The first opportunity for putting into practice the new policy of consolidated administration and royal control was offered by New Hampshire when Massachusetts canceled the commissions of her officials there, in accordance with the King's orders, in February, 1680. Unfortunately for the colonists, and for any possible chance of success for the new order, the question was complicated by the entirely extraneous one of Mason's title to the land.[[991]] Technically legal as that may have been, and not wholly without its points even on the ground of abstract justice, it was not likely that squatters, who had enjoyed all the rights of possession for two generations, and who had put their labor into their property, would be willing to yield, even on nominal terms, unless forced to do so. Juries would certainly have to be packed if decisions so inimical to the pocket-books of the colonists were to be obtained in courts upon the spot; and nothing but ill-feeling and a travesty of justice could be anticipated, whichever way the verdicts went; and the King had no intention of spending his hard-won income to establish Mason's claims by force.
Indeed, the royal policy at first was wholly conciliatory. The government provided consisted of a President and council, appointed by the King, and a popularly elected assembly, which latter was to make the laws and levy the taxes, legislation being subject to veto by the president and council in the colony, and by the King in Council in England.[[992]] John Cutt, the first President, and Martyn, Vaughan, Daniel, Gilman, and Waldron, of the Council, were all prominent men in the colony; some of them had been officials under Massachusetts. In fact, under this first royal government in New England, there was but little change; and the code of laws enacted by the Assembly was virtually a reënactment of the Massachusetts code, including some of the characteristic Puritanical criminal legislation already objected to by the English judges.[[993]] The laws which were passed confirming the land-titles of towns and individuals, and providing that, in controversies over lands, the juries should be “chosen by the freemen of each town,” were, of course, aimed at the Mason menace, while the method of selecting juries was inconsistent with English law in the matter.
Having foreseen trouble over the land-question, the King had required Mason to agree not to demand any compensation for his property prior to June 12, 1680, and to confirm any individual in possession of his title forever, subject to a quit-rent of not over sixpence in the pound, reserving for his own disposition only the lands not already taken up.[[994]] In December, Mason and his friend Richard Chamberlain, an English lawyer, who had been appointed Secretary to the province, arrived in New Hampshire, and, in compliance with royal orders, Mason was given a seat in the Council.[[995]] In view, both of the difficulties which had been experienced, for fifty years, with the colony's neighbor on the south, and of the fact that the King had appointed local men to all the government offices, the necessity of having at least one official who could be relied upon for information was obvious, and Chamberlain was instructed to transmit regularly reports of matters transacted in his office.[[996]]
The Council, however, not only made trouble about accepting him as Secretary, but endeavored to bind him by an oath of secrecy, which would have prevented the English government from obtaining information as to events in that part of the Empire, and have brought about the same absurd and impossible state of affairs, from an administrative standpoint, which Massachusetts was trying to perpetuate. Indeed, the attempt to govern the province by local officials broke down all along the line. Perhaps the least serious of the difficulties was that Mason was said to have “no more right to land in New Hampshire than Robin Hood,” and that he was thwarted at every turn. So far as that was concerned, he had already had but scant encouragement in England, where, although his claims had to be acknowledged as having possible legal validity, they seem to have been recognized, by a government anxious to avoid trouble, as being likely to create a great deal more of it than it cared to find on its hands. Had the local government shown any inclination to meet the imperial one half-way in its endeavor to bring about some sort of administrative connection between the two, and observance of the Navigation Acts, it is probable that otherwise it would have been left fairly free, and that the home officials would have been glad enough to rid themselves of Mason by abandoning him and his trouble-breeding claims to the local courts.[[997]] This, however, the colonists refused to do. Complaints, some of them well-founded, began to pour in to the authorities in England, not merely in regard to the treatment of Mason, but as to the loyalty of the province, the recognition of the King's authority, the character of the laws, the refusal to observe the Navigation Acts, and other matters, which indicated that the local government as organized could not cope with the situation.[[998]] The Lords of Trade, therefore, reported that it would be better to reorganize the government and appoint a governor from home, both as a military and as an administrative measure. Aside from other questions, there was evident danger in having a disloyal and disorganized province on the French frontier in America.
Amply justified as the English government might have been in its appointment of a home official to the post of governor, its choice of the individual selected was most unfortunate. It might be said, indeed, to have been inexcusable, did not the memory of our own happenings during the reconstruction of the South, for example, after the Civil War, preclude too free a use of vivid but satisfying adjectives. Edward Cranfield, however, whose commission was dated May 9, 1682,[[999]] was, perhaps, the most sordid and reckless character who ever served the Crown as a provincial governor, and might have sat as a model to any “carpet-bagger” of our post-bellum period; and his three years in New Hampshire are but mildly characterized as “an unbroken record of vulgar oppression and extortion.”[[1000]]
He had been but a short time in his new office when he began to have dazzling visions of the wealth to be made by fishing in the troubled colonial waters. He wrote to Secretary Blathwayt that, if he and his friend Guinn would further his schemes in England, they should share equally with himself in the plunder; and there seems good ground for assuming that Blathwayt[Blathwayt] consented, and that the disgraceful administration which followed lasted as long as it did by virtue of the complicity of the bribed secretary in England.[[1001]] Cranfield's astonishingly cool letter asking for a frigate, much as a highway man might undertake to supply himself with a pistol, on the ground that it would not only assist His Majesty's affairs, but would let himself and his accomplices “in to other advantages,” is one of the most delightfully frank state papers on record. He estimated that the troubles in Maine might be brought to yield £3000; that, as both parties to the Narraganset dispute had money, £3000 or £4000 would “not be felt”; that selling pardons in Boston might yield £10,000; while, besides other possibilities, the £5000 “collected for the Evangelizing of Indians” might be “inspected into and regulated”—a suggestion delicately veiled, but sufficiently obvious. While these enterprises, fortunately, proved beyond his powers, no amount was too small to attract him, and he showed an amazing adroitness in turning every incident of his administration into money for himself, however remote the possibility of doing so would have seemed to the casual observer.
Besides the disreputable deal with Blathwayt, which had probably helped to procure his appointment, Cranfield had also made one with Mason, by which the latter agreed to pay him £150 a year, mortgaging the whole province to him as security.[[1002]] It was, therefore, to the advantage of the new Governor to force the people to accede to Mason's demands. Although on his arrival, he expressed himself as friendly to the colony,[[1003]] and had little difficulty with his first Assembly, he fell out with it in its second session, and dissolved it, determined to rule without one.[[1004]] As a result of the feeling over this action, a disturbance, too insignificant to be called a revolt, was started by one Edward Gove, who was claimed to be of unsound mind. However, he was condemned to death by Cranfield, who confiscated his estate,—of which he promised one third to Blathwayt,—and shipped the offender to England, where, after a short stay in the Tower, he was released, in part owing to appeals by Randolph.[[1005]]
It is needless to follow Cranfield's disreputable course in detail. It was that of a petty but thoroughly unscrupulous tyrant, who had no thought for the rights of the people whom he governed, or for the interests of the Empire, and whose whole mind was concentrated on picking pockets.[[1006]] Although the Assembly was twice convened again, the deadlock between it and the executive was complete. Finally, after an effort to collect taxes illegally, it became evident that the people would stand no more, and Cranfield, who, somewhat unnecessarily, seems to have been in fear of his life, wrote home asking for recall on the score of his health and the difficult climate.[[1007]] Meanwhile, however, the unfortunate inhabitants of the colony had succeeded in getting their case before the Lords of Trade in England, who at once took action.[[1008]] They wrote a sharp letter to Cranfield, demanding explanations; and upon receipt of his defense, which they did not consider satisfactory, reported to the King that he had exceeded his authority, committed illegal acts, and failed to carry out his instructions.[[1009]] They also requested that the King allow an immediate appeal in the case of one Vaughan against Mason, in the matter of his land-title, and that all proceedings in similar cases be suspended until His Majesty's decision was known. Unfortunately, Vaughan lost the appeal, the King deciding in favor of Mason; but at least Cranfield was removed as governor, and his commission revoked, at the end of 1684.[[1010]] In order to get rid of the troublesome private claims of Mason, a plan seems also to have been proposed by the English government, the following year, by which he was to surrender all his rights to the Crown in exchange for an annuity and the governorship of Bermuda, as it was thought the people might more willingly recognize the claims of the Crown than those of an individual.[[1011]] Nothing, however, came of it, and, like a family curse, the Mason claims continued to plague everyone concerned, including the proprietor himself.
That at this crisis in New England affairs, when the attempt was being made to alter the relations of the colonies to the Crown, and to make sweeping administrative changes, such a man as Cranfield could be chosen to be the first representative of a royal executive, boded ill for the practical success of any plans, however statesmanlike they might be in conception. There would seem to be no room for doubt that his appointment had been due to corruption and jobbery, which were likely to be the stumbling-blocks in the way of any real improvement in imperial government under the Stuarts. The Lords of Trade, indeed, as well as Randolph, both realized and protested against the dangers of Mason's claim, legal as it might be, and of the harm to be done by such an appointee as Cranfield.[[1012]] Back-stairs intrigues and sordid schemings, however, were too strong to be overcome in the court of Charles, nor had there yet developed that powerful tradition of integrity and honor, which has been so marked a quality in the civil service of later England, although the foundations of such a tradition were being laid at this very time by the excellent work being done by a number of royal officials in other colonies.
Nor must it be forgotten that there was little or nothing to attract a man of first-rate ability, of high integrity, or of statesmanlike quality, in the post of royal governor in the seventeenth century. Owing to the remoteness of the colonies, their small populations, their lack of culture and social life, the pettiness of their problems, and the proneness of their inhabitants to quarrel with any royal official simply as such, the office of governor could mean only exile, without prestige or adequate pay, for any man to whom, from ability or position, a public career was open in England. As for the hungry schools of smaller fish who swam in their wake, eager to pick up a living in minor officialdom, it may be said that they were wont to apply all too thoroughly our later American maxim, “to the victor belong the spoils.” They were of the universal type, transcending time or party, place or race.