling in the case, the plea in reasoning was that the representatives of the people, in all constitutional governments, had absolute control in money grants, and that they were sole judges as to occasions and amounts, while changing demands and exigent circumstances, and their varying ability, justified their not making any fixed appropriations in the way of salaries.
The small-pox, after having been twenty years in abeyance, renewed its dreaded visitation in 1721. Nearly six thousand persons took it in Boston, of whom nearly one thousand died in the year. Inoculation was then first introduced, against violent and enormous opposition. Cotton Mather did noble service in its defence, in spite of calumny and threats of personal violence. The General Court, on account of the infection, sat at Cam- bridge, and there was an incidental controversy on the right of the Court or the Governor to designate any other place than Boston for its session. Cotton Mather, in a private letter, described the government of the time as " a venomous crew " in "a spiteful town " and "a poisoned country." Fresh disputes arose on the declaration of war in 1722 against the Eastern Indians, on its conduct, and on the prerogative of the Court as to disburse- ments, and the calling officers to account.
Shute, having some time previously received permission to visit England, left on the opening of the year 1723, somewhat abruptly, to urge his com- plaints against our General Court. Lieut .- Governor William Dummer took the chair, which, as the event proved, he was to occupy nearly six years. Shute arrived in England fully charged with his burden of grievances against his intractable field of administration. The court for hearing and adjudication was transferred from Boston to the Chamber of the Privy Council. Our House of Representatives prepared to hold its side in the contest by reinforcing its Agents with their pleas and rejoinders, and voted
53
THE ROYAL GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS, ETC.
£100 to one of them to employ legal counsel. But the Council noncon- curred alike in the proposed complaint against Shute, the address to the king, and the fee for counsel. None the less, the Speaker of the House signed its own decrees, and the Council sent an address of its own, though it afterward consented to the employ of the Agents. The Lords of Trade and the Council seem to have given a patient and candid hearing to a state- ment of the grievances urged by Shute, such as his being constantly thwarted, principally by the influence of the country members in our House of Represen- tatives, and in their claim to adjourn themselves, to appoint Thanksgiving and Fast days, and to regulate military affairs, - all without his sanction; their refusing him a fixed and honorable salary ; their neglect to protect the king's timber, and so forth. The Agents of the Province tried all their skill to de- fend and justify their constituents, pressing their assertions and arguments not only adroitly, but with such art and casuistry as, in the opinion of some Massachusetts men at home and in England, trespassed upon truth and right.
It must be frankly admitted that if the mother country had really in right and reason any prerogative authority over us, we were not only indocile, but stiffly self-willed, refractory, and in fact rebellious. The de- cision, though rendered against those men and measures of which Shute complained, was calm and moderate, even if decisive in its terms. A pur- pose approved by the Court here on petition of the ministers - as a revival of their old sway-to hold a religious synod was withstood, while the proceedings before the Privy Council were in progress. The marvel is that the charter, which really secured us more of liberty than was then enjoyed by any of the other colonies, was not taken from us, as some of the wisest and most moderate feared it would be. A temporary truce was found in the sealing, in London, Aug. 12, 1725, of a so-called "Explanatory Charter."1 When -this was offered to the acceptance of the Province, it was - by no means, however, with unanimity - approved Jan. 15, 1726. This secured to the Governor a negative on the nomination of Speaker, and limited the term for which the House might adjourn itself to two days; but it contained no injunction for securing " fixed and honorable salaries " to His Majesty's servants here. Shute might now have returned to Boston as substantially fortified and reinforced for his unattractive administration. He had been heard to say, even with an oath, that he would see " who should be Governor of Massachusetts - he or Cooke," the Agent of the Province. While he was waiting for a man-of-war to transport him, his commission fell by the death of George I., his successor, George II., acceding to the throne, June, 1727.2 In the change in the Ministry Shute was pensioned off at £600 a year, in the enjoyment of which he reached his four-score of years.
1 [The examinations leading to this will be found in The Report of the lords of the Committee upon Governor Shute's Memorial, with his Maj- esty's Order in Council thereupon, 1725, which as reprinted in Boston was marked, " Examined by J. Willard, Secr."-ED.]
2 [The new king was not proclaimed till August. - " 14th, King George the Second pro- claimed at the Town House. The 3 regiments in arms, viz., Col. Taylor's, Phips's, Fitch's." - Jeremiah Bumstead's Diary, in N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., 1861, P. 314. - ED.]
.
54
. THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
Had there been any practicable reconciliation into a harmony of work- ing in the relations between Massachusetts and the royal authority claimed over her, it might have seemed that William Dummer, acting as Governor for nearly six years, was peculiarly suited to serve as mediator, umpire, and arbiter. A native of the province, with strong family ties and friendships binding him here, he had lived much abroad, and had become enlarged and generous in his views. He was not a strong partisan, nor did he lack a generous patriotism. As Lieut .- Governor he generally supported Shute, even at the cost of offending his nearest friends. He was on one occasion "snubbed " by the House, which, instead of anything like the usual com- pensation for like services, voted him so contemptible a "present " that he declined it. His task was found in the conduct of the war with the Eastern Indians, which he managed with vigor, in spite of his sharp conflict with the House upon the commissioning and paying of military officers. A temporary treaty was made by him with the Indians in December, 1725, and trucking-houses were established among them.
William Burnet - a son of the historian bishop, and governor of New York and New Jersey - was appointed to the chief magistracy of Massachu- setts March 7, 1728, and arrived at Boston July 13 following. His term here was a short one, - of less than fourteen months, - as he died at the Prov- ince House, Sept. 7, 1729. Brief, however, as that term was, there extended through it one bitter strife. He was welcomed with more of pomp and parade than had ever been observed in Boston on any previous occasion, and at an expense to the treasury of £1,100. There was a cavalcade, lavish fes- tivity, addresses, and a poetical rhapsody anticipating "the soaring eagle" style by the famous Mather Byles. Burnet was a true English gentleman, cultivated, courteous, affable, and social in his manners and habits, accessi- ble and acceptable to all classes. Had he been of any real use or necessity here, or had he represented any function other than that of a foreign sway, - under any form of which the people would have been restive, - he might have found this an agreeable residence. He had every quality personally for pleasing and conciliating. But "the twenty-third " of his instructions from the king, which bade him insist upon the settlement of a fixed salary of at least £1,000 upon his representative, furnished the root of bitterness. One cannot but recognize the firm loyalty, the self-respect, the dignity and persistency with which Burnet stood to his instruction, nobly rejecting, as an attempt at bribery, all the evasive ingenuity of the recusant House in offering him three times the sum as a present, while he was straitened by actual pecuniary need. And with equal recognition we must estimate the pluck and principle of the representatives of the people of Massachusetts in planting themselves then where the war of the Revolution found them, - on the position that all impositions, taxes, and disbursements of money were to be made by their own free-will, and not by dictation of king, council, or parliament.
1
55
THE ROYAL GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS, ETC.
The contest opened at once. In the Governor's first address, July 24, he imparted his "instruction " as to the matter of salary, and avowed his purpose to insist that it should be complied with. As if to avert any plea of poverty which the House might advance, he referred to the
GOVERNOR BURNET.1
parade, display, and expense which had been lavished on his own recep- tion, as evidence of the prosperity and ability of the Province. But the Court was as firm as himself. Instead of "the settlement" of a fixed salary, was that of the irrevocable purpose that no such salary should be
1 [There are portraits of Burnet belonging to the Senate Chamber at Boston. An engraving the Antiquarian Society at Worcester, and in in Drake's Boston is followed in this cut. - ED.]
56
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
allowed. The House intended only to make money grants at its own free- will, and so graduated as to signify from time to time its own feelings and appreciation of services. A grant of £1,700 was offered to him to defray his first expenses, and towards his support. In that shape he, with dignity, refused the proffer. Then the form was so far changed as to offer him £300 for the cost of his journey; but still no salary. He remonstrated, and then threatened. To firmness Burnet soon added what was called " insolence." He refused to allow the House to close its session, and to sign the pay-roll for members and expenses till his demand was complied with. Thus he subjected the Province to costs far exceeding the required amount for a salary. He warned them that their conduct would be brought to the atten- tion of Parliament, which would " look after the support of the Governor and something more," - a threat which looked to the abrogation of the charter. The House became dignifiedly wrathful, and sent a paper to the constituents in the towns vindicating its course of action. This was sus- tained by town-meetings; that in Boston deciding unanimously against the king's demand. There were a few timid and cautious persons, some of them in the Council, standing for the prerogative; and, with warnings that we might fare worse, they advised yielding. But the House - to antedate the modern use of a word - stuck. Another proffer was made to Burnet, - a grant of £3,000. It was of course refused, for this generosity of a de- fiant Court would be offset by the displeasure and rebuke of the king, as a compounding with recusancy. To free the House from the rebellious influence of Boston, he moved the Court to Salem, punning upon its peace- ful name, and upon that of Concord. But the British, neither then nor half a century later, had reason to regard those towns as aptly designated. The House protested against its removal, and voted the act illegal, but still stuck ; its constituency approving and agreeing to support it. The Governor found a graceful reason for yielding, in a resolution passed by the House to refer the issue in conflict directly to the king by an address, naming its agents and appropriating money for their payment. The Council refusing its con- currence, some Boston merchants provided the necessary sum; for which the House thanked them, promising reimbursement.
On the presenting of the address by the Agents in London, the atmos- phere there being different, the Board of Trade of course stood by the Governor and censured the House. . The Agents wrote to Boston that if the House persisted in thwarting the king's instruction, Parliament would take up the quarrel. The reply from this side was, "Better let Parliament fix the salary, than that the Province should yield its liberties by its own act," - for we had friends even in Parliament then, as afterward. A change of ministry often worked for our benefit. As Walpole's was then in peril, he wished for no added trouble about the colonies: so the House risked the venture. The excellent but courtly agent, Jeremy Dummer, wrote to the House advising complaisance to the king, and that as it was agreed on the amount of a grant it were wiser to vote it fixed for a term of years, or
57
THE ROYAL GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS, ETC.
at least through an administration; else he feared a discomfiture. The members of the House were meanwhile, in the lack of Burnet's signature, kept without their pay. In straits for his own needs he exacted an additional fee on the clearance of vessels. This, however, the Board of Trade dis- allowed: He refused to approve the choice of an attorney-general, unless he had the nomination, - a matter which was laid over for his successor. The Board of Trade next sent over an order that £1,000 should be fixed as the Governor's salary during his whole term, and the Governor tried to compel action by adjourning the House over and over, and from place to place, to harass it. The House grew warmer and more resolute at "being compelled to measures against its judgment, and driven from one part of the province to another." 1
In the midst of this harsh dissension, Governor Burnet, while driving towards Boston in his carriage from Cambridge, was overturned on the causeway, cast into the water, and so chilled as to be thrown into a fever, resulting in his death in a week after. Chagrin and excitement are supposed to have hastened that event, on Sept. 7, 1729. He was buried, with great pomp, at the public charge, at a cost of £1,100. His wife had previously died in New York. Five years after his death the General Court voted his orphan children £3,000. Lieut .- Governor Dummer again filled the chair for nearly a year. He acceded to the long-standing disputes, endeavored, in a firm but tempered way, to represent the instructions of the Crown, and would receive no grant as a substitute for a salary. As to the sturdy refusal of the House in this matter of a salary, even the Tory Chalmers 2 censures the course of the British ministry. He says that by persisting in the use of the king's name to enforce the demand for the salary, when they knew it was of no use, they nearly destroyed his - the Governor's-very inconsider- able influence. The refusal of the House to yield to the dictation was on the ground " that it would deprive the people of their rights as English- men." The English journals in the Whig interest applauded "the noble stand of this Province against the unconstitutional demands of Burnet, as endearing them to all friends of liberty."
And now came a repetition in part of a previous strange experience of Mas- sachusetts, in that, while the people had as a Governor "one of themselves," of royal instead of popular designation, he, even at the cost of proving " a turn-coat," became the champion of measures he had been commissioned to oppose. The odious Dudley had the lead in this ungrateful service in return for trust and honors. Jonathan Belcher, who now succeeded to the chair, was the grandson of Andrew, an early innkeeper in Cambridge, and a son of Andrew, a prosperous merchant in Boston and a provincial coun-
1 [The House of Representatives by an order, April 17, 1729, directed the "members for Bos- ton " to prepare a history of this contest over the Salary, from the coming of Sir William Phips; and it was printed as A Collection of the VOL. II .- 8.
Proceedings of the Great and General Court, con- taining instructions from the Crown for fixing a salary, etc. Boston, T. Fleet, in Pudding Lane, 1729, p. 112. - En ]
2 Revolt, etc., ii. 131.
58
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
cillor. The mother of Jonathan was a daughter of Deputy-Governor Dan- forth, under the Colony charter. After graduating at Harvard, and travelling much abroad, he returned to Boston as a merchant, and became a repre- sentative and councillor. Though a polished and sociable man, he was crooked, intriguing, and excitable in temper. He made himself known at first as a prerogative man, but on sudden occasion he had turned about and withstood Burnet's persistency for a fixed salary. For this cause he was employed by the House, without the concurrence of the Council, as an agent in London to advance its interest in its appeal to the king against Burnet. Being in London when the tidings of Burnet's death arrived, and availing himself of party rivalries in the Court, he contrived, by sly and adroit manœuvring, to convince the Government that he was admirably suited for the office of arbiter in the matters at issue. He was commissioned Governor of Massachusetts Jan. 8, 1730. William Tailer was restored as Lieut .- Gov- Trips ernor in place of Dummer, but, dying in 1732, was succeeded by Spencer Phips. Belcher had a son of the same name who, after graduating at Harvard in 1728, was a student at law in the Temple, and served his father in London.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.