1 they did not despair, and the controversy which they kept alive made for some years the prominent question in the politics of the Province. A few judicious persons were in favor of making strenuously the exertions and sacrifices necessary for a speedy return to a solid currency. But in the difficulties of the time they could obtain little hearing; and, as a choice between evils, they generally favored the public bank.2 Sir Henry Ashurst, head of the dissenting interest in Parliament, and Constantine Phipps, ancestor of the Marquesses of Normanby of the present time, had for many years been agents of Massachusetts in England. Phipps, attaching himself to the Tory Ministry which, after the blunder of the Whigs in the proceedings against Dr. Sacheverel, held power in the last years of Queen 1710. Anne, became thereby unacceptable to the people and General Court of Massachusetts; and about the same time Ashurst died. Sir William, his brother, equally respected for his worth, and regarded as a person of more ability and influence, was elected to be agent, against Dudley's strenuous opposition. But it was no object of ambition to him, the less so as he thought the agents had not been liberally treated; and he declined Appointto serve, pleading ill health, and recommending Dummer to Jeremiah Dummer for the place. Dummer, grand bition to the projectors (among whom were persons so considerable as Nathaniel Byfield, Peter Faneuil, and Hezekiah Usher) to issue bills, or print their scheme, till they had laid it before the General Court. (Council Record.) For a list of publications in this controversy, see Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, April 25, 1866, p. 88. 2 Aug. 8, 1715, Dummer informed the Lords of Trade that he had been directed by the Province, if a project of a bank should be submitted to the 3 ment of be agent. Lords, to pray that, before any action was taken, they might have opportunity to examine it; and he asked that all action might be suspended till the new Governor should arrive in Massachusetts. (British Colonial Papers.) Again, August 24, he laid before them an argument against the proposed bank, maintaining that the bills of credit of the last quartercentury afforded a better circulating medium, and that if a profit was to be made the public ought to have it. (Ibid.) 3 Journal of the Board of Trade. 1699. son of a former Assistant of Massachusetts, and a graduate of Harvard College, was chosen to be agent, also against Dudley's recommendation of another person.1 After leaving Cambridge, Dummer had studied at the University of Utrecht for some years. Then, after a short visit to his home, he went to England, where he obtained the notice and engaged in the service of Henry St. John; and a prospect of advancement opened before him, which was closed by the Queen's death. 1712. This appointment, especially after his opposition to it, made Dudley anxious. He feared that the failure at Quebec would be used to his prejudice. He wrote to Lord Oct. 29. Dartmouth, protesting that every thing possible had been done by him to promote the ill-fated expedition. "If after all my sincere endeavors in that affair," insecure he said, "I should lose my reputation with the position. people here, and her Majesty's favor, I should be the most unfortunate man living. I have served her Majesty here faithfully these ten years. . I have left nothing undone, . . . . . and have had but a mean support, and yet am not willing to lose my station." 2 As Dudley's 8, at a meeting of the Council, sixteen were present, and fifteen voted for the appointment, in concurrence with the Deputies." But, February 9, the Governor refused his assent. July 27, 1710. This day the Deputies sent in a bill [Sir William Ashurst having declined the agency] to choose Mr. Jeremiah Dummer for their agent. Governor says he will be drawn asunder with wild horses, before he will be thrust upon, as last year." (Sewall's Journal.)-June 6, 1710, Dummer informed the Board of Trade that Sir William declined to accept the agency. Feb. 5, 1711, he presented his own commission, signed by Dudley the preceding November 10. (Journal of the Board of Trade.) 2 Letter in British Colonial Papers. to his mean support, Usher, on the other hand, whom Dudley (moved perhaps by the memory of their ancient participation in Andros's councils) had usefully befriended, but who had now quarrelled with him, affirmed that Dudley, though always complaining, had been saving money out of his pay. There is some reason to think that, at this time, Vetch was intriguing in England to supplant the Governor. But he not long after fell into discredit. Nicholson wrote of him from Boston to Lord Bolingbroke: "He hath, I think, acted very arbitrarily and illegally, and hath defrauded her Maj- April 23. esty very considerably, and hath gone away. 1 Letter in British Colonial Papers. But Dummer, sustained by several other persons who were examined by the Board of Trade, gave a very different character of Vetch. Dummer said that "Colonel Vetch was a man of good sense, well affected to the government, and a good soldier; that he had heard of no complaint against him but what had been made by Colonel Nicholson." (Journal of the Board of Trade, for Jan. 17, 1715.) Nicholson appears to have espoused in this case the cause of Sir Charles Hobby, who had made interest to supersede him as Governor of Nova Scotia. The rivals were reconciled, and with Vetch's acquiescence Hobby was "made Lieutenant-Governor of Annapolis Royal." (Ibid., for February 4.) As late as 1724, Vetch was hoping to succeed Shute as Governor of Massachusetts. In a letter to the Duke of Newcastle, of June 22 of that year, he set forth his former services in the expeditions against Canada and Nova Scotia. He says that, after the Treaty of Utrecht, he was removed from the government of the latter Province, " only for his zeal for his present Majesty's royal family and interest." He thinks it "next to impossible Mr. Shute should go VOL. IV. 1714. back, considering the vast breach that is now between him and the whole body of the people and government there," and he "dares without vanity affirm that no person is more capable [than himself] of serving the interest of the crown in that country, and no person can be more acceptable to the whole people there." (British Colonial Papers.) Colonel Nicholson, while in Massachusetts, was by no means modest in his assumptions of authority, and Dudley stood his friend. In conferences with the Council, it was his custom to place himself at the head of the table, by the Governor's side. On one occasion, Sewall and another justice sent his secretary to gaol for some noisy joviality on a Saturday night. Nicholson complained, and the Governor obtained the Council's consent for the offender's discharge. (Sewall's Journal, for Feb. 14, 1711.) 22 June 8, 1713, "Letter read from Mr. Harley, referring to the Board petition of officers and soldiers who served in the late war, and now disbanded, to the Queen, praying a grant 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.) A negotia Aug. 10. The Governor, as usual, set himself to conciliate those whom he found himself unable to break down. Sir William Ashurst was induced to write out to Massachusetts, that, if Dudley should be displaced, the Province might prove to be the loser.1 Phipps, who at first had pursued him with acrimony, had still earlier been won over. The agent and the Governor, both devoted clients of the new Tory Ministry, were naturally brought together by this sympathy. Dudley never stood so strong in England as he did just before Queen Anne died and Lord Bolingbroke fled.2 His last days of office. But though his desisting from the offensive demands with which he had begun his administration had removed the principal immediate cause of contention between him and the people of Massachusetts, and though the advantage to them of his activity and capacity in the conduct of the war did not fail to be appreciated, yet it would be an error to suppose that he ever reinstated himself in their confidence or good-will, after the treacheries of his earlier public life. When he had made a speech to the General Court, an Sept. 29. tion followed respecting the terms of the grant, and provision for the expenses of the enterprise. (Ibid., for June 12, July 6, 9, and 10, August 14, 19, 21.) But the demands of the petitioners were thought to be "so high that their Lordships could not represent any thing to my Lord Treasurer in their favor." The project was subsequently revived, but still fruitlessly. (Privy Council Register, for December 6, and Journal of the Board of Trade, for Dec. 30, 1714, and Feb. 15, 1715.) On the night of May 20, a mob in Boston broke into and entered a warehouse," and "broke the windows of a gentleman of her Majesty's Council." The Council took notice of it the next day (Council Records), and, May 28, the Governor made a speech upon it to the House. (Mass. Prov. Rec.) He said that his doing so was not for want of power of his own to suppress disorders; and the House seem to have agreed with him, for they took no action. I do not know who was the Counsellor, or what provocation he had given. 1 Letter of Sir William Ashurst to Increase Mather, in Hutch., II. 211, note. 2 In 1714, the fifth Congregational Church, called the New North Church, was established in Boston. It was dedicated May 5, and John Webb became its pastor. (John Eliot, Sermon preached May 2, 1804; Francis Parkman, Sermon preached Nov. 27, 1814; Mass. Hist. Col., XXV. 215.) Oct. 2. nouncing the Queen's death, the Council followed it up by a vote for a joint committee of the two Houses Oct. 1. to prepare an Address to the King, praying a renewal of the commissions of the Governor and Lieutenant-Governor. The Representatives refused to concur in it; they refused, when solicited by the Council, to reconsider their vote of non-concurrence; and the Court was prorogued without further discussion of the matter. The Governor continued to execute his office for the present by virtue of an Act of Parliament, which was understood to extend such authority for a period of six months from the sovereign's death. At the end of that time he withdrew, and the Council assumed the chief executive authority conformably to a provision of the charter. In a few weeks, however, came a royal proclamation, reinstating him in his place in time to preside at the next General Court.2 It may be thought to betoken the weakness of Dudley's last days of office, that the General Court (Mass. Prov. Rec. for Nov. 5, 1714), averse to the continued expense of defending a great extent of frontier, ordered that no person should thenceforward, unless by special license, settle anywhere in Maine, except at York, Berwick, Arrowsick, Kittery, and Wells. A garrison at Pemaquid would be of no use to any of these plantations. 2 Addington showed to Sewall an order from the Queen, of May 3, 1707, constituting the oldest Counsellor Governor in case of the Governor's death or absence. (Sewall's Journal, for Jan. 1, 1715.) But this was not the provision of the charter. Jan. 27, 1715, the Governor presided in the Council as usual. Feb. 1, the Council sent a committee to him to inquire whether, six months having expired since the sovereign's 1 1715. Feb. 4. March 21. death, he had received any order to continue the government. He replied that he had received no orders. Those of the Counsellors who were then in town called a meeting of the Council for the second following day. Feb. 4, that body "published by beat of drum" a proclamation making known that a "Devolution had taken place," and that they had assumed the government; and sent a committee to acquaint the Governor with this. Lieutenant-Governor Tailer made his claim to preside in the Council; but it was disallowed, and Wait Winthrop was made its presiding officer. (Council Records; Sewall's Diary; Letter of the Council to the Lords of Trade, of March 2, 1715, in Mass. Arch., LI. 271). — March 16, the Council made inquisition respecting an unsigned printed sheet, entitled "The Case of the Governor and Council of Massachusetts Bay." Thomas Fleet, whom they examined, |