they prayed for some forbearance, " because of their enfeebled and impoverished state." As one proof that it was not zeal in which they were wanting, they represented that one man out of every five in their jurisdiction, capable of bearing arms, had been doing military service in the past year. While their agent in England was "to vindicate and justify the government," they magnanimously or prudently instructed him not to "fault or impeach others for want of doing their duty, or for their conduct in that affair." Some little consolation was derived from the knowledge that a plan entertained by the French for the retaking of Port Royal had been disconcerted by the necessity of concentrating their forces for the strengthening of Quebec.2

Oct. 24.

1712.

In the following year some of the customary inroads of Indians, varied by no novel circumstances, took place along the north-eastern border. On the Peace of whole, in the discouragement which prevailed, the Utrecht. intelligence of the discreditable peace of Utrecht was received with welcome in Massachusetts.* March 31. The Indians proposed to the officer command

1713.

1 British Colonial Papers.

2Letter read [June 8, 1713] from Mr. Harley, referring to the Board petition of officers who served in the late war, and now disbanded, to the Queen, praying a grant of a great tract of land in North America, uninhabited, between New England and Nova Scotia, in order to their settling and planting there." (Journal of the Board of Trade, sub die.) Mr. Dummer, as agent for Massachusetts, appeared before the Board, June 11, and expressed his approval of the project. A negotiation followed (July 6, 9, 10, 21) respecting the expenses of their transportation. An estimate of the charges" was **sent [April 8, 1714] to Sir Isaac Newton, master worker of her Maj

esty's mint, for his opinion and observations thereon." The Queen died a few months after this, and the scheme, though not yet abandoned, came to nothing.

Niles, in Mass. Hist. Col., XXXV. 333-335; Penhallow, 71– 74; comp. N. H. Provincial Papers, III. 543-546.

• May 4, 1713, the Privy Council "ordered that the Lords of Trade forthwith cause the proclamation for publishing the treaties of peace and commerce lately concluded between her Majesty and the French king to be sent to the Governors of her Majesty's plantations, with directions to cause the same to be solemnly published." (Register of the Privy Council.)

July 11.

ing at Casco to make a treaty on their own account.1 Dudley kept up his dignity by answering that they must come to him at Portsmouth; and there accordingly they made another of their untrustworthy pacifications, professing themselves loyal subjects of the British Queen, and imploring forgiveness for their past misdeeds and perfidies. It was estimated that the eastern tribes had lost one-third part of the whole number of their warriors during the past ten years, and an equal proportion of women and children, and that the proportion of lives sacrificed had been little, if at all, less among the English population of Maine. While some families were extinct, others mourned parents, brothers, children, murdered or torn from them to hopeless captivity. The settlements were reduced to miserable poverty; their trade was ruined; their houses were burned; their fields were devastated. More than a hundred miles of sea-coast, lately the seat of prosperous life, bore no longer a trace of civilized humanity.

1 Mass. Archives, XXIX. 22-29, 30-32.

CHAPTER IX.

Discord between the Governor and the General Court.

1703.

Sept. 1.

April 8.

THE renewal of the Indian war at the beginning of Dudley's administration, while it invited harmonious action between him and the General Court, did not suspend their jealousy of one another. He called the Court together to consult on the state of affairs, informing them that he had already sent succors into Maine, in sufficient force, as he still hoped, to restore tranquillity. It was not unnatural that he should regard a moment when he felt his importance to the people to be great, as being a favorable one for the enforcement of measures which he knew to be disrelished by them; and he read a letter from the Queen urging anew the matter of stated salaries for the high officials. The House replied that, in the absence of many of its members, kept at home by the existing alarm, they could not prudently proceed to consider a subject of such moment.' The importance of a stated and permanent salary for the Governors had been as clearly seen by themselves as by their masters from the institution of the provincial government, - by the Ministry, because it so materially affected the power of their representatives to serve them; by the Governors, both for that reason and for their private comfort and ease. Sir William Phips was not long in seeing the expediency of praying Novembor. the King to "nominate to said Assembly a salary

1693.

1 Nor did the Governor find the Council pliant. Till the Queen appoints the Council, the best men can have no share in the govern

ment.' (Dudley to the Board of Trade, in September, 1703, in British Colonial Papers.)

sufficient for his support." Lord Bellomont, before he left England, applied to have" such a salary fixed on him as might be suitable to the government;" an application of which the unsatisfactory result has been seen in the reply of the agent of Massachusetts to the July 4. message of the Lords of Trade.2

1695.

At the Governor's next opportunity for communication with the Court, his urgency for action in respect to established salaries and the restoration of the eastern 1703. fort was such as to bring the House to a formal Nov. 16. defence of that policy, which it had adopted at the beginning of the provincial history, and in which it persisted to the end. There was now discord between the two branches of the Legislature, the Council siding with the Governor on questions of form and of his prerogative. The Representatives had sent an Address to the Queen, without consultation with the Council. The Council desired to see it. The Representatives replied that their Journal, in which it was recorded, was open to the Council's inspection, but they refused to send their clerk up with the Journal, or to furnish a copy of the paper. Dudley summoned the House to come to the Council Chamber with their Journal. They came, but did not bring it. At length they were prevailed upon to furnish a copy of the Address, and the altercation came to nothing except as manifesting the jealous temper which prevailed:*

1 See above, p. 142. 2 Ibid., p. 177.

"It hath been the privilege from Henry the Third, and confirmed by Edward the First, and in all reigns unto this day granted, and is now allowed to be the first and unquestionable right of the subject, to raise when and dispose of how they see cause, any sums of money by consent of Parliament, the which privilege we, her Majesty's loyal and

VOL. IV.

19

dutiful subjects, have lived in the enjoyment of, and do hope always to enjoy the same, under our most gracious Queen Anne and successors." (Mass. Prov. Rec., Nov. 16, 1703.) Before the Governor obtained this answer, he had to send twice to remind the House of the application he had made. (Comp. Ibid., for Nov. 4 and 15.)

Ibid., for November 15, 16, 17,

and 18.

Nov. 23.

Nov. 26.

The House made a grant to Constantine Phipps, as agent for the Colony. Dudley held that, with his becoming Governor, Phipps's agency, being unauthorized by him, had ceased. The House voted that the Governor's appropriation to other uses of moneys granted by them for the fortification of Boston Harbor was a "grievance." They presented a list of other complaints relating to his military administration, and were about to extend it still further when he prorogued them, after a rebuke accompanied with lofty assertions of his prerogative as "her Majesty's commander-in-chief in Massachusetts." They parted in

Dec. 2.

mutual ill-humor, and Dudley wrote to Lord NotDec. 19. tingham that he had communicated the Queen's requisitions to the Assembly, but though he had "for a month's time used all possible methods with them," he found it "impossible to move that sort of men, who love not the crown and government of England, to any manner of obedience." They meant, he said, to "put a slight upon her Majesty's government, of whose just rights I will not abate the least point to save my life, it being so very necessary to watch to support it amongst a people that would destroy it, if possible."1

The Governor's first speech to the General Court after the sack of Deerfield was occupied with that subfor the war. ject to the exclusion of the commonplaces of the salaries and of the eastern fort. The Court called

Provisions

1704.

March 8. for six hundred volunteers, offered a premium of a hundred pounds for scalps, and sent to solicit military aid from Rhode Island and Connecticut. A large supply of money was wanted. Bills of credit were issued to the amount of ten thousand pounds, and a tax was laid for their redemption.

The Representatives never overlooked the importance

1 Letter of Dudley, in British Colonial Papers.