Volume I Part 6 (1/2)
”Let men of G.o.d in courts and churches watch O'er such as do a toleration hatch.”
Such a son of such a father was the marvel of New England. Those who clung to the old traditions and mourned for the old theocracy under the old charter, hated Joseph Dudley as a renegade; and the wors.h.i.+ppers of the Puritans have not forgiven him to this day. He had been president of the council under the detested Andros, and when that representative of the Stuarts was overthrown by a popular revolution, both he and Dudley were sent prisoners to England. Here they found a reception different from the expectations and wishes of those who sent them. Dudley became a member of Parliament and lieutenant-governor of the Isle of Wight, and was at length, in the beginning of the reign of Queen Anne, sent back to govern those who had cast him out. Any governor imposed on them by England would have been an offence; but Joseph Dudley was more than they could bear.
He found bitter opposition from the old Puritan party. The two Mathers, father and son, who through policy had at first favored him, soon denounced him with insolent malignity, and the honest and conscientious Samuel Sewall regarded him with as much asperity as his kindly nature would permit. To the party of religious and political independency he was an abomination, and great efforts were made to get him recalled. Two pamphlets of the time, one printed in 1707 and the other in the next year, reflect the bitter animosity he excited.[87] Both seem to be the work of several persons, one of whom, there can be little doubt, was Cotton Mather; for it is not easy to mistake the mingled flippancy and pedantry of his style. He bore the governor a grudge, for Dudley had chafed him in his inordinate vanity and love of power.
If Dudley loved himself first, he loved his native New England next, and was glad to serve her if he could do so in his own way and without too much sacrifice of his own interests. He was possessed by a restless ambition, apparently of the cheap kind that prefers the first place in a small community to the second in a large one. He was skilled in the arts of the politician, and knew how, by attentions, dinners, or commissions in the militia, to influence his Council and a.s.sembly to do his will.
His abilities were beyond question, and his manners easy and graceful; but his instincts were arbitrary. He stood fast for prerogative, and even his hereditary Calvinism had strong Episcopal leanings. He was a man of the world in the better as well as the worse sense of the term; was loved and admired by some as much as he was hated by others; and in the words of one of his successors, ”had as many virtues as can consist with so great a thirst for honor and power.”[88]
His enemies, however, set no bounds to their denunciation. ”All the people here are bought and sold betwixt the governour and his son Paul,”
says one. ”It is my belief,” says another, probably Cotton Mather, ”that he means to help the French and Indians to destroy all they can.” And again, ”He is a criminal governour.... His G.o.d is Mammon, his aim is the ruin of his country.” The meagreness and uncertainty of his salary, which was granted by yearly votes of the a.s.sembly, gave color to the charge that he abused his official position to improve his income. The worst accusation against him was that of conniving in trade with the French and Indians under pretence of exchanging prisoners. Six prominent men of the colony--Borland, Vetch, Lawson, Rous, Phillips, and Coffin, only three of whom were of New England origin--were brought to trial before the a.s.sembly for trading at Port Royal; and it was said that Dudley, though he had no direct share in the business, found means to make profit from it. All the accused were convicted and fined. The more strenuous of their judges were for sending them to jail, and Rous was to have been sentenced to ”sit an hour upon the gallows with a rope about his neck;” but the governor and council objected to these severities, and the a.s.sembly forbore to impose them. The popular indignation against the accused was extreme, and probably not without cause.[89] There was no doubt an illicit trade between Boston and the French of Acadia, who during the war often depended on their enemies for the necessaries of life, since supplies from France, precarious at the best, were made doubly so by New England cruisers. Thus the Acadians and their Indian allies were but too happy to exchange their furs for very modest supplies of tools, utensils, and perhaps, at times, of arms, powder, and lead.[90] What with privateering and illicit trade, it was clear that the war was a source of profit to some of the chief persons in Boston. That place, moreover, felt itself tolerably safe from attack, while the borders were stung from end to end as by a swarm of wasps; and thus the country conceived the idea that the town was fattening at its expense. Vaudreuil reports to the minister that the people of New England want to avenge themselves by an attack on Canada, but that their chief men are for a policy of defence. This was far from being wholly true; but the notion that the rural population bore a grudge against Boston had taken strong hold of the French, who even believed that if the town were attacked, the country would not move hand or foot to help it. Perhaps it was well for them that they did not act on the belief, which, as afterwards appeared, was one of their many mistakes touching the character and disposition of their English neighbors.
The sentences on Borland and his five companions were annulled by the Queen and Council, on the ground that the a.s.sembly was not competent to try the case.[91] The pa.s.sionate charges against Dudley and a pet.i.tion to the Queen for his removal were equally unavailing. The a.s.semblies of Ma.s.sachusetts and New Hamps.h.i.+re, the chief merchants, the officers of militia, and many of the ministers sent addresses to the Queen in praise of the governor's administration;[92] and though his enemies declared that the votes and signatures were obtained by the arts familiar to him, his recall was prevented, and he held his office seven years longer.
FOOTNOTES:
[77] _Vaudreuil et Beauharnois au Ministre, 17 Novembre, 1704._
[78] _Vaudreuil et Beauharnois au Ministre, 17 Novembre, 1704_; _Vaudreuil au Ministre, 16 Novembre, 1704_; _Ramesay au Ministre, 14 Novembre, 1704_. Compare Penhallow.
[79] _Vaudreuil au Ministre, 5 Novembre, 1708_; _Vaudreuil et Raudot au Ministre, 14 Novembre, 1708_; Hutchinson, ii. 156; _Ma.s.s. Hist. Coll. 2d Series_, iv. 129; Sewall, _Diary_, ii. 234. Penhallow.
[80] The rewards for scalps were confined to male Indians thought old enough to bear arms,--that is to say, above twelve years. _Act of General Court, 19 August, 1706._
[81] _Dudley to Lord ----, 21 April, 1704._ _Address of Council and a.s.sembly to the Queen, 12 July, 1704._ The burden on the people was so severe that one writer--not remarkable, however, for exactness of statement--declares that he ”is credibly informed that some have been forced to cut open their beds and sell the feathers to pay their taxes.”
The general poverty did not prevent a contribution in New England for the suffering inhabitants of the Island of St. Christopher.
[82] _Vaudreuil au Ministre, 12 Novembre, 1708._ Vaudreuil says that he got his information from prisoners.
[83] _Resume d'une Lettre de MM. de Vaudreuil et de Beauharnois du 15 Novembre, 1703, avec les Observations du Ministre._ Subercase, governor of Acadia, writes on 25 December, 1708, that he hears that a party of Canadians and Indians have attacked a place on the _Maramet_ (Merrimac), ”et qu'ils y ont egorge 4 a 500 personnes sans faire quartier aux femmes ni aux enfans.” This is an exaggerated report of the affair of Haverhill. M. de Chevry writes in the margin of the letter: ”Ces actions de cruaute devroient etre moderees:” to which Ponchartrain adds: ”Bon; les defendre.” His att.i.tude, however, was uncertain; for as early as 1707 we find him approving Vaudreuil for directing the missionaries to prompt the Abenakis to war. _N. Y. Col. Docs._, ix. 805.
[84] _Dudley to ----, 26 November, 1704._
[85] _Abrege d'une lettre de M. de Vaudreuil, avec les notes du Ministre, 19 Octobre, 1705._
[86] On the negotiations for neutrality, see the correspondence and other papers in the _Paris Doc.u.ments_ in the Boston State House; also _N. Y. Col. Docs._, ix. 770, 776, 779, 809; Hutchinson, ii. 141.
[87] _A Memorial of the Present Deplorable State of New England, Boston, 1707._ _The Deplorable State of New England, by Reason of a Covetous and Treacherous Governour and Pusillanimous Counsellors, London, 1708._ The first of the above is answered by a pamphlet called a _Modest Inquiry_.
All three are reprinted in _Ma.s.s. Hist. Coll., 5th Series_, vi.
[88] Hutchinson, ii. 194.
[89] The agent of Ma.s.sachusetts at London, speaking of the three chief offenders, says that they were neither ”of English extraction, nor natives of the place, and two of them were very new comers.” Jeremiah Dummer, _Letter to a n.o.ble Lord concerning the late Expedition to Canada_.
[90] The French naval captain Bonaventure says that the Acadians were forced to depend on Boston traders, who sometimes plundered them, and sometimes sold them supplies. (_Bonaventure au Ministre, 30 Novembre, 1705._) Colonel Quary, Judge of Admiralty at New York, writes: ”There hath been and still is, as I am informed, a Trade carried on with Port Royal by some of the topping men of that government [Boston], under colour of sending and receiving Flaggs of truce.”--_Quary to the Lords of Trade, 10 January, 1708._
[91] _Council Record_, in Hutchinson, ii. 144.
[92] These addresses are appended to _A Modest Inquiry into the Grounds and Occasions of a late Pamphlet int.i.tuled a Memorial of the present Deplorable State of New England. London, 1707._