Thomas Hutchinson (governor) - Governor of Massachusetts

Governor of Massachusetts

Because of the controversy over the Stamp Act, the radical faction came to control both the assembly and the governor's council in 1766, and Hutchinson was denied a seat on the governor's council. Amid increased furore after the passage of the 1767 Townshend Acts, Governor Bernard requested and received military troops to protect crown officials. Letters written by Bernard describing conditions in the province were acquired by the radical opposition and published, leading to his recall. Bernard left for England on 1 August 1769, leaving Hutchinson as acting governor. Hutchinson was unsuccessful in his attempts to distance himself from the unpopular Bernard administration, and he continued to be attacked in the assembly and the local press. Despite this, he continued to lobby for a formal appointment as governor. He categorically refused to again serve as lieutenant governor under another governor, preferring instead a posting elsewhere, or to resign the lieutenant governorship.

Hutchinson was still acting governor when protests over the Townshend taxes erupted into the Boston Massacre on 5 March 1770, when British soldiers fired into a crowd, killing five people. Hutchinson went to the scene in the aftermath of the shooting, and promised that justice would be applied fairly. He had all of the British soldiers involved in the incident arrested the next day, but ongoing unrest in the city compelled him to request the withdrawal of British troops from the city to Castle William. The soldiers were eventually tried, and two were convicted of manslaughter, although their sentences were reduced. The episode shook Hutchinson's confidence in his ability to manage affairs in the province, and he penned a resignation letter.

Governor Bernard had, in the mean time, taken up Hutchinson's cause in London. In March 1771 Hutchinson's commission as governor arrived in Boston, having been approved by the king while his resignation letter was going the other way. (Colonial secretary Lord Hillsborough rejected his resignation.) The instructions sent with the commission were fairly strict, and left Hutchinson relatively little room to manoeuvre politically. Things that particularly galled Samuel Adams included an instruction restricting the meetings of the governor's council, and another limiting the appointment of colonial agents to individuals having the governor's approval.

One of Hutchinson's instructions was to relocate the provincial assembly from Boston to Cambridge, where it would be less under the influence of radical Boston politics. This modest demand, accomplished by executive order, resulted in howls of complaint of gubernatorial arbitrariness in the assembly, and an exchange of arguments, rebuttals, and counterarguments between Hutchinson and the assembly that ran for thousands of pages and lasted until 1772. The nature of the affair furthered the radical cause, whose proponents painted Hutchinson's action as a bold and devious attempt to further the executive prerogative. The radicals were further outraged when Hutchinson announced in 1772 that his salary, which had previously been subject to appropriation by the assembly, would be paid by the crown instead. This was seen by the radicals as a further usurpation of power that rightfully belonged in the province. Written debates with the assembly extended to the role of Parliament in governing the policies, and further deepened the divide between it and Hutchinson. They also raised flags elsewhere in the colonies and in England, where observers noted that Hutchinson's arguments had effectively driven moderates in the province to join with the political hardliners.