eastern tribes had not above "three hundred fighting men," yet that they had broken up a thousand families of English settlers. He represented that "the Province of Maine, a noble country, had been destroyed in the late war," and that there were "no thoughts of repeopling it; the people were not public-spirited enough." He distinguished a portion of the Council as "the sour part." He reported them as saying that " they were too much cramped in their liberties already," and he complained that a bill relating to piracy, especially a clause punishing it with death, "would not go down with them by any means." He had had a sharp dispute with the Council about their alleged right to a share in the appointment of certain officers. Sir William Phips had been weak enough, he said, to yield that point to them; and Stoughton had done the same, though not without a protest. The Governor was honorable, frank, and sensitive, perhaps over-confident, perhaps not without arrogance. The sight of knavery in others enraged him, and he could not endure to be himself suspected of any indirection. He was genial and good-natured, and was esteemed to be not ungenerously disposed towards the people whom he came to rule. For his short service the General Court made him two grants of a thousand pounds each; a greater liberality than was

off five times their number of them; but I was soon convinced that it was not altogether the want of courage and conduct in the English that gave the advantage to the Indians this last war, but chiefly the Indians' manner of birding (as I may call it) the English, and using the advantage of the woods and fastnesses for shooting, and then sheltering themselves.

1 July 14, 1699, and July 4, 1700. (Provincial Laws and Resolves, I. 394, 437.) Each Act explicitly declares the grant to be "a present." From the first the ground assumed by the Province against a fixed salary for the

Governor was steadily maintained. When, in 1694, the Court made a grant to Phips of five hundred pounds

for his great service in the government the last year," it was not till the day after they had passed the "Act for the setting forth of General Privileges," declaring such grants to be within their own unshared discretion. (Ibid., 170, 174.)

No grant was made to Stoughton while he was acting Governor, because in Bellomont's commission he was instructed during his absence from the seat of his government to allow half of his emoluments to the Lieutenant

ever shown to a Governor of Massachusetts, before or since his time. They overrated the extent of his friendship for them. They might have been less liberal, had they known of his writing home that in his government he wanted persons, employed in the King's service in all ranks," from the Governor to the meanest officer," to be "not men of the country, but Englishmen."

Question of

port.

A present of a thousand pounds of the provincial currency, made to him by the General Court, Lord Bellomont said, was equivalent to no more than the Gover seven hundred pounds sterling, whereas, before nor's supleaving England, he had been led to expect a regular salary of twelve hundred pounds. "I never did," he writes, "nor ever will ask them any thing, and it troubles me that I am on so precarious a foot for a salary for this government." 2 This complaint being communicated by the Lords of Trade to the agent of Massachusetts, Sir Henry" said he believed the Council and the Assembly would not consent to settle a salary upon 1700. all Governors for the future; but that if his Majesty should be pleased to write to them, or if this Board should do it, he doubted not but that they might be persuaded to settle a suitable salary upon the Earl of Bellomont during his government." "

Jan. 31.

Governor. (Journal of the Board of want of a house, and obliged to pay Trade for Oct. 1, 1695.)

1 Letter of Lord Bellomont to the Lords of Trade, of April 23, 1700. (British Colonial Papers.) Again, he writes to the Lords of the Admiralty, Sept. 7, 1699, that he has appainted for King's Advocate in the Admiralty Courts of New Hampshire and Rhode Island" Thomas Newton, an Englishman born, which I confess is one quality I shall always desire to meet with in men that I recommend to employment in these plantations."

2 Letter of Aug. 28, 1699, in British Colonial Papers. He adds that he is "put to great inconvenience for

£100 a year for one, besides the hire of a stable. There is a very good house-plot where Sir Edmund Andros had lived, standing on the best part of the town. £3000 would build a good house and offices, - not much, considering that building here is at least a third dearer than in London."

8 Letter of Sir Henry Ashurst in British Colonial Papers. Perhaps, as the demand was not yet pressed, the Court was not averse to the agent's using this compliant language, as long as he did it on his own responsibility alone.

1695.

July 16.

Thus early the dispute was announcing itself, which continued with intermissions for nearly half a century, and which was at last decided in favor of the Province by the parent government's desisting from its pretension. From the time of the conception of the arrangement for Lord Bellomont to go to America, before the institution of the Board of Trade, the project of a stated provision for the colonial Governors was in the contemplation of the British Ministry. The Lords Justices, during an absence of the King upon the continent, resolved" that the Governors in America should . . . not be left to depend solely on benevolence of assemblies for their support," while they did "not think that the charge should be laid on revenue in England; it might be an ill precedent." 1 Immediately on his appointment, he represented to the Lords of Trade the fitness "that a salary suitable to the dignity of those governments might be proposed for him to the King' After two years' experience of his American govJuly 15. ernments, he wrote to the Lords that his "appointments were so very narrow that he could not live on them;" that he was the "pensioner" of the General Court of Massachusetts "just as long as they pleased.” 3

1697. April 15.

1700.

1 British Colonial Papers. Lord Bellomont's instructions were "the usual instructions given to Governors of Massachusetts, with the addition of the usual clause for restraining the Governor for accepting money given by the Assembly without the King's leave." (Journal of the Board of Trade for Oct. 1, 1695.) Accordingly this leave was expressly given in his case. (Provincial Laws and Resolves, I. 766, 777.)

2 British Colonial Papers. Comp. Journal of the Board of Trade for July 4, 1695. Writing to Popple, Secretary of the Board, April 14, 1697, Lord Bellomont specifies £1200

12

3

as a proper salary for Massachusetts to pay, and says, as to the style he should live in, that "it will be expected he should make somewhat a better figure than Sir Edmund Andros did." (Ibid.; comp. a Representation of the Lords of Trade to the King, in O'Callaghan, IV. 263.)

British Colonial Papers.-Yet he found his government of Massachusetts the most comfortable of the three. Stoughton and Addington were very assistant" to him, and he "would rather govern four such provinces as the Massachusetts Bay than New York."

66

The Board agreed with him that he was not made as independent of the Court as was desirable, and remarked on the contumacy of "the only Province depending immediately on the King which had not settled an allowance on the Governor," while it was "able the better to do that, and build a house for the Governor, because they were not in debt." 1

suspicious cir-
Taking alarm

Quest for

pirates in

the north

ern Colo

nies.

One consideration known to have had weight in the selection of Lord Bellomont for the chief administration in America related to the piracies believed to have been committed by vessels equipped in or resorting to the ports of that country. Already, before his lordship's arrival, Stoughton had instituted inquiries respecting these crimes. A ship of three or four hundred tons, called the "Adventure," came in cumstances into Narragansett Bay. at some circumstances of their reception, the crew landed and dispersed into the country. The captain, named Bradish, and ten others, were arrested in Massachusetts.3 From them it was learned that the vessel, then mounting twenty-two guns, had a year before sailed from Gravesend for Borneo, on a trading voyage for March 16. some London merchants; and that, after they had been six months at sea, part of the company, twenty-five or twenty-six in number, conspired to seize the ship, left the master with the rest of the crew and passengers on an island, and chose the boatswain's mate to be their captain. After a division of the plunder, which yielded to each more than fifteen hundred dollars in money, besides a share in other. valuable property, they sought a place

1 Journal of the Board of Trade for April 11, 1700; comp. Ibid. for June 12, 22.

2 See e.g. the letter of the Lords of Trade, of March 21, 1698, to Lord Bellomont, in O'Callaghan, IV. 299; comp. his letters to the Lords of Trade, Ibid., 304, 307, 309.

1698.

8 Bradish escaped, with the connivance, as was believed, of the gaoler (O'Callaghan, IV. 585), but was briskly hunted for and retaken. (Letter of Lord Bellomont of Oct. 24, 1699, in British Colonial Papers.) Feb. 16, 1700, he was sent to England with Kidd. (Sewall's Diary.)

1699.

where they might land and disperse without observation. At the end of a year from their going to sea, the March 19. rovers had made a port at the east end of Long Island, where they deposited some of their booty, while they should make further observations. Proceeding thence to Block Island, they took the alarm which occasioned their dispersion and flight.'

The pirate

Kidd.

In respect to another criminal, the activity of Lord Bellomont was stimulated by a personal interest. William Kidd was the pirate whom he was especially deWilliam sirous to get into his hands. Four or five years before, the Governor had become interested in an enterprise for clearing the eastern seas of piratical cruisers which were preying there on European commerce. In London he had formed an acquaintance with Colonel Robert Livingston, of New York, and took "occasion to mention to this gentleman the scandal which lay upon New York in respect to the encouragement and retreat which pirates found there." At a subsequent interview, Livingston "said he had spoke with one Captain William Kidd, lately come from New York in a sloop of his own upon the account of trade, who told him that he knew most of the principal men who had been abroad roving, and divers who had lately gone out, and likewise had some knowledge of the places where they usually made their rendezvous, and that he would undertake to seize most of them, in case he might be employed in one of the King's ships, a good sailer of about thirty guns, and might have a hundred and fifty men. . . Livingston affirmed that Kidd was a bold and honest man.

1 Stoughton's letter of April 12, 1699, to Vernon, Secretary of State. (Hutch. Hist., II. 116, note.)

Kidd was known and well reputed in Massachusetts earlier than this time. June 8, 1691, within the year after Phips's disaster before

The King was

Quebec, he and another shipmaster received commissions from Bradstreet and his Council," for going forth on their Majesties' service, to suppress an enemy privateer now upon this coast." (Mass. Hist. Col., XXI. 122.)