Background
Samuel Shute was the son of Benjamin Shute of London and his wife, a daughter of the Rev. Joseph Caryl, a distinguished nonconformist minister.
military officer royal governor
Samuel Shute was the son of Benjamin Shute of London and his wife, a daughter of the Rev. Joseph Caryl, a distinguished nonconformist minister.
Samuel received his preliminary schooling from the Puritan schoolmaster Charles Morton.
On December 12, 1683 he was admitted fellow commoner at Christ's College, Cambridge, but apparently took no degree.
He was admitted to the Middle Temple, November 23, 1683.
He obtained a captaincy in the army, fought in Marlborough's campaigns, was wounded at Blenheim, and in 1712 became lieutenant-colonel of the 3rd Dragoon Guards.
He was selected for the governorship of Massachusetts Bay and New Hampshire in April 1716 and reached Boston on October 4. Although he was well received by Judge Samuel Sewall and the Rev. Cotton Mather, his administration was one of the stormiest suffered by any royal governor. He was insulted by the Assembly in their treatment of the salary question, a perennial cause of hostility between the executive and legislative powers.
He opposed the issues of paper money, acting within his instruction and also in the light of sound business principles, but was over-powered by the Assembly, which was largely composed of men of "Small fortunes & Meane Education". The Assembly attempted to encroach upon the governor's rights to adjourn the General Court and to designate its place of meeting, claiming that the right of adjourning the court did not include the right of adjourning the lower House.
They quarrelled with him over his right to negative the choice of a speaker, and as a result the colony was obliged in 1725 to accept an explanatory charter defining this right of the governor.
There had been much trouble with the Indians on the northern frontier, and a further quarrel with the Assembly occurred when they refused to provide the fortifications which Shute considered necessary.
In 1717, Shute met the Indians in a conference at Arrowsick Island, where, although he handled the negotiations without great ability, a new and useful treaty of friendship was signed, but by 1720 the relations with the more northern Indians, stirred up by French machinations, had become so serious as to necessitate war, and in connection with the military operations the Assembly made absurd and unwarranted claims to authority.
Finally, despairing of conducting the government in the face of these and other claims, Shute sailed, on January 1, 1723, for England. There he presented a memorial to the Privy Council and laid his grievances before them.
These were so obvious that the colony's agent, Jeremiah Dummer, and other friends in England wrote to the Assembly that they were doing themselves and their cause much harm by the way they had treated Shute. The only answer that body made to their agent's candor was to refuse him an allowance.
Shute remained in England, endeavoring to collect his arrears of salary. In the spring of 1727, when he was about to return to Massachusetts, his commission was vacated by the death of the king. He was not reappointed, but was consulted about the instructions for his successor, William Burnet, and was awarded a pension of £400 a year. He remained thereafter in private life until his death.
Shute never married.