(Governor Hutchinson's House on Milton Hill.)
He often afterwards was at Court, and was treated with the greatest kindness by both King and Queen. A baronetcy was offered him, which he declined because of insufficient means to support the title, his property in America having been confiscated. He was however handsomely pensioned. He does indeed write under date of September 1st, 1778, "The changes in the last four or five years of my life make the whole scene, when I look back upon it appear like a dream or other delusions. From the possession of one of the best houses in Boston, the pleasantest house and farm at Milton, of almost any in the world and one of the best estates in the Colony of Rhode Island, with an affluent income, and a prospect of being able to make a handsome provision for each of my children at my death—I have not a foot of land at my command, and personal estate of £7000 only, depending on the bounty of Government for a pension, which, though it affords a present ample provision for myself, and enables me to distribute £500 a year among my children, yet is precarious, and I cannot avoid anxiety. But I am still distinguished by a kind Providence from my suffering relations, friends, and countrymen in America as well as from many of them in England, and have great reason to be thankful that so much money is yet continued to me."[146]
(Inland View from Governor Hutchinson's House.)
The Governor's diary in England is a profoundly pathetic record of a man broken-hearted by his expatriation. His sons and daughters and their families to the number of twenty-five were all dependent upon him. "He is glad he has a home for them, when so many fellow-exiles are in want." As Hutchinson was by far the ablest and most eminent of his party, so his sufferings were especially sharp. His name was held to be a stigma. Hutchinson Street in Boston became Pearl Street. The town of Hutchinson in the heart of the Commonwealth, cast off its title as that "of one who had acted the part of a traitor and parricide," substituting for it that of Barre, the liberal champion in Parliament.
The honorable name he had made through forty years of self-denying wisely directed public service, was blotted out, for generations it was a mark for obloquy. His great possession and large estate were confiscated, and to the shame of his countrymen be it said, they did not spare even his family tomb. It was sold by the State and the bones of his ancestors, some of the greatest men of the colony, and those of his wife and children were thrown out. The old stone with the Hutchinson crest on it still remains over the tomb in Copp's Hill burial ground with the name of the new owner of the tomb rudely marked on it. Could the governor have had a premonition of what was going to happen when he wrote to his son, Feb. 22, 1775, that he wished to have a new tomb built at Milton, and the remains of his wife, deceased twenty-one years, to be tenderly removed from Copp's Hill and deposited therein, with space for himself, and bade him "leave the wall or any ornament or inscription till I return, and the sooner it is finished the better."
His son Thomas had left Milton and retired to Boston before he received his father's letter. Hostilities immediately followed, and were succeeded by the confiscation of the estates of the loyalists. Hence this cherished design of the governor was never carried out. Again on May 15th, 1779, he writes in his diary, "And though I know not how to reason upon it, I feel a fondness to lay my bones in my native soil and to carry those of my dear daughter with me." Again he writes, "The prospect of returning to America and laying my bones in the land of my forefathers for four preceding generations, and if I add the mother of W. H. it will make five, is less than it has ever been." Then at last this entry is found. "Sept. 16, 1779. Stopped at Croydon, went into the church, looked upon the grave of my dear child, inquired whether there was room for me, and was informed there was." He was indeed sinking fast, and his end was rapidly approaching. A few months later, June 3, 1780, as he was walking down the steps of his house to his coach, going for his morning drive, he fell into the arms of his servant, and with one or two gasps he resigned his soul to God, who gave it. He was buried at Croydon on the 9th of June. It would scarcely be possible for a human life to close among circumstances of deeper gloom. Utter destruction had overtaken his family. His daughters and his son dispirited, dropped prematurely at the same time with him into the grave. His son "Billy" died on Feb. 20. A child of Elisha's died on June 25th, and his daughter Sarah died on the 28th. In daily contact with him was a company of Loyalist exiles, once men of position and wealth, now discredited, disheartened, and in danger of starvation. The country he loved and had suffered so much for, had nothing for him but contumely. To a man like Hutchinson public calamity would cause a deeper pang than private sorrow. No more threatening hour for England has probably ever struck than that in which the soul of this great and good man passed away. It had become apparent that America was lost, a separation that might be fatal to the empire, and which her hereditary enemies were hastening to make the most of. To America herself the rending seemed to many certain to be fatal.
While the members were thus being torn away, destruction seemed to impend at the heart. At the moment of his death, London was at the mercy of the mob, in the Gordon riots. The city was on fire in many places, a drunken multitude murdered, right and left, laying hands even upon the noblest of the land. Lord Mansfield, Chief Justice of England, because he had recommended to the mercy of a jury, a priest arrested for celebrating mass, saved his life with difficulty, his home with all his possessions going up in flames. What a remarkable coincidence this was with what happened to the governor when he was Chief Justice of Massachusetts. The exile's funeral passed on its way through smoke, and uproar, that might easily have been regarded as the final crash of the social structure. No one foresaw then what was immediately to come; that England was to make good her loss twice over, that America was to become the most powerful of nations, that the London disorders were on the surface merely, and only transient. In Hutchinson's latest consciousness, every person, every spot, every institution dear to his heart must have seemed to be overwhelmed in catastrophe. Such was the end of a life thoroughly dutiful and honorable.[147]
On the death of Cromwell, his body was buried in Henry VII chapel, and after the restoration it was disinterred and gibbeted at Tyburn, and then buried under the gallows, the head being placed on a pike over Westminster Hall, where Cromwell had Charles I condemned to death. And now nearly two and one-half centuries since this event occurred a beautiful monument of Cromwell has been erected by Parliament on the lawn a few feet from Westminster Hall where the above events took place. Will the city of Boston ever do likewise and erect a statue to Governor Hutchinson in some public place as a slight atonement for the obloquy cast upon his name, the desecration of his family tomb, and as a recognition of the great services he rendered his native state, for certainly he was one of the worthiest sons that Massachusetts has ever produced, and there should be some memorial in the place of his birth, to record his private virtues, his historical labors, his high station, his commanding influences, and his sorrows, which have an interest, which none acquainted with his life can fail to feel.