John Wentworth bought the lieutenant-governorship and made it profitable until he died. From his widow, Mark Hunking’s daughter, Benning Wentworth inherited the Mansion at Little Harbor. As a young graduate of Harvard who had brought home a Boston bride, and as the owner of a prosperous business and a fine house, he was popular enough, and his path was paved into politics. The Assembly applauded his protests against the Governor of Massachusetts who also governed New Hampshire. As a member of the council his youthful oratory soon moderated to the whisper of the boss who is learning how to do things smoothly, for there was much to be gained if London could be persuaded to appoint a distinct governor for New Hampshire who would not be responsible to Massachusetts. In 1744 the opportunity came to prove his point.
Benning Wentworth sold a cargo of lumber to an agent of the King of Spain. When it reached Cadiz the agent had resigned, and his successor refused the cargo. On the return voyage the ship foundered, and Wentworth and a handful of sailors counted themselves lucky to be rescued. He went at once to London to beg the government to enforce his claim on Spain. With similar complaints from other British merchants a bill was presented at Madrid which Spain honored but did not pay, and under economic pressure England declared war upon her. At home, meanwhile, Governor Belcher had fallen into every trap his enemies set for him, and was removed, but not before the King had been prevailed upon to separate Massachusetts and New Hampshire once and for all, re-survey their boundaries, and set up a new governor not only in Boston but in Portsmouth.
Theoretically, John Thomlinson, the agent of New Hampshire in London, brought this about, but, as a matter of fact, it was Thomlinson’s good aim and Benning Wentworth’s timely cartridges which shot Governor Belcher’s support from under him. What more natural, therefore, than that Benning Wentworth return to Portsmouth as governor of New Hampshire. He was received with cheers, and made a hearty address to his Assembly, suggesting that they make him a guaranteed annual grant of salary. The Assembly replied with fulsome cordiality and said they would grant him whatever they found themselves able to pay. It proved to be £500 a year, and to this Thomlinson presently managed to add the job of Surveyor of the Woods, which he bought from the previous surveyor for two thousand pounds and turned over to Wentworth for a consideration not mentioned. In order to accept the post the Governor had to surrender his claims for $56,000 against the Court of Spain, and the prospects were so bright in his new position that he was glad enough to do it in favor of additional income of £800, and to settle down to a smooth program of political patronage.
It happened that he was not to be allowed to forget the Court of Spain, nor to get rich without making enemies. England’s war with Spain dragged France in, and Governor Shirley of Massachusetts, full of enthusiasm for his new charge, looked on a map for the nearest French stronghold, found it to be Louisburg, on Cape Breton Island, and shouted for money, arms, and men for an expedition. Benning Wentworth, who liked Shirley and often asked his advice, heard the cry, and offered New Hampshire help. Shirley took the help, and appointed a rival merchant in Portsmouth, William Pepperrell, as general in command.
Here was a delicate situation. Shirley, having securely appointed Pepperrell, wrote: “It would have been an infinite satisfaction to me, and done great honor to the expedition if your limbs would have permitted you to take the command.” Wentworth was so charmed with the idea that he forgot his gout and volunteered! To this Shirley replied, with more truth than tact, that “any alteration of the present command would be attended with great risque, both with respect to the Assembly and the soldiers being entirely disgusted.” “You was made General,” wrote a friend to Pepperrell, “being a popular man, most likely to raise soldiers soonest. The expedition was calculated to ESTABLISH Shirley and make his creature Wentworth Governor of Cape Breton, which is to be a place of refuge for him from his creditors. Beware of snakes in the grass and mind their hissing.” About four thousand men rallied, a fleet of a hundred vessels assembled, and the voyage began, planned by a Governor, and commanded by a merchant, to storm a citadel called the “Gibraltar of America.”
Contemporaries called it a “Cambridge commencement,” and without a wild sort of undergraduate enthusiasm it must have failed. An enthusiastic preacher gave Governor Shirley a plan for investing the fortress which he had worked out himself. Another amateur gave him a model of a flying bridge to be used in scaling the walls—it only needed twelve hundred feet of rope to operate, and a thousand men might pass over it in four minutes. Shirley took his own counsel, drew his own beautifully-timed plans, and designed his own scaling ladders and pikes. The men were growing restless when George Whitefield, the eminent Newburyport counterpart of our own Billy Sunday, devised a motto “nihil desperandum Christo duce,” and the expedition sailed like fanatic crusaders out of Boston Harbor, unscathed by a severe epidemic of small-pox in the port.
Every plan Shirley made went wrong. The fortress, instead of being surprised by the fleet, woke up the morning of April 29 to see it lying off the harbor. Yet on June 17 the well-scared commander of the citadel hauled down the French flag. The Yankees took the city, hauled the Tricolor up again, and lured several valuable prizes into port in this way. Pepperrell was made a Baronet, Commodore Warren an Admiral. England forced France to make peace, and gave Louisburg back. Do you, perhaps, see now why they called it a Cambridge commencement?
Governor Wentworth, though not a participant, shared vicariously in the glory of the expedition, and kept busy at home directing the fighting in the west against French Indians who raided the frontier stockades from the New York lakes. Gradually and thoroughly he installed his relatives in lucrative positions of the provincial government. An occasional quarrel with his Assembly brought forth a protest to the King to remove him and place Pepperrell in his stead. Unruffled, he would call his council to the mansion at Little Harbor, set out an enormous punch-bowl on the council-room sideboard, and conduct the affairs of state as swiftly as a governor should who wants to move on to the card-rooms for a friendly game.
From his office above he could keep a weather eye on the ships out for the West Indies with lumber and livestock and fish and oil, and could tick off those inward-bound with molasses and coffee and rum. Toward town he could glimpse the stocks where more ships were building to tie his wilderness province, with its twenty miles of seacoast, to the outside world. If the Assembly lost its manners and had to be attended to, he stepped to the landing at the council-room door, and was royally wafted away to town in his official barge. His aims were not all selfish by any means. He gave a grant of land in the Connecticut valley on which to build Dartmouth College, he drew from the Assembly a grant of 300 pounds to restore a part of the burned library of Harvard. If his wife and his son had been spared to him, his life would have been very happy. But they were not spared, and thus innocently they contribute to the story of the house its most entertaining episode.
The kindly poet in the Craigie House told it in the Tales of a Wayside Inn. Shorn of its poetic embellishments, it is this: The Governor grew lonely in the great house. He had lost his wife, his boy, his figure. A maid of Portsmouth caught his eye, but she loved a sailor, and would have none of the Governor and his city ways. Accordingly, the sailor was caught by a press-gang and shipped to sea. Benning Wentworth grew lonelier, until one day he summoned to his house a number of guests, among them the Reverend Arthur Brown. After a good dinner he fixed a firm eye upon the dominie; and said: “You are here, sir, to marry me.” The company was astounded, and asked for the bride, whereupon the Governor turned and introduced as his blushing betrothed a maid-of-all-work in the house, Martha Hilton. And so, as so often happens, they were married.