John Leverett - Massachusetts Politics

Massachusetts Politics

Leverett became active in local politics after becoming a freeman in 1640. In 1642 Leverett and Edward Hutchinson were sent as diplomatic envoys to negotiate with the Narragansett chief Miantonomoh amid concerns that all of the local Indian tribes were conspiring to wage war on the English colonists. Miantonomoh came to Boston and convinced Governor Winthrop that the rumors they had heard were groundless. Leverett would be called on for diplomatic missions in future administrations as well.

Following his return from England, he resumed his political activities. He was elected as one of Boston's two representatives in the colony's general court in 1651, and served a brief stint as Speaker of the House. Throughout the 1650s and 1660s he served five terms on the general court.

Governor John Endecott in 1652 sent a survey party to determine the colony's northern boundary, which was specified by the charter to be 3 miles (4.8 km) north of the Merrimack River. This survey party discovered (incorrectly) that the northern limit of the Merrimack was near what is now known as Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire. An east-west boundary at this latitude was found to include a number small settlements in what is now southern Maine. Endecott sent Leverett as one of several commissioners to negotiate the inclusion of these settlements into the colonial government, which resulted in the eventual formation of York County, Massachusetts. Leverett became interested in developing more land in Maine as result of this and other official visits, and invested in a significant amount of land there, over and above the lands inherited from his father.

In 1655 he was formally appointed as the Massachusetts colony's agent in England. It is unclear, given the overlap with his governance in Acadia, when he actually went to England, but he served in this capacity until 1662. During the 1650s when Cromwell was Lord Protector the colony benefited from the relationship he had cultivated with Cromwell during the civil war. In particular, Cromwell took no steps to enforce the 1651 Navigation Act against the colony's merchants, and also overlooked complaints about the colony's repressive tactics against religious nonconformists. The latter occurred despite Leverett's personal opposition to the colony's extreme stance on religion. A common claim that Leverett was knighted by Charles II lacks a solid foundation in the documentary record.