Jonathan Belcher

Jonathan Belcher was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on 8 January 1681/82.[1][2][3] The fifth of seven children, his father Andrew was a merchant who was also one of the first slave traders in colonial New England, and his mother, Sarah (Gilbert) Belcher, was the daughter of a politically well connected Connecticut merchant and Indian trader. His mother died when he was seven, and his father sent him to live with relatives in the country while he expanded his trading business.[2]

Andrew Belcher was highly successful in trade, although some of it was in violation of the Navigation Acts, and some was supposedly conducted with pirates.[4] However he made his money, he became one of the wealthiest men in Massachusetts in the 1680s and 1690s. To promote the family's status, he sent his son to the Boston Latin School in 1691, and then Harvard College in 1695, where Belcher was listed second (the order of listing being a rough indication of a family's importance) behind Jeremiah Dummer. Belcher and Dummer both went on to political careers in the province, sometimes as allies, but also as opponents. Belcher's five sisters all married into politically or economically prominent families, forging important connections that would further his career.[5]

In January 1705/06 Belcher married Mary Partridge, the daughter of former New Hampshire Lieutenant Governor William Partridge, an occasional business partner of his father's.[6] The couple had three children (Andrew, Sarah, and Jonathan) before she died in 1736.[7] His brother-in-law through this marriage was the painter Nehemiah Partridge.[8]

Belcher's summer home in Milton, Massachusetts, was destroyed by fire in 1776, but portions of it may have survived in its replacement, built by his widow.

Belcher graduated from Harvard at the age of 17, and then entered into his father's business.[9] The trading empire his father built encompassed trade from the West Indies to Europe, and included shares or outright ownership of more than 15 ships. In the spring of 1704 Belcher's father sent him to London to cultivate business contacts of his own, and to secure military supply contracts.[10][11]

After forging relations based on his father's letters of introduction in London, Belcher traveled to the Netherlands to do the same with Dutch merchants, and to begin a tour of western Europe. After seeing the sights of Rotterdam and Amsterdam he traveled to Hanover, where he was received by Electress Sophia and met the future King of Great Britain, George, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg.[12] After calling on the Prussian court in Berlin, he returned to New England.[13]

During these travels he was exposed to a variety of religious practices, but found regular comfort in Christian services most similar to the Calvinist-leaning New England Congregational Church.[14] He eventually came to see himself as a defender of that faith practice, which permeated his political life.[15]

During the years of the War of the Spanish Succession (whose North American theater is also known as Queen Anne's War), Belcher's father was retained as a major supplier to the colonial militia and served as the province's commissary general. Belcher was involved in the management of the family's trading activities.[16] In 1708, he traveled again to London, where he secured a major contract with The Admiralty. Before returning to Massachusetts he once again traveled to Hanover, where he was well received at court.[17] The war effort caused economic upheavals in Massachusetts, and the Belchers, who stockpiled grain and other supplies for military use, became a focus for popular discontent when food shortages arose late in the war. The family's warehouses were the targets of mob action, and Belcher was beaten by a mob on one occasion.[18]

Belcher's merchant interests included the occasional involvement in slave trading.[19] He is known to have owned slaves as well, ordering them from his friend, Isaac Royall Sr. He presented an enslaved Indian to Electress Sophia on his second visit to Hanover in 1708.[20] Despite this, he expressed a distaste for slavery, writing in 1739, "We have but few in these parts, and I wish there were less."[21]

In addition to the mercantile trade, the Belcher family also had extensive land holdings in New England. Due to errors in early surveys of the line between Massachusetts and neighboring Connecticut, Massachusetts in the early 1700s gave lands in the central portion of the province to Connecticut as compensation for the survey errors, which were in its favor. When Connecticut auctioned off these "Equivalent Lands" in 1716, Belcher was one of the buyers. The lands he was allocated were eventually incorporated as Belchertown.[22]

Belcher also inherited property from his father that was located in what is now Wallingford and Meriden, Connecticut. He spent a significant amount of money in an unsuccessful attempt to profitably mine the property for metal ores, particularly copper.[23] In 1714 Belcher expanded his mining interests, acquiring a stake in a mine in Simsbury (now East Granby, Connecticut). In 1735 he reported having invested £15,000 in these ventures,[24] which failed in part because under British law at the time it was illegal to smelt copper in the colonies, necessitating the costly shipment of ores to England.[25] He eventually established a technically illegal smelting operation.[24] (The Simsbury site, later used by the state as a prison, is now a National Historic Landmark.)[26]

Upon the accession of King George I in 1714, Andrew Belcher sent Jonathan to London, seeking to capitalize on the existing connection to the new king.[27] During this trip Belcher engaged in recruiting for his properties in Connecticut. In addition to hiring an experienced metal refiner in England, he also recruited German miners;[28][29] the area near the Simsbury mine became known as "Hanover" as a consequence of their presence.[30] (Belcher had previously toured mines in the Harz mountains on his first visit to the Hanover.)[19]

Despite being treated with indifference by Belcher, William Shirley obtained political prominence and power, later maneuvering to obtain Belcher's removal from office in 1741.

While he was in London Belcher arranged for Lieutenant Governor Dummer to be replaced by William Tailer (whose appointment to that post in 1715 he had ironically managed to supersede by lobbying for Dummer's appointment), and recommended that Jeremiah Dummer (with whom his relations had become seriously strained) be dismissed as colonial agent.[31] He was well received in Massachusetts upon his arrival in 1731, but immediately began to purge opponents and their supporters from positions over which he had control. This immediately put all on notice that he would freely use patronage power as a political weapon.[44]

One early issue Belcher took on was that of defending the established church. As an ardent Congregationalist (which was the establishment in Massachusetts) he perceived as dangerous the attempts of adherents of the Church of England in particular to gain exemptions from church taxes. He was willing to countenance such an exemption for the relatively modest number of Quakers, but refused to support one for the more numerous and politically connected Anglicans until it was apparent in 1735 that he would be instructed to do so. His support of the Quaker exemption brought him a potent support base in that community in London.[45]

In 1735, Belcher presided over a meeting in Deerfield at which the Stockbridge Indians agreed to accept Congregationalist missionaries and authorized the erection of a mission house.[46] (The Mission House, built c. 1742 pursuant to this agreement, still stands, and is a National Historic Landmark.)

Belcher also sought to improve business conditions in Boston. While on his tours of Europe he had opportunity to witness the comparatively orderly markets in Dutch cities; he used what he learned from those experiences to significantly reform the previously chaotic markets of Boston.[47] (His positive feelings towards the Hanovers prompted him to name Boston's Hanover Street in their honor.)[48]

Richard Waldron was Belcher's kinsman and right-hand man in the administration of the New Hampshire province.

Belcher's administration of New Hampshire started out friendly but rapidly turned sour. He learned that Lieutenant Governor John Wentworth had offered his support to Samuel Shute when the governorship became available, and consequently turned on the entire Wentworth clan in retaliation. He took on as an ally and confidant Richard Waldron, a bitter opponent of the Wentworths and a relative by marriage. As John Wentworth had, during his long tenure as lieutenant governor, established a large power base with both the province's land owners and merchants, this made him many powerful enemies. Biographer Michael Batinski theorizes that it was Waldron's influence that drove Belcher to strip many Wentworths and their allies from patronage positions.[49]

The Wentworth power base was also generally unhappy that New Hampshire was tied to Massachusetts with the shared governorship, and many resented the fact that a Massachusetts man occupied the post.[50] Because of their influence, New Hampshire's assembly was hostile to Belcher, and his opponents were able to convince the Board of Trade to appoint some of their number to the provincial council over his objections.[51] Belcher made repeated unsuccessful attempts to get sympathetic assemblies, calling for elections ten times during his tenure. The intransigent legislatures refused to enact his legislative proposals.[52]

Belcher was disheartened when David Dunbar was appointed lieutenant governor of New Hampshire after John Wentworth died in December 1730. Dunbar, who was friendly with the Wentworths, was also the king's surveyor, responsible for identifying trees suitable for use as ship masts and ensuring no illegal logging was taking place on ungranted lands in all of northern New England. This work was in opposition to a significant number of Belcher's supporters, who engaged in illegal logging on those lands, behavior explicitly countenanced by the governor.[53] Belcher took all steps possible to ensure Dunbar could not exercise any significant powers, refusing to seat him on the council, and making frequent trips from Boston to Portsmouth to exercise his authority personally.[54] The two men disliked one another, and Dunbar began moving supporters in London to lobby for Belcher's replacement not long after his appointment in 1731.[53] The illegal logging activity by Belcher's allies eventually came to the attention of William Shirley, the crown advocate of the provincial admiralty court whose patron was the powerful Duke of Newcastle.[55]

Belcher was unwilling to resolve longstanding boundary disputes between New Hampshire and Massachusetts. The disputed territory included areas west of the Merrimack River from its great bend near present-day Chelmsford, Massachusetts, to present-day Concord, New Hampshire. Competing grantees from the two provinces were by the 1730s engaging in increasingly tense legal action and petty violence against each other.[56] Despite claims that he was neutral on the matter, Belcher orchestrated affairs to prefer the settlement of lands north and west of the Merrimack River by Massachusetts residents. The dispute eventually reached the highest levels of government and court in England. New Hampshire's advocates for separation from Massachusetts found an able spokesman in John Thomlinson, a London merchant with logging interests, who in 1737 convinced the Board of Trade to establish a commission on the boundary issue.[57][58] Despite Belcher's attempts to orchestrate legislative proceedings to the advantage of Massachusetts (for example, allowing the New Hampshire assembly only one day to prepare a case on the dispute while that of Massachusetts had several months), the final ruling on the boundary, issued in 1739, went significantly in New Hampshire's favor.[56][59]

Samuel Waldo, a wealthy Massachusetts businessman with considerable interests in logging, objected to the practice of illegal logging on Crown lands permitted by Belcher during his tenure as governor.

By 1736 representatives of Belcher's many political enemies began to coalesce into a unified opposition in London. William Shirley, who sought a more lucrative position, sent his wife to London to lobby on his behalf, making common cause with Samuel Waldo, a wealthy lumber baron whose supply contracts with the Royal Navy were harmed by Belcher's support of illegal logging.[60] David Dunbar resigned as lieutenant governor in 1737 and went to London, where he provided documentation of the logging practices. These forces united with Thomlinson in an effort to orchestrate the replacement of Belcher, preferably with Shirley in Massachusetts and Benning Wentworth in New Hampshire.[57][61]

Matters became more complicated in 1739 due to London politics and a currency crisis in Massachusetts. Belcher had been ordered to effect the retirement of a large amount of Massachusetts paper currency by 1741, and the legislation to accomplish this was rejected by the Board of Trade, leading to the introduction of competing banking proposals in the province. One faction dominated by landowners proposed a land bank, while merchants proposed a bank that would issue silver-backed paper.[62] The proposals polarized the Massachusetts political establishment, and Belcher was unable to take sides for fear of alienating supporters on either side. He instead sought without success to browbeat the assembly into passing a currency retirement scheme acceptable to London. In 1740 elections land bank supporters swept into office, and the bank began issuing notes.[63] Merchant interests opposed to the land bank began widespread lobbying in London for Parliamentary relief[64] (which came in 1741, when it passed legislation extending the 1720 Bubble Act, which disallowed unchartered companies, to the colonies)[65] likely abetted by John Thomlinson.[66]

While this crisis brewed in Massachusetts, the ascendant Duke of Newcastle successfully pressured Prime Minister Robert Walpole to declare war on Spain in 1739.[67] Part of the war strategy involved the raising of provincial forces to assist in operations against Spanish holdings in the West Indies. Belcher, who was expected to raise about 400 men, promised to raise 1,000, but was only able to raise about 500 in Massachusetts, and not even the 100 he had promised from New Hampshire.[68] This was due in part on the reluctance of the extra companies to travel to the Caribbean without assurances of pay and supply.[69] Belcher also, in pursuit of the financial agenda, vetoed bills to issue currency with which to fund the militia that were raised.[70]

The exact reasons for Belcher's dismissal have been a recurring subject of scholarly interest, due to the many colonial, imperial, and political factors at play.[71] Two principal themes within these analyses are Belcher's acquisition of many local enemies, and the idea that good imperial governance in London eventually required his replacement.[72] Before the issues of 1739 most of the efforts to unseat Belcher had failed: Belcher himself noted that year that "the warr I am ingag'd in is carrying on in much the same manner as for 9 years past."[73] Historian Stephen Foster further notes that someone as powerful as Newcastle was at the time generally had much weightier issues to deal with than arbitrating colonial politics. In this instance, however, imperial and colonial considerations coincided over the need for Massachusetts to provide a significant number of troops for Newcastle's proposed West Indies expedition.[74] In April 1740 Newcastle in effect offered Shirley the opportunity to prove, in the light of Belcher's political difficulties, that he could more effectively raise troops than the governor could.[75] Shirley consequently engaged in recruiting, principally outside Massachusetts (where Belcher had refused his offers of assistance, understanding what was going on), and deluged Newcastle with documentation of his successes while Belcher was preoccupied with the banking crisis.[76][77] Newcastle handed the issue off to Martin Bladen, secretary to the Board of Trade and a known Belcher opponent. The Board of Trade then apparently decided, based on the weight of the evidence, that Belcher needed to be replaced.[78] In April 1741 the Privy Council approved William Shirley's commission as governor of Massachusetts, and Benning Wentworth's commission as governor of New Hampshire was issued the following June.[79][80]