( The second volume of The Papers of Francis Bernard reco...)
The second volume of The Papers of Francis Bernard records the reaction of the royal governor of colonial Massachusetts to the tumultuous events surrounding the passage of the Stamp Act in 1765. Because the response to the new legislation in Boston set the pattern for the reaction of all the other colonies, these letters constitute firsthand observations on the birth of the American movement for independence. This is the second of four volumes of selected letters, to be followed upon completion by a calendar of documents covering Bernard's life and career.
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Francis Bernard was born in 1712 in Brightwell, Suffolk, England and was baptized in July 12, 1712. He was the only child of the Reverend Francis Bernard and his wife, Margery Winlowe, came of an old and well-connected English county family.
Bernard's formal education began at Westminster in 1725, and he then spent seven years at Oxford, where Christ Church granted him a master of arts in 1736. He read law at the Middle Temple and was called to the bar in 1737.
About 1737 Bernard settled at Lincoln as a provincial counsel. In 1740 he was appointed commissioner of bails for Lincoln, York, Nottingham, and in 1741 married Amelia Offley, daughter of Stephen Offley of Norton Hall, Derbyshire. The marriage ended the first phase of his career. His aristocratic tastes and a rapidly growing family made an increased income essential. His wife was a niece of the first Viscount Barrington and of Col. Shute, formerly governor of Massachusetts. Bernard soon became intimate with her cousin, the second Lord Barrington, who thenceforward was to be his political sponsor in England. Through Barrington's influence he was appointed governor of New Jersey, arriving there on June 14, 1758. His short term of office was successful and uneventful and was ended by his transfer to Massachusetts. His commission as governor of that colony was dated January 14, 1760, and he arrived in Boston the 2nd of the following August.
The nine years which Bernard spent in Boston were among the most turbulent in the history of the colony. The problems with which he had to grapple were beyond the power of English statesmen to solve and well beyond that of Bernard. On his arrival he wrote that he found the political parties so equally divided that it would be "madness for me to have put myself at the head of either. " On account of the necessity of exercising his appointing power he was at once, however, drawn into the arena, and in the steadily growing bitterness of the disputes with the mother country it was inevitable that the representative of the Crown should incur the resentment of the colonial patriots. To indicate the delicacy of Bernard's task it is only needful to point out that his years of office covered the attempted enforcement of the new Sugar Act, the issuance of the hated Writs of Assistance, the Stamp Act, and the quartering of troops in Boston. Had his lot fallen on less troublous times he might have made a good record. He was by no means devoid of ability, and more open than many governors to the colonial point of view. In the trying months of 1763 and 1764 he showed wisdom and a liberal tendency.
Bernard realized as few did that the old triangular problem of New England, Old England, and the West Indies, which had taken legislative shape a generation earlier in the Molasses Act, was in reality more of a dispute between England and the island planters than between England and the American continental merchants. He strove hard by sensible arguments sent to his superiors to procure a lowering or abolition of the duties under the Sugar Act, and he regarded the Stamp Act as most inexpedient. As representative of the home Government, however, he was forced to carry out their policies. He did not always do so judiciously and as the turmoil became greater he lost what balance of judgment he may have possessed. He misread the signs of the times and did not understand the people he governed. Innocently but disastrously, he misrepresented conditions to the Government in England, and began to flounder in his own local policies.
Bernard's ideas on colonial trade were for the most part sound and favorable to the colonists, but his political ideas were fantastically opposed to the wishes and instincts of the people. For example, his scheme for dividing New England into new governments, one of which should embrace Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and half of Connecticut, showed a doctrinaire obliviousness to colonial psychology. In 1769 a number of letters from him to officials at home were published in Boston and completed his unpopularity. The Assembly sent charges against him to England and he was removed from his post, sailing from Boston August 1, 1769, amid somewhat ungenerous exhibitions of popular rejoicing. The accusations against him of underhand dealings do not bear examination and the English Government finally rejected the Assembly's complaint as "groundless, vexatious, and scandalous. "
Bernard’s later years were spent in England and marred by disappointments. A promised pension of £1, 000 a year was not paid, though he seems to have received £500 annually, and was appointed commissioner of customs for Ireland. He never resided there and resigned the post in 1774. His closing years were spent in almost complete retirement at his place at Aylesbury, where he died June 16, 1779.
Francis Bernard is famous for his positions as the 10th governor of the Province of New Jersey from 1758 to 1760 and governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay from 1760 to 1769. During his service as the governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay Bernard's policies angered the colonists and were the impetus of the building of broad-based opposition within the province to the rule of Parliament that later culminated in the 1773 Boston Tea Party. Bernard was made a baronet, becoming Sir Francis Bernard of Nettleham, Lincolnshire, by patent dated April 5, 1769. And on July 2, 1772, he was made an honorary D. C. L. by Oxford.
( The second volume of The Papers of Francis Bernard reco...)
Francis Bernard was a member of the Middle Temple.
In 1741, Francis Bernard married Amelia Offley, daughter of Stephen Offley of Norton Hall, Derbyshire.
