1703

ment the year after his superior, professed Oct 22. to find that Dudley had not been devoted enough to the sovereign. "It is high time," he

And

wrote to the Lords, "to have a governor Dec 30. who will assert her Majesty's prerogative, and curb the antimonarchial principles." he added that of the subordinate officers commissioned by Bellomont, and still employed by Dudley, "many were disaffected to crown government." The truth was that Dudley befriended the local party with which in the late administration Usher had been at feud, and that he did not mean to be incommoded by interference on the part of his lieutenant. Usher undertook to restore Jefferys, who had been removed from the post of secretary by his predecessor. He complained that Waldron and Partridge had “misapplied the public money," and that Dudley wrongfully continued Hincks as commander of the fort, one reason for this favoritism being that "Hincks is a Churchman" (a member of the Congregational Church). "I must say Partridge and Waldron governs; nothing to be done but what they are for."

December.

The lieutenant-governor's dissatisfaction cast off all reserve as time passed on. "The country,"

1704. he wrote to the Lords of Trade, "is uniJan. 19. versally against him [Dudley], and he does not find one that gives him a good word; if we have not a change by having a new governor, we shall in a short time be ruined. . . . . . We want a

.....

1708.

good soldier to manage the war. Nothing like a viceroy over all." It is not May. likely that Dudley was acquainted with these letters, but the breach went on widening. Usher wrote to the Lords, "His Excellency is 1709. pleased to tell me, when I go into the August 5. province I put all in a flame." Dudley, on his part, informed them," Mr. Usher has been

very unfortunate in putting himself into Nov. 15. Mr. Allen's affair, the delay of which has made him poor and angry, and particularly with Mr. Waldron." In a letter to Dudley, Waldron calls Usher "an envious, malicious liar." Dudley encloses it to the Secretary of State, and acquaints him that though Waldron's language is "too harsh," the statement which it clothes "is true."

Dudley ordered by letter that Waldron should be received into the Council, over which, in the governor's absence, Usher was presiding. Usher asked the secretary whether he had 1710. received the warrant with the royal sign- Nov. 21. manual appointing Waldron, and, being informed that it had not come, he refused to allow Waldron to be sworn, who, on his part, "said he should not take notice, but wait the governor's instructions,” and then "parted sourly with his hat on." "When at any time," so Usher wrote, "I come into the Council, if Waldron is there before me, with disdain has his back some time to me, and at a distance says, 'Your servant,' with insulting deportment, affronts many and great, with disrespect

to the Queen's commission." Such were the official amenities of that place and time.

"An account of the circumstances and state of New Hampshire," drawn up by George Vaughan, agent of the province in England, represents it as 1708. containing "six towns; viz., Portsmouth, July 6. Dover, Exeter, Hampton, Newcastle, and Kingstown, the two last very small and extraordinary poor; drove to great straits by reason of the war, there not being a thousand men in the 1709. whole government." Dudley wrote to the March 1. Lords, "I account New Hampshire is in value of men, towns, and acres of improvement just a tenth part of the Massachusetts, and I believe I do not misreckon to a hundredth part, their trade excepted, which will not make much more than the thirtieth part of Boston and dependencies."

1715.

After the death of Queen Anne, New Hampshire addressed the new monarch, to no purpose, with a petition for the reappointment of Dudley. William Vaughan and five other counselMarch 18. lors wrote to George Vaughan, still agent in London," We pray Lieutenant-Governor Usher may have his quietus, which he said he had often written to England for. He complains his office is a burden to him, and the people think it is a burden to them, and so 't is a pity but both were eased." Usher was displaced, and George 1726. Vaughan was made lieutenant-governor. Sept. 25. Usher withdrew to his stately home at

Medford, in Massachusetts, where he died when nearly eighty years old.

Sept. 4.

The commission of Dudley authorized him to command the militia of Rhode Island; but that chaotic community did not afford a hopeful sphere for the application of his arbitrary principles. Soon after his return from his early visit to 1702 the eastern country, he went to Newport, Sept. 3. attended from Boston by several members of his Council and others, and in form presented his claim to the governor and Council of Rhode Island. They referred him to the grant of the control over its militia made to the colony in the charter of King Charles the Second, and said they could take no step in compliance with his demand, except under authority from the General Assembly, which would not be in session till the next month. Dudley ordered the major of "the Island regiment" to parade his command on the following day. The major excused himself, saying he was sworn to serve the colonial government. In the Narragansett country, to which Dudley passed on, he succeeded better. The militia officer there in command made no trouble. "The whole body of the soldiers in arms" took the oath which he proposed; and, having "treated the soldiers as the time and place would allow," he went home. The governor and Council of Rhode Island came to the Narragansett country, and there "used all methods to bring back the people to confusion."

Sept. 5.

Sept. 7.

Another matter of scarcely less interest was Dudley's claim, justified by an express order in his commission, to exercise admiralty jurisdiction. The governor of Rhode Island had issued commissions to armed vessels. Dudley held that Cranston had no authority for so doing, and that such commissions were void. Nathaniel Byfield, appointed Judge of Admiralty by Dudley, refused on this ground to condemn a French prize brought in by a Rhode Island privateer, and thereby gave such offence that, when he adjourned his court in Newport, he "was hooted down the street, without any notice being taken by any in the government."

Sept. 17.

Reporting these transactions to the Board of Trade, Dudley wrote that, when he published his instructions in Rhode Island, "the Quakers raged indecently, saying that they were ensnared and injured." He "could obtain nothing of them but stubborn refusal, saying they would lose all at once, and not by pieces." "I do my duty," he said, "to acquaint your Lordships that the government of Rhode Island, in the present hands, is a scandal to her Majesty's government. It is a very good settlement, with about two thousand armed men in it, and no man in the government of any estate or education, though in the province there be men of very good estates, ability, and loy alty; but the Quakers will by no means admit them to any trust, nor would they now accept