WEBVTT NOTE 60. The Liberalism of Lord Bellomont in the Royal Colonies 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:08.480 Volume 1, Chapter 60, The Liberalism of Lord Belamont in the Royal Colonies 2 00:00:08.480 --> 00:00:14.920 The settlement after the Glorious Revolution had made New Hampshire a royal colony. Samuel 3 00:00:14.920 --> 00:00:21.760 Allen, claimant to the proprietorship, was named royal governor. Allen's son-in-law, 4 00:00:21.760 --> 00:00:28.560 the wealthy John Usher, served as lieutenant governor and resident executive of the colony. 5 00:00:28.560 --> 00:00:34.840 Usher struggled with the assembly throughout the 1690s. He continually asked it for tax 6 00:00:34.840 --> 00:00:41.920 money, which the assemblymen claimed the colony was too poor to afford, and tried to conscript 7 00:00:41.920 --> 00:00:48.680 troops which they failed to supply. The assembly was thus the spokesman for the liberties of 8 00:00:48.680 --> 00:00:55.420 the people against the exactions of the royal and proprietary executive. Usher's attempts 9 00:00:55.420 --> 00:01:00.700 to collect quit rents was largely futile, as no quit rents could be collected from a 10 00:01:00.700 --> 00:01:07.260 New Hampshire jury. When Usher urged the assembly to raise more taxes, it replied that 11 00:01:07.260 --> 00:01:13.700 it would do so only if Usher would join them in petitioning for a return of the province 12 00:01:13.700 --> 00:01:19.660 to Massachusetts. Finally, mass pressure from the citizens of New Hampshire persuaded Allen 13 00:01:19.660 --> 00:01:27.820 to discharge his generally hated son-in-law and to fill his post in 1697 with the Treasurer 14 00:01:27.820 --> 00:01:34.660 of New Hampshire, William Partridge. Partridge, powerful at court as a heavy supplier of mast 15 00:01:34.660 --> 00:01:40.060 and timber to the Royal Navy, now fought it out with Usher before the legislature for 16 00:01:40.060 --> 00:01:45.940 the office of Lieutenant Governor. The Council and Assembly insisted on Partridge in what 17 00:01:45.940 --> 00:01:51.540 What the rattled usher described as the Piscataqua Rebellion. 18 00:01:51.540 --> 00:01:56.140 The assembly sent its profound thanks to the king for the new appointment. 19 00:01:56.140 --> 00:02:02.380 In regard to the tyrannical usher, the assembly assured the crown that there had been no disturbances 20 00:02:02.380 --> 00:02:05.040 but what he himself had made. 21 00:02:05.040 --> 00:02:12.580 We already noted that Benjamin Fletcher became royal governor of New York in 1692 and that, 22 00:02:12.580 --> 00:02:19.260 Although the convicted Leislerians were allowed their rehabilitation, Fletcher was a staunch 23 00:02:19.260 --> 00:02:22.500 partisan of the old oligarchy. 24 00:02:22.500 --> 00:02:28.900 After the Leislerians received full royal pardon, Fletcher had to let Delanoi and others 25 00:02:28.900 --> 00:02:31.420 take their seats as assemblymen. 26 00:02:31.420 --> 00:02:37.380 He later blamed their obstructions for the allegedly inadequate defenses of the colony. 27 00:02:37.380 --> 00:02:42.420 In addition, Fletcher kept the conflicts alive by threatening to shoot anyone who in the 28 00:02:42.420 --> 00:02:49.420 May 1695 election would dare to vote for Delanoi. In the New York City elections that year, 29 00:02:49.780 --> 00:02:55.900 the despotic Fletcher sent roving bands of soldiers and sailors through the streets threatening 30 00:02:55.900 --> 00:03:02.500 to draft anyone who happened to vote incorrectly. These troops were also made freemen of the 31 00:03:02.500 --> 00:03:09.500 city arbitrarily in order to gain their votes against the popular Leslerian party. Such 32 00:03:09.500 --> 00:03:17.500 Such methods of intimidation were successful in confining public offices to the hands of the minority oligarchy. 33 00:03:17.500 --> 00:03:23.500 Economically, Fletcher feathered his own nest in those of the oligarchy in many ways. 34 00:03:23.500 --> 00:03:32.500 For one thing, in return for lavish bribes, Fletcher granted the protection of New York to pirates, who abounded in that era. 35 00:03:32.500 --> 00:03:38.500 As a result, many prominent New Yorkers accumulated fortunes from piracy. 36 00:03:38.500 --> 00:03:45.500 In addition, huge arbitrary land grants were handed out to favorites of Fletcher, thus 37 00:03:46.100 --> 00:03:52.500 sowing the seeds of trouble for over a century to come. These vast privileges to the landed 38 00:03:52.500 --> 00:03:58.560 oligarchy widened the gulf between the New York oligarchy and the rest of the people. 39 00:03:58.560 --> 00:04:05.560 In 1697 alone, Adolph Phillips received the highland patent of 205,000 acres, a large 40 00:04:35.560 --> 00:04:47.560 William Smith, ally of the oligarchy on Long Island, received a grant of no less than 50 square miles in Nassau County. 41 00:04:47.560 --> 00:04:52.560 Fletcher specialized in buying the allegiance of members of his council. 42 00:04:52.560 --> 00:05:01.560 Thus, one councillor, Captain John Evans, received an enormous tract of 800 square miles in 1694. 43 00:05:01.560 --> 00:05:14.560 and Fletcher made a grant of almost 540,000 acres in the Mohawk River Valley to a Dutch minister, the Reverend Mr. Delius and a group of other members of the oligarchy. 44 00:05:14.560 --> 00:05:27.560 In return for these services, the grantees paid Fletcher large amounts in bribes and intolerable corrupt selling away, as Fletcher's successor described it. 45 00:05:27.560 --> 00:05:33.560 Fletcher received a total of approximately 4,000 pounds sterling in bribes. 46 00:05:33.560 --> 00:05:41.560 Concerning the grants of monopoly privilege that required assembly approval, Fletcher had a more difficult time. 47 00:05:41.560 --> 00:05:48.560 This new democratic institution naturally represented the farmers, the bulk of the New York populace. 48 00:05:48.560 --> 00:05:54.560 The farmers bitterly opposed attempts by the old New York City monopolist 49 00:05:54.560 --> 00:05:58.960 to regain their old flour-bolting and packing monopoly. 50 00:05:58.960 --> 00:06:03.260 So determined was the assembly to secure free trade in flour 51 00:06:03.260 --> 00:06:08.260 that it insisted on refusing to pass any other measure whatever 52 00:06:08.260 --> 00:06:11.060 until Fletcher agreed to this bill. 53 00:06:11.060 --> 00:06:17.260 Finally, under this pressure and after the assembly had bribed Fletcher with 400 pounds, 54 00:06:17.260 --> 00:06:21.560 free trade in flour became law in 1695. 55 00:06:21.560 --> 00:06:26.560 New York City made repeated frantic attempts to regain the flour milling monopoly. 56 00:06:26.560 --> 00:06:36.560 In 1700 it adopted an ordinance placing heavy duties on all flour and biscuits imported into the city from the outlying farms. 57 00:06:36.560 --> 00:06:45.560 But again the assembly refused to pass any appropriation or tax bill until this ordinance was repealed. 58 00:06:45.560 --> 00:06:50.560 Finally, after an unsuccessful attempt to pack the assembly with city representatives, 59 00:06:50.560 --> 00:06:59.560 The New York City merchants had to reconcile themselves to the loss of their monopoly privileges in the flower industry. 60 00:06:59.560 --> 00:07:04.560 Governor Fletcher was also eager to establish the Anglican Church in New York. 61 00:07:04.560 --> 00:07:10.560 He also wanted the assembly to vote taxes for government for the duration of the life of the current king. 62 00:07:10.560 --> 00:07:15.560 The assembly, of course, adamantly refused to do either one. 63 00:07:15.560 --> 00:07:22.120 Fletcher also had no success in exerting his will over the Connecticut militia, to the 64 00:07:22.120 --> 00:07:25.360 rule of which he had a royal claim. 65 00:07:25.360 --> 00:07:32.240 Ordered in 1693 to place its forces at his disposal, Connecticut absolutely refused. 66 00:07:32.240 --> 00:07:37.240 The embittered Fletcher announced to England that the laws of England have no force in 67 00:07:37.240 --> 00:07:41.640 this colony, they set up for a free state. 68 00:07:41.640 --> 00:07:47.660 of Chastising Connecticut, the Crown, in effect, removed Fletcher's authority. 69 00:07:47.660 --> 00:07:53.800 By the mid-1690s, the three royal colonies of the North, Massachusetts, New Hampshire 70 00:07:53.800 --> 00:08:02.560 and New York, were all suffering under Tory oligarchs, Staughton, Allen and Usher, Fletcher, 71 00:08:02.560 --> 00:08:06.760 and conflicts raged between them and the Liberal Assemblies. 72 00:08:06.760 --> 00:08:11.800 In the meanwhile, the Tories were rapidly losing favor in the home country. 73 00:08:11.800 --> 00:08:16.840 The Tories were being replaced in political favor by the more liberal Whigs. 74 00:08:16.840 --> 00:08:23.480 The naming of the Whig William Popple as Secretary of the New Board of Trade signified a decline 75 00:08:23.480 --> 00:08:29.160 in the influence of the powerful Tory bureaucrat, William Blathewaite. 76 00:08:29.160 --> 00:08:36.280 By 1695, the King had decided to bring unity to his strife-torn royal colonies by appointing 77 00:08:36.280 --> 00:08:42.640 Being a common governor over all of them, the highly influential liberal, Whig, Robert 78 00:08:42.640 --> 00:08:49.880 Coote, Earl of Belmont, friend of the great liberal philosopher John Locke. News of the 79 00:08:49.880 --> 00:08:55.560 appointment of Belmont was greeted with joy by the liberal forces in these colonies, and 80 00:08:55.560 --> 00:09:02.560 with heart-rending anguish by Dudley and Staunton in Massachusetts, by Fletcher in the New York 81 00:09:02.560 --> 00:09:10.960 and by Alan and Usher in New Hampshire. William Penn, Peter Delanoi of New York and the Winthrop 82 00:09:10.960 --> 00:09:17.440 brothers Fitzjohn and Waite were also jubilant. Bellamont was known to have been bitterly 83 00:09:17.440 --> 00:09:26.000 anti-Dudley and anti-Andros and a staunch defender of the Lislarian Revolution. In fact, he had 84 00:09:26.000 --> 00:09:33.000 in the New England Colonies, The New England Colonies, The New England Colonies, The New 85 00:09:56.000 --> 00:10:03.480 in New Hampshire in July of the same year. This common appointment, incidentally, did 86 00:10:03.480 --> 00:10:10.240 not mean that the colonies of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and New York were amalgamated 87 00:10:10.240 --> 00:10:16.800 as under the dominion. Instead, each kept its separate political institutions, but simply 88 00:10:16.800 --> 00:10:23.420 had a common governor. Lord Bellamont lost no time in aligning himself with the popular 89 00:10:23.420 --> 00:10:32.100 from Massachusetts, Wade Winthrop traveled to New York with two other delegates of the 90 00:10:32.100 --> 00:10:38.620 General Court to greet the new governor. He later wrote to a friend of Bellamont's noble 91 00:10:38.620 --> 00:10:45.820 character. In his inaugural speech in the Bay Colony, Bellamont boldly attacked Charles 92 00:10:45.820 --> 00:10:58.340 Bellamont associated with such liberal leaders as Winthrop and Elisha Cook. He deplored with 93 00:10:58.340 --> 00:11:05.180 equal fervor the Puritan fanatics and the Tory oligarchs. The grateful General Court 94 00:11:05.180 --> 00:11:12.220 voted Bellamont a very large salary of £1,500, the largest sum that Massachusetts ever voted 95 00:11:12.220 --> 00:11:16.220 for a Colonial Governor before or since. 96 00:11:16.220 --> 00:11:24.220 Unfortunately, Bellamont did not have enough time to exert any real impact on Massachusetts. 97 00:11:24.220 --> 00:11:30.220 He left the colony after little more than a year, in the summer of 1700, and he met 98 00:11:30.220 --> 00:11:34.220 his untimely death the following spring. 99 00:11:34.220 --> 00:11:40.100 Bellamont's impact on New Hampshire was considerably greater, despite the short span. 100 00:11:40.100 --> 00:11:46.340 For Belemont decisively confirmed the relatively liberal William Partridge as lieutenant governor 101 00:11:46.340 --> 00:11:49.860 in place of the Tory, John Usher. 102 00:11:49.860 --> 00:11:55.500 Belemont was totally disgusted with the proprietary party and with Allen's persistent attempts 103 00:11:55.500 --> 00:12:00.260 to grant him huge bribes and to divide the province with him. 104 00:12:00.260 --> 00:12:06.980 Belemont curtly told Allen, I would not sell justice if I might have the world, and he 105 00:12:06.980 --> 00:12:13.020 And he denounced Blathwaite for being on Alan's payroll. Under Bellamont's aegis, the courts 106 00:12:13.020 --> 00:12:19.020 of New Hampshire gave short shrift to Alan's proprietary presumptions, and Partridge and 107 00:12:19.020 --> 00:12:25.220 the Assembly reconfirmed all the land titles that Alan had tried to dislodge. Alan took 108 00:12:25.220 --> 00:12:31.780 his case to the King, and the proprietary claims were to drag on for an additional half-century, 109 00:12:31.780 --> 00:12:39.000 What never again was proprietary feudalism to come close to imposing itself on the settlers 110 00:12:39.000 --> 00:12:42.020 and landowners of New Hampshire. 111 00:12:42.020 --> 00:12:49.380 Bellamont had, in effect, delivered a decisive blow to proprietary predation in New Hampshire. 112 00:12:49.380 --> 00:12:56.220 Lord Bellamont spent most of his all-too-brief tenure in New York, and there had the greatest 113 00:12:56.220 --> 00:12:57.820 impact. 114 00:12:57.820 --> 00:13:03.940 In the first place, Bellamont launched a determined and uncompromising attack on the land grants 115 00:13:03.940 --> 00:13:10.220 to the oligarchy. In the short time that proved to be available to him, he accomplished a 116 00:13:10.220 --> 00:13:15.480 remarkable amount. He publicly deplored the fact that three-quarters of the land of New 117 00:13:15.480 --> 00:13:20.700 York had been placed in the hands of less than a dozen men because of the large land 118 00:13:20.700 --> 00:13:27.400 and Land Grants, Fletcher's corruption and arbitrary subsidies were denounced, and Bellamont 119 00:13:27.400 --> 00:13:35.180 managed in 1699 after bitter struggle to drive through the council the invalidation of many 120 00:13:35.180 --> 00:13:37.260 of the Fletcher grants. 121 00:13:37.260 --> 00:13:43.940 The Mohawk grant to Delius and Company and the land gifts to Bayard, Evans and others 122 00:13:43.940 --> 00:13:46.500 were invalidated. 123 00:13:46.500 --> 00:13:51.740 The Delius grant was considered particularly unfortunate, for dispossessed Indians were 124 00:13:51.740 --> 00:13:56.140 forced to leave and began trading with the French. 125 00:13:56.140 --> 00:14:01.940 The grant, therefore, had aroused the hostility of the Albany fur traders, as well as the 126 00:14:01.940 --> 00:14:03.380 Leslarians. 127 00:14:03.380 --> 00:14:09.620 Lord Bellemont had to overcome the implacable opposition of three council members, themselves 128 00:14:09.620 --> 00:14:16.460 the recipients of huge land grants from Fletcher, Stephanus Van Cortlandt, Robert Livingston, 129 00:14:16.460 --> 00:14:22.780 and William Smith. Because of this opposition, Bellamont was unable to get many other Fletcher 130 00:14:22.780 --> 00:14:29.460 as well as previous grants annulled. He was, however, able to get the crown to impose a 131 00:14:29.460 --> 00:14:37.000 1,000-acre limit on future grants, to annul extravagant grants, and to require forfeiture 132 00:14:37.000 --> 00:14:44.180 of lands that had not been settled and improved within three years. Much of Bellamont's short 133 00:14:44.180 --> 00:14:52.180 was concerned with cracking down on piracy and on the connivance of the New York oligarchy in that organized theft. 134 00:14:52.180 --> 00:15:03.180 Such leading oligarchs and anti-leslarians as Frederick Phillips, Thomas Willett, Thomas Clark, and William Smith were all denounced for piracy. 135 00:15:03.180 --> 00:15:10.720 and six oligarch-counselors, including William Nichols, Nicholas Bayard and Captain Gabriel 136 00:15:10.720 --> 00:15:17.760 Minvier, were suspended by Bellamont for the same reason. Bellamont began more as a determined 137 00:15:17.760 --> 00:15:24.220 opponent of the oligarchy than as an ardent Lislarian, but his furious struggle with the 138 00:15:24.220 --> 00:15:32.020 oligarchy inevitably made him leader of the Lislarian party in the colony. Bellamont also 139 00:15:32.020 --> 00:15:39.340 Belemont also endeared himself to the Lisslerians in 1698 by rescuing Lissler and Milburn from 140 00:15:39.340 --> 00:15:45.940 their graves near the scaffold and rebaring their bodies with pomp and ceremony near 141 00:15:45.940 --> 00:15:48.860 a Dutch Reformed church. 142 00:15:48.860 --> 00:15:55.660 When Belemont arrived in New York, he found the assembly dominated by the oligarchy. 143 00:15:55.660 --> 00:16:00.580 Even though the assembly was a relatively democratic organ, much of the rural electorate 144 00:16:00.580 --> 00:16:05.420 represented the feudal manners rather than the tenants living on them. 145 00:16:05.420 --> 00:16:11.340 To carry through his land reform program, Bellamont needed a liberal assembly, and he 146 00:16:11.340 --> 00:16:17.480 obtained the defeat of the Jacobite party in the 1699 election. 147 00:16:17.480 --> 00:16:23.140 He did this partly by holding all voting on the same day, thus preventing the customary 148 00:16:23.140 --> 00:16:28.540 practice of a man's voting in every county in which he owned property. 149 00:16:28.540 --> 00:16:35.680 In fact, Belemont issued a proclamation for a truly free election and charged that the 150 00:16:35.680 --> 00:16:42.060 people have been heretofore interrupted in their freedom of elections. 151 00:16:42.060 --> 00:16:47.980 After Belemont removed the councillors implicated in piracy, it was this assembly that drove 152 00:16:47.980 --> 00:16:51.020 through the Belemont land reforms. 153 00:16:51.020 --> 00:16:57.300 The assembly also compensated some former Leslarians for expenses, pardoned the remaining 154 00:16:57.300 --> 00:17:13.020 The Grateful Assembly also voted the large sum of £1,500 as salary to Bellamont. It 155 00:17:13.020 --> 00:17:18.660 was the Leslarian Assembly, incidentally, along with Bellamont, that had put the severe 156 00:17:18.660 --> 00:17:26.020 and successful pressure on New York City to end its tax on rural flour. The Assembly, 157 00:17:26.020 --> 00:17:32.780 However, did belie its general anti-monopoly record by prohibiting the importing of empty 158 00:17:32.780 --> 00:17:39.700 casks into the city of New York, thus, in effect, granting a monopoly of cask-making 159 00:17:39.700 --> 00:17:42.180 to the Coopers of New York City. 160 00:17:42.180 --> 00:17:47.380 It should be noted that after the death of Leisler, the Leslerian party did not have 161 00:17:47.380 --> 00:17:53.740 to suffer any of the embarrassing contradictions of Leisler's own dictatorial and warmongering 162 00:17:53.740 --> 00:17:55.020 program. 163 00:17:55.020 --> 00:18:00.980 The movement now blossomed forth as a truly liberal one, with a major emphasis on freedom 164 00:18:00.980 --> 00:18:06.860 as over against monopoly privilege, whether in flour or in land. 165 00:18:06.860 --> 00:18:14.180 Indeed, Bellamont's goal in land reform envisioned not only invalidating all the land grants, 166 00:18:14.180 --> 00:18:19.460 but also cutting the public domain into small plots and granting them free and clear to 167 00:18:19.460 --> 00:18:25.900 to Individual Settlers, thereby anticipating the libertarian homestead program. 168 00:18:25.900 --> 00:18:31.900 Bellamont recognized that the repressive landed monopoly in New York would drive away potential 169 00:18:31.900 --> 00:18:39.240 settlers in droves to neighboring colonies, where land was free, abundant and unengrossed 170 00:18:39.240 --> 00:18:40.960 by privilege. 171 00:18:40.960 --> 00:18:46.120 The landed oligarchs of New York were so worried by Bellamont's thoroughgoing plans for land 172 00:18:46.120 --> 00:18:52.400 and Reform that they hired a lawyer, John Montague, to plead their cause in England. 173 00:18:52.400 --> 00:18:59.640 Montague continued the feudal landowners' traditional policy of confusing their arbitrary 174 00:18:59.640 --> 00:19:07.600 property claims granted by government privilege with the rights of private property itself. 175 00:19:07.600 --> 00:19:13.240 He did not point out that arbitrary land grants sharply conflicted with the genuine property 176 00:19:13.240 --> 00:19:20.260 Rights of Past and Future Settlers. In one important respect only did Bellamont betray 177 00:19:20.260 --> 00:19:26.980 the liberal cause and thereby undercut his own liberal support. This was his emphatic 178 00:19:26.980 --> 00:19:33.800 determination to enforce the Navigation Acts. This, of course, was in keeping with the new 179 00:19:33.800 --> 00:19:40.500 tightening of imperial mercantilism put through in the last analysis by the Whiggish merchants 180 00:19:40.500 --> 00:19:47.300 of England, eager to gain monopolistic privileges for themselves. Here Bellamont made common 181 00:19:47.300 --> 00:19:53.740 cause with the Tory Edward Randolph, who as Surveyor General of the Customs praised Bellamont's 182 00:19:53.740 --> 00:20:00.860 rigor in enforcement and denounced Fletcher's laxity. Using his office for plunder, Fletcher 183 00:20:00.860 --> 00:20:07.340 had not been particularly interested in enforcing regulations. This attempt to enforce the hated 184 00:20:07.340 --> 00:20:14.220 Navigation laws alienated the merchants of New York from Bellamont and split the liberal 185 00:20:14.220 --> 00:20:20.260 movement in the colony. The merchants in the assembly threatened to vote no more taxes 186 00:20:20.260 --> 00:20:26.200 and to tear down the customs house. Many actually fled the colony and moved to the east New 187 00:20:26.200 --> 00:20:32.980 Jersey port of Perth Amboy. Large-scale petitions of merchants and others asked for Bellamont's 188 00:20:32.980 --> 00:20:59.260 The Anglican minister, Rev. William Vessey, led in this hypocritical attack, and Vessey 189 00:20:59.260 --> 00:21:05.780 Vessi was to remain the leader of the High Church Party in New York for many years thereafter. 190 00:21:05.780 --> 00:21:11.620 In a counterattack, Bellamont unsuccessfully tried to have Vessi removed from the post 191 00:21:11.620 --> 00:21:17.500 on the ground of Jacobite sympathies. When the Reverend Mr. Delius, who had lost his 192 00:21:17.500 --> 00:21:24.140 huge land grant, was suspended by the assembly from his church post, the wrath of the Dutch 193 00:21:24.140 --> 00:21:30.900 Church fell on Bellamont's head. Petitions poured in, in behalf of Delius. They came 194 00:21:30.900 --> 00:21:36.940 from the elders, deacons and members of his Albany Church, as well as from many others, 195 00:21:36.940 --> 00:21:43.140 including Fletcher in England, diligently trying to blacken his successor's reputation.