Background
Thomas Newton was born on June 10, 1660 in England.
Thomas Newton was born on June 10, 1660 in England.
Newton was educated in England.
Newton arrived in Boston during the régime of Edmund Andros, was sworn as an attorney June 7, 1688, and found early and important employment of an official character.
In 1691 he was in New York as attorney for the Crown in the trial of Jacob Leisler, Milborne, and others for high treason. In 1692 he was secretary of New Hampshire; and he was still a member of the council of that province in 1698. In 1702 he was appointed deputy judge of the court of Admiralty for Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire. In 1707 he became comptroller of the customs in Massachusetts, and in 1720, attorney-general.
Meanwhile his private practice of the law flourished.
Conditions of life in Boston were becoming less simple and judges and attorneys began to have more frequent recourse to the principles and precedents of the English common law than theretofore.
Newton quickly became a leading member of the bar in Massachusetts, and is given credit for having "a greater influence in molding the early jurisprudence" of the province, "than any of his contemporaries".
In 1701-02 he appeared as counsel for a slave seeking to establish his freedom under an act of manumission granted by his master.
When in May 1692 a special commission of oyer and terminer was appointed for the trial of the supposed witches at Salem, of the ten commissioners only Newton was a trained lawyer.
It is clear, from a letter written by Newton from Salem a few days after taking up his work there, that he was as completely obsessed by the prevailing delusion as his fellows who were not trained in the law. Spectre evidence was admitted, confessions were extorted, and menaces used against those who denied their guilt while he was attorney for the Crown as well as later. In fact, it was only after Newton had been superseded that the Salem juries began to acquit. His connection with the "judicial murder" of Leisler, Milborne, and others in New York has been noted. In 1705, when some twenty men were placed on trial in Boston for alleged piracy, he was the principal attorney for the Crown. The evidence admitted and the procedure used in this trial were indefensible even according to the common-law precedents then prevalent. His conduct of these trials seems to have been "not only greatly to his discredit but morally criminal".
As a citizen of Boston, he bore his fair share of the duties of government and frequently placed his legal talents at the disposal of the town.
Newton was a communicant of King's Chapel, the first Episcopal church in Massachusetts, and a leading member in its early and difficult days, serving as vestryman and churchwarden on numerous occasions.
Newton became a member of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company in 1702.
Newton married an English woman, Christian Phillips, and by her had four children, Hibbert, Elizabeth, Christian, and Hannah. His son Hibbert was appointed collector of customs in Nova Scotia in 1711, and had a worthy if not distinguished career in that province and in Boston.