English barrister, who had come to Boston some time before (about
1733-35) to seek his fortune. He looked about for offices in the
gift of the home government, and began soliciting them one after
another. When the Spanish war came on, he busied himself in prompting
enlistment, and took care that the authorities in England should know
it; and Mrs. Shirley, then in that country, had, to her husband’s
advantage as it turned out, the ear of the Duke of Newcastle. Shirley
was in Rhode Island acting upon the boundary question, which was then
raised between Massachusetts and her neighbor, when his commission
arrived, and he hastened to Boston to take the oath.
Shirley had some excellent qualities for political station. He
was courtly and tactful, and when at a later day he entertained
Washington he captivated the young Virginian. He was diligent in his
duties, and knew how to retreat when he had advanced unadvisedly. He
governed his temper, and was commonly wise, though he did not possess
surpassing talents.[286] In his speech to the legislature he urged
the strengthening of the defences of Boston, for the Spanish war
still raged; and he touched without greatly clarifying the financial
problem. He tried in a more civil way than his predecessor had followed
to get his salary fixed; but he could not force a vote, and a tacit
understanding arising that he should be sure annually of £1,000, he
desisted from any further attempts to solve that vexed question. A
month later, he went to Commencement at Cambridge, and delivered a
Latin speech at the proper moment, which was doubtless talked over
round the punch in the chambers, as it added one scholarly feature to
a festival then somewhat riotously kept. There was more dignity at the
Boston lecture, when Benjamin Colman preached, and when his sermon
was printed it had in an appendix the address of the Boston ministers
to the new governor, and his Excellency’s reply. Spencer Phips was
retained in the chair of the lieutenant-governor, but a new collector
of Boston came in with Sir Henry Frankland, the story of whose passion
for the maid of a Marblehead inn is one of the romances of the
provincial history of New England.[287]
Boston was now a vigorous town, and held probably for the next forty
years a larger space in the view which Europe took of the New World
than has belonged to her since. Forty topsail vessels were at this
time building in her ship-yards. She was despatching to sea twice as
many sail as New York, and Newport was far behind her. Fortunes were
relatively large, and that of John Erving, the father of Shirley’s
son-in-law, was perhaps the largest of its day. He earned a few
dollars in ferrying passengers across to Cambridge on a Commencement
Day; put them into fish for Lisbon, there into fruit for London, and
the receipts into other commodities for the return voyages, until the
round of barter, abundantly repeated, made him the rich man that he
became, and one who could give tea to his guests. The privateers of
the merchants brought royal interest on their outlay, as they captured
goods from the French and Spanish traders. Yankee wit turned sometimes
unpromising plunder to a gain. One vessel brought in “a bale of papal
indulgencies,” taken from a Spanish prize. Fleet, the printer, bought
them, and printed his ballads on their backs. Another Boston merchant,
of Huguenot stock, had given the town a public hall. This benevolent
but keen gentleman, of a limping gait, did not live long to add to the
fortune which he inherited. The first use that Faneuil Hall was put
to was when James Lovell, the schoolmaster and a writer in the local
magazines, delivered a eulogy there on this same Peter Faneuil,[288]
while the loyal Bostonians glanced from the speaker to the likeness of
George II., which had already been hung on its walls.
Shirley with the rest saw that war with France could not be far off.
There was preparation for it in the treaty with the Six Nations, which
was made at Philadelphia in July, 1742. In August Shirley himself
had treated with the eastern Indians at Fort St. George’s. The next
year (1743) the line of western settlements in Massachusetts was
strengthened by the occupation, under William Williams, of Poontoosuck,
now Pittsfield, and Williams was later instructed to establish Fort
Shirley (at Heath), Fort Pelham (at Rowe), and Fort Massachusetts (in
Adams, near the Williamstown line).
In 1744 the war came.[289] The French, getting advices from Europe
earlier, attacked Canseau before the English were aware of the hostile
decision. Though France had published her declaration in March, the
news did not reach Boston till the 2d of June. Men’s thoughts passed
from the “Great Awakening” to the stern duties of a war. “The heavenly
shower was over,” said Thomas Prince, who saw with regret what he
thought a warfare with the devil pass by; and Fleet, the wit of the
newspapers, pointed to an opportune comet, and called it “the most
profitable itinerant preacher and friendly New Light that has yet
appeared among us,” while all the pulpit orators viewed it after other
and their own fashions. Perhaps the lingering puritanism saw an omen or
a warning in the chimes just then set in the tower of Christ Church.
A lottery in full success was not heinous enough in those days, it
would seem, to be credited with all the divine rebukes that it might be
now.[290]
There was danger on the coasts. The armed sloops of Rhode Island and
Connecticut were cruising between Martha’s Vineyard and New Jersey,
and the brigantines of Massachusetts watched the coast north of Cape
Cod.[291] But the retaliatory stroke was soon to come in the expedition
against Louisbourg.
Dr. Douglass, who had grown into prominence in Boston, prophesied the
failure of a scheme which had the barest majority in the assembly,
and the chances were certainly on his side: but a desire to show what
could be done without the military aid of England aroused the country,
and not a little unworthy hatred of Romanism helped on the cause. One
parson at least was ready to take along with him a hatchet to hew down
the altars of the papist churches. A company from Plymouth, under
Sylvanus Cobb, was the earliest to reach Boston. Massachusetts mustered
3,250 men, and the transports which sailed out of Boston harbor with
this force made a fleet of a hundred sail, under convoy of nine or ten
armed vessels, the whole carrying not far from 200 cannon.
The reader must turn to another chapter for the progress of the
siege.[292] Good fortune favored this time the bold as well as the
brave. Word coming back to Boston for reinforcements, an express was
sent to Captain Williams, at Fort Shirley, and in six days he reported
in Boston with 74 men, and sailed on the 23d of June. Louisbourg,
however, had already surrendered (June 16), two days after the Rhode
Island sloop “Tartar”[293] and two other war-sloops had dispersed
the flotilla which was speeding from Annapolis to its assistance.
This was the only active force of Rhode Islanders in the campaign;
her contingent of foot, which was intended to join the Connecticut
regiment, did not reach the ground till after the surrender; but her
privateers did good service elsewhere, meanwhile, having sent into
Newport during the year a full score of prizes.
It was on a fast day, July 2d, that the news of the success reached
Boston, and spread throughout the colonies, occasioning[294] exuberant
rejoicing, which the ministers tempered as best they could with
ascribing the conquest to the finger of God, shown “more clearly,
perhaps,” as Charles Chauncy said, “than since the days of Joshua and
the Judges.” Modern historians think that Douglass was right, and that
extraordinary good luck was a chief reason of the success.
The colonies beyond the Hudson were now anxious to be partakers in the
cost and in the burden of the future defence of the captured fortress,
if they had not shared the danger and exhaustion of the victory.[295]
Pennsylvania offered £4,000, New Jersey £2,000, and New York £3,000.
* * * * *
The victorious Pepperrell returned to Boston in June, 1746. Cannon
from the batteries saluted the frigate which brought him. The governor
welcomed him at the Castle and escorted him to the landing of the town,
where the Cadets received him and led the way to the council chamber.
Here addresses and congratulations were exchanged, and the successful
general started for his home in Maine, meeting demonstrations of honor
at every town on his way.
Shirley now resolved on further conquest, and plans were being arranged
for an armament sufficient for the conquest of all New France, with
the help this time of veterans from England, when news came of the
speedy arrival of a large French fleet on the coast, with a mission
of reprisals and devastation.[296] In August a thanksgiving for the
victory at Culloden was held, and Thomas Prince spoke in the Old South
in Boston. In September there was little giving of thanks, and there
was much fear of the French admiral, D’Anville. Troops were pouring
into Boston from the country. Douglass says he saw six or seven
thousand of them on Boston Common. The defences of the harbor were
being rapidly strengthened. All the coast lookouts were reëstablished,
and shore batteries were manned. Rhode Island pushed work on her forts.
Connecticut sent promises of large reinforcements, if the attack should
fall on Boston. Every Frenchman was put under surveillance, and the
times inciting to strong language, the General Court issued orders for
greater publicity to be given to the act against profaneness. There
was a fast to supplicate for mercy. Thomas Prince in his pulpit heard
the windows of the meeting-house rattle with a rising storm. He prayed
that it might destroy the French fleet. It did. Divided counsels,
disappointments in plans, the sudden death of D’Anville, its commander,
the suicide of his lieutenant, disorganized the purpose of the enemy;
the waves and the rocks did the rest, and only a fragment of the great
armament went staggering back to France. Boston breathed easily, and
the hasty soldiers marched home to their harvests; and when news came
of the compact which George Clinton had made with the Six Nations at
Albany, in August and September, hope and courage prevailed, though
the tidings from Fort Massachusetts were distressing. Then came
other massacres, and Indians were reported prowling through northern
Hampshire. It had been intended to make a demonstration against Crown
Point in the autumn. Provisions and munitions were hurried from Boston;
Massachusetts men gathered at Albany. Winter came, disconcerting plans,
and discouragement ensued.[297]
The next year Boston had a taste of the old-world despotism to which
it had not been accustomed. Commodore Knowles, commanding a part of
the fleet which had assisted in the capture of Louisbourg, came to
Boston. Some of Knowles’ men deserted, and as enlistments did not bring
what recruits the fleet needed, the commodore sent a press-gang to
town (November 17, 1747), which seized whomever they found about the
wharves. Boston was enraged. A mob gathered, and demanded that some
of the officers of the fleet, who were in town, should be detained
as hostages. The air grew murkier, and Shirley became frightened and
fled to the Castle. The legislature tried to settle the difficulty,
and Knowles threatened to bombard the town, unless his officers were
released. The General Court denounced the riot, but signified to the
commodore the necessity of redress. Under its order, the officers
returned to the fleet, and Knowles, finding the business had become
dangerous, let most if not all of his recruits go, and set sail, but
not till the governor, gathering courage from the control over the mob
which a town meeting had seemed to acquire, had come back to town, when
he was escorted to his house by the same militia that had refused his
summons before.
It was a violent reaction for Shirley from the enthusiasm of the
Louisbourg victory, thus to experience the fickleness of what he called
the “mobbishness” of the people; and his trust in the town meeting and
the assembly was not strengthened when the representatives reduced
his allowance, on pretence of the burdens which the war had brought.
Shirley intimated that the 200,000 population of the province and a
capital with 20,000 inhabitants did not mark a people incompetent to
pay their rulers equably; but his intimations went for little. The
colony was not in very good humor. England, in making the treaty of Aix
la Chapelle (October 7, 1748), had agreed to restore Louisbourg to the
French, and leave the bounds as before the war. There were discordant
opinions among the advisers of the government touching the real value
of Louisbourg as a military post; but it was unfortunate that to
redress the balance in Europe England had to relinquish the conquests
of her colonists. It may not have been wholly without regard to the
quelling of the New England pride, which might become dangerous,—since
Sam. Adams was pluming his political rhetoric in the _Independent
Advertiser_ at this time,—that it was thought best by that treaty to
give to the province an intimation of the superior authority of the
Crown.[298] The province was not without its own power of warning,
for Hugh Orr, a young Scotchman, manufactured about this time at
Bridgewater 500 stands of arms for the province of Massachusetts Bay;
which are said to have been carried off by the British from Castle
William when they evacuated Boston in March, 1776. They are supposed to
have been the first made in America.[299]
Meanwhile, Horatio Walpole, the auditor-general, with an eye to his
own personal advantage, had brought forward a project of the Board of
Trade for overruling the charters of the colonies; but the strenuous
opposition of William Bollan and Eliakim Palmer for Massachusetts
and Connecticut made the advocates of the measure waver, and the
movement failed. Shirley was devising a plan of his own, which looked
to such an extension of the parliamentary prerogative as had not yet
been attempted. His scheme was to build and maintain a line of posts
at the eastward, the expense of which all the colonies should share
under a tax laid by Parliament.[300] In the pursuit of this plan,
Shirley obtained leave of absence, and went to England (1749), while
the conduct of affairs was left in the hands of Spencer Phips, the
lieutenant-governor, a man of experience and good intentions, but
not of signal ability. Thomas Hutchinson, James Otis, and two others
meanwhile went to Falmouth to engage the eastern Indians, who were far
from quiet, in a treaty, which was finally brought to a conclusion on
October 16, 1749. In the following winter (1749-50), Sylvanus Cobb was
in Boston fitting out his sloop for a hostile raid through the Bay of
Fundy; but Cornwallis at Halifax thought the preparations for it had
become known to the French, and the raid was not accomplished.
The next year (1750), Parliament touched the provinces roughly. The
English tanners wished for bark, and they could get it cheap if the
English land-owners could sell their wood to the furnaces, and the
furnaces would buy it if they could find a sufficient market for their
iron and steel, as they could do if they had no rivals in America.
It was a chain of possibilities that Parliament undertook to make
realities, and so passed an act forbidding the running of slitting and
rolling mills in the colonies, and Charles Townshend, who introduced
the bill, found no opposer in Shirley. The bold utterances that
Jonathan Mayhew was making in indignant Boston carried a meaning that
did not warn, as it might, the Board of Trade in England.
Shirley, after four years’ absence, during which he had been employed
in an unsuccessful mission to Paris about the Acadian boundaries, came
back to Boston in 1753, to be kindly received, but to feel in bringing
with him a young Catholic wife, whom he had married in Paris, the
daughter of his landlord, that he gave her the position of the first
lady in the province not without environing himself and her with great
embarrassment, in a community which, though it had departed widely from
the puritanism of the fathers, was still intolerant of much that makes
man urbane and merry. While Shirley had been gone, the good town had
been much exercised over an attempt to introduce the drama, and the
performance of Otway’s _Orphan_ at a coffee-house in King Street had
stirred the legislature to pass a law against stage plays. The journals
of Goelet[301] and others give us some glimpses of life, however, far
from prudish, and show that human nature was not altogether suppressed,
nor all of the good people quite as stiff as Blackburn was now painting
them.
Notwithstanding his hymeneal entanglement, Shirley was unquestionably
the most powerful Englishman at this time in America. The fortuitous
success of his Louisbourg expedition had given him a factitious
military reputation.[302] A test of it seemed imminent. For the sixth
time in eighty years the frontiers were now ravaged by the savages.
Pepperrell was sent to pacify the eastern Indians. The French were
stretching a cordon of posts from the Atlantic to the gulf which
alarmed Shirley, and he doubted if anything was safe to the eastward
beyond the Merrimac, unless the French could be pushed back from Nova
Scotia. He feared New Hampshire would be lost, and with it the supply
of masts for the royal navy. A road had been cut along the Westfield
River through Poontoosuck (Pittsfield) to Albany, and Shirley planned
defences among the Berkshire Hills.
At this juncture a conference of the colonies was called at Albany in
1754, which had been commanded through the governor of New York by the
Board of Trade. The reader will find its history traced on a later
page. Hutchinson in July brought back to Boston a draft of the plan of
action. In the autumn the legislature was considering the question,
while Franklin was in Boston (October-December) conferring with
Shirley and discussing plans. Boston held a town meeting and denounced
the Albany plan, and in December (14th) the legislature definitely
rejected it, as all the other colonies in due time did. Rhode Island,
particularly, was very vigilant, lest an attempt might be made to
abridge her charter-privileges. Connecticut established its first press
in this very year, which with the press of the other colonies, was
lukewarm or hostile to the plan.[303]
Shirley had not attended the congress. He had left Boston in June
(1754) on the province frigate “Massachusetts,” with the forces under
John Winslow to build a fort on the Kennebec, which was completed on
the 3d of September and called Fort Halifax. On his way he stopped
at Falmouth, and on the 28th of June he had a conference with the
Norridgewock Indians, and on July 5th another with the Penobscots.
Accompanied by some young Indians who were entrusted to the English
for education, the governor was once more in Boston on the 9th of
September, where he was received with due honor.
This expedition and the congress were but the prelude to eventful
years. When Henry Pelham died, on the 6th of March of this year, his
king, in remembrance of the wise and peaceful policy of his minister,
exclaimed, “Now I shall have no more peace!” For the struggle which was
impending, New England had grown in strength and preparation, and had
had much inuring to the trials of predatory warfare. She had increased
about sixfold in population, while New York and Virginia had increased
fivefold. The newer colonies of Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey,
and Maryland had fairly outstripped these older ones, and numbered now
nine times as large a population as they had sixty-five years earlier.
The Carolinas and Georgia had increased in a ratio far more rapid.
Massachusetts at this time probably had 45,000 on its alarm list, and
in train-bands over 30,000 stood ready for the call.[304] John Adams,
when teaching a school in Worcester the next year, ventured to write to
a friend, “If we can remove the turbulent Gallicks, our people will in
another century become more numerous than England itself.”
In the spring of 1755 Shirley went to Alexandria, in Virginia, being
on the way from March 30 till April 12, to meet the other governors,
and to confer with General Braddock upon the organization of that
general’s disastrous campaign. When the news of its fatal ending
reached New England it gave new fervor to the attempts, in which she
was participating, of attacking the French on the Canada side,[305]
and the war seemed brought nearer home to her people when, by the
death of Braddock, the supreme command devolved on the Massachusetts
governor.[306] On the 6th of November, at Thomas Hutchinson’s
instigation and in expression of their good-will at Shirley’s
promotion, the General Court passed a vote of congratulation.
The autumn had been one of excitement in Boston.[307] The forces of
nature were conspiring to add to the wonderment of the hour. A part of
the same series of convulsions which overturned Lisbon on November 1st
and buried Sir Henry Frankland in the ruins, to be extricated by that
Agnes Surriage whose romantic story has already been referred to, had
been experienced in New England at four o’clock in the morning of the
18th of the same month, with a foreboding of a greater danger; but the
commotion failed in the end to do great damage to its principal town,
then esteemed, if we may believe the _Gentleman’s Magazine_, finer than
any town in England excepting London. People looked to the leading man
of science in New England of that time for some exposition of this
mighty power, and Prof. John Winthrop gave at Cambridge his famous
lecture on earthquakes, which was shortly printed.[308] The electrical
forces of nature had not long before revealed themselves to Franklin
with his kite, and it was in November or December that the news was
exciting comment in Boston, turning men’s thoughts from the weariness
of the war.
That war had not prospered under Shirley, and with a suspicion that
he had been pushed beyond his military capacity he was recalled to
England, ostensibly to give advice on its further conduct. He had
found that Massachusetts could not be led to tax herself directly for
the money which he needed, and only pledged herself to reimburse, if
required, the king’s military chest for £35,000, which Shirley drew
from it. A scale of bounties had failed to induce much activity in
enlistments, and the forces necessary for the coming campaign were
gathering but slowly.[309] This was the condition of affairs when
Shirley left for England, carrying with him the consoling commendations
of the General Court.
Spencer Phips, the lieutenant-governor, succeeded to the executive
chair in Massachusetts at a time when even Boston was not felt to
be secure, so fortunate or skilful were the weaker French in a
purpose that was not imperilled by the jealousies which misguided
the stronger English. It was now problematical if Loudon, the new
commander-in-chief, was to bring better auguries. In January of the
next year (1757), he came to Boston to confer with the New England
governors. The New England colonies now agreed to raise 4,000 new
troops. Meanwhile Phips had died in April (4th) in the midst of the
war preparations, and Pepperrell, as president of the council, next
directed affairs till Thomas Pownall,[310] who had been commissioned
governor, and who had reached Halifax on the fleet which brought
Lord Howe’s troops, arrived in Boston, August 3d, on the very day
when Montcalm on Lake George was laying siege to Fort William Henry,
which in a few days surrendered. The news did not reach Pownall till
he had pushed forward troops to Springfield on their way to relieve
the fort. He put Pepperrell at once in command of the militia,[311]
and a large body of armed men gathered under him on the line of the
Connecticut;[312] for there was ignorance at the time of Montcalm’s
inability to advance because of desertions, and of the weakening of
his force by reason of the details he had made to guard and transport
the captured stores. Messengers were hurried to the other colonies to
arouse them. John Adams, then a young man teaching in Worcester, kept
from the pulpit by reason of his disbelief in Calvinism, stirred by
the times, with the hope some day of commanding a troop of horse or
a company of foot, was one of these messengers sent to Rhode Island,
and he tells us how struck he was with the gayety and social aspect
of Sunday in that colony, compared with the staid routine which
characterized the day in Massachusetts.[313]
Massachusetts had enrolled 7,000 men for the campaign. Connecticut had
put 5,000 in the field, and Rhode Island and New Hampshire a regiment
each. Massachusetts had further maintained a guard of 600 men along her
frontiers. The cost of all these preparations necessitated a tax of
half the income of personal and landed property.
In a commercial sense almost crushed,[314] in a political sense the
people were as buoyant as ever. When Loudon sent orders to quarter a
regiment of the British troops on the people, the legislature forbade
it, and grew defiant, and nothing could pacify them but the withdrawal
of the order. The commander-in-chief, however he stormed in New York,
found it expedient to yield when he learned of the fury his order was
exciting in a colony upon whose vigor the home government was largely
depending for the successful prosecution of the war. This had now
fallen into the hands of Pitt, and he at once recalled Loudon, who
chanced to be in Boston, parleying with the legislature about raising
troops, when an express brought him his recall. Abercrombie, who
succeeded, was even a worse failure; but there was a burst of light at
the eastward. Amherst had captured Louisbourg in July (1758),[315] and
bringing his troops by water to Boston had landed them on September
13. Never was there so brilliant array of war seen in the harbor
as the war-ships presented, or on Boston Common where the troops
were encamped. Amherst delayed but three days for rest, when on the
16th of September he began his march westward to join the humbled
Abercrombie. At Worcester the troops halted, and John Adams tells us
of the “excellent order and discipline” which they presented, and of
the picturesqueness of the Scotch in their plaids, as this army of four
thousand men filled his ardent gaze.
During the winter recruiting was going on in Boston with success for
the fleet wintering at Louisbourg.[316] In the campaign of the next
year (1759), Massachusetts and Connecticut put at least a sixth of all
their males able to bear arms into the field. They were in part in the
army which Amherst led by way of Lake Champlain to the St. Lawrence,
and among them were some of the veterans which Pepperrell had command
in 1745 at Louisbourg,—Pepperrell who was to die during the progress
of the campaign, on the 6th of July, at Kittery in his sixty-fourth
year. Another portion went with Pownall to the Penobscot region, or
followed him there, and assisted in the building of Fort Pownall, which
was completed in July (1759).[317] The reader must turn to another
chapter[318] for the brilliant success of Wolfe at Quebec, which
virtually ended the war.
George the Second hardly heard of the victories which crowned his
minister’s policy. He died October 25, 1760, but the news of his death
did not reach Boston till December 27th. He had already effected a
change in the government of Massachusetts. Pownall, who had made
interest with the Board of Trade to be transferred to the executive
chair of South Carolina, left Boston in June, taking with him the
good wishes of a people whom he had governed more liberally and
considerately than any other of the royal governors.[319] Two months
later (August 2, 1760), Francis Bernard, who had been governor of New
Jersey,[320] reached Boston as his successor. He showed some want of
tact in his first speech, in emphasizing the advantages of subjection
to the home government, and gave the House opportunity to rejoin
that but for the sacrifice in blood and expense which these grateful
colonies had experienced, Great Britain might now have had no colonies
to defend. Notwithstanding so untoward a beginning, Bernard seems to
have thought well of the people, and reported fair phrases of encomium
to the Lords of Trade.[321]
A few weeks after Bernard’s arrival Stephen Sewall, the chief
justice, died (September 11, 1760). Thomas Hutchinson was now the
most conspicuous man in New England, and he had put all New England
under obligations by his strenuous and successful efforts to better
their monetary condition. A train of events followed, which might
possibly have been averted, if, instead of appointing Hutchinson to
the chief-justiceship, as he did, Bernard had raised one of the other
justices, and filled the vacancy with Col. James Otis, then Speaker of
the House, father of the better known patriot of that name, and whose
appointment had been contemplated, it is said, by Shirley. Hutchinson
was already lieutenant-governor, succeeding Spencer Phips, and was soon
to be judge of probate also for Suffolk,—a commingling of official
power that could but incite remark.
The younger Otis was soon to become conspicuous, in a way that might
impress even Bernard. There were certain moneys forfeited to the king
for the colony’s use, arising from convictions for smuggling under the
Sugar Act; the province had never applied for them, and had neglected
its opportunities in that respect. The House instructed Otis to sue the
custom-house officers. The superior bench under the lead of Hutchinson
decided against the province, and it did not pass without suspicion
that Bernard had placed Hutchinson on that bench to secure this verdict.
An event still more powerful in inciting discontent was approaching.
Charles Paxton, who had been surveyor of Boston since 1752,
had, in his seeking for smuggled goods, used general search
warrants,—unreturnable, known as “writs of assistance,” and of course
liable to great abuse. It seems probable that this process had been so
far sparingly used, and there had been no manifest discontent. Upon
the king’s death, the existing writs had only a six months’ later
continuance, when new applications must be made under the new reign.
These new applications came at a time when the public mind was much
exercised, and there was a determination to question the legality of
such unrestrained power as the writs implied. The hearing was to be
before the court of which Hutchinson was now the chief. Jeremy Gridley
appeared for the king, and the younger Otis with Oxenbridge Thacher
for the petitioners. The court deferred its decision, but in November,
1761, the case was again discussed. The court meanwhile had had advices
from England, and the writs were sustained. In the discontent growing
out of this proceeding, we may find the immediate beginning of the
controversy between the provinces and the Crown, which resulted in
the American Revolution. The subsidence of the war left men time to
think deeply of these intestine griefs, and when the Peace of Paris in
February, 1763, finally dissipated the danger of arms, events had gone
far to shape themselves for bringing another renewal of battle, not
with the French, but with the mother country.
CRITICAL ESSAY ON THE SOURCES OF INFORMATION.
NEW ENGLAND IN GENERAL.—Of Cotton Mather’s _Magnalia Christi
Americana, or the Ecclesiastical History of New England from 1620
to 1698_, mention has been made in another volume,[322] and, as the
title shows, it touches only the few earlier years of the period now
under consideration. The book was published in London in 1702, and
a solitary forerunner of the edition reached Boston, as we know,
October 29 of the same year. It was the most considerable work which
had been produced in the British colonies, and was in large part an
unshapely conglomerate of previous tracts and treatises. Neal, Mather’s
successor in the field, while praising his diligence in amassing the
material of history, expressed the opinion of all who would divest
scholarship of meretriciousness when he criticised its “puns and
jingles,”[323] and said, “Had the doctor put his materials a little
closer together, and disposed them in another method, his work would
have been more acceptable.”[324] But Mather without Matherism would
lose in his peculiar literary flavor; we laugh and despise, while his
books nevertheless find a chief place on the shelves of our New England
library. Mather was still young when the _Magnalia_ was printed, but
he stood by his methods and manner a quarter of a century later, and
in publishing (1726) his _Manuductio ad Ministerium_[325] he defended
his labored and bedizened style against, as he says, the blades of
the clubs and coffee-houses, who set up for critics. He also belabored
Oldmixon in a similar fashion, when that compiler both borrowed the
doctor’s labors and berated his reputation, and Mather called him, in
his inveterate manner, Old Nick’s son.[326] Sibley not unfairly remarks
that these peculiarities of Mather’s style were probably almost as
absurd to his contemporaries as to ourselves;[327] and very likely it
helped to create something of that curiosity respecting him, which
Prince tells us he found in Europe at a later day.
In any estimate of Cotton Mather we may pass by the eulogy of his
colleague Joshua Gee,[328] and the _Life of Cotton Mather_[329] by
his son Samuel, as the efforts of a predisposing and uncritical
friendliness. We are not quite sure how far removed from the fulsome
flattery, if not insincerity, of funeral sermons in those days was the
good word upon his contemporary which came from Benjamin Colman.
With the coming of the present century we might suppose the last
personal resentment of those who knew Cotton Mather had gone, and as
an historical character it might well be claimed that a dispassionate
judgment was due to him. When James Savage edited Winthrop’s journal,
the public were told how Cotton Mather should be contemned; and the
tale was not untruthful, but it was one-sided. Quincy in his _History
of Harvard University_ could give no very laudatory estimate of the
chronic and envious grumbler against the college.[330] When Dr.
Chandler Robbins wrote the _History of the Second Church_ of Boston, he
said all he could, and in a kindly spirit, to qualify the derogatory
estimate then prevalent respecting his predecessor; and W. B. O.
Peabody in his _Life of Cotton Mather_[331] tempered his judgment
by saying, “There is danger lest in our disgust at his fanaticism
and occasional folly we should deny him the credit which he actually
deserves.” His professed defenders, too, lighten their approval with
pointing out his defects. Thus does Samuel G. Drake in a rather feeble
memoir in the _N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg._ (vol. vi.), and in the
1855 edition of the _Magnalia_. Dr. A. H. Quint in the _Congregational
Quarterly_, 1859, and Dr. Henry M. Dexter in the _Memorial Hist. of
Boston_, vol. ii., incline to the eulogistic side, but with some
reservations. Mr. Samuel F. Haven in the _Report of the Amer. Antiq.
Soc._, April, 1874, turned away the current of defamation which every
revival of the Salem witchcraft question seems to guide against the
young minister of that day. The estimates of Moses Coit Tyler in his
_Hist. of Amer. Literature_ (vol. ii.), and John Langdon Sibley in his
_Harvard Graduates_ (vol. iii.), show that the disgust, so sweeping
fifty years ago, is still recognized amid all efforts to judge Mather
lightly.[332] Mankind is tender in its judgment of the average man,
when a difference of times exists. The historical sense, however, is
rigid in its scrutiny of those who posture as index-fingers to their
contemporaries; and it holds such men accountable to the judgments of
all time. Great men separate the perennial and sweet in the traits of
their epoch from the temporary and base,—a function Cotton Mather had
no conception of.
* * * * *
The next general account of the New England colonies after the
_Magnalia_, and covering the first thirty years of the present period,
was Daniel Neal’s _History of New-England containing an account of the
civil and ecclesiastical affairs of the country to 1700_. _With a map,
and an appendix containing their present charter, their ecclesiastical
discipline, and their municipal-laws_. In 2 vols. (London. 1720.)[333]
Dr. Watts, writing to Cotton Mather, Feb., 1719-20, of Neal’s history,
said that he had hoped to find it “an abstract of the lives and
spiritual experiences of those great and good souls that planted and
promoted the gospel among you, and those most remarkable providences,
deliverances, and answers to prayers that are recorded in your
_Magnalia Christi_, but I am disappointed of my expectations; for he
has written with a different view, and has taken merely the task of an
historian upon him.” Watts took Neal to task personally for his freedom
about the early persecution; but Neal only answered that the fidelity
of an historian required it of him.[334] Neal himself in his preface
(p. iv.) acknowledges his freedom in treating of the mistakes into
which the government fell.
Prince in the preface to his _Chronological History of New England_
says: “In 1720 came out Mr. Neal’s History of New England.... He has
fallen into many mistakes of facts which are commonly known among us,
some of which he seems to derive from Mr. Oldmixon’s account of New
England in his British Empire in America, and which mistakes[335]
are no doubt the reason why Mr. Neal’s history is not more generally
read among us; yet, considering the materials this worthy writer was
confined to, and that he was never here, it seems to me scarce possible
that any under his disadvantages should form a better. In comparing him
with the authors from whence he draws, I am surprised to see the pains
he has taken to put the materials into such a regular order; and to me
it seems as if many parts of his work cannot be mended.”
* * * * *
Rogers and Fowle, printers in Boston, who were publishing a new
magazine, begun in 1743, called _The American Magazine_, announced
that they would print in it by instalment a new history of the English
colonies. They changed the plan subsequently so as to issue the book
in larger type, in quarterly numbers, and in this form there appeared
in January, 1747, the first number, with a temporary title, which
read: _A summary, historical and political, of the first planting,
progressive improvements and present state of the British settlements
in North America; with some transient accounts of the bordering French
and Spanish settlements. By W. D., M. D., No. 1. To be continued_.
Boston, 1747.[336] The author soon became known as Dr. William
Douglass, the Scotch physician living in Boston,—“honest and downright
Dr. Douglass,” as Adam Smith later chose to call him. He had drawn
(pp. 235-38), in contrast to Admiral Warren, a severe character of
Admiral Knowles, whose conduct, which occasioned the impressment riot
then recent, was fresh in memory. Knowles seems to have instituted
a suit for libel, which led to a rather strained amend by Douglass
in the preface to the first volume, when the numbers were collected
in 1749, and were issued with a title much the same as before, _A
Summary, historical and political, of the first planting,_ etc.,
_containing_—here follow five heads.[337] The character which he had
given of Knowles, he says, was written out of passionate warmth and
indiscretion, merely “in affection to Boston and the country of New
England, his _altera patria_,” and then adds that he has suppressed
it in the completed volume.[338] The second volume is dated 1751, and
Douglass died in 1752.[339]
To his second volume (1751) he adds what he calls “a supplement to
the first volume and introduction to the second volume,” in which he
hints at the offence he had given Shirley and Knowles—the latter’s
suit for libel forcing him to recant, as we have seen—by saying,
“If facts related in truth offend any governor, commodore, or other
great officer,” the author “will not renounce impartiality and become
sycophant.” He further charges upon “the great man of the province
for the time being,” as he calls Shirley, the “impeding, or rather
defeating, this public-spirited, laborious undertaking,” as he
characterizes his own book.
A large part of the work is given to New England, which he knew best;
but his knowledge was at all times subservient to his prejudices, which
were rarely weak. He is often amusing in his self-sufficiency, and
not unentertaining; but he who consults the book is puzzled with his
digressions and with his disorderly arrangement, and there is no index
to relieve him.[340] Hutchinson struck the estimate which has not since
been disputed: it was his “foible to speak well or ill of men very much
as he had a personal friendship for them, or had a personal difference
with them.”[341] Prof. Tyler in his _Hist. of American Literature_[342]
has drawn his character more elaborately than others.[343] His book,
while containing much that is useful to the student, remains a source
of uncertainty in respect to all statements not elsewhere confirmed,
and yet of his predecessors on New England history Douglass has
the boldness to say that they are “beyond all excuse intolerably
erroneous.”[344]
A wider interest than that of ecclesiastical record attaches to a book
which all students of New England history have united in thinking
valuable. This is the work of Isaac Backus, a Baptist minister in
Middleborough, Mass., who published at Boston in 1777 a first volume,
which was called _A History of New England, with particular reference
to the denomination of Christians called Baptists_.[345] This volume
brought the story down to 1690 only, but an appendix summarized
subsequent history down to the date of the book. In the second volume,
which appeared at Providence in 1784, the title was changed to _A
Church History of New England, vol. ii., extending from 1690 to 1784_.
The same title was preserved in the third volume, which was published
in Boston in 1796, bringing the narrative down to that date. In the
preface to this volume the author complained of the many typographical
errors in the first volume, and professed that though there had been
private dislikes of the work by some “because their own schemes of
power and gain were exposed thereby,” he knew not of any public dispute
about “its truth of facts.” The whole work has been reprinted under the
title of the original first volume, with notes by David Weston, and
published in two volumes by the Backus Historical Society at Newton,
Mass., in 1871.[346]
Miss Hannah Adams published at Dedham, Mass., in 1799, a single
volume, _Summary History of New England_. She does not profess to have
done more than abridge the usual printed sources, as they were then
understood, and to have made some use of MS. material, particularly
respecting the history of Rhode Island.
[Illustration: HANNAH ADAMS.
This follows an oil portrait by Alexander in the cabinet of the
American Antiquarian Society at Worcester. Hannah Adams was born at
Medfield, in 1755, and died at Brookline, Mass., Nov. 15, 1831; and she
was the first person interred at Mount Auburn.]
It is the fourth and last published volume of Dr. Palfrey’s _History
of New England_ (Boston, 1875) which comes within the period of the
present chapter, bringing the story, however, down only to 1741, but
a continuation is promised from a MS. left by the author, and edited
by General F. W. Palfrey, his son, which will complete the historian’s
plan by continuing the narrative to the opening of the war of
independence. This fourth volume is amply fortified with references and
notes, in excess of the limitations which governed the earlier ones.
The author says in his preface that he may be thought in this respect
“to have gone excessively into details, and I cannot dispute [he adds]
the justness of the criticism; such at present is the uncontrollable
tendency of my mind.”
[Illustration: JOHN GORHAM PALFREY.
The editor is indebted to Gen. F. W. Palfrey for the excellent
photograph after which this engraving is made.]
In 1866 Dr. Palfrey published a popular abridgment of his first three
volumes in two smaller ones. These were reissued in August, 1872, with
a third, and in 1873 with a fourth, which completed the abridgment of
his larger work, and carried the story from the accession of Shirley
to power down to the opening of the military history of the American
Revolution. In this admirably concise form, reissued in 1884, with
a thorough index, the work of the chief historian of New England is
known as _A compendious History of New England from the Discovery
by Europeans to the first general Congress of the Anglo-American
Colonies_,—the last summarized chapter in the work not being
recognized in the title.[347]
MASSACHUSETTS.—For this as well as for the period embraced in the
third volume of the present history,[348] Thomas Hutchinson’s _History
of Massachusetts Bay_ is of the highest importance. Hutchinson says
that he was impelled to write the history of the colony from observing
the repeated destruction of ancient records in Boston by fire, and
he complains that the descendants of some of the first settlers will
neither use themselves nor let others use the papers which have
descended to them. He seems, however, to have had the use of the papers
of the elder Elisha Cooke. He acknowledges the service which the Mather
library, begun by Increase Mather, and in Hutchinson’s time owned by
Samuel Mather, who had married Hutchinson’s sister, was to him.
While Hutchinson’s continuation of the story beyond 1749 was as yet
unknown, George Richards Minot planned to take up the narrative and
carry it on. Minot’s _Continuation of the History of the Province of
Massachusetts Bay from 1748_ shows that he made use of the files in
the state house as well as their condition then permitted, but he
was conscious of the assistance which he might have had, and did not
possess, from the papers in the English archives. His first volume was
printed in 1798; and he died before his second volume was published,
in 1803, which had brought the record down to 1765, but stopped
abruptly.[349] Grahame (iii. 446) calls the work “creditable to the
sense and talent of its author,” but considers “his style frequently
careless, and even slovenly and ungrammatical.” His contemporaries
viewed his literary manner much more favorably, and were inclined
to give him a considerable share in placing our native historical
literature upon a scholarly basis. More painstaking research, with
a careful recording of authorities, characterizes the only other
_History of Massachusetts_ of importance, that by John S. Barry, whose
second volume is given to the period now under consideration,—a work,
however, destitute of commensurate literary skill, or its abundant
learning would give it greater reputation. Haliburton, in chapters 2
and 3 of book iii. of _The Rule and Misrule of the English in America_,
traces in a summary way the turbulent politics of the province of
Massachusetts during its long struggle against the royal prerogative.
Emory Washburn’s _Sketches of the judicial history of Massachusetts
from 1630 to the revolution in 1775_, Boston, 1840, contains
biographical notices of the judges of Massachusetts, and traces the
relations of the study of the law to the progress of political events.
William Henry Whitmore’s _Massachusetts civil list for the colonial
and provincial records, 1630-1774_, Albany, 1870, is a list of the
names and dates of appointment of all the civil officers constituted
by authority of the charters or the local government. The general
histories of Maine (during this period a part of Massachusetts) have
been sufficiently characterized in another place.[350]
CONNECTICUT.—The _History of Connecticut_, by Benjamin Trumbull,
becomes not of less value as it approaches his own time. Grahame (ii.
165) says of him that he is “always distinguished by the accuracy of
his statements, but not less distinguished by his partiality for his
own people,” and Palfrey (iv. 226) avers that with all “his gravity
Trumbull had a tendency for sensational traditions,” and both are
right. He had not brought the story down later than 1713, in the volume
published at Hartford in 1797. He says that he availed himself of the
material which the ancient ministers and other principal gentlemen of
Connecticut had communicated to Thomas Prince, when that writer was
engaged upon his _Chronological Hist. of New England_; and in this
collection, he adds, “important information was found, which could
have been obtained from no other source.” Trumbull’s first volume was
reprinted at New Haven in 1818, with a portrait of the author, together
with a second volume, bringing the story down to 1764.
RHODE ISLAND.—Of Rhode Island in the present period, Arnold’s
_History_ is the foremost modern authority.[351] Mr. William E. Foster
has recently prepared, as no. 9 of the _Rhode Island Historical Tracts_
(1884), a careful and well-annotated study of the political history of
the eighteenth century, in a _Memoir of Stephen Hopkins_.
NEW HAMPSHIRE.—Dr. Belknap, as the principal historian of New
Hampshire, has been characterized in another place.[352] The
bibliography of his history may find record here. The first volume,
_The History of New Hampshire, vol. i., comprehending ... one complete
century from the discovery of the Pascataqua_, was read through the
press in Philadelphia (1784) by Ebenezer Hazard.[353] This volume was
reprinted at Boston in 1792, where meanwhile vol. ii. (1715-1790) had
appeared in 1781, and vol. iii., embracing a geographical description,
was issued in 1792. The imprints of these volumes vary somewhat.[354]
There was printed at Dover, N. H., in 1812 (some copies have “Boston,
1813”) a second edition in three volumes, “with large additions and
improvements published from the author’s last manuscript;” but this
assertion is not borne out by the book itself.[355] A copy of his
original edition having such amendments by Belknap had been used in
1810, at Dover, in printing an edition which was never completed, as
the copy and what had been done in type were burned. Before parting
with this corrected copy, the representatives of Dr. Belknap had
transferred his memoranda to another copy, and this last copy is
the one referred to in the edition which was printed by John Farmer
at Dover in 1831, called _The History of New Hampshire by Jeremy
Belknap, from a copy of the original edition having the author’s last
corrections, to which are added notes containing various corrections
and illustrations. By John Farmer._[356] This is called vol. i.,
and contains the historical narrative, but does not include the
geographical portion (vol. iii. of the original ed.), which Farmer
never added to the publication.[357] Belknap says that he had been
educated under the influence of Thomas Prince, and that he had used
Prince’s library before it had been despoiled during the Revolution. Of
Hutchinson—and Belknap was in early manhood before Hutchinson left New
England—he says that while that historian writes many things regarding
New Hampshire which Neal and Douglass have omitted, he himself omits
others, which he did not think it proper to relate. He refers to Mr.
Fitch, of Portsmouth, as having begun to collect notes on New Hampshire
history as early as 1728, and says that he had found in Fitch’s papers
some things not elsewhere obtainable. He also animadverts on errors
into which Chalmers had fallen in his _Political Annals of the American
Colonies_.
[Illustration]
EDITORIAL NOTES.
=A.= THE DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF NEW ENGLAND.—After the lapsing of
the New England Confederacy consequent upon the charter of William
and Mary, the governments which made up that group of colonies had
no collective archives. It is only as we search the archives of the
English Public Record Office, and those of Paris and Canada, including
Nova Scotia, that we find those governments treated collectively. The
_Reports_ of the English Historical Manuscripts Commission have of late
years not only thrown additional light on our colonial history, as
papers touching it preserved in the muniment rooms of leading families
have been calendared, but the commission’s labors have also been the
incentive by which the public depositary of records has been enriched
by the transfer of many papers, which the commission has examined.
Nine of their voluminous reports (up to 1885) have been printed, and
by their indexes clues have been provided to the documents about New
England history. The _Shelburne Papers_, belonging to the Marquis of
Lansdowne, which make a large part of the _Fifth Report_, while of
most interest in connection with the American Revolution, reveal not
a little concerning the colonial history of the earlier part of the
seventeenth century. The volumes enumerated in this _Report_, which
are marked xlv. (1705-1724) and xlvi. (1686-1766), are of particular
interest, referring entirely to the American colonies. We find here
various papers of the Board of Trade and Plantations (or copies of
them), embracing the replies from the provincial governors to their
inquiries. In the volume numbered lxi., there are sundry reports of the
attorney and solicitor-general, to whom had been referred the appeals
of Massachusetts in 1699, and of Connecticut in 1701; his report of
1705 respecting Jesuits and papists in the plantations; that of 1707 on
the acts of Massachusetts fining those trading with the French; that
of 1710 on the reservation of trees in Massachusetts for masts of the
royal navy; that of 1716 on the claim of the governor of Massachusetts
to command the militia of Rhode Island; that of 1720 on the negative
of the governor reserved in the charter of Massachusetts; that of
1722 on the question of the time when the three years that a province
law is open to disapproval properly begins; that of 1725 on the
encroachments of the House of Representatives on the prerogative of the
Crown; that of 1732 relating to the validity of acts in Rhode Island,
notwithstanding the governor’s dissent,—not to name many others.
Another source of documentary help is the manuscripts of the British
Museum, of which there are printed catalogues; and the enumeration of
the documents in the possession of the Canadian government,—of which
the quality can be judged, as they existed in 1858,—in the _Catalogue
of the Library of Parliament_, Toronto, 1858, pp. 1541-1655.
* * * * *
The archives of Massachusetts are probably not surpassed in richness by
those of any other of the English colonies. The solicitude which the
colonial and provincial government always felt for their preservation
is set forth by Dr. George H. Moore in appendix v. of his _Final
notes on Witchcraft_ (New York, 1885). In 1821, Alden Bradford, then
secretary of the commonwealth, made a printed statement of “the
public records and documents belonging to the commonwealth” (pp.
19), but the fullest enumeration of them was included in a _Report
to the Legislature of Massachusetts, made by the Commissioners ...
upon the condition of the records, files, papers, and documents in
the Secretary’s department, Jan., 1885_ (pp. 42), drawn up by the
present writer. An indication of such of them as concern the period
of the present volume may be desirable.[358] The series of bound
volumes, arranged in 1836-46, by the Rev. Joseph B. Felt, according
to a classification which was neither judicious nor uniform, but, as
Dr. Palfrey says, betrays “ingenious disorder,”[359] includes not all,
but the chief part of the papers illustrative of legislation in the
secretary’s office which concern us in the present chapter and make
part of one hundred and thirty-one volumes. These come in sequence
through vol. 136,—the omitted volumes being no. 107 (the revolution
of 1689) and nos. 126 to 129 (the usurpation of the Andros period).
The other volumes as a rule begin in the colonial period and come down
to about the beginning of the Revolutionary War. They are enumerated
with their topical characteristics in the _Report_ already referred to
(pp. 8, 9). Four volumes of ancient plans, grants, etc. (1643-1783),
accompany the series.
Of the so-called _French Archives_—documents copied in France—mention
has been elsewhere made, and a considerable portion of them cover the
period now under examination.[360]
The destruction of the town and court house in 1747 carried with it
the loss of many of the original records of the colony and province.
The government had already undertaken a transcript of the records of
the General Court, which had been completed down to 1737; and this
copy, being at the house of Secretary Josiah Willard, was saved. A
third copy was made from this, and it is this duplicate character which
attaches to the records as we now have them. Transcripts of these
records under the charter of William and Mary had by its provisions
been sent to the Lords of Trade, session by session, and orders were
at once given to secure these from 1737 to 1746, or a copy of them,
for the province archives. For some reason this was not accomplished
till 1845, when a commissioner was sent to England for that purpose;
and these years (1737-1746) are thus preserved. None of these records
for the provincial period have been printed.[361] The records of the
upper branch or the council were also burned,[362] and were in a
similar way restored from England. Of the House of Representatives, or
lower branch, we have no legislative records before 1714, nor of the
legislative action of either branch have we any complete record before
1714, since neither the journals of the House nor the legislative part
of the records of the council were sent over to England, but only the
executive part of the latter, which was apparently made up in view
of such transmission, as Moore represents. The preservation of the
journals of the House is due to the jealousy which that body felt of
Dudley when he prorogued them in 1715. Because of their inaction on
the paper-money question, the House, in a moment of indignation, and
to show that they had done something, if not what the governor liked,
voted to have their daily records printed. The set of these printed
journals in the possession of the State is defective.[363] There is
not known to be a perfect set of them in any collection, perhaps not
in all the collections in the state, says Judge Chamberlain,[364] who
adds: “Of their value for historical purposes I have formed a very high
opinion. In many respects they are of more value than the journals of
the General Court, which show results; while the journals of the House
disclose the temper of the popular branch, and give the history of
many abortive projects which never reached the journals of the General
Court.”[365] Of a series of copies called charters, commissions, and
proclamations, the second volume (1677-1774) concerns the present
inquiry. There is a file of bound letters beginning in 1701, and it
would seem they are copies in some, perhaps many, cases of originals in
the archives as arranged by Mr. Felt.
Respecting the French and Indian wars, nine volumes of the so-called
_Massachusetts Archives_ cover muster-rolls from 1710 to 1774,
including the regiments of Sir Chas. Hobby and others (1710), the
frontier garrisons, those of Annapolis Royal (1710-11), the expedition
to the West Indies (1740), the campaigns of Crown Point, Fort William
Henry, and Louisbourg (1758), beside various eastern expeditions and
the service by sea. Of the first Louisbourg (1745) expedition, there
are no rolls, except as made up in copies from the Pepperrell and
Belknap papers in the library of the Mass. Historical Society. In
addition to these bound papers there are many others in packages, laid
aside by Mr. Felt in his labor, in some cases for reasons, and in other
cases by oversight or a varying sense of choice.[366]
The _Colonial Records_ of Connecticut for the present period have come
under the supervision of Mr. C. J. Hoadly, and are carefully edited.
In 1849 about 50,000 documents in the state archives had been bound in
138 volumes, when an index was made to them.[367] The correspondence of
the Connecticut authorities with the home government (1755-58) has been
printed in the _Connecticut Historical Collections_ (vol. i. p. 257).
For Rhode Island, the continuation of the _Colonial Records_, beginning
with vol. iii., covers the period now under consideration. The
sessional papers of 1691-95, however, are wanting, and were probably
sent to England by Bellomont, whence copies of those for May and June,
1691, were procured for the Carter-Brown library. Newport at this time
was a leading community in maritime affairs, and the papers of these
years touch many matters respecting pirates and privateers. The fifth
volume (1741-56) indicates how Rhode Island at that time kept at sea
more ships than any other colony, how she took part in the Spanish war,
and how reckless her assembly was in the authorizing of paper money.
The sixth volume (1757-69) closes the provincial period.
The series of publications of New Hampshire ordinarily referred to as
_Provincial Papers_, from the leading series of documents in what is
more properly called _Documents and records relating to New Hampshire_,
is more helpful in the present period than in the earlier one.[368]
They may be supplemented by the Shute and Wentworth correspondence
(1742-53), and Wentworth’s correspondence with the ministry (1750-60);
and letters of Joseph Dudley and others, contained in the Belknap MSS.
in the cabinet of the Mass. Historical Society.[369] The _Granite
Monthly_ (vol. v. 391) has published a list of the issues of the
press in New Hampshire from 1756 to 1773; and B. H. Hall’s _History
of Eastern Vermont, from its earliest settlement to the close of the
eighteenth century_, with a biographical chapter and appendixes (2
vols., Albany, N. Y., 1858, and on large paper in 1865), supplements
the story as regards the claim of New Hampshire to the so-called New
Hampshire grants.
* * * * *
The legislative and judicial methods of the several governments are
of the first importance to the understanding of New England history,
for it was a slow process by which it came to pass that professional
lawyers held any shaping hand in the making or the administering of
laws. The first Superior Court of Massachusetts under the provincial
charter had not a single trained lawyer on the bench, and its assembly
was equipped more with persistency and shrewdness in working out its
struggle with the crown officer who tried to rule them than with legal
acquirements. E. G. Scott, in his _Development of Constitutional
Liberty in the English Colonies_ (N. Y., 1882, pp. 31-58), examines the
forms of the colonial governments and the political relations of the
colonies. No one has better traced their relations to European politics
than Bancroft.
The legislation of the several governments has had special treatment in
Emory Washburn’s _Sketches of the Judicial History of Massachusetts,
1630-1775_ (Boston, 1840); in T. Day’s _Historical Account of the
Judiciary of Connecticut_ (Hartford, 1817); in John M. Shirley’s “Early
Jurisprudence of New Hampshire,” in the New Hampshire Historical
Society’s _Proceedings_, June 13, 1883. Cf. also H. C. Lodge, _Short
Hist. of the English Colonies_, pp. 412-419.
Of the legislation of Massachusetts, Dr. Moore says[370] that it is “a
record which, notwithstanding all its defects, has no parallel in any
other American State.” The first edition of the Province Laws, under
the new charter, was printed in 1699, and it was annually supplemented
by those of the succeeding sessions till 1714, when a second edition
was printed, to which an index was added in 1722, and various later
editions were issued.[371] In 1869 the first volume of a new edition,
of historical importance, was published by the State, with the title
_Acts and Resolves, public and private, of the Province of the
Massachusetts Bay, with historical and explanatory notes, edited by
Ellis Ames and Abner C. Goodell_. Mr. Ames has since died (1884), and
the editing is still going on under Mr. Goodell; five volumes, coming
down to 1780, having been so far published.[372]
=B.= MEN AND MANNERS.—Dr. George E. Ellis, in an address[373] which
he delivered in October, 1884, on the occasion of erecting a tablet to
Samuel Sewall’s memory in the new edifice of the Old South church, in
Boston, of which that last of the puritans had been a member, said:—
“Judge Sewall is better known to us in both his outer and inner being
than any other individual in our local history of two hundred and fifty
years; and this is true not only of himself, but through his pen,
curiously active, faithful, candid, kind, impartial, and ever just,
his own times stand revealed and described to us. His surroundings and
companions, his home and public life, the habits, usages, customs,
and events, and even the food which we can almost smell and taste,
the clothes, and furnishings, the modes of hospitality, of travel,
the style of things,—all in infinite detail; the military service,
the formal ceremonials and courtesies, the excitements, panics,
disasters,—all these have come down to us through Sewall’s pen, with a
fullness and old-time flavor and charm, which we might in vain seek to
gather from many hundred volumes. And all this comes from Sewall having
kept a daily journal from 1674 to 1729, fifty-five years,”—and forty
of these years come within the scope of the present chapter.
These journals had long been known to exist in a branch of Sewall’s
family, but as, Dr. Ellis says, they “had been kept with much reserve,
sparingly yielding to earnest inquirers the information they were
known to contain.” President Quincy had drawn from them in his
_History of Harvard University_, and had called them “curious and
graphic,” as his extracts show. They had also been used by Holmes in
his _American Annals_, by Washburn in his _Judicial History of Mass._,
and by others. In 1868, some friends of the Mass. Historical Society
purchased the diaries and other Sewall papers of the holders, and gave
them to the society.[374] The diaries have since been published, and
make part of the _Collections_ of that society.[375] Despite a good
deal of a somewhat ridiculous conservatism, linked with a surprising
pettiness in some ways, the character of Sewall is impressed upon
the present generation in a way to do him honor. His was a struggle
to uphold declining puritanism, and the contrasts presented by the
viceroyalty of New England at that time to one who was bred under the
first charter must have been trying to Christian virtues, even were
they such as Sewall possessed.[376] Dr. Ellis has pointed out[377]
how universally kindly Sewall was in what he recorded of those with
whom he came in contact. “There are no grudges, no animosities, no
malice, no bitter musings, no aggravating reproaches of those—some
very near him—who caused him loss and grief, but ever efforts to
reconcile, by forbearance, remonstrance, and forgiveness.” All this may
be truly said, and afford a contrast to what the private diaries of
his contemporaries, the two Mathers, would prompt us to say of their
daily records. Those who are more considerate of the good names of
those divines than they were themselves have thus far prevented the
publication of these diaries. Dr. Ellis[378] says of them:—
“The diaries of Increase and Cotton Mather are extant, but only
extracts of them have been printed. Much in them is wisely
suppressed. Increase, though a most faithful, devoted, and eminently
serviceable man, was morbid, censorious sometimes, and suffered as
if unappreciated. The younger Mather was often jealous, spiteful,
rancorous, and revengeful in his daily records, and thus the estimate
of his general worth is so far reduced through materials furnished by
himself.”[379]
There is among the Sparks manuscripts in Harvard College library a
bound quarto volume which is superscribed as follows: “To Mr. Samuel
Savile, of Currier’s Hall, London, attorney-at-law: Dear friend,—I
here present you with an abstracted Historical Account of that part of
America called New England; to which I have added the History of our
voiage thereto, Anno Domini, 1740.” This account presents one of the
best pictures of New England life, particularly of that in Boston, from
a contemporary pen.[380] There are various other diaries of lookers-on,
which are helpful in this study of New England provincial life, like
the journals of Whitefield, the diary of Francis Goelet,[381] the
journal of Madam Knight’s journey, 1704,[382]—not to name others.
Among published personal records, there are George Keith’s _Journal of
Travels from New Hampshire to Caratuck_ (London, 1706); Capt. Nathaniel
Uring’s _Voyages and Travels_, published at London in 1727;[383] and
Andrew Burnaby’s _Travels through the middle settlements in North
America in the years 1759 and 1760_, London, 1775.[384] Burnaby passed
on his way, from Bristol through Providence to Boston. The early part
of the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin is of exceptional value as a
reflex of the life of New England as it impressed a young man.[385]
Among the modern treatises on the social condition of New England, a
chief place must be given to Henry Cabot Lodge’s _Short History of
the English Colonies_, the chapters in which on the characteristics
of the colonies and their life are the essential feature of a book
whose title is made good by a somewhat unnecessary abridgment of the
colonies’ anterior history. Lodge groups his facts by colonies. Dr.
Edward Eggleston in some valuable papers, which are still appearing
in the _Century Magazine_, groups similar, but often much minuter,
facts by their topical rather than by their colonial relations. Mr.
Horace E. Scudder prepared an eclectic presentation of the subject in
a little volume, _Men and Manners a hundred years ago_ (N. Y., 1876),
which surveys all the colonies. The Rev. Jos. B. Felt’s _Customs of New
England_ (1853) has a topical arrangement.[386]
For Massachusetts in particular, most of the local histories[387]
contribute something to the subject; and in the _Memorial History of
Boston_ there are various chapters which are useful,[388] and a survey
is also given in Barry’s _Massachusetts_ (vol. ii. ch. I).
“He that will understand,” says Bancroft,[389] “the political character
of New England in the eighteenth century must study the constitution of
its towns, its congregations, its schools, and its militia.”[390]
=C.= FINANCE AND REVENUE.—Dr. J. Hammond Trumbull in a pamphlet,
_First Essays at Banking and the first paper money in New England_
(Worcester, 1884,—from the Council Report of the American Antiquarian
Society, Oct., 1884), traces more fully than has been done by Jos. B.
Felt, in his _Historical account of Massachusetts Currency_ (Boston,
1839), and by Paine in the Council Report of the same society, April,
1866,[391] the efforts at private banking previous to the province
issue of bills in 1690, and with particular reference to a tract,
which he ascribes to the Rev. John Woodbridge, of Newbury, called
_Severals relating to the fund, printed for divers reasons as may
appear_ (Boston, probably 1681-82).[392] Dr. Trumbull attributes to
Cotton Mather a paper sustaining the policy of issuing paper bills
in 1690, which was published as _Some considerations on the Bills of
Credit now passing in New England_ (Boston, 1691),[393] to which was
appended _Some additional considerations_, which the same writer thinks
may have been the work of John Blackwell, who had been the projector
of a private bank authorized in 1689. Similar views as there expressed
are adopted by Mather in his _Life of Phips_, as printed separately in
1697, and as later included in the _Magnalia_.
In Dec., 1690, the bills of the £7,000 which were first authorized
began to be put forth. Felt (p. 50) gives the style of them, and
though an engraved form was adopted some of the earliest of the issues
were written with a pen, as shown by the fac-simile of one in the
_Proceedings_ of the Massachusetts Hist. Soc. (1863, p. 428). Up to
1702 there had been emissions and repetitions of emissions of about
£110,000, when another £10,000 was put out. A fac-simile of one of
these notes is given in Smith’s _Hist. and Literary Curiosities_, p.
xlv. The issues for the next few years were as follows: 1706, £10,000;
1707, £22,000; 1708, £10,000; 1709, £60,000; 1710, £40,000; 1711,
£65,000,—a total of £207,000.
In the following year (1712), the province bills of Massachusetts were
made legal tender,[394] but the break had come. The public confidence
was shaken, and their decline in value rapidly increased under the
apprehension, which the repeated putting off of the term of redemption
engendered.
In Connecticut the management was more prudent. She issued in the end
£33,500, but all her bills were redeemed with scarce any depreciation.
A fac-simile of one of her three-shilling bills (1709) is given in the
_Connecticut Colony Records_, 1706-1716, p. 111.[395]
Rhode Island managed her issues wildly. The history of her financial
recklessness, by E. R. Potter, was published in 1837, and reprinted by
Henry Phillips, Jr., in his _Historical Sketches_, etc. This paper as
enlarged by S. S. Rider in 1880, constitutes no. viii. of the _Rhode
Island Historical Tracts_, under the title of _Bills of Credit and
Paper Money of Rhode Island, 1710-1786_, with twenty fac-similes of
early bills. In 1741 Gov. Ward made an official report to the Lords
Commissioners of Trade, rehearsing the history of the Rhode Island
issues from 1710 to 1740, and this report, with other documents
relating to the paper money of that colony, is in the _Rhode Island
Col. Records_, vol. v. (1741-56).
Towards the end of Dudley’s time in Massachusetts, the party lines
became sharply drawn on questions of financial policy. The downfall
of credit alarmed the rich and conservative. The active business men,
not many in numbers, but strong in influence, found a flow of paper
money helpful in making the capital of the rich and the labor of the
poor subserve their interests, as Hildreth says. There were those who
supposed some amelioration would come from banks, private and public,
and the press teemed with pamphlets.[396] The aggressive policy was
formulated in _A Projection for erecting a Bank of Credit in Boston,
New England, founded on Land Security_, in 1714.[397] Its abettors
endeavored to promote subscriptions by appealing to the friends of
education, in a promise to devote £200 per annum to the advantage of
Harvard College.[398]
The small minority of hard-money men cast in their lot with the
advocates of a public bank as the lesser evil of the two.
Gov. Dudley was no favorer of the Land-bank scheme[399] and his son,
Paul Dudley, attacked it in a pamphlet, _Objections to the Bank of
Credit lately projected at Boston_[400] (Oct., 1714), to which an
answer came in Dec., from Samuel Lynde and other upholders, called _A
Vindication of the Bank of Credit_.[401] “Of nearly thirty pamphlets
and tracts, printed from 1714 to 1721,[402] for or against a private
bank or a public bank,” says Dr. Trumbull,[403] “that of Dudley was
the first, and is in some respects the ablest;” but he places foremost
among the advocates of the scheme the author of _A Word of Comfort
to a Melancholy Country_ (Boston, 1721), purporting to be by “Amicus
Patriæ,” or, as Trumbull thinks (p. 40) there is little doubt, by the
famous Rev. John Wise, of Chebacco. (Cf. _Brinley Catal._, i. nos.
1,442-45.)
To forestall the action of the private bank, the province, by a law,
issued £50,000 to be let out on mortgages of real estate, and these
bills were in circulation for over thirty years, and the assembly
took other action to prevent the Land-bank scheme being operative.
The subsequent emissions of paper money can be traced in Felt, who
also cites the contemporary tracts, ranged upon opposite sides, and
supporting on the one hand the conservative views of the Council, and
on the other the heedless precipitancy of the House. One of these,
_The Distressed state of the town of Boston considered ... in a letter
from a gentleman to his friend in the country_ (1720), excited the
attention of the council as embodying reflections on the acts of the
government.[404]
In 1722 bills of as small a denomination as one, two, and three
pennies[405] were ordered, to provide small change, which had become
scarce.
The financial situation was rapidly growing worse. In 1710 an ounce of
silver was worth eight shillings in paper, and in 1727 it had risen to
seventeen shillings; and at this time, or near it (1728), there was
afloat about £314,000 of this paper of Massachusetts indebtedness, to
say nothing of a similar circulation issued by the other colonies,
that of Rhode Island showing a much greater depreciation.[406] The
fall in value was still increasing when in 1731 there were plans of
bringing gold and silver into the country for a medium of trade;[407]
but naturally the needy mercantile class opposed it. Thomas Hutchinson
early (1737-38) distinguished himself in the assembly as a consistent
opposer of paper money, and in 1740 he tried to push a scheme to hire
in England 220,000 ounces of gold to meet the province bills, but he
had little success. Another[408] scheme, however, flourished for a
while; and this was one reviving the old name of the Land-bank, though
sometimes called “Manufactory bank,” a bill for which was set afoot
by Mr. John Colman, a needy Boston merchant, as Hutchinson calls him.
Its principal feature consisted in securing the issues of the bank by
a mortgage on the real estate of each associate to the extent of his
subscription. It found its support in the small traders and the people
of the rural districts, and was sustained in general by the House of
Representatives. The leading and well-to-do merchants opposed it, and
set up what was called a “Silver Scheme,”—an issue of notes to be
redeemed in silver after the lapse of ten years.[409] “Mr. Hutchinson,”
as this gentleman himself records, “favored neither, but considered
the silver plan as without fraudulent purpose, which he did not think
could be the case with the Land-bank.”[410]
[Illustration: RHODE ISLAND PAPER,—TWELVE PENCE.
From an original bill in an illustrated copy of _Historical Sketches of
the Paper Currency of the American Colonies, by Henry Phillips, Jr._,
Roxbury, 1865,—in Harvard College library.
In 1733, Boston instructed its treasurer to refuse the bills of the new
emission of Rhode Island. (_Records_, 1729-42, p. 53.)]
The favoring and the opposing of the popular measure of the Land-bank
drew lines sharply in the current political contests. The governor was
suspected of double dealing, and while he was believed to be personally
interested in it, he carried out openly the opposition which the Board
of Trade instructed him to pursue: rejected the speaker and committees
of the House, who were urging its progress, and displaced justices
and militia officers of that way of thinking. All the while rumors
of riot began to prevail, but they were not sufficient to coerce the
government in a relaxation of their opposition; and the governor on
his side carried espionage to a degree which was novel. It is said
that something over £50,000 of the bank’s bills actually got out; but
some one discovered that an old act of Parliament, which came of the
explosion of the South Sea company, held each partner responsible, and
nothing else was needed to push the adventure out of existence.[411]
Felt gives the main points in the development of this financial scheme,
but here as elsewhere his book is a mere conglomerate of ill-digested
items, referring largely to the five volumes (c.-civ.) of the _Mass.
Archives,_ marked “Pecuniary,” which cover the monetary movements in
Massachusetts between 1629 and 1775. Among the _Shelburne Papers_, vol.
61,[412] there appears a report of the attorney general to the Lords of
Trade on this scheme of erecting a Land-bank in Boston, dated Nov. 10,
1735.
[Illustration: RHODE ISLAND THREE-SHILLINGS BILL, 1738.
From an original bill in the Harvard College copy of Phillips’ _Hist.
Sketches_.]
A leading combatant in the wordy conflict which followed was the
Scotch physician, William Douglass, then living in Boston. His first
publication was _Some observations on the scheme projected for emitting
£60,000 in bills of a new tenor to be redeemed with silver and gold_,
Boston, 1738.[413] In the same year he published without date, _An
Essay concerning silver and paper currencies, more especially with
regard to the British colonies in New England_, Boston.[414] He next
printed in London in 1739 a _Discourse concerning the currencies of the
British plantations in America, especially with regard to their paper
money, more particularly in relation to Massachusetts_.[415]
[Illustration: NEW HAMPSHIRE FIVE-SHILLINGS BILL, 1737.
From an original bill in the Harvard College copy of Phillips’ _Hist.
Sketches of Paper Currency_. Fac-similes of bills of 1727 and 1742
are given in Smith’s _Lit. and Hist. Curiosities_, p. liii. Cf. also
Potter’s _Manchester_.]
[Illustration: NEW HAMPSHIRE THREE-POUNDS BILL, 1740.
From an original bill in the Harvard College copy of Phillips’ _Hist.
Sketches_. There is a fac-simile of a N. H. bill of forty shillings in
Gay’s _Pop. Hist. U. S._, iii. p. 133; and one of a bill of 1742-43 in
Cassell’s _Hist. United States_, i. p. 486.]
A fortunate plan for withdrawing the debased paper currency of
Massachusetts Bay was finally matured.[416] Though the taking of
Louisbourg had severely taxed the colony with a financial burden, the
loss of it by treaty now made the way clear to throw off the same
burden. William Bollan, the son-in-law of Shirley, had gone over after
the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle to represent how the sacrifices of New
England deserved more recognition than was seemingly paid them in
the surrender of her conquest. This and other reasons prevailed, and
the government agreed to reimburse the province for the cost of the
siege. This was reckoned on the new basis of paper money. Shirley
in 1743 had been allowed to give his assent to an issue called “new
tenor,” in which the value to silver was about ten times as great as
the enormous flood of issues then in circulation bore, and these last
were now known as “old tenor.” On this new basis Louisbourg had cost
£261,700, which was held to be equivalent to £183,600 in London, the
pound sterling equalling now about 30 shillings of the new tenor, and
£11 of the old.[417] This agreement had been reached in 1749,[418] and
the specie was shipped to Boston. Two hundred and seventeen chests of
Spanish dollars and a hundred casks of copper coin were carted up King
Street, in September, the harbinger of new prosperity. It was due most
to Thomas Hutchinson’s skilful urgency that the assembly, of which he
was now speaker, was induced to devote this specie to the redeeming
of the paper bills of the “old tenor,” of which £2,000,000 were in
circulation.[419] It was agreed to pay about one pound in specie for
ten in paper, and the commissioners closed their labors in 1751, the
silver and copper already mentioned paying nine tenths of it, while a
tax was laid to pay the remaining tenth. About £1,800,000 in current
bills were presented; the rest had been destroyed or hid away and
forgotten.[420] Rhode Island had received £6,322 as her share of the
whole; but as she was not wise enough to apply it to the bettering of
her currency, she suffered the evils of a depreciated paper longer than
her neighbors.[421] The same lack of wisdom governed New Hampshire.
Connecticut had always been conservative in her monetary practices.
When the Massachusetts Assembly, in 1754, sought to raise money for the
expenses of the war then impending, its debate upon an inquisitorial
excise bill levying a tax on wines and liquors incited violent
opposition. Samuel Cooper launched at the plan a pamphlet called _The
Crisis_.[422] Another brief attack appeared with nothing on the title
but _The Eclipse, MDCCLIV._[423] Daniel Fowle, however, was accused of
printing another satirical account of the Representatives’ proceedings,
which was published in 1754 as _The Monster of Monsters_, and the
“Thomas Thumb, Esq.,” of the title is supposed to have shielded Samuel
Waterhouse. Fowle was arrested, and the common hangman was directed to
burn the pamphlet in King Street.[424] Sabin says that not more than
three or four copies of the tract escaped, but the _Brinley Catalogue_
shows two.[425] After his release Fowle printed in Boston the next
year (1755) _A total Eclipse of Liberty. Being a true and faithful
account of the arraignment and examination of Daniel Fowle before the
House of Representatives of Massachusetts Bay, Oct. 24, 1754, barely
on suspicion of being concerned in printing and publishing a pamphlet,
entitled The Monster of Monsters. Written by himself._ An _Appendix to
the late Total Eclipse_, etc., appeared in 1756.[426]
In May, 1755, a stamp act went into operation in the province, by which
the Representatives had established duties upon vellum, parchment, and
paper for two years. It yielded towards defraying the charges of the
government about £1,350 for the years in question.[427] Shirley issued
a proclamation of its conditions, one of which is in the Boston Public
Library, and has been reprinted in its _Bulletin_, 1884, p. 163.
=D.= THE BOUNDS OF THE NEW ENGLAND COLONIES.—During the provincial
period, the external limits and internal divisions of New England were
the subject of disagreement. The question as to what constituted the
frontier line towards Acadia was constantly in dispute, as is explained
elsewhere.[428]
On the western side New York had begun by claiming jurisdiction as far
as the Connecticut River. She relinquished this claim in the main, as
to her bounds on Connecticut, when that colony pressed her pretensions
to a line which ran a score of miles from the Hudson, and when she
occupied the territory with her settlers, the final adjustment being
reached in 1731.[429]
On the line of Massachusetts the controversy with New York lasted
longer. The claim of that province was set forth in a _Report_ made in
1753, which is printed in Smith’s _New York_ (1814 ed., p. 283), and
Smith adds that the government of Massachusetts never exhibited the
reasons of its claim in answer to this report, but in the spring of
1755 sold lands within the disputed territory.[430] In 1764 the matter
was again in controversy. Thomas Hutchinson is thought to have been the
author of the Massachusetts argument called _The Case of the Provinces
of Massachusetts Bay and New York, respecting boundary line between the
two provinces_ (Boston, 1764).[431] Three years later (1767) a meeting
of the agents of the two provinces was held at New Haven, by which the
disagreement was brought to a conclusion.[432]
For the region north of Massachusetts New York contended more
vigorously, and the dispute over the New Hampshire grants in the
territory of the present Vermont, which began in 1749, was continued
into the Revolutionary period. When, in 1740, the king in council had
established the northern line of Massachusetts, the commission of Gov.
Benning Wentworth, of New Hampshire, the next year (1741), extended his
jurisdiction westward until it met other grants, which he interpreted
to mean till it reached a line stretched northerly in prolongation
of the westerly boundary of Massachusetts, twenty miles east of the
Hudson, and reaching to the southern extremity of Lake Champlain. On
the 3d of Jan., 1749, Wentworth made a grant of the town of Bennington,
adjacent to such western frontier line. These and other grants of
townships which Wentworth made became known as the New Hampshire
Grants.[433] The wars prevented much progress in the settlement of
these grants, but some of the settlers who were there when the French
war closed assembled, it is said, with the Rev. Samuel Peters in 1763
on Mount Pisgah, and broke a bottle of spirits with him, and named the
country _Verd Mont_.
Gov. Colden, of New York, on Dec. 28, 1763, issued a proclamation
claiming the land thus held under the grants of Wentworth, basing his
rights on the grants in 1664 and 1674 to the Duke of York of “all lands
from the west side of the Connecticut River to the east side of the
Delaware Bay.” On the 20th July, 1764, the king in council confirmed
Colden’s view, and made the Connecticut River the boundary as far as
45° north latitude. When this decision reached Wentworth he had already
granted 128 townships. New York began to make counter-grants of the
same land, and though the king ordered the authorities of New York to
desist, when word reached London of the rising conflict, it was the
angry people of the grants rather than the royal will which induced
the agents of New York to leave the territory. Gov. John Wentworth
continued to make grants till the Revolution, on the New Hampshire
side; but though Gov. Moore, of New York, had been restrained (1767),
his successors had not the same fear of the royal displeasure. As
the war approached, the dispute between New York and the grants grew
warmer.[434] In 1773 James Duane, it is thought, was the champion of
the New York cause in two pamphlets: _A State of the rights of the
Colony of New York with respect to its eastern boundary on Connecticut
River so far as concerns the late encroachments under the Government
of New Hampshire_, published by the assembly (New York, 1773); and
_A Narrative of the proceedings subsequent to the Royal Adjudication
concerning the lands to the westward of Connecticut river, lately
usurped by New Hampshire_ (New York, 1773).[435] The next year (1774)
Ethan Allen answered the first of these tracts in his _Brief narrative
of the proceedings of the government of New York_. Allen dated at
Bennington, Sept. 23, 1774, and his book was published at Hartford.[436]
The war of independence soon gave opportunity for the British
authorities on the Canada side to seek to detach the Vermonters from
their relations to the revolting colonies.[437] The last of the royal
governors of New Hampshire had fled in Sept., 1775, and a congress
at Exeter had assumed executive control in Jan., 1776. The next year
(1777) a convention framed a constitution, and by a stretch of power,
as is told in Ira Allen’s _Hist. of Vermont_, it was adopted without
recurrence to the people’s vote. In March, 1778, the state government
was fully organized. The dispute with New York went on. Gov. Clinton
issued a proclamation. Ethan Allen answered in an _Animadversary
Address_ (Hartford, 1778),[438] and in Dec., 1778, a convention of the
people of the grants was held, and their resolution was appended to
a document prepared by a committee of the assembly, called _A public
defence of the right of the New Hampshire grants (so called) on both
sides Connecticut river, to associate together, and form themselves
into an independent state. Containing remarks on sundry paragraphs
of letters from the president of the Council of New Hampshire to his
Excellency Governor Chittenden, and the New Hampshire delegates at
Congress_.[439]
The same year the legislature of New York directed the preparation of
a _Collection of evidence in vindication of the territorial rights
and jurisdiction of the state of New York, against the claims of the
commonwealth of Massachusetts and New Hampshire, and the people of
the grants who are commonly called Vermonters_. It was prepared by
James Duane, James Morrin Scott, and Egbert Benson, and is printed
in the _Fund Publications_ of the New York Historical Society, 1870
(pp. 277-528). On the other side, Ethan Allen published _A vindication
of the opposition of the inhabitants of Vermont to the government of
New York, and of their right to form an independent state_;[440] and
in 1780, in connection with Jonas Fay, and by order of the governor
and council, he published _A concise refutation of the claims of New
Hampshire and Massachusetts Bay, to the territory of Vermont; with
occasional remarks on the long disputed claim of New York to the
same_.[441]
In 1782, Ethan Allen again brought out at Hartford his _The present
state of the controversy between the states of New York and New
Hampshire on the one part, and the state of Vermont on the other_.[442]
The arguments and proofs were rehearsed in 1784, when the question was
to be presented to court, in a brief by James Duane, called _State
of the evidence and argument in support of the territorial rights of
jurisdiction of New York against the government of New Hampshire and
the claimants under it, and against the Commonwealth of Massachusetts_.
An amicable adjustment prevented the publication of this document, and
it was first printed in the _N. Y. Hist. Soc. Coll._ for 1871.[443]
Connecticut claimed certain lands in Northern Pennsylvania, which came
within her jurisdiction by the extension of her lines, as expressed in
her charter of 1662, westward to the South Sea. New York, being then in
the possession of a Christian power, was excepted, but the claim was
preserved farther west. In 1753 a company was formed to colonize these
Connecticut lands in the Susquehanna valley, and lands were bought of
the Indians at Wyoming. The government of Pennsylvania objected, and
claimed the lands to be within the bounds of William Penn’s charter.
(Cf. _Penna. Archives_, ii. 120, etc.) The defeat of Braddock checked
the dispute, but in 1761 it was renewed. In 1763 the home government
required the Connecticut people to desist, on the ground that they had
not satisfied the Indian owners. New bargains were then made, and in
1769 settlements again took place. General Gage, as commander-in-chief
of the British troops on the continent, refused to interfere. In 1774,
William Smith prepared an _Examination of the Connecticut claim to
lands in Pennsylvania, with an appendix and map_ (Philadelphia, 1774);
and Benjamin Trumbull issued _A Plea in vindication of the Connecticut
title to the contested lands west of the Province of New York_ (New
Haven, 1774). See entries in the _Brinley Catalogue_, Nos. 2121, etc.
The dispute was later referred to the Continental Congress, which in
1781 decided in favor of Pennsylvania, and Aug. 8, 1782, commissioners
were appointed. (_Journals of Congress_, iv. 59, 64.) Connecticut still
claimed west of Pennsylvania, and though she retained for a while
the “Western Reserve,” she finally ceded (1796-1800) to the United
States all her claims as far as the Mississippi.[444] The claims of
Massachusetts, on similar grounds, to land in Michigan and Wisconsin
were surrendered to the general government in 1785.
* * * * *
The original patent for the Massachusetts Company made its northern
line three miles north of the Merrimac River. New Hampshire claimed
that it should be run westerly from a point on the coast three miles
north of the mouth of that river. When the Board of Trade, in 1737,
selected a commission to adjudicate upon this claim, Massachusetts was
not in favor, and New Hampshire got more than she asked, the line being
run north of the river three miles, and parallel to it, till it reached
the most southerly point of the river’s course, when it was continued
due west.[445]
Respecting the boundaries on the side of Maine, there is a journal of
Walter Bryent, who in 1741 ran the line between New Hampshire and York
County in Maine.[446]
Massachusetts also lost territory in the south. The country of King
Philip on the easterly side of Narragansett Bay had been claimed by
Plymouth, and Massachusetts, by the union under the province charter,
succeeded to the older colony’s claim. An arbitration in 1741 did
not give all she claimed to Rhode Island, but it added the eastern
towns along the bay.[447] On the frontiers of Connecticut, the towns
of Enfield, Suffield, Somers, and Woodstock had been settled by
Massachusetts, and by an agreement in 1713 she had included them in
her jurisdiction.[448] In 1747, finding the taxes in Massachusetts
burdensome from the expenses of the war, these towns applied to
be received by Connecticut, and their wish was acceded to, while
Massachusetts did not dare risk an appeal to the king in council.[449]
The disputes of Connecticut and Rhode Island respecting the
Narragansett country resulted on that side in a loss to
Connecticut.[450]
In an interesting paper on the “Origin of the names of towns in
Massachusetts,” by William H. Whitmore, in the _Proceedings_ (xii.
393-419) of the Mass. Hist. Society, we can trace the loss of towns to
Massachusetts, which she had incorporated, and find some reflection of
political changes. Up to 1732 the names of towns were supplied by the
petitioners, but after that date the incorporation was made in blank,
the governor filling in the name, which may account for the large
number of names of English peers and statesmen which were attached to
Massachusetts towns during the provincial period. The largest class of
the early names seems due to the names of the places in England whence
their early settlers came. Prof. F. B. Dexter presented to the American
Antiquarian Society, in April, 1885, a paper of similar character
respecting the towns of Connecticut.
=E.= FORTS AND FRONTIER TOWNS OF NEW ENGLAND.—The large increase
during recent years in the study of local history has greatly broadened
the field of detail. As scarcely one of the older settlements to the
west, north, and east escaped the horrors of the French and Indian
wars, the student following out the minor phases must look into the
histories of the towns of New England. Convenient finding-lists for
these towns are the _Check-list of Amer. local history_, by F. B.
Perkins; Colburn’s _Bibliog. of Massachusetts_; Bartlett’s _Bibliog.
of Rhode Island_; and A. P. C. Griffin’s “Articles on American local
history in Historical Collections, etc.,” now publishing in the _Boston
Public Library Bulletin_.
For the Maine towns particular reference may be made to Cyrus
Eaton’s _Thomaston, Rockland, and South Thomaston_ (1863), vol. i.;
E. E. Bourne’s _Wells and Kennebunk_; Cushman’s _Ancient Sheepscot
and Newcastle_; Willis’s _Portland_ (2d ed.); Folsom’s _Saco and
Biddeford_; Eaton’s _Warren_ (2d ed.), which gives a map, marking
the sites of the forts about the Georges River; Johnston’s _Bristol,
Bremen, and Pemaquid_, which gives a map of the Damariscotta River
and the Pemaquid region, with the settlements of 1751; R. K. Sewall’s
_Ancient Dominions of Maine_; James W. North’s _Augusta_; G. A. and H.
W. Wheeler’s _Brunswick, Topsham, and Harpswell, including the ancient
territory known as Pejepscot, Boston_, 1878 (ch. iv. and xxiii.).
See the present _History_ (Vol. III. p. 365) for notes on the local
history of Maine, and (Ibid., p. 364) for references to the general
historians,—Sullivan, whose want of perspicuousness Grahame (i. 253)
complains of, and Williamson.
At the present Brunswick (Maine), Fort Andros had been built in 1688,
and had been demolished in 1694. Capt. John Gyles erected there in
August, 1715, a post which was called Fort George. Ruins of it were
noticeable at the beginning of this century. There is a sketch of it in
Wheeler’s _Brunswick, Topsham, and Harpswell_, pp. 624, 629.
The fort at St. Georges (Thomaston, Me.) had been built originally in
1719-20, to protect the Waldo patent; it was improved in 1740, and
again in 1752 was considerably strengthened. (Williamson, i. 287.)
At Pemaquid, on the spot where Andros had established a post, Phips
had built Fort William Henry in 1692, which had been surrendered by
Chubb in 1696. It is described in Dummer’s _Defence of the New England
Charters_, p. 31; Mather’s _Magnalia_, book viii. p. 81. In 1729 Col.
David Dunbar erected a stone fort, perhaps on the same foundations,
which was called Fort Frederick. There is a plan of the latter post in
Johnston’s _Bristol, Bremen, and Pemaquid_, pp. 216, 264. Cf. Eaton’s
_Warren_, 2d ed.
Further down the Kennebec River and opposite the upper end of Swan
Island stood Fort Richmond, which had been built by the Massachusetts
people about 1723. Near the present Augusta the Plymouth Company
founded Forts Shirley and Western in 1754. There are plans and views
of them in J. W. North’s _Augusta_, pp. 47-49. Cf. Nathan Weston’s
_Oration at the Centennial Celebration of the Erection of Fort
Western, July 4, 1854_, Augusta, 1854.
Col. John Winslow planned, in 1754, on a point half a mile below
Teconick Falls, the structure known as Fort Halifax, according to the
extent shown by the dotted line in the annexed cut.[451] Winslow’s
letter to Shirley, with the plan, is in the _Mass. Archives,_ and both
are given in North’s _Augusta,_ pp. 59, 60. The fort was completed
the next year by William Lithgow, as shown by the black part of the
cut, the rear flanker, forming the centre of the original plan,
having been built, however, by Winslow. This block-house measured 20
× 20 feet below, and on the overhang 27 × 27 feet. The narrower of
the large structures was the barracks, also raised by Winslow, but
removed by Lithgow, who built the other portions.
[Illustration: FORT HALIFAX.]
The cut follows a reconstruction-draft, made by Mr. T. O. Paine,
which is given by North (p. 62). The flanker nearest the river is
still standing, and the upright planks on the side, as shown in the
annexed cut, mark the efforts which have been made of late to secure
the timbers. In the Maine Historical Society’s _Collections,_ vol.
viii. p. 198, is a history of the fort by William Goold, as well as
the annexed cut of a restoration of the entire fort, drawn by that
gentleman from descriptions, from the tracings of the foundations,
and from the remaining flanker. The preceding volume (vii.) of the
same _Collections_ had contained “materials for a history” of the
fort, edited by Joseph Williamson,—mainly documents from the _Mass.
Archives._ A journal of the march of Capt. Eleazer Melvin’s company
in Gov. Shirley’s expedition to the Norridgewock country, when Fort
Halifax was erected in 1754, kept by John Barber (May 30, 1754-Aug. 17,
1754), is in _N. E. Hist. and Gen. Reg._, 1873, pp. 281-85. Cf. further
in Williamson’s _Maine_, i. 300; Hutchinson’s _Massachusetts_, iii. 26.
A plan (1754) of the Kennebec River forts, by John Indicott (measuring
3-8/12 × 1-5/12), is noted in the _Catalogue of the King’s Maps_ (i.
580), in the British Museum. The forts on the Kennebec, and the chief
localities of that river, are described by Col. William Lithgow in
1767, in a deposition printed in the _N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg._,
1870, p. 21. Lithgow was then fifty-two years old, and had known the
river from childhood.
[Illustration]
In 1752, when there was some prospect of quieting the country, and
truck houses were built at Fort Richmond and St. Georges, William
Lithgow and Jabez Bradbury were put in charge of them.
[Illustration]
A paper by Richard Pike, on the building and occupancy of Fort Pownall,
on the Penobscot, is in the _N. E. Hist. and Gen. Reg._, 1860, p. 4.
In Williamson’s _Belfast_, p. 56, is a conjectural view of the fort,
drawn from the descriptions and from a survey of the site in 1828. _A
Survey of the river and bay of Penobscot, by order of Gov. Pownall_,
1759, is among the king’s maps (Catal., ii. 167) in the British Museum.
A journal of Pownall’s expedition to begin this fort was printed, with
notes, by Joseph Williamson in the _Maine Hist. Coll._, v. 363. Cf.
Williamson’s _Maine_, i. 337. This fort was completed in July, 1759, at
a cost of £5,000, and stood till 1775. Cf. _N. E. Hist. and Geneal._
Reg., 1859, p. 167, with an extract from the _Boston News-Letter_, May
31, 1759.
This enumeration covers the principal fortified posts in the disputed
territory at the eastward; but numerous other garrison posts,
block-houses, and stockades were scattered over the country.[452] A
view of one of these, known as Larrabee’s garrison stockade, is given
in Bourne’s _Wells and Kennebunk_, ch. xxi. The view of a block-house
built in 1714, near the junction of the Kennebec and Sebasticook
rivers, as sketched in 1852, is annexed.
West of Maine the frontier stretched from the Piscataqua to the valley
of the Housatonic.
For the New Hampshire part of this line, Belknap’s _Hist. of New
Hampshire_ must be supplemented for a general survey by B. H. Hall’s
_Eastern Vermont_. So far as the muster-rolls of frontier service show
the activity in New Hampshire, it can be gathered from the second
volume of the _Report of the Adjutant-General of New Hampshire_, 1866,
supplemented by others given in the _N. H. Revolutionary Rolls_, vol.
i. (1886). The volumes of the series of _Provincial Papers_ published
by that State (vols. ix., xi., xii., xiii.), and called “Town Papers,
1638-1784,” give the local records. The principal town histories
detailing the events of the wars are Potter’s _Manchester_; Bouton’s
_Concord_; Runnel’s _Sanbornton_; Little’s _Warren_; C. C. Coffin’s
_Boscawen_; H. H. Saunderson’s _Charlestown_; B. Chase’s Old Chester;
C. J. Fox’s _Dunstable_; Aldrich’s _Walpole_; and Morrison’s _Windham_.
[Illustration: FLANKER, FORT HALIFAX.]
In 1704 the assembly of New Hampshire ordered that every householder
should provide himself with snow-shoes, for the use of winter scouting
parties. (_N. H. Prov. Papers_, iii. 290.) In 1724 Fort Dummer was
built near the modern Brattleboro, in territory then claimed by
Massachusetts. (_Hist. Mag._, x. 109, 141, 178; _N. H. Hist. Soc.
Coll._, i. 143; _N. H. Adj.-Gen. Rept._, 1866, ii. p. 122.) In 1746,
after the alarm over the D’Anville fleet had subsided, Atkinson’s New
Hampshire regiment was sent north to meet any invasion from Canada.
(_N. H. Adj.-Gen. Rept._, 1866, ii. 83.) The next year (1747), Walter
Bryent advanced with his regiment as far as Lake Winnepesaukee. (_N.
E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg._, July, 1878, p. 297; N. H. Prov. Papers, v.
431, 471; Belknap, ii. 228.)
In 1747 the fort at “no. 4,” or Charlestown, the outpost towards
Canada, was attacked. (Saunderson’s _Charlestown_; Stone’s _Sir
William Johnson_, i. 260.)
In 1752-54 there is record of the hostilities on the New Hampshire
borders in the _N. H. Prov. Papers_, vi. 301, 310-319.
The St. Francis Indians confronted the settlements of the upper
Connecticut, and in 1752 Shirley sent Capt. Phineas Stevens to treat
with them in the presence of the governor of Canada. (_N. Y. Col.
Docs._, x. 252.) For the massacre at Hinsdale in 1755, and attacks
in the Connecticut valley, see _N. H. Prov. Papers_, vi. 412, and
_Adj.-Gen. Report_, 1866, vol. ii. 153.
[Illustration: FORT HALIFAX, 1755.
(_Restoration._)]
In 1694-95, the frontier line of Massachusetts was established by law
as including the towns of Amesbury, Haverhill, Dunstable, Chelmsford,
Groton, Lancaster, Marlborough, and Deerfield. Five years later this
list was increased by Brookfield, Mendon, and Woodstock, with a kind of
inner line, running through Salisbury, Andover, Billerica, Hatfield,
Hadley, Westfield, and Northampton.
For the border troubles of Massachusetts, beside Penhallow and Niles,
Neal and Douglass, and the _Magnalia_, we turn to Hutchinson with
confidence in the facilities which he enjoyed; but John Adams says
(_Works_, x. 361), “When Mr. Hutchinson’s _History of Massachusetts
Bay_ first appeared, one of the most common criticisms upon it was the
slight, cold, and unfeeling manner in which he passed over the Indian
wars.”
The most exposed towns fronting the New Hampshire line were Haverhill,
Andover, and Dunstable. The _History of Haverhill_, by G. W. Chase
(1861), gives the story of the Indian troubles with much detail.[453]
For Andover they may be found in S. L. Bailey’s _Historical Sketches of
Andover_ (Boston, 1880); and for Dunstable in Elias Nason’s _History of
Dunstable_ (1877). Just below Dunstable lay Groton, and Dr. Samuel A.
Green’s _Groton during the Indian Wars_ supplies the want here,—a good
supplement to Butler’s _Groton_. The frontiers for a while were marked
nearly along the same meridian by Lancaster, Marlborough, Brookfield,
and Oxford. The _Early records of Lancaster, 1643-1725_, _edited by
H. S. Nourse_ (Lancaster, 1884), furnishes us with a full reflection
of border experiences during King William’s, Queen Anne’s, and
Lovewell’s wars, and it may be supplemented by A. P. Marvin’s _History
of Lancaster_. The sixth chapter of Charles Hudson’s _Marlborough_
(Boston, 1862), and Nathan Fiske’s _Historical Discourse on Brookfield
and its distresses during the Indian Wars_ (Boston, 1776), illustrate
the period. The struggle of the Huguenots to maintain themselves at
Oxford against the Indians is told in Geo. F. Daniels’ _Huguenots
in the Nipmuck Country_ (1880), and in C. W. Baird’s _Hist. of the
Huguenot Emigration to America_ (1885).
There is in the cabinet of the Mass. Hist. Soc. (_Misc. Papers_, 41.41)
an early plan of the Connecticut and Housatonic valleys, showing the
former from the sea as far north as Fort Massachusetts, and the latter
up to Fort Dummer, and bearing annotations by Thomas Prince.
[Illustration: BLOCK HOUSE, BUILT 1714.]
In the valley of the Connecticut, Northfield held the northernmost post
within the Massachusetts bounds as finally settled. One of the best of
our local histories for the details of this barbaric warfare is Temple
and Sheldon’s _History of Northfield_. Deerfield was just south, and
it is a centre of interest. The attack which makes it famous came Feb.
29, 1704-5, and the narrative of the Rev. John Williams, who was taken
captive to Canada, is the chief contemporary account. Gov. Dudley sent
William Dudley to Quebec to effect the release of the prisoners, and
among those who returned to Boston (Oct. 25, 1706) was Williams, who
soon put to press his _Redeemed Captive_,[454] which was published in
1707,[455] and has been ever since a leading specimen of a class of
books which is known among collectors as “Captivities.”
Further down the Connecticut than Deerfield lies Hadley, which has
been more fortunate than most towns in its historian. Sylvester
Judd’s _History of Hadley, including the early history of Hatfield,
South Hadley, Amherst, and Granby, Mass., With family genealogies, by
L. M. Boltwood_, Northampton, 1863, follows down the successive wars
with much detail.[456] A systematic treatment of the whole subject was
made by Epaphras Hoyt in his _Antiquarian Researches, comprising a
history of the Indian Wars in the Country bordering on the Connecticut
River_, etc., to 1760, published at Greenfield in 1824. There had been
published seventy-five years before, _A short narrative of mischief
done by the French and Indian enemy on the western frontiers of the
Province of Massachusetts Bay, Mar. 15, 1743-44, to Aug. 2, 1748,
drawn up by the Rev. Mr. Doolittle of Northfield, and found among his
manuscripts after his death_. Boston, 1750.[457]
By the time of Shirley’s war (1744-48), the frontier line had been
pushed westerly to the line of the Housatonic,[458] and at Poontoosuck
we find the exposed garrison life repeated, and its gloom and perils
narrated in J. E. A. Smith’s _History of Pittsfield_, 1734-1800
(Boston, 1869). William Williams, long a distinguished resident of
this latter town, had been detailed from the Hampshire[459] militia in
1743 to connect the Connecticut and the Hudson with a line of posts,
and he constructed forts at the present Heath, Rowe, and Williamstown,
known respectively as forts Shirley,[460] Pelham, and Massachusetts. In
August, 1746, the latter post, whose garrison was depleted to render
assistance during the eastward war, was attacked by the French and
Indians, and destroyed.[461]
[Illustration]
Fort Massachusetts was rebuilt, and its charge, in June, 1747,
committed to Major Ephraim Williams.[462] It became the headquarters
of the forts and block-houses scattered throughout the region now the
county of Berkshire, maintaining garrisons drawn from the neighboring
settlers, and at times from the province forces in part. The plans of
one of these fortified posts are preserved in the state archives, and
from the drawings given in Smith’s _Pittsfield_ (p. 106) the annexed
cuts are made.[463]
In 1754 the charge of the western frontier was given to Col. Israel
Williams.[464]
These Berkshire garrisons were in some measure assisted by recruits
from Connecticut, as that colony could best protect in this way its
own frontiers to the northward. Beside the general histories of
Connecticut, this part of her history is treated in local monographs
like Bronson’s _Waterbury_, H. R. Stiles’ _Ancient Windsor_, Cothren’s
_Ancient Woodbury_, Larned’s _Windham County_, and Orcutt and
Beardsley’s _Derby_.[465]