Centers of Power: Legislators of the Massachusetts General Court, 1691-1780

The Massachusetts legislature was undoubtedly the most powerful institution in the British colony. It was a major center of power and rival of the governors and of imperial authority. Its basis of power was not always clear, but it recognized dependence on King and Parliament in England as well as on its constituents in Massachusetts. It asserted, however, British rights and liberties and spoke for the colony in all matters of political controversy. Other lesser centers of power sometimes influenced its operation by determining the education of its members, molding its objectives, and creating its policies. From 1691 many legislators came to Boston and served, as did governors and other British officials, but the legislature grew in power as an institution and was the axis of colonial life. It passed the laws, provided for defense, helped select officials, and levied and spent taxes. In the 1770s, it took the colony into revolution against England. In 1780, it would offer the new state its first permanent constitution.

The legislators of both houses were variously equipped for their responsibilities, but most had served in the towns as selectmen and assessors or in the counties as jurymen and judges. They sometimes had training in the law, businesses, and other practical occupations like surveyor, church deacon, or militia officer. Most were farmers who faced yearly problems of survival, planting crops on the light Massachusetts soil. The lawmakers may have benefited by more training, but in speaking for their towns they were undoubtedly well prepared to do a competent job.

A small group, possibly one out of 15 legislators, were college educated, and another larger number were former apprentices in endeavors like law, medicine, business, and seafaring. All the rest may broadly be classified as farmers, sometimes with rentals, multiple tracts of land, and slave and free workers. None of these legislators was illiterate, but a variety of educational experience separated them. The requirements of service in distant Boston surely separated people of village education from those able to read, speak, and think on provincial issues. On their election to the legislature, many men were confronted for the first time in their lives with complicated problems of government and became cautious in offering their service. They may have deferred to the college graduates among them and to representatives of the business community.

The Harvard College graduates among them came from the largest institution of learning in the colonies. Every decade, Harvard taught increasingly greater numbers of young men who would become church, business, and government leaders. The students were drawn primarily from Massachusetts Bay, and most would select the colony as their permanent home. Their education was generally applicable to most careers they would choose to follow, but only a few would serve many years in the legislature.

Harvard College gave most boys a new experience. They often came out of country villages or from little coastal towns unprepared for their new life. At Harvard, their home-made breeches and stockings and probably their shoes and wigs looked out of place and their language and pronunciation seemed rustic. They begged their parents for new attire, English cloth for their breeches and stylish wear. When the clothing crisis passed, they were already well introduced into the ritual of early rising, long hours of study, and the constant trials of recitation. In time, they joined fellow students in the playful antics of college life. Old ways disappeared as the country boy became a college lad.

They debated, orated, and discussed a wide assortment of ancient and present issues. Their daily instruction of language, classics, and philosophy was well balanced with ethics, history, and disputation, which offered them knowledge and wisdom. They endured discipline and suffered physical strokes if they were excessively disobedient. John Adams, the future United States president, took away from Harvard a desire to study more deeply. But he and others mostly learned how to be gentlemen, use language, speak, argue, wear clothes correctly, and be aware of ideas greater than their own. Adams once described his youth uniquely: as a boy, when he threw pebbles into a lake, the rings in the water spread out small; in later life, when he repeated the process, the rings became larger and larger. In 1816, he contributed money to Harvard in the spirit of enlarging the search for knowledge: “I never did anything with more satisfaction than by contributing a mite towards removing some of the shackles of the human mind.”1

Like Adams, other legislators who had spent their maturing years at Harvard or other colleges of America or the United Kingdom appeared to have an advantage in the House of Representatives. Scattered throughout committees and earning vital positions in House and Council leadership, they infiltrated the legislative process. They were not, however, the most active legislators every year. Renewing college friendships, they shared common experiences, books, ideas, and aspirations, and often stood side by side in crises. In the 1726 House, seven of the 11 most active leaders had graduated from Harvard or Yale. In 1760, seven of the 22 leaders were graduates of those colleges and were, over the years, generally the most enduring leaders in the House. Thomas Clap of Plymouth, Harvard Class of 1725, held 114 committee seats in 1760, while his nearest rival had 78. From 1760 to 1765, he was among the first two or three committee leaders each year. His Harvard classmen had included Joseph Dwight of Hatfield, Edmund Quincy of Braintree, and William Brattle of Cambridge, all of whom became influential during these years. Clap was known as a fine conversationalist and energetic public servant. Scandal sometimes, however, tarnished his image, but fast footwork helped him to escape serious injury.2 Clap’s rival, Royall Tyler of Boston, was a wealthy merchant’s son who moved into legislative politics by being overseer of the poor and sitting on an “increditable” number of town committees. Tyler graduated from Harvard in 1743 with James Otis, Jr., and Samuel Cooper of the Brattle Street Church and roomed with Jonathan Mayhew, the future outspoken minister of the West Church. His friends thus were among the most influential figures in the Boston community of the 1760s. For a few years in that decade he won recognition as a very active legislator, but being ambitious, he ranked as a committeeman in 1763 and was promoted a year later to the Council where he exercised power until his death in May 1771.3

Neither Tyler nor Clap were the best examples of men who learned the value of a high moral code at Harvard; both had unclean hands in their political dealings. As a rule, however, Harvard men were always among the honored and proper legislative leaders. Impressive as that service was, their exact political strength defies measurement in any legislative session. Thomas Hubbard, Thomas Hutchinson, Samuel Wells, Samuel White, and Robert Hale, however, used their power over many years and commanded great respect. And there was Elisha Cooke, Jr., whose battles with the governors in the 1720s and 1730s won the respect, perhaps the love, of Bostonians who in 1737 gave him one of the truly impressive funerals of the decade.4 The cannon blasts from batteries in Boston and islands in the harbor, the appearance of the militia in full dress, and the ceremonies at meeting house and cemetery were nearly royal tributes—and all for a legislator.

Cooke’s Harvard connection in the House of Representatives was indeed impressive and should not be underestimated. Intellectual connections of these graduates bound many individuals; perhaps living together for four years gave the man enduring sense of family association. They also shared common backgrounds in the study of history and philosophy and had mutual friends in the clergy and business community. These friends settled in the coastal and interior towns of this compact society like those in Tyler’s class of 1743—William Pynchon, Shearjashub Bourne, Samuel Waldo, Jr., and Andrew Pepperrell5—who scattered to towns at great distances from each other.

The power of education could be secured without a college degree, however. The Chandler family were important people often without the benefit of a degree. In nearly every decade from the 1720s, members of the family were prominent in the legislature. So, too, were most members of the Russell and Leonard families, and again without a college experience. Members of Cape Cod and island families, like the Nortons, Coffins, and Mayhews, often succeeded without formal education. Other important individuals arose to positions of power without a literary education, men like John Choate, Samuel Waldo, Sr., William Pepperrell, Jr., and James Otis, Sr.—although some polish, education, and experience might have improved the public performances of James Otis, Sr., and John Choate, who were often criticized for their rustic manners. Peter Oliver found Otis to be lacking in proper speech training and culture. It may be that Otis’s advancement to the Superior Court of Judicature in 1760, when he had the prize of Chief Justice snatched away by Thomas Hutchinson, reflected on his cultural limitations.6

Education could often be obtained elsewhere besides the campuses of Harvard and Yale. Whether it was as good would be a delicate question, but the financial rewards were often impressive. Most medical doctors, many lawyers, and some merchants served formal or informal apprenticeships and won success. Jacob Wendell received his training in the counting houses of Albany and Boston. Charles Apthorp, Thomas Hancock, and James Russell were business people who became wealthy, influential, and well regarded through the apprentice system. Many of these merchants, moreover, had enquiring minds, were alert to political issues, and played their part in the community by backing religious and cultural projects. The following example of Joseph Gilman, the brother of Tristram of Harvard College, describes the adventure of an apprentice at one stage in his development. It may also reflect a level of education, or kind of education, that many merchants shared. The example is a little extended, but it describes a large group of young men who would rise eventually to colony offices.

In the 1750s, Joseph Gilman was sent to Boston from his home in Exeter, New Hampshire, to study the mysteries of being a merchant. In far-off Boston he had trouble translating his needs into language his mother would understand or appreciate in Exeter. In a letter asking for some stylish shirts, he says to mother:

There is a great difference between staying at home driving the plough,
making fence and the like, than going into warehouses, among the best company, to the Town House to speak to a gentleman or . . . [to] buy a bill of exchange as I am forced to do. What I desire by this [request] is [that] I may be fit to be seen in the company I am frequently among. . . . If madam you did least know the right of the case, you would not so much laugh at my writing so.

Joseph wanted additional stockings, an extra wig for Sunday wear, and better looking and fitting shoes. His mother was sympathetic and agreed, after more arguments from her son, to find the money. She then turned to his education and urged him to make use of his opportunities in Boston. He replied again:

You write [that] you are afraid I do not improve the kind of opportunity Providence has indulged me with of hearing Mr. [George] Whitefield. I am sure you have not any reason to think so. I informed you that I rose at 4 in the morning to hear him, and the morning he preached his farewell sermon I rose at half after twelve at midnight for fear of oversleeping myself and before 4 in the morning [I] was at the Old South Church and waited for his coming.7

Joseph readily accepted her religious advice, but he resisted her advice on other matters of education just enough to make a polite argument of boyish protest:

Next you write me you are willing I should get all the learning I can, but [that I] must remember that to know God and myself is the best knowledge. I know it is, but the knowledge of the mathematical law is no impediment to the knowledge of God, but a great help in so much that Doctor [Isaac] Watts says that he believes it were impossible for him to arrive at so high a degree of knowledge of the perfection of the Great Creator had he not been skilled in the sciences of geography and astronomy.

Her 16-year-old son was tasting life as an apprentice in Boston. The town was full of such young men, and the larger companies welcomed the sons of business partners and associates. Men from Salem and Kittery in Massachusetts Bay, Portsmouth in New Hampshire, and Albany in New York came to study in Boston’s counting houses where they learned contracting, commercial law, and government practices. Smaller numbers gathered in the regional towns, often coming to Boston later in their training; others went off to London for experience or to meet the English merchants who supplied the New England companies. Future Governor Jonathan Belcher was sent on a grand trip of exploration after his Harvard College graduation and business training. John Hancock, Harvard Class of 1754, entered his Uncle Thomas’s establishment after graduation, worked with the old gentleman for nearly a decade, and was treated to a tour of London—at his uncle’s request—by former Governor Thomas Pownall. John Hancock, the apprentice and heir to his uncle, was thoroughly introduced to the mercantile business and responded “with the same punctuality and assiduity . . . [as] any good clerk.”8

These young apprentices often stayed in Boston and became members of the merchant’s extended family. Joseph Gilman married, too, before he went back to Exeter, New Hampshire. Newbury, Salem, Plymouth, and Barnstable are among their hometowns, and Boston was often the former home of the wives they took with them when they left to establish businesses as young merchants. The impression is that the master became like a father and the marriage tie with the master’s daughter or niece was an additional connection that made for the beginning of a long familial relationship.

Although the number of apprentices in trade centers cannot be determined easily, these young men served the merchant community as representatives of their companies. The merchants were thus mentors of many young men, and their influence extended outwardly from their shops and counting houses into the colony. Over the years, these connections surely developed in many ways to bind the Boston community to the other coastal and business centers. When town representatives came up to Boston to sit in the legislature, the merchants among them likely lived with their former masters and exchanged much gossip and politics, possibly speaking of patronage and business opportunities for each other.

The business community of Boston was peculiarly a center of power like Harvard College because of the prominence of its merchants in the colony and because it was the seat of British administration and of the legislature. The Boston area included the larger metropolitan region of Charlestown, Chelsea, Malden, Watertown, Cambridge, Roxbury, Milton, and Newton. People had moved out of Boston to live in the more spacious suburbs. To conduct business, they took ferries into the hub or rode to their shops by horse and carriage. The great homes of the merchants were on Roxbury Hill and in nearby surrounding towns. Thomas Hutchinson had his seat at nearby Milton, and John Vassell lived near Harvard in Cambridge. Other merchants were in Charlestown, Watertown, and Dorchester.

The four Boston representatives were traditionally among the active leaders, but they were not always elected the speaker. They were present, nonetheless, in positions of power. Most of the key figures of the Revolutionary legislature—Samuel Adams, James Otis, Jr., James Bowdoin, and John Hancock—were Boston residents as well as Harvard graduates. They had their hands on the committee system and rallied to their side a good many people of the towns—business acquaintances, sometimes apprentices of years past, sometimes relatives.

These Boston representatives were bound by ties to the churches and the societies of the towns. Many were members of Brattle Street Church, King’s Chapel, or Old South Meeting House, enjoying the class-like seating that recognized wealth. Some had ties with the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company whose yearly elections of commander and officers were marks of recognition, and whose officers (like William Heath in 1771) participated in major funeral ceremonies. Old William Shirley had died in Roxbury, but the funeral was held in Boston where the dignitaries gathered, Henry Caner of King’s Chapel gave the sermon, and the procession was lead by the Artillery Company, the Boston Regiment, and the officials of the colony. The officers of the Boston Regiment, attired in their full regimentals with black crepe, placed the coffin in the tomb area beneath the chapel. The only discord in the ceremony was the “exile” of the legislature in rural Cambridge. Many representatives rode into the city and joined the acting governor in the procession from Roxbury to Boston.

On occasions like this funeral, Boston merchants were particularly visible, filling the Council to a greater extent than the House of Representatives. Their Council terms were renewed yearly, but their tenure usually extended into old age. Most also held administrative positions in the colony and counties. In 1760, 14 of the 28 councilors were Boston area merchants or long-time city residents because of their government positions. In 1726, 13 were Boston residents, and an additional four or five were from the nearby towns. The ratio of city and province membership shifted slightly over the years, and any differences may depend on the criteria of residence. Because the Council was more than a group of legislators or advisors of the governor, membership was also a recognition of prominence in the colony’s business, military, and civilian life. The Council was an assembly of wealthy and prestigious men usually possessing education and social status. The representation of college graduates among them was as high as among the active committeemen of the House of Representatives. In 1760, 13 of the 28 councilors graduated from Harvard College.9

The Council was like a House of Lords. Around the large table sat 28 members of the judiciary, the military, the administration, and the important families. There sat also Sir William Pepperrell, Jr., war hero of Louisbourg, who was honored by the king as baronet, but he was also the chief landholder, merchant, and political figure of York County, Maine, as successor of an influential father. His Council membership from 1727 to 1759 was only surpassed by Samuel Sewall’s, the judge and chief justice of the Superior Court of Judicature who resigned in 1725 after 34 years of service. Pepperrell was not a great legislator, but a soldierly figure of dignity and prestige who had joint residences in Boston and Kittery, but he preferred his home in Maine. Sewall, however, lived in Boston and was an active councilor who attended the public functions of the government with almost a religious zeal. His great diary covering five decades is nearly a daily account of his presence at dinners, funerals, and official ceremonies.

Because the Boston area was tied by familial and commercial relationships to the province, the city’s representatives and councilors had more power than their numbers would indicate. They often spoke for the entire community of New England merchants and landholders. Such a person was the powerful councilor Jonathan Belcher who had many flourishing businesses and valuable property throughout the colony. A very wealthy man and Harvard graduate, he enjoyed family connections with the Olivers, Hutchinsons, and Partridges and used his prestige to become governor in 1730 when the Council had become too confining for him. The governorship for a native New Englander offered far greater advantages than the legislature and he held it for 11 years of good service.

In the 1730s, Belcher had a vision to associate his family with the leading New England and English merchants: He would govern two colonies, Massachusetts Bay and New Hampshire; his son Andrew would manage the family land and commercial businesses from Boston with a brother-in-law; and his son Jonathan would study at Middle Temple in London, handle with an uncle their English business, and marry a landed heiress. Jonathan might later stand for the House of Commons, practice law in Westminster, and be ready to petition for colonial patronage for the family as the occasion offered. Meanwhile, the governor’s Boston politics would please the home government—he would govern a restless people with firmness, secure honors for friends, and win contracts for the merchants. These images gradually faded, however, due to circumstances beyond his control. He had to give way on a permanent salary, admit failures to reward friends, and abandon plans for his son in English politics. Even worse, his relationship with the Massachusetts legislature eventually heated to a boiling point when he recklessly got involved in a dispute over the establishment of banks in Massachusetts and the control of the economy. In the controversy, he took sides with the Boston merchants and their provincial friends and used his position to purge the rural opposition from the colony’s offices.10

Belcher did not anticipate the hornet’s nest he had broken when he became the center of the controversy over the kind of banks, land or silver, that should be established. Both no doubt had strengths and weaknesses, and both would have tentatively solved the currency problem. As a wealthy land owner and merchant, he was particularly suited to mediate rival claims of the potential bankers. Instead, he jumped into the fray to help the silver bank directors, to support the merchants of Boston and coastal Massachusetts, and to rally undecided land holders and other merchants. His forceful, aggressive methods against the opposition aroused so much bitterness that the House purged the Council of the silver bank shareholders, and Belcher retaliated by purging the House nominees for the Council of land bank people and ordering a special election of the House in 1741. Its leadership had reflected the crisis of power as anti-Belcher representatives challenged his politics and gained control of House committees. Most of the leaders of 1739 either did not stand for election in 1740 or were replaced by their towns. Thomas Hutchinson used the crisis as a good time to visit London, and John Chandler stayed in Worcester for a year. Belcher emerged as a center of crisis, and London’s Board of Trade recalled him and suppressed both banks. It would take years for the severely shaken Boston merchants to recover from the shock of English intervention. Meanwhile, a new group of representatives entered the top leadership of the House; such men as Robert Hale, John Choate, Isaac Little, and Samuel Watts would be visible for the next decade.11

Belcher certainly gambled wildly and lost heavily. His friends in London could not help him, and the English government refused to choose sides, condemned both banks, and sacrificed Belcher by putting William Shirley into office. Shirley was to heal the wounds of crisis as best he could, but he was given much more balm to apply than Belcher ever possessed. When war became serious with Spain and was expected with France, he had commissions, contracts, and business opportunities at his disposal. These perquisites inspired in Shirley almost the same vision as Belcher had had regarding family, honors, and relations with England. He was, however, more cautious in handling the legislature than Belcher; he was an Englishman, an educated and experienced lawyer, and a Cambridge University graduate. He held better cards with which to play the imperial game. Like other colonial officials, he felt distant from the London center of power, but in short order he had obtained a few contracts for Boston merchants, some business for the local shipping and timber people, and important successes in getting favors for colonials in London. During his tenure, the committees of the Massachusetts legislature reflected the activity and prosperity of the war.

When Belcher lost his offices in 1741, he did not try to reenter Massachusetts politics by going back into the legislature. He had a son and brother-in-law in England contact acquaintances in the political establishment for a new appointment. Years of petitioning followed until he abandoned his shattered base in Massachusetts and accepted the governorship of New Jersey. One of his sons managed his New England estates and later entered politics. On Belcher’s death in 1757, his body was returned to his native Massachusetts for burial.

Belcher’s successor, William Shirley, never served a day in the Massachusetts legislature, nor had he attended Harvard College, but he had sons-in-law, Eliakim Hutchinson, Robert Temple, and John Erving, Jr., who were graduates or business people of Boston, and another son-in-law, William Bollan, who was a Boston merchant and English-trained lawyer like himself. Politics flourished for a time under Shirley’s leadership because he had powerful friends in the British ministry. In Boston, the great merchants soon forgot Belcher and counted Shirley as a friend when English contracts and hard money flowed into the province. Under Shirley’s patronage, the fortunes of the Apthorps and Hancocks, in particular, matured owing to the profits of shipping supplies to Nova Scotia, servicing visiting warships in Boston Harbor, and provisioning the Army for its attack on Crown Point in New York during the wilderness campaign of 1756.

For nearly 20 years (1742-1762), the legislature took part in the war prosperity, often led by governors like Shirley and Pownall who possessed real power in London. Business intensity varied over these years as the representatives had many opportunities to earn commissions for themselves, their sons, or townspeople, or to make a market for local produce. More representatives came to sessions as the honey from patronage accumulated. In the 1730s, about 100 representatives qualified each year; by 1761, the number had reached 128, with an average near 120. In the late 1750s, the wealthy merchants Samuel Waldo, John Erving, Sr., and Thomas Hancock joined the Council.

Until the Anglo-French wars ended in 1763, much provisioning, ship repair, and transshipping was always available to Boston merchants. Although the provisioning trade for the British Navy in Nova Scotia and Quebec continued to be lucrative, the value of the trade declined gradually and the legislature’s activity changed from war to peace. Allowing for the local problems of demobilization and the erection of new towns, the numbers of representatives reflect the coming of other issues. The House had 119 members in 1763, 121 in 1765, and 122 in 1767. The revolutionary crisis of the 1770s, however, brought the numbers to well over 200 members and in 1776 to 301.

In the late 1730s when the war trade became significant, the legislature chose Christopher Kilby, merchant and representative from Boston, as the colony’s London agent. He was not the first colonial agent, but he had many more business transactions to supervise than the earlier agents. Thomas Hancock liked the appointment in 1739 and praised him as “a very worthy young Gentleman and my particular intimate friend.”12 Kilby held the position for about ten years, but was replaced by the English lawyer William Bollan, Shirley’s son-in-law, who served for nearly 17 years. Under Kilby and Bollan, the position opened up sources of information for the legislature, eased relations with London merchants, and provided entry into the offices of the government. Kilby became one of ten or more major London merchants trading with New England and did not return to Boston. Bollan never had an exporting business as such, but he provided reports on business, advice on imperial politics, and speculations on English policy. Often he was before the Board of Trade and the ministry with his reports for Massachusetts. During the Seven Years War, he received and audited military accounts from the colony, pushed them through the proper agencies in London, and remitted the payments to Boston. Much money went to Massachusetts, and he had his hands on all of it. Although he took his percentage as an agent, he seemed to be sensitive to the colony’s interests. His messages and reports to the legislature became pressing committee business. His position under Shirley was so significant that he had rivals for his job. Under Governor Pownall in 1758 he was threatened by removal. The governor wanted to replace him with his brother, John Pownall, Secretary of the Board of Trade, but the attempted removal had aroused too much hostility to succeed. Even Thomas Hutchinson in 1763 toyed briefly with the idea of being the agent.

In the 1760s, like most offices of the colony, the agency became politicized. Bollan lost his position because the legislature wanted its own appointee, but he reappeared in the 1770s as the agent for the Council. Meanwhile, the agency became a way for the legislature to bypass the governor and conduct business directly with the home government and people friendly with the colony. Its growing power created serious tension with the governor in Boston, who saw his position being undermined and a new way for the legislature to oppose him.

In 1771, when Governor Hutchinson vetoed salary grants for agents William Bollan and Dennys De Berdt, the legislature sent the governor a joint protest. William Brattle, Harrison Gray, and James Pitts for the Council and James Otis, Jr., John Hancock, and Jerathmeel Bowers for the House presented the official statement explaining how power had transferred to the agent over the years. Because the agent had become a first line of defense against ruthless ministers, his appointment, instructions, and salary must be determined solely by the legislature. Because the first law of both self-defense and nature was to protest aggression, the legislature had to be free to work with its representative in England without the governor’s interference. The committee concluded thus:

The Right of Defence includes a Right to all the Means requisite and proper for that Defence, and consequently a Right to appoint and support their own Defender; without this, the Freedom and Benefit of Defence would be taken away, where they cannot appear in their own person.13

Until the Revolution closed the 1774 session, this argument with the governor over control of the agent continued. It was a fundamental issue of the revolutionary struggle—the right of the legislature to be heard in London by people of its own choosing. The committee stressed that it was reaching beyond the governor, who was normally the imperial representative, because
he no longer acted for the people and nation. He was, indeed, “wholly in their [ministry’s] power.” The House had commissioned the best of the Anglo-Americans, Benjamin Franklin, as its agent, while the Council retained the able William Bollan.

On proroguing the legislature in July 1771, Thomas Hutchinson mainly addressed himself to the dispute over the removal of the legislature to Cambridge, but he spoke as well of his local responsibility as an official of the crown. “His Majesty expects me,” he said, “ . . . [to] make no Invasion upon any of your Rights, but . . . he enjoins me to give up no part of his Prerogative.”14 He then recessed the General Court for nine months, until April 8, 1772, which was about three weeks before the Charter required the legislature to be dissolved for the 1772 elections.

The arrogance in keeping the legislature from meeting was obvious to all as the lawmakers in a few days tried to handle some of the pressing issues that had accumulated over nine months. The Journal shows that at least 17 bills were on the governor’s desk by the last day of the session. Hutchinson refused to sign three of them before he delivered a prepared address on the crisis. Ending the rump legislature on April 25, Hutchinson could not refrain from reaffirming his position as the King’s legitimate representative in Boston. He described the powers of the Charter, his instructions, his prerogative, and the position of the legislature, concluding by likening the governor to the King as the gracious father of his people whose interest is “inseparable from the prosperity and welfare of his people.”15

Hutchinson had his back against the wall in this argument over the agents’ salaries. His hard-nosed tactics in keeping the legislature in Cambridge had already angered most of the members, and most were seeking something else that would embarrass the repulsive governor. Agent Benjamin Franklin found what they were looking for in London—some of Hutchinson’s private letters on American politics. Hutchinson had always worried that his correspondence would fall into the hands of enemies, as had happend to his predecessor, Francis Bernard. Bernard’s embarrassing letters, published in 1769, caused enough public criticism to diminish his usefulness in office.16 A similar fate was altogether possible for Hutchinson, who advised the ministry that the publication of his private correspondence could meet with a similar kind of reaction and warned of the absolute need for secrecy.

Hutchinson and his family and friends had already corresponded extensively with Thomas Whately, the former secretary of George Grenville. Their purpose was informational, and it was undoubtedly pleasant to write to a person of influence and knowledge in London. This was not the only correspondence among Bostonians, however, who were anxious to express their opinions to Englishmen concerning the crisis in the empire.17

Sometime in 1772, Benjamin Franklin, the agent for the House of Representatives, was shown the Hutchinson-Oliver letters of 1768 and 1769. Whately was then dead, and the letters were in the hands of someone who hated Hutchinson. From this mysterious person there was the making of a plot, and the spread of information from the letters was a part of it. Benjamin Franklin, who was apparently excited by the possibility of using the letters, had the privilege of sending them to the House leaders who would see them as evidence of the plots and deceits of Hutchinson and his gang against colonial liberty. Exposure could ruin him politically. The letters were shown in Boston privately at first, and then to the House in closed session, where a 101 to 5 vote denounced them. Finally, they were printed for general circulation. They probably contained nothing really new, but they brought forth a demand for Hutchinson’s recall throughout the colony. He had apparently angered too many people, and the letters appeared to be evidence of his deception and disloyalty as a New Englander. John Adams called him a “vile serpent.” Others gathered materials for bonfires to burn his effigy. Gasping at the emotional outbreak, Hutchinson turned to his superiors in London for consolation.18

Hutchinson was fully aware of London as a center of power. Franklin, the agent of the House, dutifully placed the letters in the hands of the legislature. Bollan, the second agent, remained peculiarly silent, but his feelings against Hutchinson and the Olivers were equally intense. The agents, however, were playing another role in this exposure of Hutchinson. They were acting to turn the colony against the governor and only incidentally to represent the colony in London. It was dirty business, but tempers were aflame.

The struggle of the legislature with the governor was ever a part of the Massachusetts system of government. However, few men went as far as Thomas Hutchinson in stating the governor’s prerogatives, and few agents went as far as Franklin and his associates in undermining the governor. From the days of William Phips and Joseph Dudley, the governors regularly used the prerogative, citing their instructions in speeches to the legislature. The legislature generally respected and, to some degree, feared the powers of the Ministry and the instructions of the Board of Trade. The governors, acting directly for the home government, were able thus to use their position to force most British policies through the legislature. They counted heavily on their English friends in government, however, and suffered at a change of British politics—a new monarch, a new group of ministers, and a new favorite for the governorship. Joseph Dudley thus fell from power in 1714 when Queen Anne died. His eventual successor, Samuel Shute, challenged the power of the House to select a speaker. In 1720, he vetoed the new speaker, Elisha Cooke, Jr., whom he feared, and in pressing his power, he dissolved the House for new elections.19 He later went to London to argue his position, and the legislature, in turn, rushed over a special agent who would challenge the governor. Cooke, the outspoken House leader of the day, met the governor before his English superiors, rallied merchant support, and forced the issue to a crisis. Cooke also had the people’s support—“the Great Darling of his Country”—but, alas, Shute was influential in London, with relatives in the aristocracy and friends among the Dissenters.

In the end, the English government handed down in 1725 an “Explanatory Charter,” and the House, with a little humility, voted 48 to 32 to accept the limitation on its powers.20 Shute wisely decided not to return to Massachusetts, and William Burnet, the young, influential governor of New York, was transferred to Massachusetts Bay where he immediately engaged in a bitter dispute over the crown’s order of a continuing salary for governors. A severe deadlock over authority again threatened the colony; possibly British intervention was the only solution with another Charter revision. In September 1729, however, Burnet suddenly died in a highway accident.21

Before Burnet was selected as governor, Jonathan Belcher had been restless in Boston because his friend Shute had left the government. Because Belcher planned to visit England on business, the House instructed him to help the new resident agent, Francis Wilks, with problems facing the colony. His visit was undoubtedly an attempt to water the patronage garden for himself. In the meantime, Burnet did not like Belcher’s reputation and rivalry, so he rejected him as a candidate for the Council in the May election of 1729. His rejection was serious, but Belcher managed to explain away the intemperate assault. He seemed to be a wise New Englander and a loyal Englishman, thus widening his political support. When Burnet unexpectedly died, Belcher quickly stepped forward to back his good friend Samuel Shute as the new governor, and when Shute showed wisdom in avoiding another tour of duty in Massachusetts, he then won Shute’s powerful support for his own appointment.

A few months later, when Belcher arrived in Boston Harbor as royal governor, his reception was an amazingly popular event that pleased most people in the colony—a native returned in glory. Though he was not the first New Englander so honored, he was particularly attractive—charming, and clever. The Board of Trade instructed him to obtain a fixed salary, thus continuing the argument Burnet had had with the House of Representatives, but Belcher decided only to test the waters and then to circumvent the issue by offering to resign. Realizing that recalling Belcher would not resolve the issue, the home government listened to a choir of Belcher supporters. He used the help of his friends among the Dissenters in England (including Samuel Shute), the Quakers among his admirers, Lord Wilmington among the Whigs, his brother-in-law in England among the family, and many merchant friends among his supporters, and the Board of Trade backed off from its plan for a permanent salary. The result was a generally successful 11 years in office for Belcher. His power was made up of a strong home base in New England and an influential group of admirers in England. Many of BostonÂ’s merchants were his friends.22

Unfortunately he had a hot pen and explosive temper when his power was threatened. His sharp tongue cut down his opponents who sought relief in London from his anger. Eventually a group of Belcher haters arose, led by William Shirley’s wife, Frances. She and her husband mobilized conspirators in London and Boston who planned Belcher’s fall. They were fortunate when Belcher’s English patron lost power in the ministry and a banking crisis in Boston weakened his gubernatorial support. Over two years, they brought about the separation of the governorships of New Hampshire and Massachusetts under Belcher, the appointment of new governors for the separate colonies, and British intervention in the famous banking crisis. The Charter was not changed, but Parliament and the ministry destroyed the land and silver banks and removed Belcher as governor. It was a severe strike at American legislative initiative and the governor’s position.

As Belcher’s successor in 1741, William Shirley maintained himself in office with good connections. Henry Pelham and the Duke of Newcastle in London would provide sufficient opportunities so that he could weather most crises. For a time, his political friends in Boston differed from Belcher’s, but slowly the great merchants of Boston rallied to his support. Shirley took great care, however, to avoid the problems Belcher had created for himself. The governor chose his words cautiously, kept his hands clean (according to the standards of the day), and managed to avoid involvement in the religious emotionalism of the Great Awakening. He was an Anglican without deep religious convictions; he did not favor an episcopal establishment in the colonies, which frightened many New Englanders.23

In 1749 and 1750, when the colony bitterly debated the creation of a hard currency, Shirley was fortunate to be in London and Paris on government business for three years while partisan tempers cooled. While still in Boston, however, he advocated the new currency and pushed a bill through the legislature, but he let Thomas Hutchinson bear the brunt of the bitter aftermath. Hutchinson lost his seat in the House and his position as speaker, but he was immediately elected to the Council and reaped some political rewards for his courage.24

Shirley’s political demise began in 1755 at the moment of his greatest power. In the mobilization of the French and Indian War in 1754, he was able to give Boston the spoils of the new campaigns against France. Sons-in-law, friends, supporters, and the people, including his two sons, were all beneficiaries of the vast advantages of the mobilization. But Shirley’s problem was inexperience—he succeeded Major General Edward Braddock, but had little of the power, prestige, and knowledge of a military man to make a success of the 1755 campaign. He became a victim as well of intercolonial politics when the newly erected defenses of Fort Oswego on Lake Ontario proved inadequate to the assault of French forces. Its easy capture in the early summer of 1756 brought a political explosion that caught Shirley up in a wave of intercolonial hostility and forced the English ministry to recall him and investigate his command.25

For the years Shirley was in office, the British and American interests were generally in harmony. He never had to move meeting places of the House of Representatives, reject councilors, or prorogue the legislature. He had to endure some riots, mostly directed against British naval recruiting along the coast, and was irritated when he did not receive the salary he wanted. He did not win a majority vote for colonial union, which he strongly favored, and several times he was criticized on the House floor. His most bitter personal dispute was with Samuel Waldo of Maine over military accounting practices but the letters between the men were not published. Over these many years of rule, Shirley was remarkably successful in his legislative policies and had won a warm group of admirers.

Many people benefited from Shirley’s administration. The merchants Charles Apthorp, Thomas Hancock, and John Erving, Sr. increased their fortunes. Others enjoyed the trade and ease of exchanging products for hard currency. Still others liked their commissions in the British Army and the militia. Boston, for many, was an exciting place in which to live and work. Faneuil Hall was built and King’s Chapel reconstructed. Great mansions, including Shirley’s, were constructed on Roxbury Hill. Wharves and warehouses were erected or enlarged, and much hard money was made available from English military contracts. Some clergymen, in an expansive mood, raised the idea of a boundary for the colony on the Mississippi River. Others hoped for peace and “homes on the Kennebec and Penobscot rivers in far off Maine.”

When Shirley left Boston for London in 1756, he relinquished his offices in the colony, but expected to return to his home and family. The investigation of his command, however, dragged on in London for nearly two years, happily ending with a vindication of his reputation. In 1759, the Ministry honored him with the title of lieutenant general and sent him to the Bahama Islands as governor. In later life, he returned to Massachusetts and died at his beautiful mansion in Roxbury. His Boston family continued to prosper in the colony, but his surviving son decided to seek a career as governor of the Bahamas and other colonies.

Shirley’s successor in 1757, Thomas Pownall, was 30 years younger than he, a bachelor in search of a bride, as well as an Englishman, a Cambridge graduate, and an experienced civil servant of the Board of Trade who enjoyed much prestige. Though he had no desire to end his life as a colonial governor, he was intrigued by Massachusetts politics, and for better or worse he became involved. He helped put the great merchants of the colony on the Council, tried to capture the patronage of the English agency for his brother John, and invested heavily in Thomas Hancock’s business. He strove to keep the contracts and other military business coming into Massachusetts, but generally he failed to attract any large mobilization. The 1759 Penobscot River campaign, however, was funded by General Jeffery Amherst for the colony’s benefit. Tiring of what he regarded as too much petty politics, he secured in 1760 the governorship of South Carolina and his Boston post for family friend Francis Bernard, the governor of New Jersey.26

In the war period, the legislature was obviously concerned with military problems of recruiting, soldier discipline, injuries and sickness, and deaths. Important committees handled problems of repayment of British military expenditures.Correspondence with William Bollan was extensive and concerned British subsidies. Committees were also busy erecting political districts in the towns and admitting new towns. In 1761, Colrain, Great Barrington, and Pittsfield were established as towns, and during the war about ten towns were given new districts. Three new counties were erected—Berkshire, Lincoln, and Cumberland.27

Governor Bernard had the misfortune to enter office just as the Great War for Empire was concluding. He arrived in the summer of 1760 and immediately became the center of controversy. He apparently had overestimated the profits he could expect from the governorship. Ordinarily he had a salary and residence, but there were fees, a share of the fines from Admiralty Court seizures and condemnations, and some land grants made by a generous legislature to the governor. Perhaps something could also be raked in from appointments, certainly by giving lucrative jobs to his family members.

Unlike Shirley, who had much to give in commissions and contracts, Bernard had almost nothing. He had to take instead of give, but just as he entered office, King George II died. All officials had to be reappointed, and Bernard made some friends by favoring a few new people. But he most certainly had to reappoint almost every officeholder who had been doing a good job. Of the few recent deaths, the most important was that of Chief Justice Stephen Sewall who had served for ten years as chief of the Superior Court and for 15 as associate and had presided with distinction over the most prestigious court in the colony. The vacancy almost immediately created a political storm. Bernard sought advice from judges, and he had apparently been given some gratuitous advice by James Otis, Jr., who wanted his father appointed to the court. A British official like the governor, Otis was certainly acting properly, but Bernard passed over his father and others and appointed an associate judge of the Suffolk Inferior Court of Common Pleas. At the time, the appointee, Thomas Hutchinson, was also a councilor, lieutenant governor, and the Suffolk County Probate Court Judge. The appointment was a monumental blunder because it angered the powerful Otis family and because Hutchinson was not forced to resign any of his other posts.28 In retaliation, the Otises launched a newspaper campaign of criticism and created an opposition group in the House which the younger Otis joined and led.

As the Seven Years War ended, the nature of patronage changed for the governor’s office. Most of the new positions concerned regulating colonials—catching smugglers and appointing tax collectors, commissioners of revenue, and stamp tax distributors. The jobs were important, but their duties angered the local population. The governor and the legislature became antagonists, and relations with British merchants became hostile. In corresponding with his English friends, Governor Bernard reported hostility towards his office and offered plans to curb violence, but he longed to leave his position.29

In 1766, the House of Representatives purged the Council, ousting most of the distinguished public servants, in a reaction to the Stamp Tax and to a fundamental change in Anglo-American relations. Among the purged were Thomas Hutchinson, Andrew and Peter Oliver, and Edmund Trowbridge. George Leonard and Benjamin Lynde, Jr., resigned before the elections rather than suffer the indignity of nearly certain defeat. Bernard exercised then his own power of selection and rejected the new councilors Joseph Gerrish, Thomas Saunders, James Otis, Sr., Jerathmeel Bowers, Nathaniel Sparhawk, and Samuel Dexter nominated by the old Council and the House of Representatives. He rejected James Otis, Jr., as Speaker of the House, but then confirmed Thomas Cushing. The legislature did not fill the Council vacancies and they remained as silent evidence of declining British authority.30

Bernard remained governor until 1769, but he admitted in 1767 that his power was slipping. He reacted bitterly each May to the Council nominations, carefully filled vacancies, and he suffered the indignities of continuing opposition. In a letter of July 1768, Bernard tells his English patron this woeful story:

It is now 3 years since the popular power, which now prevails, first raised its head: I have constantly given notice of every step it has made, and have given my opinion that there was no internal power in this government which could prevent its gaining all real power. I have myself done every thing I could to stop its Progress and by my negativing power kept it from prevailing in the Council. But it is all over now.31

Bernard cited the 1768 House vote refusing to withdraw its Circular Letter describing the threats to civilian rule in Massachusetts and to obey orders of the British secretary of state as contemptuous acts against royal authority. “The Vote of the House against rescinding, which was carried by so large a majority, gave the precise Turn to the Council; and now I see that popular Leaders . . . wholly prevail in that body.”32

A few weeks before he left Boston in 1769, he wrote about the shift of power from his office: “Tomorrow the new Assembly meets. . . . Many of the Friends of Government have been turned out; many have declined serving; the few who will be in the House will be only spectators.” He added that if he dared to use his negative on the Council, he would need to remove two-thirds of the members as radicals. In desperation, he ordered the legislature to meet in Cambridge at Harvard College to avoid the violence occurring in Boston and secured special permission to leave Boston for a personal report to home authorities.

When Bernard’s transportation was found, Hutchinson became acting governor and his successor a year later when he finally resigned. The new executive was obviously courageous to accept the rule of a belligerent colony, but he was a native New Englander, had good friends all over Massachusetts, and decided to use a firm hand. He knew all of the chief actors in the legislature and wanted to rule on his own terms. He encouraged friends to take seats in the legislature and swallowed his own pride in 1770 by approving James Otis, Sr., William Brattle, James Bowdoin, Royall Tyler, and Thomas Saunders, Jr., as councilors. He appointed as chief of the Superior Court the then infirm Benjamin Lynde, Jr., undoubtedly the judge whom Bernard should have appointed in 1760 instead of him.33

Unfortunately, in keeping the legislature at Cambridge, Hutchinson fueled a major dispute. As the argument heated up, he appointed family and friends to high office and took precautions to control the opposition. He narrowed the basis of his ruling group by selecting people of proven loyalty—brother Foster Hutchinson went to the Superior Court and, in 1772, Peter Oliver became chief justice. He also had to explain to the British government and to the people why the General Court was still meeting in Cambridge. He used formal papers to explain the policy and beat back his opposition. Though powerful, his formal statements could not convince the legislators because they were angry at being exiled to Cambridge unnecessarily. The governor tested his power, but in the end he had to retreat when the legislature admitted there was a crisis in lawmaking. The members also tested his power to govern with other issues. His private letters were being passed among selected leaders, British salaries for officials were raising questions of responsibility to rule, Chief Justice Peter Oliver was threatened with impeachment for taking a British salary; and his brother-in-law, Andrew Oliver, the lieutenant governor, died in 1774. This litany of problems was reflected in the committee system of the legislature, which John Hancock led, sharing power with Jerathamel Bowers, Joseph Hawley, and David Ingersoll, Jr.34

In 1773, Hutchinson sealed his fate when he ordered the East India Company tea cargoes to be unloaded in Boston Harbor. Other colonial governments sent the ships back to England, but he counted on the help of the British warships in the harbor and wanted to obey the law that obliged entering ships to clear cargoes. He was also determined to show strength in the face of great popular opposition. Unfortunately for him, the tea was dumped—all 340 chests from the three merchant vessels. He submitted an explanation to Lord Dartmouth, the Secretary of State, on January 4, 1774, and followed with a letter to fellow governors. The uproar convinced him that he had to leave Boston. In private letters home he admitted that he had reached the end of his patience, but he would stay until General Thomas Gage succeeded him. Otherwise, because of Andrew Oliver’s death in March, the Council would assume the administration. Near riot conditions existed during Andrew’s funeral, which his brother, Chief Justice Peter Oliver, did not dare attend.35

With the arrival of Gage on May 13, the final enactment of the revolutionary struggle began. He met the General Court on May 25 and the next day rejected 13 of the nominated Council members and moved the legislature to Salem for its sessions beginning on June 1.36 The opening session actually began on June 7. Two days later, the House of Representatives and Council sent a committee asking the reason for the shift of the legislature to Salem and then appointed another committee chaired by Speaker Thomas Cushing and composed of Joseph Hawley, Samuel Adams, William Phillips, Robert Treat Paine, James Warren, William Tyng, Daniel Leonard, and John Pickering, Jr. The committee developed a series of resolutions in which it recommended a general meeting of the colonies to consider the “unhappy differences” between Great Britain and the colonies. It asked also for a day of prayer and fasting to mark the seriousness of this dispute with Great Britain. General Gage immediately dissolved the General Court on June 17, thus ending the last British legislature of Massachusetts.37

With the collapse of British authority in 1774 and 1775, the Massachusetts government gradually became American. Three congresses were held in the new state in October 1774 and in February and May 1775. Delegates from most towns assembled and conducted some necessary business. But in July 1775, the General Court resumed its yearly meetings and used procedures similar to those developed during British rule. The council assumed most executive authority, and one of its prestigious members, Jeremiah Powell, became the symbolic spokesman for the state in place of the traditional governor. General Thomas Gage, the last British governor, had already lost his power to rule and was about to leave the colony. The House of Representatives erected many new townships, qualified the delegates, screened a few for loyalty, and resumed the lawmaking tasks that General Gage had interrupted in June 1774. Its members looked to the Continental Congress to lead the new nation and asked the towns to read the Declaration of Independence in 1776, fill the military levies, and round up the Tories. Some uncertainty arose about the constitutional order. Until the adoption of the 1780 Constitution, the General Court provided a solid structure of self-government and thousands of Massachusetts and Maine citizens rallied to fight the king on distant battlefields.

These centers of power over the years had significantly influenced the work of the General Court. The process of legislating and judging the issues of petitions changed relatively little over time, except that more petitions appeared as disputes with the governor and the imperial government intensified. A window into the legislative process was provided by a gallery. The spectators supported the legislators, but there was no real mob outside the courthouse waiting to cheer on the heros, nor were there hangmen to punish the enemies of the people. Tar and feathering in the late 1760s were severe punishment, indeed, but they were not actually a direct weapon of the legislature. The General Court was forced to meet in other localities in 1774, 1775, and early 1776, but its return to Boston in May 1776 restored the usual legislating procedures, in probably the same rooms, with hundreds of committees applying the wisdom of the lawmakers. In October 1780, the first legislature under the new constitution was called into session, thus ending the colonial era of the 1691 Charter.38

NOTES

   1. Clifford K. Shipton, Sibley’s Harvard Graduates: Biographical Sketches of Those who Attended Harvard College, in the Classes 1751-1755 (Boston, 1965), 13: 519; John A. Schutz and Douglass Adair, eds., The Spur of Fame (San Marino, Calif., 1966), 4.

   2. Sibley's Harvard Graduates , 7 (1945): 494-498. Only seven members of Clap’s class of 49 served in the legislature.

   3. Sibley’s Harvard Graduates , 11 (1960): 313-318.

   4. Sibley’s Harvard Graduates , 4 (1933): 355.

  5. See Shipton, ibid. 11 (Pepperrell): 290-293, (Pynchon) 295-301, (Bourne) 178-179, (Waldo, Jr.) 322-325.

   6. Douglass Adair and John A. Schutz, eds., Peter Oliver’s Origin & Progress of the American Rebellion (The Huntington Library, 1961), 27-29; John J. Waters and John A. Schutz, “Patterns of Massachusetts Colonial Politics . . . ,” William and Mary Quarterly 24: 543-567, particularly 553.

   7. Joseph Gilman to Mary Gilman, March 4 and Nov. 15, 1754, Gilman MSS, Massachusetts Historical Society.

   8. William M. Fowler, The Baron of Beacon Hill: A Biography of John Hancock (Boston, 1980), 32-33; Sibley’s Harvard Graduates 13 (1965): 417.

9. The Harvard Graduates were Bowdoin, Brattle, Davenforth, Hill, Hubbard, Hutchinson, Lynde, Oliver (A.), Oliver (P.), Russell, Watts, and Williams.

10. See George A. Billias, The Massachusetts Land Bankers of 1740 , University of Maine Studies, 2nd Ser., 61, No. 17 (Orono, Me., 1959).

11. John A. Schutz, William Shirley: King’s Governor of Massachusetts (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1961), 44-63.

12. W. T. Baxter, The House of Hancock: Business in Boston 1724-1775 (Cambridge, Mass., 1945), 95-97.

13.Journals of the House of Representatives of Massachusetts (Boston,1919-1990), 48: 112.

14. Ibid., 116.

15. Ibid., 191-195.

16. Bernard Bailyn, The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson (Cambridge, Mass., 1974), 130; Francis G. Walett, “Governor Bernard’s Undoing,” New England Quarterly, 38 (1965): 217-226.

17. Samuel Cooper and Thomas Pownall had an extensive correspondence which Pownall used in his parliamentary speeches.

18. See Bailyn, The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson , 243-248.

19. Sibley’s Harvard Graduates , 6 (1961): 352-353.

20. Quoted from Jeremy Dummer by Shipton, ibid., 353.

21. Boston Weekly News-Letter , September 7, 1729.

22. Sibley’s Harvard Graduates , 6 (1961): 443-444.

23. Schutz, William Shirley: King’s Governor of Massachusetts , 74-79.

24. Lawrence S. Mayo, The History of the Colony and Province of Massachusetts-Bay By Thomas Hutchinson , 3 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1936), 3: 6-7.

25. Theodore Thayer, “The Army Contractors for the Niagara Campaign, 1755-1756,” William and Mary Quarterly 14: 31-46.

26. John A. Schutz, Thomas Pownall (Glendale, Calif., 1951), 174-176.

27. William H. Whitmore, The Massachusetts Civil List . . . (Baltimore, Md., 1969), 120, 121, 123.

28. Waters and Schutz, “Patterns of Massachusetts Colonial Politics . . . ,” 543-567.

29. See Bernard to Lord Barrington, Nov. 23, 1765, and May 9, 1768, Edward Channing and Archibald Cary Coolidge, eds., The Bernard-Barrington Correspondence (Cambridge, Mass., 1912), 92-93, 156-159.

30. Whitmore, The Massachusetts Civil List, 62; Journals of the House of Representatives 43: pt. I, 9-10.

31. The Bernard-Barrington Correspondence , 170.

32. Ibid.

33. Journals of the House of Representatives 47: 8-9. He rejected seats for John Hancock and Jerathmiel Bowers.

34. Bailyn, The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson , see Chapter 7, “The Scape Goat,” 221-273.

35. Sibley’s Harvard Graduates , 8 (1951): 751-752.

36.Those rejected were: John Adams, Benjamin Austin, James Bowdoin, Jerathmeel Bowers, Timothy Danielson, Samuel Dexter, Michael Farley, Jedediah Foster, Enoch Freeman, William Phillips, James Prescott, Norton Quincy, and John Winthrop.

37. Journals of the House of Representatives 50: 251.

38. Ibid., 287-291. The last words of Thomas Gage’s order of June 17 were “God save the King.”