Biographical Introduction

    By John W. Tyler

    After an extremely difficult first year and a half as acting governor, exacerbated by the rising tide of violence accompanying the enforcement of the nonimportation agreement, which culminated in the Boston Massacre, the next eighteen months would constitute an interlude of relative calm in Thomas Hutchinson’s administration (although Hutchinson hardly would have realized it at the time). Following the partial repeal of the Townshend Acts in April 1770, the nonimportation agreement began to dissolve; the popularity of the patriots seemed to wane, at least in some of the country towns of the province; and fissures appeared within the patriot leadership. Thomas Hutchinson might even have persuaded himself at times he was succeeding, only to have to come to grips once again with some new point of controversy raised by Samuel Adams and his most irreconcilable followers.

    The absence of any sign of popular outrage following the acquittal of Captain Thomas Preston for his role in the Boston Massacre suggested that Hutchinson was wise to delay the trial as long as possible in order to let popular sentiment subside. When a sympathetic jury acquitted the soldiers as well (except for two found guilty of manslaughter), a series of angry articles (traditionally assumed to have been written by Samuel Adams) appeared in the Boston Gazette, seeking to retry the evidence but stirred little popular support. In December, a final trial, intended to implicate subordinates of the American Board of Customs Commissioners in the Massacre, resulted in outright dismissal. When the evidence produced at the trials was finally published, popular opinion in the country towns grew increasingly skeptical of the accounts of the Massacre they had first read in the newspapers and in A Short Narrative of the Horrid Massacre, the town’s official account of events.

    The fall session of the General Court, lasting from 26 September through 20 November 1770, raised one old and several new points of controversy. The House continued to object to meeting in Cambridge instead of Boston and refused to proceed to business until 6 October, when its desire to challenge the legality of the royal takeover of Castle William superseded its objections. Governor and House sparred over the governor’s veto of salary grants to separate agents: Benjamin Franklin for the House and Hutchinson’s erstwhile friend William Bollan for the Council. Also, the Council was eager to chastise Andrew Oliver for sending to England his own record of its meeting on the day following the Massacre, since what Oliver said directly contradicted the Council’s much amended journal. In such a fraught session of the General Court, even the style of the opening sentence of new enactments became an issue. Hutchinson’s fifth instruction from the crown required that all acts be passed by “the Governor, Council, and House,” with no other additional words, whereas the House wanted to add the phrase “in General Court assembled” in imitation of the acts of Parliament. Hutchinson held firm, and the offending language was removed, but not without protest.1 Among its last actions, the House appended to its journal a series of resolutions still insisting on its charter right to meet in Boston.2

    In his opening message to the House, Hutchinson had urged attention to unrestricted settlement in lands east of the Penobscot River in Maine, because such activity threatened the supply of the largest white pines, which were reserved by law for the king’s use for the Royal Navy. Without protection, such trees were likely to be sawed into boards, since the settlers themselves had no incentive to preserve them. Lord Hillsborough dispatched Thomas Scammell, surveyor of the king’s woods, to watch over the area, but its vast size, harsh winter climate, and summer insects made the task difficult. The inhabitants in the region were not favorably disposed to any exercise of government authority, and the town of Machias, near the border with Nova Scotia, was a particular flashpoint for disorder. When the General Court repeatedly ignored calls to deal with problems in the Eastern Country, Hutchinson recommended in frustration that the land be taken away from Massachusetts as punishment for the province’s continued resistance to parliamentary authority.

    The Spanish seizure of the Falkland Islands in June 1770 raised the prospect of war with Spain throughout the winter of 1770–1771. For Hutchinson, that threat pointed to the need to strengthen the fortifications at Castle William, but Lord Hillsborough feared any changes at the Castle would heighten resistance to the royal takeover that had occurred there the previous September. War fever also preoccupied Parliament and diverted attention away from Hillsborough’s efforts to reform the constitution of Massachusetts by providing a royally appointed Council, changing the method of selecting jurors, limiting the scope of town meetings, and facilitating the removal of justices of the peace who failed to enforce civil order. The collapse of Bernard and Hillsborough’s plans meant that Parliament made no effort to punish either the Massachusetts General Court or the Boston town meeting for the continued escalation of their challenges to imperial authority.

    The precarious state of the ministry in London during the winter and spring of 1771 prevented Parliament from any unified response to colonial challenges to imperial authority. During the so-called “printers’ crisis,” two London printers reproduced word for word remarks made on the floor of the House of Commons, violating the privileged status of debates there. A bailiff sent to arrest the printers was himself imprisoned by one of the City’s aldermen, and when the lord mayor defended the action, the House of Commons committed both mayor and alderman to the Tower of London. Large crowds gathered to protest, and the prosecution of the printers was allowed to lapse.3 The incident not only demonstrated the strength of the opposition to the ministry but also set a precedent for freedom of the press that would spread, even to the colonies.

    Hutchinson’s commission as governor-in-chief had been repeatedly delayed during 1770 by his own indecision and Lord Hillsborough’s absence in Ireland. The commission was finally dispatched from London in early December but did not arrive in Boston until early March 1771. When Hutchinson was officially proclaimed governor-in-chief, the House of Representatives refused to issue the customary address of congratulations and a message from the Congregational ministers of Boston was notably guarded.4 The governor’s salary at an enhanced rate of £1,500 a year would now be paid by the crown, a matter that did not sit well with the House, whose members valued their traditional check on the governor’s authority whenever they had voted for his annual salary in the past.

    Hutchinson enjoyed the perquisites that came with his new appointment. He attempted to procure for Kings Chapel, which he now occasionally attended, a new set of communion silver and pulpit furnishings as a gift from the king and turned his attention to filling the gaps among the full-length portraits of British monarchs that adorned the Council Chamber. He also used patronage to aid various family members. His brother-in-law Andrew Oliver and cousin Peter Oliver became lieutenant governor and chief justice, respectively. He made a controversial appointment of his brother Foster to a seat on the bench of the Superior Court and found additional jobs for his half-brother-in-law John Cotton to augment Cotton’s meager salary as deputy secretary of the province. At the same time, Hutchinson needed to make sure that key legal posts like attorney general and advocate general of the vice-admiralty court remained in loyal hands, and he continued to try to provide for officers in the provincial garrison who were displaced by regulars when Castle William was transferred to crown control in September 1770.

    Throughout his time as both lieutenant and acting governor, Hutchinson, of necessity, always attempted to maintain cordial relations with the commander-in-chief of the North American station of the Royal Navy, particularly when it was headquartered in Boston rather than Halifax. But Hutchinson’s friendship with Commodore James Gambier after the latter’s arrival in 1770 appears, based on the warmth and almost playful good humor of Hutchinson’s letters, to have been of an altogether different order. Thus, it was a personal blow when Gambier was replaced in the spring of 1771, and Hutchinson wrote many letters of recommendation on his friend’s behalf.

    On 2 April, during an oration commemorating the first anniversary of the Boston Massacre, James Lovell declared that Parliament’s claim to authority over Massachusetts was “illegal in itself” and a usurpation of the king’s prerogative, an assertion that Hutchinson regarded as a new and troubling extension of the challenge to parliamentary supremacy. The April sitting of the General Court accomplished little, but Hutchinson’s optimism that the May elections might provide a less contentious disposition in the House initially seemed correct. The unexpected intervention of James Otis Jr. appeared to produce a response to the governor’s opening message that would enable him to return the General Court to Boston without appearing to give up his defense of the royal prerogative. Later in the session, however, Samuel Adams secured enough votes for a protest of the House that would make such a rapprochement impossible.5

    Further conflict occurred near the end of the session when Hutchinson’s instructions (which should have accompanied his commission) finally arrived. A new instruction forbade him from assenting to any law taxing the salaries of the American Board of Customs Commissioners. The House responded with the declaration that “we know of no Commissioners of Customs, nor of any Revenue His Majesty has a right to establish in North America,” prompting Hutchinson to prorogue the Court swiftly. Hutchinson was sure such a statement would “incense” Parliament and prolong conflict with the mother country.6 Hutchinson, also following instructions, refused to consent to grants for separate agents for both the House and Council; traditionally, there was just one agent approved by both houses of the General Court and the governor. His veto of the agents’ salaries would cause a final break with his old friend William Bollan, and thereafter Bollan moved irrevocably into the patriot camp.7

    Since becoming governor-in-chief, Hutchinson was keen to try his hand at exploiting differences of opinion within the patriot opposition. Earlier in the spring, James Otis Jr. had split with Samuel Adams concerning the wisdom of continuing to insist on a charter right for the General Court to meet in Boston, but since then Otis had relapsed back into mental instability, leaving Adams as the undisputed leader of the opposition. Hutchinson, who had vetoed John Hancock twice previously for a seat on the Council, let it be known that he would relax his objection if Hancock would see to it that the House no longer agitated the issue of its meeting place. Because of Hancock’s wide popularity and generous financial support of the patriot cause, his defection would have been a major coup. Also, Hutchinson did what he could to sow jealousies between the House and its newly appointed (though unauthorized) agent, Benjamin Franklin.

    With the General Court no longer in session during the summer and early fall of 1771, Hutchinson faced few direct challenges to his authority, yet what he called “a sullen discontent” still lingered. His opponents accused him of slavishly following ministerial instructions when he ought to use his own discretion. Also, the idea, introduced by the House in its final message of the last session, that the Parliament had no legitimate authority over the colonies continued to spread. The colonies, Samuel Adams and others asserted, were founded on the basis of charters granted by the reigning monarch, not by Parliament. Therefore, the colonies enjoyed a relationship with the crown completely independent of the supreme legislature.8

    Despite the fact that Parliament retained the duty on tea when it repealed the rest of the Townshend duties in April 1770, the consumption of tea in the North American colonies continued to rise, with most purchasers acquiring smuggled tea shipped from the Netherlands. For Hutchinson and his sons, who still imported tea wholesale from England (even during the non importation agreement), competition was difficult, and Hutchinson urged Hillsborough and others either to step up customs enforcement through the use of the Royal Navy (since the unpopular American Board of Customs Commissioners was reluctant to make seizures) or to restructure the trade in such a way that there would be less incentive to smuggle. Parliament would attempt the latter approach in 1773, but the way in which it was done, by granting a virtual monopoly to selected American agents of the East India Company, would stir widespread objections, ultimately leading to the Boston Tea Party.

    Shortly after becoming governor of New York in the summer of 1771, William Tryon proposed renewing talks about the disputed border between Massachusetts and New York, an issue that had remained in abeyance since 1767 when commissioners from the two colonies failed to reach an agreement. Tryon proposed splitting the few remaining miles of disputed territory, but resolving the issue proved to be more fraught than either governor anticipated, and the dispute dragged on until May 1773. In the meantime, New York would continue to issue new grants of land in the region west of the Connecticut and north of the Massachusetts boundary—in other words, the modern state of Vermont.9

    Hutchinson faced two unexpected challenges during the fall of 1771. As was traditional sometime after the harvest, Hutchinson proclaimed a day of public thanksgiving on 24 October. Clergy throughout the province were expected to read the governor’s proclamation. This year, however, since the language included thanks for the “continuance of civil and religious privileges,” only Hutchinson’s friend and minister Ebenezer Pemberton, among all of Boston’s Congregational clergy, actually read it. On 14 November, “Mucius Scaevola” writing in Boston’s newest (and soon most popular) newspaper, the Massachusetts Spy, contended that there were no such “privileges” left in Massachusetts and that Hutchinson’s willingness to accept a salary independent of the legislature made him a “monster in government.” Initially, Hutchinson suspected Joseph Greenleaf, the partner of printer Isaiah Thomas, of being Scaevola, but Greenleaf denied it, and without more evidence the Council could only strip Greenleaf of his role as justice of the peace for Plymouth County. Thomas himself refused to appear before the Council, but when the attorney general charged him with seditious libel, the Suffolk County Grand Jury refused to find a true bill.10 The controversy soon became an embarrassing issue of free speech, although Hutchinson later that winter tried to counter the patriot dominance in the press by placing more government party essays in the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter/Boston Post-Boy and Advertiser and a newly founded political magazine called The Censor, to which both he and Andrew Oliver contributed items.

    On the night of 12 November, Arthur Savage, the comptroller of customs at Falmouth, Maine, was taken from his house at gunpoint and muscled through the dark streets while disguised persons demanded to know the name of the informant in a recent seizure. Savage refused to disclose the name and was eventually released but only after promising not to identify any of his captors. Savage soon fled to Boston, where he named several of the attackers, and warrants were sworn out for their arrest. Despite Hutchinson’s determination to punish the offenders, the local courts in Falmouth failed to convict.

    Hutchinson did what he could after Sir Francis Bernard’s departure to assist members of the former governor’s family remaining in Massachusetts. He arranged shipboard transportation to England for Bernard’s wife, Amelia, in August 1770. Bernard’s eldest son, Frank, had begun to show signs of mental instability in the summer of 1769, soon after his father’s departure. Frank was confined for almost a year at Castle William on doctor’s orders for his own safekeeping. He eventually died on 5 November 1770, when it fell to Hutchinson to inform Frank’s unfortunate father. Although healthier, Frank’s brother, John, a merchant, seems to have so mismanaged his financial affairs that Hutchinson’s intervention was necessary in delicate negotiations with John’s creditors to avert bankruptcy and debtors’ prison.

    On 12 February 1772, Hutchinson received a letter from Lord Hillsborough, dated 4 December 1771, commending him for his conduct in refusing his assent to the supply bill that would have taxed the customs commissioners and for his message proroguing the General Court the previous July after its explicit denial of the right of Parliament to raise taxes in Massachusetts. Should future legislatures follow the same course, Hillsborough urged him to counter such notions with “argument and persuasion.” This message would shape Hutchinson’s conduct when the General Court reconvened later that spring and would prompt a series of messages between the governor and the House in the winter of 1773 on the nature of the imperial constitution, a debate that would be widely reprinted and prompt an embarrassing reprimand for Hutchinson from Lord Dartmouth, Hillsborough’s successor as secretary of state for the colonies.

    In the same letter praising Hutchinson, Hillsborough addressed the confusion over the form of pardon for Ebenezer Richardson, a former customs informant convicted of the murder of Christopher Seider when rioters attacked Richardson’s house on 22 February 1770. The judges of the Superior Court delayed sentencing Richardson since they believed him guilty of no more than manslaughter. News of a royal pardon arrived in May 1771, but Richardson languished in prison until the following March, when after a clarification from Lord Hillsborough he was finally released.

    In advance of the reconvening of the General Court on 8 April 1772, Hutchinson wrote to several of the representatives from more conservative western towns urging them to attend, especially since the agenda was likely to include further discussion of the boundary with New York, a subject deeply interesting to them. In his opening message, Hutchinson hinted broadly that if the House would cease asserting that the Court by right ought to meet in Boston but instead would plead for it merely as a matter of convenience, he was ready to comply. A response drafted by John Hancock contained satisfactory language, but it failed to win a majority, and Samuel Adams inserted words into the House’s response that made resolution of the issue, at least for that session, impossible. The incident deepened the rift between Hancock and Adams. At the next town meeting, Hancock moved for an inquiry into Boston’s finances, highlighting Adams’s defalcations as tax collector. During the rest of the meeting of the Court, Hutchinson did what he could to persuade the House to augment the salaries of the judges of the Superior Court, but the judges’ politics did not recommend them to the patriot majority. Hutchinson made one final attempt to convince the Court of the king’s right to order it to meet anywhere he saw fit, but to no avail, before adjourning the session on 25 April.

    In late March, Hutchinson first heard news that his friend and mentor Sir Francis Bernard had suffered a serious stroke. Bernard’s diminished capacities would leave Hutchinson temporarily without a well-placed ally and source of advice. At the same time, word arrived that John Temple, while lobbying in England, had managed to turn his removal from the American Board of Customs Commissioners to advantage by obtaining appointment as surveyor general of customs in England, an even more lucrative post.11 Because of Temple’s close family connections with leading patriots on the Council like James Bowdoin, the appointment was interpreted by many as a rebuke to Bernard, Hutchinson, and the remaining American commissioners.

    Hutchinson worried about the future of his youngest son, William Sanford Hutchinson, who showed little aptitude as a scholar while at Harvard and seemed disinclined to join his brother’s tea concern. Attempts to place Billy as a clerk to Attorney General Jonathan Sewall did not go well either. The young man was eager to travel to Britain, and his father hoped he might make connections there that would land him a government job, but as was the case when Billy’s older brother Thomas Jr. made a similar journey in 1766, Hutchinson was nervous that the allurements of London might prove too tempting. He insisted that Billy make only a brief visit to the capital before moving on to Edinburgh to study at the university there.

    Hutchinson hoped during the May elections that the split within the patriot camp might result in a General Court more favorable to the government party. Several loyal councilors whom Hutchinson feared might be turned out were not, but John Hancock, whom Hutchinson was ready finally to accept as councilor, chose not to take his seat. Nevertheless, Hancock once again tried to shape an opening message that would enable the Court to return to Boston. The reply of the Council was much more conciliatory than that of the House, drafted by Samuel Adams. Hutchinson asked for a clarification from both but received no response. Finally, he asked the Council for its opinion whether he might return the Court to Boston consistent with his royal instructions. When they unanimously replied in the affirmative, Hutchinson ended the near three-year-long standoff and summoned the Court to meet once again at the Town House in Boston on 15 June.12

    With the return of the Court to Boston, Thomas Hutchinson might commend himself that although he had weathered a stormy two years since the close of the Massacre trials, they were not without moments of success. His arguments upheld the royal prerogative whenever challenged, and he fended off objections to the idea that the royal governor ought not to receive a salary independent of the legislature. He also encouraged what appeared to be a permanent split between the most prominent leaders of the patriot party, John Hancock and Samuel Adams.13 But he could have no idea of the troubles that lay ahead. Adams would successfully fan the flames of resentment against independent salaries for the judges of the Superior Court into a province-wide petitioning movement that directly denied the supremacy of Parliament. The petitions of the various towns would become the foundation for a network of committees of correspondence linking patriots throughout the colonies. The publication of Hutchinson’s own private letters to Thomas Whately in the spring of 1773 would lead to official calls for his removal, while Parliament’s efforts to establish the East India Company on a sounder financial footing would provoke the crisis that effectively ended his governorship.