Background
Elisha Cooke Jr. was born on December 20, 1678 in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. He was the grandson of Governor John Leverett and the son of Elisha Cooke.
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The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, exploration and rapidly growing technology and expanding record-keeping made possible by advances in the printing press. In its determination to preserve the century of revolution, Gale initiated a revolution of its own: digitization of epic proportions to preserve these invaluable works in the largest archive of its kind. Now for the first time these high-quality digital copies of original 18th century manuscripts are available in print, making them highly accessible to libraries, undergraduate students, and independent scholars. Delve into what it was like to live during the eighteenth century by reading the first-hand accounts of everyday people, including city dwellers and farmers, businessmen and bankers, artisans and merchants, artists and their patrons, politicians and their constituents. Original texts make the American, French, and Industrial revolutions vividly contemporary. ++++ The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification: ++++ Library of Congress W026287 Errata slip mounted on p. 2 of cover. Last leaf pasted to paper cover. Boston : s.n, 1720?. 2,20,2p. ; 8°
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physician politician statesman
Elisha Cooke Jr. was born on December 20, 1678 in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. He was the grandson of Governor John Leverett and the son of Elisha Cooke.
Cooke attended Boston Latin School. Later he entered Harvard University from which he was graduated in 1697.
Like his father, Cooke became a physician. His political service began in 1698 when he was appointed clerk of the superior court. He inherited his father’s controversy with the Dudley family and this flamed out anew in 1714 when the “private bank” was attacked by Paul Dudley, in a pamphlet Objections to the Bank of Credit lately Projected at Boston. Cooke as one of the directors of the proposed bank signed the Vindication from the Aspersions of Paul Dudley.
Elected representative from Boston by the land-bank party, Cooke began a service of eighteen years. He was chosen to the Council five years (1717, 1724 - 1726, 1728). In 1716 he began his controversy with Gov. Shute, whose first official act approved the issue of £100, 000 in bills of credit. After it reached the Governor’s ears that Cooke in conversation had called him a blockhead and intimated that the Governor was a tool of Dudley, he removed Cooke “from his Clark’s place” and negatived him as councillor in 1718.
Meantime a violent quarrel had broken out between Cooke and John Bridger, Surveyor-General of the Woods, concerning the right to cut timber in Maine. Cooke maintained that no royal reservation of timber had been made when Maine was purchased from Gorges and that the acts of Parliament regarding naval stores did not bind Massachusetts under the province charter. The House, after sustaining this advanced position, chose him speaker (1720). Governor Shute declared, “He has treated me ill and I do negative him. ” When the House refused to elect another speaker, the Governor dissolved the assembly.
Before the new House convened in July 1720, Cooke published a pamphlet (A Just and Seasonable Vindication) in which he insisted that the House had an “indubitable, fudamental Right to Chuse their Speaker” and denied the governor’s right of veto. Upon the departure of Governor Shute and the presentation of his grievances before the Privy Council, Cooke was sent to England in 1723 to controvert the charges. This mission was fruitless and the Explanatory Charter of 1726 definitely gave the governor the right to disapprove the choice of the speaker.
Cooke was again chosen to the Council and when Governor Burnet arrived, directed the opposition to a fixed salary. In 1731 Governor Belcher appointed Cooke to the court of common pleas of Suffolk County. He remained a member of the House of Representatives but his popularity, which had kept the people “steady in the applause of his measures” began to decline because he seemed to favor a fixed salary for Governor Belcher. This inconsistency is difficult to explain, since Belcher’s confidential letters repeatedly refer to Cooke as his “inveterate enemy” and since the Governor in 1733 dismissed him from his judicial post.
In his opposition to royal prerogative, Cooke was not an entirely impartial and disinterested champion of liberty, for he was involved in speculative ventures in Maine timber lands; but Belcher asserted that he had "a fixt enmity to all Kingly Governments. ” His death in 1737 and the departure of Governnor Belcher mark the end of a political period in Massachusetts Bay. Cooke and his father inherited independent traditions of the old Massachusetts colony and transmitted them to the era of Adams and Otis.
( The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, exploration...)
He was a long-time leader of the puritan or anti-prerogative faction in Massachusetts.
The younger Cooke was truly a leader, and the "masterly hand from School Street" directed the political events of his generation.
His marriage to Jane Middlecott, great-granddaughter of Gov. Edward Winslow, occurred in 1703.