Infamas Govener": Francis Bernard and the American Revolution

University of Stirling Department of History Paper for Research Seminar Programme

15 March 1995

TITLE: The "Infamas Govener": Francis Bernard and the American Revolution

Colin Nicolson

1. Introduction

1.1. My research advances the thesis that the inability of Francis Bernard, governor of Massachusetts, to cultivate the political support of colonial conservatives and maximise popular support for the provincial administration contributed to Britain's failure to resolve the "American Question" long before the outbreak of war in 1775. In focusing on the governor's political relationship with conservatives and moderates, rather than, as has been more common, the relationship with the revolutionaries or Patriots, we might understand better why by 1775 the political foundations for a popular Loyalist counter-revolutionary movement in Massachusetts simply did not exist. My research is based on the premise that the American Revolution was -in Carl Becker's well known phrase- both a colonial struggle for home rule and a social and political revolution to decide who should rule at home. But while recent scholarship has emphasised the divisive nature of late colonial politics the prevailing tendency, as I see it, among political and social historians is to marginalise the significance of evidence pertaining to the political behaviour and ideology of those Americans and Britons who opposed the colonial protest movement. For Bernard, at least, and others in positions of power, the advent of colonial protests in the mid-1760s brought about changes in the decision-making process of government and political relationships which undermined the prospects of both Britain and the Loyalists to counteract the Revolution. 1

1.2. It might be said that a suggestion to embark on a biographical study of a colonial governor contradicts current scholarly emphasis upon interdisciplinary approaches and multicultural themes. Prosopography and behavioural analyses, for example, rather than biography are, of course, more suitable methods for broad interpretations of the American historical experience in its formative years, 1760 to 1840, when a colonial society on the periphery of the transatlantic world was transformed by a revolution into the first democratic capitalist republic in modern history2. Biography inadvertently -or wittingly in the case of-hagiography and demonology -distorts the historical relevance of common societal experiences. Secondly,

1See Colin Nicolson, "Governor Francis Bernard, the Massachusetts Friends of Government, and the Advent of the Revolution," Proceedings, Massachusetts Historical Society 101 (1991), pp.24-114; Colin Nicolson, "The Friends of Government: Loyalism, Ideology and Politics in Revolutionary Massachusetts" 2 vols, Unpublished Ph.D dissertation, University of Edinburgh, 1988. 2See Kenneth A Lockridge, "Social Change and the Meaning of the American Revolution", Journal of Social History 7 (1973), pp.403-439; Joyce Appleby, "The Social Origins of American Revolutionary Ideology", Journal of American History 44 (1977), pp.935-958 and "A Different Kind of Independence: The Postwar Restructuring of the Historical Study of Early America", William and Mary Quarterly, third series, 50 (1993), pp.245-268; Gary B Nash, The Urban Crucible; Social Change, Political Consciousness and the Origins of the American Revolution (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1979). For a brief discussion of multicultural themes and discourse theory in historical writing see Arthur Schlesinger Jr., "History: Text vs Context", Proceedings, Massachusetts Historical Society, 101 (1991), pp.1-8. 2 it is in the nature of revolutions that the descendants of the victors and the vanquished cherish conflicting images of the course of human events that changed their forebears' lives forever. Historians of the Revolution are self-conscious of the extent to which such a truism perpetuates a leadership-centred interpretation of late colonial and early American politics. A litany of heroes and villains, including Bernard, has peppered historical writing on the Revolution since the 1790s. Stories of the great deeds of great men who created the United States -the revolutionary generation and the Founding Fathers- are part and parcel of a cultural baggage of American libertarian paradigms and sacred cows. Biographical studies of the most famous revolutionaries or Patriots -Franklin, Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, the Adamses Samuel, John, and Abigail, and so on- have appeared intermittently since the early nineteenth-century and have never gone out of fashion. They have helped to shape in their own way American national consciousness by raising popular awareness of a revolutionary heritage that studies of eighteenth century Britons perhaps can never aspire to (with the possible exception one might suspect of Tom Paine). Similarly the tribulations of the Revolution's most conspicuous victims, the United Empire Loyalists, have been commemorated in the story of the settlement of Canada. Biographers of the Loyalists have been less prolific than historians of the Patriots, but no less effective in portraying the American revolution not only as a civil war that divided communities from New Hampshire to the Carolinas, but as an internal political revolution that removed from power influential, worthy opponents of the colonial protest movement.3

1.3. Studies of the complex patterns of American society during this period have not, however, precluded analyses of political behaviour in which emphasis has been placed upon the primacy of personal relationships over structural ones. To make sense of political behaviour in an early modern society we must acknowledge that political relationships between individuals rather than social groups were axiomatic to a process centred on a limited number of governmental institutions. The identification of political factions in eighteenth-century America is a problematic endeavour. The early modern party system, involving mass member organisations, articulate campaigning, and agenda setting, did not begin to evolve until the late 1780s. Political organisation on such a scale was one consequence of the Revolution, and it followed, to a degree, the activities of the colonists in nurturing interprovincial opposition to Britain from 1765 onwards. During the late colonial period, effective political power derived from a network of partisan interests and the influence factions exerted through the assemblies and town meetings on the royal governors, government officials and the populace at large.4

1.4. That is not say that influence and power in late eighteenth century American politics were consistently restricted to an elite; on the contrary, the American Revolution, though undeniably a colonial rebellion, was also the first of several major social and political upheavals in Europe and the Americas during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries that witnessed widespread, and often decisive, popular participation in the political process. Massachusetts's political leaders, for example, were drawn from local "leadership pools." They were not an oligarchy but an elite that dominated the decision-making processes of government

3See Bernard Bailyn, The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson (Belknap Press of the University of Harvard Press, Cambridge, Mass, 1974); Carole Berkin, Jonathan Sewall: Odyssey of an American Loyalist (New York and London, 1974). For a full exposition on works relating to the Loyalists see Robert S Allen, Loyalist Literature: An Annotated Bibliographic Guide to the Writings on the Loyalists of the American Revolution (Toronto and Charlottetown, 1982). 4 Robert M. Zemsky, Merchants, Farmers and River Gods: An Essay on Eighteenth-Century American Politics (Gambit, Boston, 1971), pp.12-13, Bernard Bailyn, "The Origins of American Politics", Perspectives in American History, I (1967), p.61; Richard L. Bushman, King and People in Provincial Massachusetts (University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, NC, 1985) pp.76-79, 135-175. 3 in the town meetings and the legislature yet maintained a symbiotic relationship by means of voluntary associations and extra-legal crowd action with those of lower social status-artisans, craftsmen, small farmers and the like, and even laborers-whose participation in the protest movement was instrumental in its success. The protest movement was a coalition of interest groups and sections directly affected by the reforms: lawyers, farmers, merchants, and artisans who would be paying the bulk of the duties as consumers and businessmen; town representatives, councillors, and municipal officials who decried the infringements to their rights of self-taxation. In the context of the political theory of community power structures, it was the pluralist rather than the elitist qualities of the protest movement which gave the Whigs and Patriots revolutionary appeal. It is sufficient to note that membership of a particular faction was not a prerequisite to participation in local affairs, but that deferential attitudes before the late 1770s and 1780s acted as a counter-weight to grass roots participation in provincial and municipal and provincial offices.5

1.5. By contrast for the "friends of government" and royal officials politics was the preserve of the elite and relationships, while were sustained by the notion of a shared conservative ideology. Biographical studies, as well as prosopographical studies of those involved in government can in this respect help to measure the revolutionary nature of changes in the internal dynamics of a single polity.

1.6. See H/O The Decision-Making Process of Government. The potential for conflict in imperial affairs between Britain and the colonies frequently reflected the pivotal responsibility of the royal governor for the execution of ministerial policies. Royal instructions to the governors described unequivocally their duty to veto certain categories of legislation passed by the assemblies and to execute acts of Parliament. There did not exist in the Massachusetts General Court or any other assembly in mainland North America a body of placemen - such as the "King's Friends" in the imperial Parliament - who could be expected to vote according to royal instructions. Representatives normally acted as the agents of the towns, although mandates in the form of written instructions were rare. Before the Stamp Act Crisis of 1765- 1766 the division of the Massachusetts representatives into "court" and "country" factions reflected primarily local and regional interests over imperial concerns. Issues relating to the conduct of the war with France from 1756 to 1763, such as the quartering of British soldiers,

5For more than a generation historians have debated whether politics in the Massachusetts towns was essentially elitist of democratic. See Richard Buel Jr., "Democracy and the American Revolution: A Frame of Reference", William and Mary Quarterly, third series, 21 (1964), pp.165-190; J.R. Pole, "Historians and the Problem of American Democracy", American Historical Review, 67 (1962), pp.626-646. Most adult males in Massachusetts had access to the representative system, for legal property restrictions on voting were never rigorously enforced. Up to 60 per cent of adult males in Boston and 80 per cent in other towns regularly voted in elections. Edward M. Cook Jr.'s analysis of the "leadership pools" in the towns revealed that the electors' range of choice was restricted, albeit voluntarily, to one per cent of inhabitants in Boston and up to 6 per cent elsewhere. In Fathers of the Towns: Leadership Structure in Eighteenth-Century New England (Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London, 1976), pp.10-37, 80-84. For a summary of the literature on community power structures, including the concept of "leadership pools", see Robert J. Waste, ed., Community Power: Directions for Future Research (Sage Publications, Beverly Hills & London, 1986). 4 frequently united the Massachusetts towns and their representatives against the governors.6 Error!

2. Francis Bernard (1712-1779), Colonial Governor

2.1 History has been particularly harsh in its judgement of Francis Bernard, one of the Revolution's most reviled opponents, who defied the popular furies that hastened the end of British rule in the thirteen colonies. Francis Bernard was ill-prepared for political life in the Bay colony. He was a highly ambitious office seeker with little experience of the politics of public administration. Bernard's father, a Lincolnshire rector, and his mother both died when he was an infant. He was raised by a scholarly step father and female relatives, and succeeded, with the help of local dignitaries, in developing a steady if unrewarding legal practice for over twenty years after graduating from Christ Church College, Oxford. Marriage to daughter of a wealthy Derbyshire family brought him into contact with "friends" of the Duke of Newcastle who were well placed to advance his career in public office. Lord Barrington, his wife's influential uncle and Secretary at War in a number of ministries, secured Bernard's appointment at age forty-six as governor of New Jersey in 1758. After just eighteen months, Barrington's recommendations brought Bernard promotion to the more financially lucrative if troublesome position of governor of Massachusetts.8

2.2 Bernard's ignominious departure from Boston nine years later was celebrated by the ringing of church bells, street parades and scurrilous verse that presaged the British evacuation of the town on St Patrick's Day, 1776. For six months and more before he left the province Bernard had been ridiculed in the newspapers and Samuel Adams's radical mouthpiece The Journal of the Times which catalogued everyday conflicts between Bostonians and the British troops. It was suspected by many colonists that Bernard had persuaded the ministry send to troops to the capital to protect government officials from the rampaging mobs that existed, it was said, only in the mind of the governor. Bernard's venal crime that, for Dr Benjamin Church at least, would live in the "ancient Memory of Time", typified the misdemeanours of Verres and the most despised royal governor in New England history, Edmund Andros- the lackey of the Jacobite King James II- deposed by the colonists following the Glorious Revolution of 1688-1689. Bernard had not only exceed the powers granted him by royal commission and the province Charter; his private letters obtained by and published on the direction of the assembly in April 1769 were evidence enough for most colonists that their governor had committed the cardinal sin of misrepresentation by accusing the leadership of the protest movement of

6Richard L. Bushman, King and People in Provincial Massachusetts (University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, NC, 1985), pp.76-175; Robert E. Brown, Middle-Class Democracy and the Revolution in Massachusetts, 1691-1780 (Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York, 1955), pp.150-190; William Pencak, War, Politics & Revolution in Provincial Massachusetts (Northeastern University Press, Boston, 1981), pp.150- 167; Stephen E. Patterson, Political Parties in Revolutionary Massachusetts (University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, Wisc., 1973), pp.27-47. 7Bernard Bailyn, "The Origins of American Politics", Perspectives in American History, I (1967), p.61; Bushman, King and People, pp.76-79, 135-175. 8For accounts of Bernard's life and career see Thomas Bernard, Life of Sir Francis Bernard (privately printed, London, 1790); Jordan D. Fiore, "Francis Bernard, Colonial Governor", Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, Boston University, 1950; Edmund S. Morgan and Helen Morgan, The Stamp Act Crisis: Prologue to Revolution (Collier Books, New York, 1963), pp.19-35. Bernard's papers comprise thirteen volumes of the Sparks MSS, Houghton Library, Harvard University. They are a principal primary source for this book. Some have been published in The Barrington-Bernard Correspondence and Illustrative Matter, 1760-1770 edited by Edward Channing and Archibald Cary Coolidge (Harvard Historical Studies Series vol.XVII, Cambridge, Mass., 1912; repr. Da Capo Press, New York, 1970). 5 fomenting treason, rebellion, disloyalty, and civil disorder.9 Paradoxically while the ministry had honoured him with a hereditary baronetcy, the provincial legislature, "inflamed" by Samuel Adams, petitioned the Crown for his immediate dismissal.10

2.3 The General Court's efforts came to naught when the Privy Council vindicated the errant governor without ever reviewing the evidence collected by the province, though the ministry did recall Bernard to England. In the colonies, Bernard's predicament was commonly likened to that of a social outcast or pariah "warned out" of the commonwealth -as were many other determined critics of the protest movement. His treachery was immortalised by graffiti etched in one window pane by an anonymous Patriot, that this day "August 2d 1769/The infamas/Govener left/our town"11

3. Revolutionary Ideology and Bernard

3.1 Bernard 's "infamy" is a consistent feature of revolutionary demonology, as were diatribes directed at fellow Britons such as George Grenville and the "traitorous" native-son of the Bay colony, Thomas Hutchinson, Bernard's lieutenant governor and successor. These "tories", it was alleged were the originators of obnoxious policies and the willing accomplices of court interests in London. Few colonists, as Bernard Bailyn's seminal Ideological Origins of the Revolution demonstrated, believed that the such men as Bernard were not prepared to sacrifice colonial liberties for the sake of their own naked self-interest and were held directly responsible for exacerbating political differences with Britain. The conspiracy theory according to Bailyn was the central tenet of revolutionary ideology in the 1760s and early 1770s, and was articulated by an elite steeped in the radicalism of the commonwealth tradition and republican civic humanism.

3.2 Bernard's misdemeanours were regular entries Adams's the diary of rising lawyer and future US President, John Adams compiled a long list of disputes between the assembly and the governor over, among other things the appointment of the colonial agent and the governor's "Cathartic Negative" of Councillors elected by the House, that exposed the "restless, impatient, uncountrou[la]ble, insatiable Machinations, by all Means, humane, inhumane, and diabolical, from his first arrival in this Government... to enrich himself."12) Adams's labors were echoed by the Boston shopkeeper, Harbottle Dorr whose collection of annotated newspapers catalogue the "perfidy" of Bernard and Hutchinson in a maze of cross-references to public events and speeches.13

9Letters to the Right Honorable the Earl of Hillsborough from Governor Bernard (Printed for Edes and Gill, Boston, 1769). 10Benjamin Church, "An Address to a Provincial Bashaw [Boston, 1769]" The Magazine of History 18 extra number 74 (1921, repr. Tarrytown, New York, 1921), pp.47-52, esp. stanza 11.The Tom-Cod Catcher.On the Departure of an Infamous B-r-t ([Boston, 1769]); [idem. attr. by Fiore], "Francis Bernard: Colonial Governor"], An Elegy to the Infamous Memory of Sr F-B- (Boston, 1769); Oliver M Dickerson, ed., Boston Under Military Rule, 1768-1769 as Revealed in A Journal of the Times (New York, 1970) For a discussion of the how the Sons of Liberty maximised popular participation through festivities, as well through the use propaganda and the manipulation of crowds, see Peter Shaw, American Patriots and the Rituals of Revolution (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1981), esp. pp.184-185; Dirk Hoerder, Crowd Action in Revolutionary Massachusetts (London, 1977), pp.. 11Museum aretfact no.0170, MHS. 12Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, ed. Butterfield, II, p.177. 13.Harbottle Dorr Collection of Annotated Newspapers, 4 vols, MHS 6

4. Loyalist Ideology Bernard

4.1 One anonymous historian noted that Bernard's "character...is very differently represented by his friends & his enemies". His friends admit he is "a man blunt, open, & honest, an englishman; one who despised the act of popularity" but who was "too easily provoked" by the Sons of Liberty. Bernard "was a Man of some virtuous sentiments": his "good domestick habits" of "rigid economy"; the education he provided for his children was the best that a "rather...poor man" such as he could provide in America. He was a man of "considerable erudition": a classical scholar who could speak and write Latin fluently and a celebrated patron of Harvard college.14

4.2 This much was true but after the Revolution Bernard's associates proffered a grudging respect for the predicament in which the governor was placed by opposition to British authority. Thomas Hutchinson and his fellow New Englander Judge Peter Oliver recalled ruefully how, as early as the mid-1760s, the royal governors and conservatives like themselves throughout the colonies had tried in vain to alert Britain to the colonists' inherently revolutionary tendencies - above all their advocacy of representative government and republican ideology developed, it was said, no more fully than in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Bay. In the Loyalists' eyes the "rebellion" was made possible by British neglect. Their guarded criticism of Bernard's dealings with the Whigs however suggested that they thought him at least partly to blame for some of the political "misunderstandings" which brought about the conflict that destroyed their lives.

5. Bernard and the Historiography of the Revolution

5.1 Bernard's political career has been denied the microscopic attention devoted to some of the Revolution's more famous - and notorious- sons and daughters. Political historians have presented a one dimensional portrait of Bernard that reflects a number of assumptions concerning his personal motivation and his relationship with the Whig protest movement. Bernard has been characterised as a learned, "cultured gentleman", and ambitious, if haughty, humourless, avaricious and corrupt "parvenu" who frequently let his temper and greed get the better of him.15

6. Evidence relating to Bernard's Motivation

6.2 First, it has been said that Bernard unscrupulously used his network of connections to advance his own career and that of his sons. From the moment he arrived in New Jersey, he solicited promotion to more lucrative positions. Like all royal governors, he depended on the goodwill of the assembly for his annual salary of £1,500, and in time lobbied Whitehall to place senior officials on a more permanent footing by placing them on the Crown's colonial civil list. On more than one occasion he willingly accepted what amounted to bribes from the colonial assemblies before turning against them.16

14Notices of Governor Bernard, MS Am 1700 *63M-27, Houghton Library. 15Edmund and Helen Morgan characterised Bernard as a "parvenu" in The Stamp Act Crisis, pp.19-21. John W. Tyler thought him a "vain and acquisitive placeman", in Smugglers & Patriots: The Boston merchants and the Advent of the American Revolution (Northeastern UP, Boston, 1986), p.7. 16Jordan D Fiore, "Francis Bernard, Colonial Governor", Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, Boston University, 1950, pp.454-458. 7

6.3 Second. apart from his family and books, the great love of Bernard's life was a project to develop vast tracts of land in what became the states of Maine and Vermont. For one historian, Bernard's activities as a speculator provide the clearest indication yet of the extent to which he used the powers of his office for personal gain. Many of his transactions, it has been said, were illegal, and conducted in secret.17 The only modern biography of Bernard- Fiore's Ph.D. Dissertation from 1950 -lapses into romanticism when explaining the success of the Revolution by the assertion that "the quality of the opposition to Bernard in Massachusetts has not been equalled in such a limited area at any time history" [sic]; whereas arrayed against the revolutionaries "were many uninspiring men"- officials like Bernard, Thomas Hutchinson, and Jonathan Sewall self-interested acquisitive men.18

7. Review of Evidence relating to Bernard's Motivation

7.1. Was Bernard a parvenu? I reserve judgement at present but wish to highlight some of Bernard's dominant character traits.

7.2. Governor Bernard was physically rather unexceptional, a portly man of medium height, somewhat smaller than his graceful wife Amelia, with few distinguishing features, and was prone to epilepsy. But to his family at least he was a benign patriarch. Bernard's main concern in life was the well-being of his large family. Bernard and his wife Amelia had twelve children in all of whom eleven survived infancy, six boys and four girls. The surviving testimony of the Bernard children suggest that thought of their parents as being both enlightened over protective. Bernard helped to establish his second son John in business as a merchant in Boston and secured him a sinecure in the Naval Office. (He later became governor of Barbados). Thomas, Bernard's third surviving son enjoyed a life no less fruitful as a renowned philanthropist, advocate of women's rights and biographer of his father. He obtained his M.A. in absentia from Harvard in July 1770, first in his class according to his father's status. Bernard's youngest daughter, Julia, who was born shortly before the family left New Jersey, has left a vivid account of family life in the Bay colony.

7.3. While Bernard and Amelia largely strove to isolate their children from everyday life in Boston Bernard was no cultural or social alien. His sense of British national identity - loyalty to the Crown and the Anglican church- did not preclude social acceptance, albeit he moved within a small circle of Bostonians comprising mainly Anglicans such as Charles Paxton and senior government officials. He was more intimate with Thomas Hutchinson than any one else in politics, and Hutchinson thought him an agreeable companion and a good story teller. Bernard's favourite leisure pursuits were poetry, his library and music, and there more opportunities for such in Boston.

7.4. In his own way Bernard made a contribution to colonial culture. He donated books to Harvard after the fire of 1764 and drew up architectural plans for a chapel, which still stands. His patronage of Harvard was well known though it too became a political issue. Initially, at least, Bernard supported a plan hatched by the gentry of Western Massachusetts which enraged the Harvard trustees to form two new colleges, one in Hatfield, and one in Berkshire for Indians The first Copley portrait that was hung in Harvard library in honour of Bernard's donation was

17Ruth Owen Jones, "Governor Francis Bernard and his Land Acquisitions", Historical Journal of Massachusetts, XVI (No.2 Summer, 1988), pp.121-139, esp.pp.121, 126, 136-137. 18Jordan D Fiore, "Francis Bernard, Colonial Governor", Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, Boston University, 1950, esp. p.465. 8 mutilated on the night of October 5, 1768 and the heart cut out of Bernard's figure shortly after British troops had arrived in Boston. The portrait was eventually repaired and rehung in to the annoyance of the town's Whigs who held Bernard personally responsible for subjecting the inhabitants to an army of "occupation".

7.5. Why did Bernard show such concern for his family's well-being? Of course, he may well have been a model parent, but his over-protectiveness suggests that he was extremely conscious that his own social status had never been entirely secure.

7.6. What social status did Bernard's family have? The Bernards' family historian managed to trace the family ancestry back to the thirteenth century. Over the next four hundred years the family acquired property in the shires of Cambridge, Buckingham, Lincoln, Berkshire, and Oxford. The turning point in the family's rise from the landed gentry into the aristocracy came with the marriage of Sir John Bernard (b.1437) and Margaret, daughter of Henry, fourth Lord Scrope, a Yorkist supporters of Richard III's. There is no evidence to suggest that Sir John lost property in the confiscations that accompanied Richard's demise. By the early seventeenth century, the family historian has detected a change in the fortunes of that branch of the Bernards from which the colonial governor was immediately descended. The bulk of the family states did not pass directly through this line, with the result that Bernard's father had little or no inherited property to pass onto his son. Bernard's father was probably sent to the local grammar school at Reading before he was elected to St John's College, Oxford in 1677. It is indicative of the decline in status of the Bernards of Reading that when Francis Bernard's name was entered in the college register he was designated a "pleb" or yeomen. The notion of sending young Francis to Oxford may have originated with the Archdeacon of Berkshire, Peter Mews, a Fellow and President of St John's and the distinguished Dr. Edward Bernard, a Fellow of St Johns and successor to Christopher Wren as Professor of Astronomy. Francis took his Master's degree in 1685 and was elected a fellow of the college. He became University Proctor in 1690 and took the degree of Bachelor Divinity in preparation for the ministry.

7.7. Both Mews and Dr Bernard played a significant part in advancing the career of our subject's father. Francis was appointed to the living of Codford before he succeeded his Mews ten years later in 1702 as the rector of Brightwell parish. He was a forty-one years old and a bachelor, and appears to have had little thought of marriage. It was not until he was fifty that Bernard proposed to Margery Winlowe, the twenty-five year old daughter and coheiress of a local gentry family, the Winlowes of Lewknor, Oxon.; they married on August 17, 1711, and Margery gave birth some eleven months later to their only child, Francis, who was baptised on 12 July 1712.

7.8. They had little time to enjoy together their infant son, for Francis Sr died on December 14, 1715, a few days short of his fifty-fourth birthday. The young mother and child faced an uncertain future as they prepared to leave Brightwell. Margery's dilemma, however, of whether or not to return to the parental home was resolved within a few months. The new incumbent of Brightwell was Anthony Alsop, a forty-five year old bachelor and Oxford graduate, with a scholarly and witty reputation who had attracted the interest of and cultivated connections with several politicians including the Duke of Newcastle.

7.9. With Margery's death, when Bernard was still an infant, Alsop took charge of his step son's education There is no evidence of Bernard having attended grammar school or any type of school before entering Westminster in 1725 when he was thirteen years old.

7.10. Fiore argues that after graduating from Oxford Bernard was without either inherited wealth or estates and for this reason entered the professions. Bernard entered Middle Temple in 1733 and was called to the bar in 1737. For the first few years Bernard was based in Lincoln where he was appointed a notary public by the Archbishop of Canterbury in December 1738. Further advancement came with his appointment as Commissioner of Bails for [the Districts of] Lincoln, York, Nottingham, Leicester, Derby &C during 1739 and 1740. These posts were secured by Bernard family influence in Lincoln.

7.11. Bernard's marriage to Amelia Offley in 1741 was a profitable match, in more ways than he perhaps realised. The Bernards' principal source of income was the fees Francis earned as a provincial counsel and Amelia's inherited wealth was "moderate" Bernard and Amelia stood to inherit the Nether Winchenden estate from Francis' cousin Jane Beresford, but she did not die until 1772. Amelia's parents were both dead and she lived with her half brother and his wife. Two of Amelia's relations, William Wildman Barrington, the second Viscount Barrington, and Colonel Samuel Shute, Governor of Massachusetts, became Bernard's mentors, and it is they who were able to advance his career in the colonial administration through their influence in Whitehall.

7.12. Higgins and Thomas Bernard suggest that the birth of three further children between 1752 and 1756, and another in 1757, was the immediate cause of Bernard's decision to abandon the law and seek at the age of forty-six a change of career in the colonial administration. His income as a Recorder and circuit lawyer was probably insufficient to support a family of seven children so long as uncertainty prevailed in his wife's inheritance

8. Land

8.1. For Bernard, as for other members of the colonial elite, land speculation was a risky if potentially valuable venture. By 1769 Bernard had acquired, through land grants and purchase the residential property in Roxbury and other Massachusetts towns and extensive tracts of unsettled territory in Maine, the most prominent of which was the island of Mount Desert some 100 square miles. Mount Desert Island, an unsettled island comprising 100 square miles and located east of Penobscot Bay, was granted to Bernard on February 27, 1762 by the province of Massachusetts but ownership was not confirmed by the Lords of Trade until 1771. Why did Massachusetts Grant Mount Desert to Bernard? The General Court made the grant to Bernard one week after a similar grant to the Penobscot proprietors, which, as he quickly found out also lay in the area disputed whose jurisdiction was claimed by Nova Scotia! Thomas Hutchinson and Thomas Bernard both suggest that the award reflected the popularity which Bernard enjoyed in Massachusetts up to that point.

8.2. There was however a hidden agenda on the part of the General Court Petitions for establishing twelve townships east of the Penobscot River had already been submitted by some 352 speculators to the General Court in February and approved by that body, and consented to by governor in March 1762. By granting Bernard the land in an area whose title was disputed by Nova Scotia.

9. Evidence Relating to Bernard's Political Demise

9.1 First, while Bernard's apparent success in New Jersey- rather than his family's connections -can explain his promotion to the governorship of Massachusetts his alienation from that colony's leadership began shortly after he arrived. Bernard's inability to distance 10 himself from the unpopular and acquisitive lieutenant-governor Thomas Hutchinson in dispute with James Otis Sr over the office of Chief Justice made him powerful enemies. His promotion of the Hutchinson-Oliver clique's plural office holding and subsequent endorsement of the use of writs of assistance by customs officials aroused the suspicions radicals like Oxenbridge Thacher that such practices were a "serious threat" to colonial liberties.19\

9.2 Second, Bernard's demise followed a lengthy dispute with Whig merchants over the enforcement of the customs laws, with the House of Representatives over, inter alia, the implementation of the Stamp Act in 1765-176620

9.3 Third, Bernard's biggest mistake according to the consensus school of historians, was, in his published letters to portray the American revolutionaries as revolutionaries rather than as predominantly middle class libertarians. Like many senior government officials, Bernard believed that the opposition of the assembly and the town meetings to parliamentary legislation and the occasionally violent intimidation of government officials were being engineered by an industrious minority of political extremists. Indeed, it has been suggested that Bernard advanced such an interpretation as early as 1760. Patently unpopular, Bernard's views persuaded many colonists that the provincial administration was unsympathetic to the colony's interests. (By implication, in Fiore's view Bernard and Hutchinson, were the stubborn protectors of an ancien regime based on privilege, deference, the centralisation of power, and the commercial exploitation of the American colonies from which they stood to benefit) Paradoxically, the social commentaries in Bernard's voluminous correspondence were a principal source of evidence for consensus historians.21

19John J Waters and John A Schutz, "Patterns of Massachusetts Colonial Politics: The Writs of Assistance and the Rivalry between the Otis and Hutchinson Families" William and Mary Quarterly, third series, 24 (1967), pp.543-567.Bailyn, Ideological Origins, pp.109, 151. 20"Many of the indignities heaped upon the colonial officials were spared Bernard who carefully let it be known that he had written many letters to England in opposition to the passage of those Acts. At the same time Bernard explained to his English patrons that he would support and enforce the measures. Eager to inform those patrons of the difficulties of his position, he forwarded detailed and highly exaggerated accounts of occurrences in Boston, including the Stamp Act disturbances, emphasizing particularly the dangers in which he was placed, although no other contemporary source, patriot or loyalist, contains any evidence that Bernard was ever personally in danger". Jordan D Fiore, "Francis Bernard, Colonial Governor", Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, Boston University, 1950, Abstract, p.iii. Fiore is right about the question of Bernard never receiving threats to his life or property, although to be sure, he did not have a private mansion like Hutchinson who was reviled more than Bernard in 1765 because, as Bailyn and Nash have shown, of his previous political roles as an opponent of the popular party and his feared role as a judge and disloyal "native son" in benefiting from the Stamp tax. Like Bernard, Hutchinson was obliged to enforce the act, but as a native son, he was unable to convince people, as Bernard probably did, that he had nothing to do with its introduction nor stood to benefit financially; moreover his son-in-law Andrew Oliver was to be the Stamp Officer for the province. Fiore, however, misses the point: it is not simply the case that the Whigs still thought that Bernard was an asset, however unreliable they might think he might be. Bernard was engaged in ideological and political confrontation with the assembly in an effort to build up political support. The Whigs did not require to use force directly against the person of the governor for they had a majority in the House; nor would it have been sensible to have done so, given that Bernard tried to play upon the colonists' fears of latent social and civil disorder. Any riot directed against the King's representative might have fractured the protest movement and drawn away not only friends of government but also moderate Whigs. Fiore makes little mention of Bernard's relations with the friends of government. 21The Bernard papers comprise thirteen volumes of the Sparks MSS, Houghton Library, Harvard University. Robert E. Brown, Middle-Class Democracy and the Revolution in Massachusetts, 1691-1780 (Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York, 1955), pp.176-177, 182-189 221-232; Jordan D Fiore, "Francis Bernard, Colonial Governor", Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, Boston University, 1950, pp.465-468, and passim 11

9.4 Fourth, by the 1960s and 1970s, revisionist historians who emphasised the refractory and divisive nature of colonial politics made few references to Bernard's role. But their research indicated that the success of the Whigs in forcing the repeal of the Stamp Act in 1766 irrevocably weakened the basis of political support for Bernard's administration thereafter in both the lower chamber of the assembly, the House of Representatives, and the upper, the Governor's Council, as well as in town meetings throughout the province. One of the most effective means employed by the Whig protest movement to effect changes in British policy before the commencement of hostilities was the use of extra-legal crowd violence to intimidate government officials, whose duty it was to execute policy, and political detractors, including men of considerable social standing and political influence, such as Thomas Hutchinson and senior customs officials, as well as hitherto passive "friends of government". The "cumulative effect" was the growth in political power of a popular resistance movement that by the end of Bernard's administration in 1771 had succeeded in amending specific acts of Parliament though not in forcing concessions from Britain on the matter of American self-government.22\

9.5 Fifth, amidst a rage of popular indignation Bernard's reputation was destroyed in 1769 by the publication in the province newspapers of his secret correspondence with British ministers. For the Whigs the letters were irrefutable evidence that their governor had conducted a private vendetta against them. For the first time ordinary citizens could read at their leisure of how Bernard had urged the British to arrest the ringleaders of the protest movement and railed at the "constitutional imbecility of the Council". Adams, Cushing, James Otis, and the rest were never brought to trial, but Bernard's negative and pessimistic interpretation of provincial politics directly influenced government ministers during the Stamp Act crisis and beyond. JP Reid has shown that the cabinet made the decision to dispatch troops to Boston in 1768 to protect officials on the basis of reports sent by Bernard and the commissioners of Customs, and without ministers receiving a formal request for troops from the appropriate civil authority - the governor- in -Council.23

9.6 In a fit of pique born of disappointment, -perhaps also in exasperation with Britain- Bernard declared that Britain would lose its American empire unless it embarked on the most radical plan of reorganisation ever attempted by the centre. His controversial proposals for the establishment of a uniform system of government for the various colonies were at bottom intended to curtail the influence and power of the Whigs in the assemblies and towns. Bernard drafted his reform proposals throughout the 1760s, but they were not published until 1774.24

22Leslie J. Thomas, "Partisan Politics in Massachusetts During Governor Bernard's Administration, 1760- 1770", Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1960; Stephen E. Patterson, Political Parties in Revolutionary Massachusetts (University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, Wisc., 1973), pp.52-65; Pauline Maier, From Resistance to Revolution: Colonial Radicals and the Development of American Opposition to Britain, 1765-1776 (Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1973), esp. pp.51-53, 73-74, 151-157, 198-227; William Pencak, War, Politics & Revolution in Provincial Massachusetts (Northeastern University Press, Boston, 1981), pp.172-174, 185-206; Dirk Hoerder, Crowd Action in Revolutionary Massachusetts (London, 1977), pp.84-117 Francis G Walett, "The Massachusetts Council: The Transformation of a Conservative Institution", William and Mary Quarterly, third series, 6 (1949), pp.605-627. 23Letters to the Right Honorable the Earl of Hillsborough from Governor Bernard (Printed for Edes and Gill, Boston, 1769). Quotation from Bailyn Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, p. 277; see also p.112 for discussion of colonial opposition to "standing armies" and Bernard's belief that regular British troops were necessary. John Philip Reid, In a Rebellious Spirit: The Argument of Facts, The Liberty Riot and the Coming of the Revolution, (Pennsylvania State University press, University Park, Penn., 1979),pp.121-126. 24Some of Bernard's controversial proposals appeared first in Letters to the Right Honorable the Earl of Hillsborough, op. cit. See Francis Bernard, Select Letters (1774). Detailed analysis of Bernard's plans has been undertaken by Aeilt E. Sents, "Francis Bernard and Imperial Reconstruction", Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Missouri, Columbia, 1973. For a hostile contemporary review of Bernard's Select Letters see John 12

(Evidence of Bernard's "inability to appreciate the American point of view" was an incredulous proposal for the institution of a hereditary colonial nobility - an "independent class of royal appointees", according to Fiore -that took no account of the mobile social structure of colonial society.25

9.7 In short, historians have shown that the transformation of a popular protest movement into an entrenched and interprovincial resistance movement by 1774 was thus largely brought about by uncompromising and ever more confrontational responses from the British government prompted by senior officials in the thirteen provincial administrations pre-eminent among whom were Bernard and Hutchinson. The folly of successive ministries and administrations in most of the thirteen colonies, particularly those of Bernard and Hutchinson in Massachusetts, was to reduce the range of political options open to the Americans to maintain political liberties. Soon after the fighting had commenced in Massachusetts, independence, despite the conciliatory efforts of some on both sides, remained the colonists’ only option.26

10. Review of Evidence Relating to Bernard's Political Demise

10.1 Bernard's character is more complex than, for example, Fiore's portrait of a loyal, inflexible "civil servant" who let his personal motivation obscure his rational judgement27. Unfavourable comparisons of royal governors like Bernard with a generation of brilliant revolutionary leaders and scions of patrician families cannot, of course, in itself explain the collapse of British rule in Massachusetts and other colonies from 1775 onwards.

10.2 First, Bernard was more than a cog in the mechanism of government and a protagonist in Britain's plans to husband the resources of her colonies: he was indeed, as the revolutionaries maintained, an astute and calculating politician in the disputes between Massachusetts and Britain. Initially, Bernard dissociated himself from particular partisan interests. Between 1760 and 1762, his main political objective was to establish a "broad bottom" of support for his administration. Bernard placated members of both the "court" and "country" factions in their search for offices, and, with the legislature, made appointments liberally. His inexperience in the nuances of provincial affairs -rather than a desire to placate Hutchinson's was the principal reason for Bernard's entanglement with the Otis family. It has been argued, that Bernard did not fully anticipate the consequences of securing Hutchinson's allegiance.

Adams, "Novaglus", in The Works of John Adams, 10 vols, edited by Charles Francis Adams (Boston, 1850- 1856), IV, pp.111-181. Bernard's administration was debated at length by Adams and the Loyalist Daniel Leonard, see [Daniel Leonard], Massachusettensis: or A Series of Letters containing A Faithful narrative of the State of Many Important and Striking Facts, which liad the Foundation of the Present Trouble un the Province of the Massachusetts Bay... (Boston, 1775). 25Jordan D Fiore, "Governor Bernard for an American Nobility", The Boston Public Library Quarterly 4 (1952), pp.125-136. The same point is made by Bailyn, Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, pp.277-278, 284. 26 PDG Thomas, British Politics and the Stamp Act Crisis: The first Phase of the American Revolution, 1763- 1765 (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1975); Ian R Christie and Benjamin W Labaree, Empire or Independence, 1760-1776: A British-American Dialogue on the Coming of the American Revolution (Oxford, 1976); Lawrence Henry Gipson, The British Empire before the American Revolution, 14 vols, (New York, 1936-1969), X and XI. 27Jordan D Fiore, "Francis Bernard, Colonial Governor", Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, Boston University, 1950, esp. p.465, 13

10.3 Second, the study of Bernard's relations with provincial conservatives and opponents of the Whig protest movement - known collectively as the "friends of government" has assisted in providing a more accurate assessment of his role as a mediator in the disputes between Britain and the colonies. Bernard assumed his politician's role somewhat unwillingly, as much in response to circumstances as by design, when he experienced at first hand the fundamental weaknesses of imperial power during the Stamp Act Crisis of 1765-1766.28

10.4 The friends of government were the embodiment of antirevolutionary opinion in Massachusetts. First, they challenged the Whigs' interpretations of American constitutional rights - particularly the restrictions that the radicals placed on the scope of parliamentary authority in the colonies. The friends of government, like the Whigs, professed a faith in the constitutional arrangements settled by the Glorious Revolution of 1688-1689 and the Massachusetts Charter f government, 1691-1692. The friends of government also admitted that the colonists had grievances over taxation, but they could see no conspiracy afoot to undermine their liberties. While both the friends of government and the Whigs were committed to upholding the concept of a legitimate opposition to the Crown, the friends of government publicly voiced concern that resistance to acts of Parliament presaged an "internal revolution" in the colony. They believed that the Whigs were rebelling against the institutions, traditions, and transatlantic culture which were the sources of their liberties.

10.5 Moreover, he friends of government rejected outright the political strategy employed by the Whigs to defeat British policies - a strategy based on campaigning through both conventional constitutional methods and extralegal protests. The violent intimidation of several government officials and opponents of the protest movement threatened the breakdown of civil order. The preferred method of safeguarding fundamental liberties was for the colonists to endure hardship temporarily, whilst the assembly and governor negotiated with the British government for relief.29

11. The Stamp Act Crisis

11.1. Bernard shared many of the colonists' apprehensions. He was sympathetic to the merchants and influenced by the economic arguments they made against the Revenue Act. Bernard advised Halifax that a revised mercantilist policy was commercially and politically unsound when colonial merchants were experiencing spiralling costs and declining profits. His views on the proposed stamp duty were less forthright, although he approved Hutchinson's enterprising treatise and the political and economic arguments it delivered.

11.2. The proposals Hutchinson, Bernard and the friends of government developed were undermined by events in Britain leading up to the introduction of the Stamp Act in March 1765. News arrived in May of the passage of the act and of Parliament's curt dismissal of the colonies' petitions of the previous year. Thereafter, with one avenue of negotiation temporarily closed, the friends of government became more vocal in their condemnation of the stamp tax.

28Colin Nicolson, "Governor Francis Bernard, the Massachusetts Friends of Government, and the Advent of the Revolution," Proceedings, Massachusetts Historical Society CIII (1991), pp.24-114; Colin Nicolson, "The Friends of Government: Loyalism, Ideology and Politics in Revolutionary Massachusetts" 2 vols, Unpublished Ph.D dissertation, University of Edinburgh, 1988. 29The evidence to support this argument is derived from several key sources. Examination of roll calls in the assembly, together with the testaments of the Whigs, indicates that approximately forty-three representatives voted against the Whigs on major imperial and provincial issues . In twenty-five cases, the members represented "court" towns with previous political links to the provincial government. 14

They ignored Bernard's plea not to support the Whigs' proposal in the assembly for a congress of the all the colonies to co-ordinate opposition to the act. Two friends of government, Ruggles and Oliver Partridge, were elected, along with James Otis, as Massachusetts's delegates to the Stamp Act Congress. Finally, and most dramatically, the Stamp Act riots in Boston during August, two months before the Congress was due to convene in New York, undermined public support for Bernard from the friends of government and deterred government officials from implementing the Stamp Act.

11.3. Bernard misconstrued the aspirations of the Whig leaders; they were not levellers. But his anxiety grew from the fact that these men, seemingly without hesitation or difficulty, should employ violence and intimidation to defeat an act of Parliament when the legal processes of redress had yet to be exhausted. Fear for the safety of himself and his family prompted Bernard to retreat to Castle William, situated on an island in Boston harbour, shortly after the first riot on August 14. From Bernard's perspective, it was reckless of Britain to have attempted to tax the Americans against their wishes when it was evident that the provincial government was ill- equipped to compel submission. Bernard was aroused to a state of intense alarm by the painful realisation that British ministers were patently unaware of his predicament.

To introduce Parliamentary Taxations into America before the Establishment of a Power sufficient to enforce Obedience to them is...beginning at the Wrong End. The People know at present they may chuse [sic] whether they would be taxed or not; & in such a deliberation it is easy to say what their Choice will be....Surely it is not known in Whitehall how weak & impotent the Authority of the American Governors is in regard to popular Tumults.

11.4. In terms of political expediency, Bernard was hopeful, though not over-confident, that the friends of government would lead a conservative backlash against the radical-led protest movement. Bernard's immediate priority during 1764-1765 was to temporise the opposition to the Revenue Act and stamp tax. A consensus prevailed among the members in rejecting the prospect of Parliamentary taxation, although, major, possibly irreconcilable, differences existed on the interpretation of the colonists' constitutional rights. These ideological divisions Bernard chose to exploit. His designs, however, ended in failure and provide the principal explanation as to why his later years in Massachusetts were dominated by bitter feuds with the Whigs.

11.5. In short, Bernard endeavoured to blackmail the legislature by playing on latent fears both of internal disorder generated by the Boston riots and conflict with Britain if the colony refused to accept the Stamp Act. In retrospect, Bernard misjudged the disposition of the members. They could see no justification for Bernard's grim prognosis, and they berated the governor for his thinly veiled accusations of disloyalty. They rejected out of hand the suggestion of compensating the victims of the riots. Instead of becoming the issue on which the representatives could unite behind the provincial administration, compensation was made to sound ludicrous.

11.6. Bernard claimed that his plans were thwarted by the members' fears of mob intimidation, lest their support for the administration be misinterpreted as support for the Stamp Act itself. The testaments of Bernard and Hutchinson do not over-estimate the impact of the Boston riots on the thinking and actions of the friends of government. They fail, however, to acknowledge the positive reasons for the friends' refusal to support the administration. In requiring Bernard, who lacked the requisite political support, to uphold the Stamp Act, the former Grenville ministry colony had set the provincial administration a monumental task. While many friends of government shared Bernard's apprehensions, they were hostile to his efforts to divert the assembly's attention away from the immediate issue at hand, the repeal of the act. Bernard's urgency to resolve the crisis led him to ignore warnings from his confidants - probably Hutchinson and Andrew Oliver - that the colony "would not hear of a Submission."

12 Politics After the Stamp Act Crisis

12.1. Disputes between Britain and the colonies, 1766-1774, polarised further Massachusetts's internal ideological divisions, but the political basis of support for the administration and Britain never fully developed. High turnover rates in annual House membership prevented the development of a partisan infrastructure among the friends of government. Between 1715 and 1774, on average three-sevenths of the incumbent members were replaced each year. A higher rate of change prevailed for the friends of government. In the 1766 elections, which brought about a 39 per cent turnover in total membership, the friends of government were reduced by half to twenty-two members.

12.2. The nature of the relationship between the towns and their representatives constrained the possibilities for the friends of government to co-ordinate their political activities.

12.3. The friends of government, however, were unable to sustain coalitions with the moderates.

12.4. Changes in the political composition of the House paralleled those in the Council. From 1767, the balance of political power in the Council rested with the moderates. In the autumn of 1768, he Council joined Boston's municipal officials in obstructing moves to prepare quarters for British troops. Thereafter, Bernard received little positive assistance from the Council in dealing with matters of state. Board members formulated their own "policy" under the direction of a committee of up to eleven members and appointed their own London agent. Bernard generally refused to countenance their unconstitutional proceedings, from which he and the friends of government were excluded. When the House removed those councillors who had refused to join the opposition, Bernard vetoed no less than eleven nominees, leaving him with an upper chamber of just sixteen, twelve less than the conventional twenty-eight members. Bernard's proposal for the Crown to appoint a mandamus Council reflected the decline of the friends of government and in their inability to compete by the existing "rules". He suggested that most of the friends of government and the principal officers removed by the House would make ideal candidates for the new Council.

12.5. The Non-Importation controversy of 1767-1770 generated political dissent within the commercial communities of Boston and the east, but with little advantage to the provincial 16 government. Economic reasons alone can explain the behaviour of many opponents of Non- Importation, although the political dimension of their stance should not be ignored.30

13. Bernard and British Policy

13.1 The political reasons as to why Bernard might wilfully undermine the colonists' protests against obnoxious imperial policies have never been satisfactorily explained. Why was Bernard so politically inept as to advocate imperial reforms that would have stripped Massachusetts of its cherished rights and liberties entrenched in the Charter of 1691 that were at the heart of the revolutionaries struggle against Britain? Surely, we may, surmise neither Bernard nor the ministry were so stupid as to ignore this issue. Bernard's controversial recommendations for reforming the colonial governments stemmed directly from his failure to mobilise opinion among the friends of government and moderates in the Assembly and town meetings. Bernard projected their aspirations into the arena of imperial decision-making - not only to justify his claims that Massachusetts was on the point of rebellion, or that further conflict could be averted by the reorganisation of colonial government, but to demonstrate above all that to be successful British colonial policy required to be supported by a substantial body of provincial political opinion.

13.2 In Secretary of State, Wills Hills, the Earl of Hillsborough -an intimate of Bernard's patron Lord Barrington -Bernard found a keen advocate of a more hawkish colonial policy between 1768 and 1770 than the Grafton-Chatham and the North Administrations were at first want to think expedient. Recognising that after Bernard's death his own reputation was irrevocably linked with that of Bernard's Hillsborough eulogised the governor as "a gentleman very meritorious in the services of his King and country." (He did, after all "reward" Bernard with a Irish sinecure when the former governor was in financial difficulty).31

13.3 However, it would be inaccurate to suggest that Bernard and Hillsborough consistently had their own way. Bernard's detractors within the ministry and Parliament accused him of making errors of judgement that clearly irritated the colonists. One of his main critics was the Earl of Shelburne, who, while, he refused to compromise with the Americans on the matter of parliamentary supremacy, was keen to limit the damage to relations arising from Bernard's "intemperance". He was the most vociferous opponent in the cabinet of the decision to send troops to Boston in 1768. Shelburne blamed Bernard for "a want of wisdom and management" in persuading the government to adopt a "succession of impolitic measures". His main complaint was directed at Bernard's confrontational style in dealing with the General Court.

Mr Bernard,...having governed the Province of Massachusetts Bay for many years with words only, felt naturally a wish in the beginning of the present troubles to muster up his arguments and chop logic with the General Assembly, and though he has been foiled at his own weapons, he seems to this day to value himself more upon a good argument than a wise measure; but seeing at present the ill-success of this proceeding, and that the clamour was

30 During 1768-1770, the anti-Whig Boston Chronicle published the names and cargoes of 285 traders from Boston and 56 from other Massachusetts ports who imported British goods after August 1768. The low frequency with which 80 per cent of importers received goods suggests that these violations were neither intentional nor politically motivated. Most were overlooked by the merchants' committees charged with enforcing the boycott. 31The Earl of Hillsborough to Scrope Bernard, December 21, 1782, c.f. Higgins, The Bernards, II, p.171. 17

too loud for argument, he seems to have retired to his closet to vent his chagrin in womanish complaints, instead of combining men and forming bold plans of administration as the exigencies if affairs seems to require, and as his situation, invested as it is with the authority of Great Britain, might well enable him to do.32

14. Bernard, the Friends of Government and Loyalism

14.1. Thirdly, the political origins of Loyalism in Massachusetts lie in the responses of the friends of government to the Whig protest movement between 1765 and 1775. The Stamp Act riots and the Whigs' resistance to parliamentary authority had a profound impact on government officials and provincial conservatives, such as the friends of government, in the commercial and farming communities of the east coast. While the friends of government generally shared the Whigs' distaste for the Stamp Act and other British colonial policies, they feared that the protest movement would eventually precipitate a political revolution at home and military conflict with Britain. The growth of the protest movement convinced Governor Francis Bernard that the provincial administration required the active assistance of the friends of government both to ensure the implementation of Britain's policies and maintain imperial authority. Bernard's failure to mobilise the majority of friends of government and achieve a consensus of provincial political opinion favourable to Britain can, in part, be attributed to the nature of politics in pre-revolutionary Massachusetts. In short, the friends of government did not function as a court faction, although they were united by a conservative, proto-Loyalist ideology. While the friends of government in the legislature found common cause with the provincial administration on several occasions they lacked the organisation and common purpose of the Whigs necessary to sustain anti-Whig coalitions.

14.2. Similarly, the friends of government in the provincial town meetings were minority factions bereft of popular support. The political orthodoxy demanded by the radicals in the end fulfilled its dual purpose of mobilising popular opinion on behalf of the protest movement and discouraging active support for the friends of government. Less than 30 per cent of Massachusetts's small number of Loyalists were friends of government, for by 1776, when the British retreated to Nova Scotia, Loyalist resistance to the revolutionary movement had all but ceased to exist in the province outside of Boston.

14.3 By 1769, the friends of government in the legislature had ceased to exist as a potent political force. There were no dissenting voices when the new House debated the contents of Bernard's letters recently exposed by the Whigs. A series of resolves condemned the governor for having "acted against the spirit of a free constitution", and on June 27 a petitioner called on the King to dismiss him forthwith. The following day, Bernard informed the assembly that he was returning home on leave to Britain, where he would assume a newly awarded baronetcy. Bernard did not return to America, though he remained as governor until 1771.

32Higgins, The Bernards, II, p.172, c.f. Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice, Life of William, Earl of Shelburne, afterwards First Marquis of Lansdowne, with extracts from his Papers and Correspondence.