Rhode Island.—Of Rhode Island in the present period, Arnold’s History is the foremost modern authority.[351] Mr. William E. Foster has recently prepared, as no. 9 of the Rhode Island Historical Tracts (1884), a careful and well-annotated study of the political history of the eighteenth century, in a Memoir of Stephen Hopkins.
New Hampshire.—Dr. Belknap, as the principal historian of New Hampshire, has been characterized in another place.[352] The bibliography of his history may find record here. The first volume, The History of New Hampshire, vol. i., comprehending ... one complete century from the discovery of the Pascataqua, was read through the press in Philadelphia (1784) by Ebenezer Hazard.[353] This volume was reprinted at Boston in 1792, where meanwhile vol. ii. (1715-1790) had appeared in 1781, and vol. iii., embracing a geographical description, was issued in 1792. The imprints of these volumes vary somewhat.[354] There was printed at Dover, N. H., in 1812 (some copies have “Boston, 1813”) a second edition in three volumes, “with large additions and improvements published from the author’s last manuscript;” but this assertion is not borne out by the book itself.[355] A copy of his original edition having such amendments by Belknap had been used in 1810, at Dover, in printing an edition which was never completed, as the copy and what had been done in type were burned. Before parting with this corrected copy, the representatives of Dr. Belknap had transferred his memoranda to another copy, and this last copy is the one referred to in the edition which was printed by John Farmer at Dover in 1831, called The History of New Hampshire by Jeremy Belknap, from a copy of the original edition having the author’s last corrections, to which are added notes containing various corrections and illustrations. By John Farmer.[356] This is called vol. i., and contains the historical narrative, but does not include the geographical portion (vol. iii. of the original ed.), which Farmer never added to the publication.[357] Belknap says that he had been educated under the influence of Thomas Prince, and that he had used Prince’s library before it had been despoiled during the Revolution. Of Hutchinson—and Belknap was in early manhood before Hutchinson left New England—he says that while that historian writes many things regarding New Hampshire which Neal and Douglass have omitted, he himself omits others, which he did not think it proper to relate. He refers to Mr. Fitch, of Portsmouth, as having begun to collect notes on New Hampshire history as early as 1728, and says that he had found in Fitch’s papers some things not elsewhere obtainable. He also animadverts on errors into which Chalmers had fallen in his Political Annals of the American Colonies.
A. The Documentary History of New England.—After the lapsing of the New England Confederacy consequent upon the charter of William and Mary, the governments which made up that group of colonies had no collective archives. It is only as we search the archives of the English Public Record Office, and those of Paris and Canada, including Nova Scotia, that we find those governments treated collectively. The Reports of the English Historical Manuscripts Commission have of late years not only thrown additional light on our colonial history, as papers touching it preserved in the muniment rooms of leading families have been calendared, but the commission’s labors have also been the incentive by which the public depositary of records has been enriched by the transfer of many papers, which the commission has examined. Nine of their voluminous reports (up to 1885) have been printed, and by their indexes clues have been provided to the documents about New England history. The Shelburne Papers, belonging to the Marquis of Lansdowne, which make a large part of the Fifth Report, while of most interest in connection with the American Revolution, reveal not a little concerning the colonial history of the earlier part of the seventeenth century. The volumes enumerated in this Report, which are marked xlv. (1705-1724) and xlvi. (1686-1766), are of particular interest, referring entirely to the American colonies. We find here various papers of the Board of Trade and Plantations (or copies of them), embracing the replies from the provincial governors to their inquiries. In the volume numbered lxi., there are sundry reports of the attorney and solicitor-general, to whom had been referred the appeals of Massachusetts in 1699, and of Connecticut in 1701; his report of 1705 respecting Jesuits and papists in the plantations; that of 1707 on the acts of Massachusetts fining those trading with the French; that of 1710 on the reservation of trees in Massachusetts for masts of the royal navy; that of 1716 on the claim of the governor of Massachusetts to command the militia of Rhode Island; that of 1720 on the negative of the governor reserved in the charter of Massachusetts; that of 1722 on the question of the time when the three years that a province law is open to disapproval properly begins; that of 1725 on the encroachments of the House of Representatives on the prerogative of the Crown; that of 1732 relating to the validity of acts in Rhode Island, notwithstanding the governor’s dissent,—not to name many others.
Another source of documentary help is the manuscripts of the British Museum, of which there are printed catalogues; and the enumeration of the documents in the possession of the Canadian government,—of which the quality can be judged, as they existed in 1858,—in the Catalogue of the Library of Parliament, Toronto, 1858, pp. 1541-1655.
The archives of Massachusetts are probably not surpassed in richness by those of any other of the English colonies. The solicitude which the colonial and provincial government always felt for their preservation is set forth by Dr. George H. Moore in appendix v. of his Final notes on Witchcraft (New York, 1885). In 1821, Alden Bradford, then secretary of the commonwealth, made a printed statement of “the public records and documents belonging to the commonwealth” (pp. 19), but the fullest enumeration of them was included in a Report to the Legislature of Massachusetts, made by the Commissioners ... upon the condition of the records, files, papers, and documents in the Secretary’s department, Jan., 1885 (pp. 42), drawn up by the present writer. An indication of such of them as concern the period of the present volume may be desirable.[358] The series of bound volumes, arranged in 1836-46, by the Rev. Joseph B. Felt, according to a classification which was neither judicious nor uniform, but, as Dr. Palfrey says, betrays “ingenious disorder,”[359] includes not all, but the chief part of the papers illustrative of legislation in the secretary’s office which concern us in the present chapter and make part of one hundred and thirty-one volumes. These come in sequence through vol. 136,—the omitted volumes being no. 107 (the revolution of 1689) and nos. 126 to 129 (the usurpation of the Andros period). The other volumes as a rule begin in the colonial period and come down to about the beginning of the Revolutionary War. They are enumerated with their topical characteristics in the Report already referred to (pp. 8, 9). Four volumes of ancient plans, grants, etc. (1643-1783), accompany the series.
Of the so-called French Archives—documents copied in France—mention has been elsewhere made, and a considerable portion of them cover the period now under examination.[360]
The destruction of the town and court house in 1747 carried with it the loss of many of the original records of the colony and province. The government had already undertaken a transcript of the records of the General Court, which had been completed down to 1737; and this copy, being at the house of Secretary Josiah Willard, was saved. A third copy was made from this, and it is this duplicate character which attaches to the records as we now have them. Transcripts of these records under the charter of William and Mary had by its provisions been sent to the Lords of Trade, session by session, and orders were at once given to secure these from 1737 to 1746, or a copy of them, for the province archives. For some reason this was not accomplished till 1845, when a commissioner was sent to England for that purpose; and these years (1737-1746) are thus preserved. None of these records for the provincial period have been printed.[361] The records of the upper branch or the council were also burned,[362] and were in a similar way restored from England. Of the House of Representatives, or lower branch, we have no legislative records before 1714, nor of the legislative action of either branch have we any complete record before 1714, since neither the journals of the House nor the legislative part of the records of the council were sent over to England, but only the executive part of the latter, which was apparently made up in view of such transmission, as Moore represents. The preservation of the journals of the House is due to the jealousy which that body felt of Dudley when he prorogued them in 1715. Because of their inaction on the paper-money question, the House, in a moment of indignation, and to show that they had done something, if not what the governor liked, voted to have their daily records printed. The set of these printed journals in the possession of the State is defective.[363] There is not known to be a perfect set of them in any collection, perhaps not in all the collections in the state, says Judge Chamberlain,[364] who adds: “Of their value for historical purposes I have formed a very high opinion. In many respects they are of more value than the journals of the General Court, which show results; while the journals of the House disclose the temper of the popular branch, and give the history of many abortive projects which never reached the journals of the General Court.”[365] Of a series of copies called charters, commissions, and proclamations, the second volume (1677-1774) concerns the present inquiry. There is a file of bound letters beginning in 1701, and it would seem they are copies in some, perhaps many, cases of originals in the archives as arranged by Mr. Felt.