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. 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 experses 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),

(Mass.

and, May 28, the Governor made a
speech upon it to the House.
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. 1.

Oct. 2.

by

nouncing the Queen's death, the Council followed it up a vote for a joint committee of the two Houses 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, royal proclamation, reinstating him in his place in time to preside at the next General Court.

'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.

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

1715.

Feb. 4.

came a

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,

May 26.

One of the Counsellors chosen by the new Court was Nathaniel Byfield, whom again the Governor gratified his ill-humor by rejecting, whether on account of an unkindness of long standing, or because of Byfield's position as to the proposed bank. On the other hand, at this last moment of his power, he relented towards Elisha Cooke, and consented to his introduction into the Council. Soon came intelligence that one Colonel Burgess, who had served in Spain under General Burgess to Stanhope, had by his favor received the royal appointment to be Governor,3 and the Council voted to raise a joint committee to attend to "the reception of the Governor speedily to be expected." But the House would not consent. On the day to which, for the

Appointment of

be Gover

nor.

April 21.

said that he had printed "a quire of copies secretly, and delivered them to Paul Dudley. Jonathan Belcher said he had received three copies, of which he had sent two to England.

When the Governor proclaimed his restoration, he came to town for the purpose at the head of four troops of horse. (Sewall's Journal, for March 21.) A few days after (April 1), he proposed his son Paul for Judge of Probate. But the Council rejected the nomination by a vote of ten to eight. Paul Dudley had refused the Council's commission to be Sheriff, saying that he already had the Governor's. The Council then made another appointment, but Paul Dudley was made Sheriff again on his father's restoration. (Council Record; comp. Sewall's Journal.)

Nathaniel Byfield (see above, Vol. III. 579, note, 583, note 2), who was a person of some importance at this period, was son of a member of the Westminster Assembly of Divines, and nephew of Bishop Juxon. He came from England in 1674, and settled at Bristol. In 1693, he was

Speaker of the House, and Judge of Probate for his county. In 1703, he was appointed Judge of Admiralty, and held the office through the whole of Dudley's administration. Dudley, when he came over as Governor, found him in office as a Counsellor, but they soon fell out, and the breach was never reconciled. (Whitmore, Andros Tracts, I. 3, 4.) In England, Byfield quarrelled with Dummer, who took Dudley's part, though between himself and the Governor there was still no good will. (See letters of Dummer to Colman, of Jan. 15, 1714, in Mass. Hist. Col., V. 197, and to Tutor Flint, of March, 1715, in Mass. Hist. Col., VI. 78.)

2

Perhaps Cooke was now in failing health. He died October 31 of this year.

8 News comes that Colonel Burgess is to be our Governor. This news will damp my daughter of Brookline her triumph." (Sewall's Journal.) Sewall's son had married a daughter of Dudley, and the young couple did not agree any better than their parents.

Governor

Nov. 23.

last time, Dudley prorogued the Court,1 Lieutenant-Governor William Tailer met them as chief magistrate Accession of in the absence of Colonel Burgess, who still loi- Lieutenanttered in England, and whose appointment he an- Tailer. nounced. He said nothing of the late Governor's withdrawal. Tailer, a connection of Stoughton by marriage, and one of his heirs, had brought over his 1711. own commission as successor to Povey four years before, having probably owed his advancement to approved military service at the capture of Port Royal.2 Nicholson in person,3 and the Governor by letter, had introduced him favorably in England.

1710.

Nov. 20.

Retirement

of Dudley

Dudley was now sixty-eight years old. He lived five years longer, but took no further part in public business. When he died, he was commemorated and death by the Boston newspaper, as "a singular honor to his country, and in many respects the glory of it; early its darling, always its ornament, and in his age its It is happy for bad men of ability that injured

crown." 4

1720.

April 2.

painful than this is to see how Dudley's character is treated by so good a man as Dr. Colman, who, as far as I have found, preached the only funeral sermon on the Governor. Colman might feel biassed towards him, by reason of his services to the College, to which Colman was SO zealous a friend. And the AttorneyGeneral (the Governor's son) had been eighteen years a member of Colman's church (Sermon, Præf. iv.). But, after all, he is so far from commending the Governor without caution, that the most unpleasant feature of the composition is the ill-disguised slyness with which he attempts to compromise between his desire to please and his sense of truth (Sermon, 10, 32). In his exhibition of the virtues of the patriarch Joseph he abounds in flattering insinuations, but he is observably reserved about

communities are forgiving, that power and shining quali ties confuse the moral judgment, and that apologists are so easily enlisted from among the interested and the ignorant, the good-natured, the reckless, and the insincere.

It is needless to multiply words on the character of Dudley. It was not a mystery, nor was he a monster of turpitude. There is no necessity to regard him as having been destitute of all moral sense, nor even to set down his religious professions as merely hypocritical and false. Many a transgressor feels the presence of a conscience which has power enough to rebuke and distress, but not enough to arrest and reform him; and religious conviction and sensibility have been often known to exist in the absence of upright conduct. For aught man can know, this man, like many others more famous and many less famous than he, had tampered with his better mind till the distinctions which make the world's security were obscured to his own view; and with a certain sort of sincerity he could call evil good, and good evil, as often as only evil would suit his domineering aim. At all events, he had no purpose to be true and useful. He meant to get power, and all that power brings with it, and with gay arrogance placed his unimportant self above the rights and the welfare of the community, which with honest affection had empowered him to do it grievous harm.

Mentally and morally, Dudley belonged to a class of actors who again and again have strutted their hour on the busy stage, applauded to the echo by the throngs who admire cleverness and "idolize success." A sordid ambition does not begin its career with revelations of its character. It makes public services its earliest stepping-stones. Public good-will in free States is the card essential to the

making applications of them to that other Joseph whom the occasion summoned him to commemorate, thus offering less provocation to the criticism of a discerning public. Funeral

sermons are a grievous snare to the historian, till he has read a sufficient number of them to be reasonably upon his guard.