A “SCRUB-POETICAL” ANSWER TO A GOVERNOR
His Excellency Jonathan Belcher, governor of His Majesty’s provinces of Massachusetts and New Hampshire, must have many times realized what a very difficult and disagreeable task it is to drive an ill-matched team, especially when one of them is to all appearances possessed of the Evil One, and the pole is loose and not to be depended on. Such a team the governor had in his two provinces, and he was a very busy man.
Massachusetts kept well in the traces and gave him comparatively little trouble. He lived in Boston, and was thus able to maintain a more intimate knowledge of the people of that State and the trend of public opinion than was possible to do in respect to more distant New Hampshire, where he was relatively a stranger. Though not popular as a man or as a Crown official, his personal presence in Massachusetts as governor, with the miniature court, the sumptuous appointments, and the dignity which accompanied the King’s commission, necessarily had some effect in steadying the progress of government there.
But in New Hampshire he had many serious problems. A small province both in population and resources, it had for many years stood between Massachusetts and the savages, who were continually hovering about the frontiers, and in this almost constant warfare, and by the costly vigilance which was necessary even in times of nominal peace, the province had incurred debts which were a heavy burden on the sparse population. During the time in which New Hampshire was considered by the Crown not of sufficient size, wealth, and importance to maintain a governor of its own, and accordingly yoked with Massachusetts, the power of granting townships in New Hampshire was, of course, vested in the governor, and exercised by him under the same royal instructions as in Massachusetts. The plans and purposes of the government in locating these grants in New Hampshire are easily seen by their peculiar but systematic location. They were largely laid out in lines, each line of towns answering a specific purpose. One line followed the Merrimack river, Amherst, Bedford, and Goffstown, guarding the west bank of the main inland waterway of the two provinces. Another line, Concord, Hopkinton, Henniker, Hillsborough, Warner, and Bradford, formed a northern frontier, and connected the Merrimack with Washington and Lempster the most northerly of another line, the Monadnock townships, which, nine in number, established a perfect connection back to the Massachusetts line. Still another line, Chesterfield, Westmoreland, Walpole, and Charlestown, guarded the east bank of the Connecticut. All these established and maintained a protection for the whole of central Massachusetts against any incursions of the Indians from the north, and enclosed large tracts of very valuable land.
The burden of the taxation necessary to pay the expenses of Indian warfare and maintain the government rested heavily on the people of New Hampshire, while they were engaged in conflict with the wilderness, planting the standard of civilization step by step further north and west. Therefore, when the governor in his recurring messages constantly besought the Assembly to raise money—to supply funds for repairing Fort William and Mary, for building a new prison or repairing the old one, for the expenses of carrying on the boundary line controversy with Massachusetts—he did not always meet with a cordial reception or a courteous reply. Money for current expenses and paying old obligations as fast as possible the Assembly was willing to provide, but little was to be had for other purposes which did not appear to its members absolutely and urgently necessary.
A strong opposition to the administration sprang up in New Hampshire, and manifested itself in an intrigue to procure the governor’s recall. The opposition was headed by Lieutenant-Governor Dunbar, a pugnacious Irishman, and Theodore Atkinson and Benning Wentworth, who had been appointed councillors through the efforts of Dunbar, but whose admission to the council board Governor Belcher prevented for two years. It was a strong combination. Dunbar was not possessed of great influence with the home government aside from that which pertained to his office, but Wentworth and Atkinson had powerful friends and connections in England, who were not slow to take advantage of Governor Belcher’s increasing unpopularity both in America and England. So successful were they, that when, in 1741, the royal decision on the boundary line was carried into effect, and New Hampshire finally freed from union with Massachusetts, Wentworth was commissioned governor of the province and Atkinson became secretary of the council, equivalent to the present office of secretary of state.
Governor Belcher was not, however, without friends in New Hampshire, and the chief of these, perhaps, was Richard Waldron, then secretary of the council. They were intimate friends, both officially and personally, and maintained a lively correspondence. Entirely different in character and disposition, the oddities of each attracted and amused the other. The governor’s peppery temper gave Waldron many a chance for a jest or a clever and good-natured retort. But his friends were too few, and the opposition too strong, and the settlement of the long-disputed boundary line gave the home government an opportunity too attractive to be lost for reestablishing the governments of the two provinces on a basis of complete separation, intended to result in a lasting peace, and the relief of the Board of Trade and Plantations from continual complaints and the burden of discussion and decision of what, to them, were but petty provincial squabbles.
This was, in brief, the general atmosphere of the provinces when Governor Belcher went to New Hampshire to meet the Assembly in the winter of 1733–4, and there delivered his regular speech and scolded on his regular subjects. That he was not considered seriously by all the inhabitants was not due to any lack of earnestness on his part. The author of the poetical reply has not yet been ascertained. Suspicion, however, points to Richard Waldron. The handwriting resembles his, but cannot be certainly identified.
During the first century of the life of the province no family was more prominent or carried a larger influence in the public affairs of New Hampshire than the Waldrons. Whatever may be said of peculiar characteristics which were displayed by some members of the family, the early Waldrons were, as a rule, strong, hard-headed pioneers, the type of men most needed in subduing a hostile wilderness. Later generations became wealthy, and wealth brought to them education and refinement, as brains brought distinction, both civil and military.
Secretary Richard Waldron, whom we assume to be the author of the reply to Governor Belcher’s message, was the son of Richard, and grandson of Major Richard, who was killed by the Indians at Dover in 1689, and was born Feb. 21, 1693–4. He was graduated from Harvard in 1712, and soon removed from Dover to Portsmouth. He was a member of the Governor’s council, Secretary of the province, and Judge of Probate. It is to the burning of his house in 1736 that we may charge a considerable loss of the early New Hampshire archives and records, and the breaks in the records which were thus created are serious obstacles to the historian of the present day.