native country which he revisited was changed since he had known it so well. With the loss of that charter to which he had been treacherous, the dream of self-government was for the present dispelled from the minds of the people of Massachusetts. If there was discontent among them, there was not concert in any endeavor for a change. They had been learning to regard themselves as, in another sense than in earlier times, the subjects of the British crown. And so far he might promise himself that in his communications with them he had the less impracticableness to apprehend at their hands.' On the other hand, he had good reason to count upon a vigorous support from the government which he came to serve. The inauguration of the last ministry of King William had dismissed seen no evidence of his ever acting in that capacity. Accompanied by Brenton, who bore a commission as "Collector, Surveyor, and Searcher," he arrived in Boston from Cowes, in the Isle of Wight, Jan. 21, 1691. (Sewall's Diary, sub die.) In the autumn of that year, having done execution upon Leisler at New York in the spring, he was at his home in Roxbury (Ibid., November 20 and December 27), as he was in the autumn of 1692, at the time of the witchcraft excitement (O'Callaghan, III. 847, 848; IV. 2, 3), and in the spring of the following year (Sewall's Diary, for March 17, 1693). It was on account of his "living in Boston, four hundred miles from hence " (New York), that Fletcher, in September, 1692, "suspended" him from his judicial office. (Smith, History of New York, 129). It must have been in 1633 or 1694 that he returned to England; for, Nov. 28, 1703, he wrote to John Usher, "I had the honor to serve under my Lord Cutts as LieutenantGovernor nine years and a half, while he was in Flanders." (British Co lonial Papers.) In the last Parliament of King William the Third, he sat for Newtown, the borough which had been represented before his time by the Duke of Marlborough, while still a commoner, and which introduced George Canning into Parliament in 1793. 1 March 18, 1702, Dudley presented a "memorial for removing one of the four foot companies at New York to New England." (Privy Council Register; comp. Journal of the Board of Trade for March 24.) Possibly he was timid about his reception, and wanted these troops for security. Certainly he could not have expected a cordial welcome. According to a letter of the time (George Larkin to the Lords of Trade, Oct. 14, 1701, in British Colonial Papers), some declare publickly that they will oppose the landing of Colonel Dudley." But perhaps nothing more was in his mind than to keep up the state to which he had been used in the Isle of Wight, during the years while his superior was in Flanders. the patrons of Lord Bellomont, and placed his own friends in power. Dudley met the Court on the day of his arrival, and adjourned it for five days, after publishing his commis 1702. sion and that of the Lieutenant-Governor, Thomas June 11. Povey. The latter, who, when he took his place at the adjourned meeting, was a stranger in America, is believed to have been a brother of the new Secretary to the Board of Trade.' The Council for the year had been chosen a fortnight before, on the day prescribed by the charter. Of its members, several had been active opponents of the Governor in his earlier career, and some had taken a part both in the severities used towards him when the government of Andros was overthrown, and in the influence exerted in England to obstruct his advancement to the place which now rewarded his intrigues. Policy of his govern It is not to be assumed that Dudley was absolutely without good-will for Massachusetts. IIis own interest being first cared for, he was not unwilling to promote hers, and to promote it earnestly when the two might be advanced together. He would rather than not have her prosper, when no object personal to himself interfered. But, when he most desired her prosperity, it was in the spirit of an arrogant and jealous patron. It must ment. be such as England, and as he, her ruler for England, should allow. He scouted the thought of having her judge for herself of her rights or of her wants; what she enjoyed, she was to receive and be thankful for as a boon. The opposite theory in her politics was held by the persons against whom he was also enraged by a sense of personal wrong; and the displeasure with which for both reasons he regarded them he disguised only till opportuni 1 Thomas Povey, at the time of this appointment, was a "captain in the Queen's own regiment of footguards." (British Colonial Papers.) The Queen had deviated from the order of business by appointing him without communication with the Board of Trade. (Journal of the Board for April 21, 1702.) ties should come for its more effectual expression. As to them and to all opponents, he too well knew the conditions of successful ambition to allow himself to be ruled by more impulsive passions. To persist in any gratification of his pride which might incommode a serviceable friend, or confirm or give advantage to an inconvenient enemy, was no part of his plan or practice. He schooled himself to humiliations which won the favor of Randolph, and at an easier cost of professions and compliments he subdued the hostility of Cotton Mather. His tenacious resentments waited to do their work till the time should arrive when his interests no longer demanded their repression. His meet General Court. The formal language of his manifesto (so to call it) when, following the example set by Lord Bellomont, he addressed the Legislature, at its meeting, in a set ing with the speech, disclosed the rancor which former events had inspired. Some of his hearers must have June 16. found it hard to listen with composure to the language of easy superiority in which he announced the proposed system of his government, and his views of the relations and duty of the Province to the parent country. "Not being," he told the Court, "so profitable to the crown in customs as the southern Colonies, Massachusetts ought to make up the deficiency by falling into such other articles of trade to supply the kingdom of England with naval stores, and other commodities there wanting, of which the Province was capable, as might remove this objection, and cause it to be less chargeable to the crown, at the same time keeping within the strictest bounds of all Acts of Parliament." Lofty insolence to be used to men who had sat by his side in council with Endicott and Danforth, and to whom he had been a suppliant in the former years of his merited defeat and helplessness! Galling insolence especially from the lips of the son of the stout Puritan who had left England behind for other objects than that of contributing to her supply of naval stores! The Gov ernor announced that he was expressly instructed to urge the rebuilding by the Province of the fort at Pemaquid, the provision of a house for his residence, and the establishment of regular and sufficient salaries for the Governor, Lieutenant-Governor, and Judges.' He said it was remarked in England that Massachusetts was the only Province in which such provision was not made.2 War with Four days afterwards arrived intelligence from the Queen's Secretary of Stat3 of her declaration of war against France. Thirking his presence im- France. mediately necessary in the astern country, where June 20. trouble was now to be appreended from the Indians, the Governor prorogued the General Court with some expressions of disappointment at their neglect of the matters of business he had laid before them. had taken no action upon either of his proposals; place of the consent to one of them, which he had promised himself, they pursued the usual course. The scantiness of the grant which they made him of five 1 Hutchinson (History, II. 152) understood that Dudley had led the ministry to expect that he would be able to carry this point, and that accordingly his urgency in respect to it, and his mortification when he failed, were the greater. "Colonel Dudley desiring that some method may be taken for disposing the Assembly of Massachusetts Bay to settle a salary upon her Majesty's Governor of that Province, directions were given for preparing an article for that purpose to be inserted in the instructions to be given him." (Journal of the Board of Trade for June 24, 1702.) For Dudley's instructions, see Mass. Hist. Col., XXIX. 100. In Governor Burnet's time, in the year 1729, when the controversy about stated salaries was at its height, the House of Representatives published June 27. They but in June 24. a volume entitled "A Collection of the Proceedings of the Great and General Court or Assembly of his Majesty's Province of the Massachusetts Bay, in New England, containing several instructions from the crown to the Council and Assembly of that Province for fixing a salary on the Governor, and their Determinations thereon, as also the Measures taken by the Court for supporting the several Governors, since the Arrival of the Present Charter." Beginning with a recital of grants to Phips, Bellomont, and Stoughton, it exhibits in detail the transactions relating to this subject down to an advanced stage of the struggle with Burnet. I shall refer to it under the title of Collection of Proceedings." 3 1702, May 15, Lord Nottingham became Secretary of State, vice Manchester. War was declared May 4. hundred pounds. 49'a ality to Lord Bellor. 1. v unfriendly sent mination to ke nance in their The Govern with their recent liberindication both of their self, and of their deter desinthe Governor's mainte whom he did niste at coprom a party of friends for any authority from the General Court, proceed, anto te eastern country, going as far as to Penapad. Taget some representatives of the native assurances of pacife intention when it be, whom he Oct. 27. happy resultaat no better succes Fortification of self and the J. fort at Pemaquid. to that y suaded to renew their Congratulating the Court, in the autumn, on this wy, he renewed, but with for fixed salaries for him or the restoring of the 1 sd that, on his late visit And that the foundation was still good; that a quantity of the materials of the old structure, demolished six years before by the French, was on the spot in a condition to be used again, and that there was abundance of lime close at hand. The Representatives could not be brought to view the proposal with favor. At this time, as well as earlier and later, they insisted that Pemaquid, remote from the vicinity of the settlements, was no fit place for a fort intended to give them security; that its position on the coast was such as to render it incapable of being made tenable against an enemy, except by a heavy outlay; and that in no view would a fortification there be useful to the Province in a degree proportioned to the inevitable cost. They judged that the pertinacity with which the matter was urged by the English government was due, not, as was pretended, to considerations of their interest, but to an exaggerated opinion of the importance of a work at Pemaquid in maintaining an English possession of that territory between the Kennebec and the Penobscot, which 1 Mass. Province Laws, I. 498. |