University of Kentucky UKnowledge United States History History 1996 Jonathan Belcher: Colonial Governor Michael C. Batinski Southern Illinois University Carbondale Click here to let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Thanks to the University of Kentucky Libraries and the University Press of Kentucky, this book is freely available to current faculty, students, and staff at the University of Kentucky. Find other University of Kentucky Books at uknowledge.uky.edu/upk. For more information, please contact UKnowledge at [email protected]. Recommended Citation Batinski, Michael C., "Jonathan Belcher: Colonial Governor" (1996). United States History. 45. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_united_states_history/45 Jonathan Belcher, Colonial Governor Jonathan Belcher, Colonial Governor Michael C. Batinski THE UNIVERSITY PRESS OF KENTUCKY Frontispiece: Jonathan Belcher, portrait engraving by John Faber. Courtesy of Special Collections at Princeton University Library. Copyright© 1996 by The University Press of Kentucky Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth, serving Bellarmine College, Berea College, Centre College of Ketucky, Eastern Kentucky University, The Filson Club, Georgetown College, Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University, Murray State University, Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, and Western Kentucky University. Editorial and Sales Offices: The University Press of Kentucky 663 South Limestone Street, Lexington, Kentucky 40508-4008 Library of Congress Catalog-in-Publication Data Batinski, Michael C., 1943- Jonathan Belcher, Colonial Governor/Michael C. Batinski. p. em. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN: 978-0-8131-5111-3 l. Belcher, Jonathan, 1682-1757. 2. Governors-Massachusetts~ Biography. 3. Governors-New Hampshire-Biography. 4. Massachusetts-History-Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775. 5. New Hampshire-History-Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775. I. Title. F67.B45B38 1996 97 4.2'02'092-dc20 [B] 95-32666 This book is printed on acid-free recycled paper meeting the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. § For Jason and Ginny and Peter with love This page intentionally left blank Contents Preface ix 1 The Puritan in a Whiggish Age 1 2 The Perils of Public Life 28 3 Interpreting the Role of Governor 54 4 The Art of Politics 90 5 The Soul of Politics 106 6 Servant to the King and People 12.5 7 Exile and Fulfillment 149 List of Abbreviations 173 Notes 174 Sources 200 Index 207 This page intentionally left blank Preface New England's Puritans expected their leaders to be modeled from the Book of Nehemiah. It was common fare on election days for the Puritan ministers to retell the story of Nehemiah and his labors to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. In 1690, for example, Cotton Mather recalled the dark days of the "Babylonish Captivity," when many Jews had been driven from their homes and forced to live in exile. 1 During that time Nehemiah won the favor of King day news came toNe­ Artaxerxes and was appointed royal cupbearer. One hemiah that the Jews who remained in the homeland were suffering griev­ ously. The wall that once protected Jerusalem had been broken down, the people were naked to their enemies, and the community was slowly dying. Nehemiah wept. He went to his master begging that he be allowed to return to his people. The king consented and made Nehemiah governor of Judea. On returning to the homeland, Nehemiah summoned the people to rebuild the wall and then gathered them to hear the reading of the laws of their fa­ thers and to rededicate themselves to the covenant. Thus, he expelled the heathen from the city, cleansed it of injustice and corruption, restored the proper observation of the Sabbath, and rejuvenated God's people. Nehemiah stood beside Jeremiah in New England's political thought. With the passing of the founding generation of Puritan settlers, ministers be­ rated the people for their sins, their backsliding ways, their neglect of the covenant. Speaking like latter-day Jeremiahs, they warned that unless the people reformed their ways they were sure to fall under God's judgment. Jonathan Mitchel spoke as a Jeremiah when he delivered the election sermon of 1667. Troubled times required good rulers, men who could stand like "Nehemiah on the Wall" protecting this covenanted people. Cotton Mather picked up that motif in his election sermon and later elaborated on the theme in his Magnalia Christi Americana. For Mather, John Winthrop became the "Nehemias Americanus." So too, Jonathan Edwards employed the Book of Nehemiah to press his cause for spiritual awakening. And during the struggle for independence from Great Britain, New England's divines fashioned the biblical leader to fit their quest for liberty.2 ix X PREFACE One son of New England, Jonathan Belcher, became the embodiment of the Nehemiah. When Benjamin Colman delivered the election sermon of 1718, he recommended the young Belcher as a Nehemiah who deserved to be elevated to the governor's Council.' Belcher, in turn, sought to make him­ self into the good ruler. As governor of Massachusetts and New Hampshire in the 1730s, he labored to protect the Puritan legacy, its institutions and its faith, from assault. The ministers responded by giving thanks for his govern­ ment and praising him from their pulpits as a true Nehemiah. The role brought him fulfillment. Later, when appointed governor of New Jersey, he faithfully pursued that ideal. He was one of the few royal officials who en­ joyed the confidence of leading evangelicals such as George Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards. They mustered their political influence to support his ad­ ministration, and they mourned his passing. Aaron Burr, Edwards's son-in­ law, delivered the governor's funeral sermon. In summing up Belcher's life, the minister praised him as God's true "servant" who had conducted himself like "that pious Governor Nehemiah."4 Nehemiah standing at the walls of Jerusalem-that image dominated the imaginations of New England's Puritans because it fit their sense of them­ selves. Like the biblical ruler, their leaders labored to protect a special people in covenant with God. Massachusetts's magistrates, like their biblical coun­ terpart, derived their authority from two sources, from a God who called them to stand watch over this "city on a hill" and from a king who cared nothing for that vision. Massachusetts had become a "wilderness zion" pro­ tected by two "hedges" or walls, the covenant with God and the king's char­ ter. It was the task of the good ruler to keep both walls intact.5 The first charter had been granted by King Charles I and brought to Massachusetts-Bay by John Winthrop in 1630. It became the legal founda­ tion for planting a Puritan government. This royal charter enabled the saints to elect their own magistrates from legislators to the governor. It secured self­ rule. Yet, ironically, the charter came from a king who despised this experi­ ment in Puritan utopia. In the days after the Puritan revolution and the restoration of the English monarchy, Massachusetts struggled valiantly, he­ roically, defiantly to preserve its charter, but in the end the colony buckled to the royal will. Succeeding generations remembered that moment in 1684 when King Charles II revoked the charter. The next year James II, a Catholic, succeeded to the throne and appointed men to govern New England who were outspoken enemies of the Puritans. Those who witnessed these dark days never tired of recounting the train of tyrannies that followed and that glorious event in 1688, when England overthrew its Catholic king and in­ stalled William and Mary. New England's Puritans rose up against their op­ pressors. They rejoiced to learn that the new government in London had PREFACE xi secured a Protestant succession to the throne, and they pledged their loyalty to the monarchy. When Cotton Mather delivered the election sermon of 1690, he de­ clared that "The People of New-England are a People of God" and the "most Loyal People" of all the king and queen's subjects.6 The next year, when Massachusetts received a new charter, he and his cohorts celebrated. The charter of 1691 became a new "hedge" or wall protecting God's covenanted people. But the political settlement did not restore the New England way to what it had been. Under the new charter, the franchise was tied to property not church membership. While the voters chose a House of Representatives, which in turn elected a Council each year, the king appointed the governor. The governor remained in office at the king's pleasure. And governors ap­ pointed in England came to America with instructions to support the Church of England as the established church. They were expected to promote English economic interests even when they collided with the colony's welfare. These latter-day Puritans thus entered a whiggish world. The Board of Trade, the Bank of England, the House of Commons stood at the center of this world, imposing their influence upon the peripheries of the empire. New vocabularies were gaining currency. While New England's caretakers still thought within the conventions of the jeremiad and perceived themselves as a people covenanted with God, they were now compelled to wrestle with constitutional issues and legal forms, with questions of currency and finance. Increasingly, as they looked to London, they became conscious of themselves as provincials on the periphery of civilization. The descendants of John Winthrop self-consciously imitated the latest styles of English gentility. They listened to their ministers deliver their jeremiads, but they were also paying attention to the latest prints from London's bookstalls. While they chose to think of themselves as Puritans, they felt embarrassment by their fathers' in­ tolerant ways toward Quakers and witches.