July 13. with the Council, he chose to exercise himself through his Governor. The General Court yielded this point. By a new Act they gave the power of visitation "to his Majesty and his Governor and commander-in-chief for the time being of this Province;" but they provided that five Fellows of the Corporation should always be persons elected from the Council. The influence of the President and his friends had also prevailed to introduce the novel provision that no person shall be chosen and continued President, Vice-President, or Fellow of said Corporation, but such as shall declare and continue their adherence unto the principles of reformation which were espoused and intended by those who first settled this country and founded the College, and have hitherto been the profession and practice of the generality of the churches of Christ in New England." The Governor objected to this exclusion of members of the English establishment from the academical government. He arrested the Act, and "advised to address his Majesty for a royal charter of incorporation." The suggestion having led to nothing, for the General Court were reluctant to allow the necessity of committing every thing to the royal pleasure, — the Governor renewed it the next year. The Council passed a vote to carry it into effect, but the Representatives still preferred to frame a charter for the King's consideration. At last the two branches agreed upon a Draught of a Charter of Incorporation for Harvard College, to be humbly solicited for to his Majesty." The care of it was intrusted to Lord Bellomont, with a request for him to use his interest in England for its adoption, which one of his letters shows that he was entirely disposed to do.2 But he did not live to bring 1 1700. June 11. July 12. July 15. the royal approbation which he had twice refused before." 2 The settlement of it [the College] seems to involve the ardent de Death of 1 the matter to the notice of the King. He died in New York before the end of the year after his return thither; Lord Bello- happy, perhaps, to escape the unjust reception which was awaiting him in England, on account March 5. of his connection with Lord Somers. mont. 1701. 3 1700. 2 Perhaps he died of sheer disappointment and mortification, for he knew how he was maligned in England; and the King's ministers, who should have been his vindicators, had given him recently no sort of attention. A week before his departure from Boston, he wrote thence July 9. "in the anguish of his soul: ""There came hither two ships from London, the last week in May, which brought me not a letter from any of the ministers, and another ship four days ago, but not a letter by that neither. What must the people here and in New York think, but that either the King and his ministers have no sort of care or value for these plantations, not minding whether they 4 sires and affections of these people beyond all other things in this world; for, as they have an extraordinary zeal and fondness for their religion, so any thing that disturbs them in that touches them in their tenderest part.” (British Colonial Papers.) 1 November 19, the Board of Trade considered a letter from Sir Henry Ashurst, "together with the draft of a charter, desired by that government of the Massachusetts Bay, for Harvard College, in New England." (Journal of the Board of Trade.) But no action on the subject is recorded. 2 Randolph, who was hostile to Lord Bellomont, and who had come to Bermuda, was, as usual, making mischief. The Governor of that island had occasion to seize his papers, and among them found copies of letters to the Board of Trade, in which he wrote "very villanously and in a very scurrilous manner against Lord Bellomont," ascribing to him no less than the character of a rogue." (Letter of Blake to Nanfan, of November 6, 1699, in British Colonial Papers.) 3 One of his annoyances was his being straitened as to means of living. "I must be so free with your Lordship as to tell you that, unless care be taken to provide an honorable maintenance for me, and certain, I must go to Boston next spring to make sure of their annual present of £1600 their money. I were to blame if, because I am neglected at home, I should neglect myself here." (Letter to the Lords of Trade, of Nov. 28, 1700, in O'Callaghan, IV. 784.) 4 Letter to Secretary Vernon, of July 9, in British Colonial Papers. Nov. 22, 1700, Sir Charles Hodges succeeded Vernon as Secretary of State. May 26 of this year, Bellomont's friend, the Duke of Shrewsbury, had gone out of office, and been succeeded by the Earl of Jersey. fall into French hands or no; or else that I am in disgrace with the King, and that all this neglect proceeds from a personal slight to me. I never in all my life was so vexed and ashamed as now; I put the best face I can on it, but I find other people take the liberty to judge of the present conduct of affairs in England." After he went to New York, and still more completely after his death there in the next year, the local administration again devolved on Stoughton, as Lieutenant-Governor. Stoughton survived his superior by not many months. A token of popular approbation, of a kind to which he had not been used, came to cheer his last solitary days. The House-perhaps in a sudden access of good-will for an old servant often visited with the popular rebuke, perhaps from a really grateful sense of his recent commendable services, perhaps from no kinder motive than was supplied by an apprehension of having Dudley for 1701. their ruler resolved to send a petition to the April 18. King, for the appointment of Stoughton to that office. But the Council refused to concur in the measure. Stoughton's health was failing. He presided at the opening of the next General Court; but, while its business was yet unfinished, was forced to prorogue it for a month, "being incapable, by reason of sickness, of further affording his presence in the Assembly, or of admitting of their going to him." Death of Before the month was out, he died in Dorchester, Stoughton. where he had passed his joyless life, having been born there in the second year after the great im- May. migration. June 30. July 7. 1632. He had filled many offices, and performed their duties with a surly assiduity, which commanded a certain sort of esteem. He perhaps loved nobody, though the winning as well as commanding powers of Dudley may have blended something of affection with the deference into which he was subdued by the genius of that highly endowed man. On the other hand, if he was not loved, Stoughton was not of a temper to be made uncomfortable by isolation, while it was a pleasure to him to feel that he had some command of that confidence which men repose in such as they see. to be indifferent to their good-will, and independent of it as coveting nothing which it has to bestow. When his constituents were angry at the result of his mission to England, he did not distress himself for their displeasure, but waited patiently for it to subside; and when they solicited him to go a second time on the same errand, he told them, with no warmth and no reflection on the past, that they could not have his services. While, like While, like every landholder in Massachusetts, he was frightened at the excesses of Andros, he had little enthusiasm for the rising by which Andros was expelled. The prosecution of the witches was a proceeding quite to his mind; the "stern joy" of inflicting great misery under the coercion of an unflinching sense of duty was strangely congenial with his proud and narrow nature; he had a morbid relish for that class of duties. which, bringing wretchedness on others, may be supposed to cost the doer a struggle against the pleadings of pity. When, sympathizing with the almost universal sorrow and remorse that succeeded the witchcraft madness, his gentle associate Sewall publicly bemoaned his sin, and in agony implored the Divine forgiveness, Stoughton professed that, whatever mistakes might have been made, he saw "no reason to repent of what he had done with the fear of God before his eyes." While, on the one hand, his habitual unconcern about popular favor generally gave him the command of as much of it as he cared for, he was helped, on the other, by the friendship of the clergy, which he took as much pains to secure as he ever thought it worth while to bestow for any amiable purpose. If the people did not want him, he could be content; at all events, he would not complain or solicit. If they did want him, he would serve them without fraud and without ambition, but it must be after his own grim fashion, a fashion to be dictated, as the occasions arose, not only by his judgment and sense of duty, but by his prejudices and his temper He meant to be excellently firm; he excelled in being churlish, morose, and obstinate, in a style of the most unimpeachable dignity. Displeasure of Trade. The Board of Trade had not been satisfied with the recent conduct of Massachusetts. They had not been able to prevail upon that Province to under- of the Board take the expense of rebuilding the fort at Pemaquid, notwithstanding their having pressed it with urgent repetition. The General Court, resenting the renewed activity in enforcing the Acts of Navigation,' which they regarded as unjust and heavily oppressive, had refused to pass laws desired in England for the more rigorous execution of those Acts.2 The Board were informed by an official person,3 writing from New York, that he feared "the government at Boston might represent him Dec. 29. as a warm man for publicly exposing the argument of one of their clergy, who maintained that they were not in conscience bound to obey the laws of England, having no 1. It was at this time, too, that the excessive jealousy of colonial manufactures referred to above (IV. 20) was manifested. 2 Chalmers, MS. Letter to Lord Mansfield, 86.- April 11, 1700, in anticipation of the business of the approaching session, the Board advised the Governor to consider "whether it would not be proper to reject those Counsellors who opposed passing a law [to make piracy a capital offence], and were averse to the laws of England." They "desired him to dispose the Assembly to build forts, especially at Pemaquid, because the Province of Maine was annexed to Massachusetts for maintaining that fort, which would secure 1701. the coast and the fishery." They commended him for his course in the " contest with the Council about the nomination of officers, and refusing to pass a bill about Harvard College.' It was, they wrote (April 19)," strange that Massachusetts should pay so little regard to their own safety, with relation to the Eastern Indians, as to neglect the building of the fort; "they must be pressed to it; their obstinacy might oblige Parliament to provide some remedy." (British Colonial Papers.) 3 Letter of William Atwood, in O'Callaghan, IV. 930. He was a Judge of Admiralty. (N. H. Rec., II. 359.) |