Thomas Hutchinson - Literature

Colonial governor, born in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, the great-great grandson of Anne Hutchinson. As chief justice of the Massachusetts Superior Court, he upheld the legality of the Stamp Act (1765). He was governor of Massachusetts during the eventful period preceding the American Revolution (1771–4), and then he moved to England and wrote a valuable history of the Massachusetts Bay colony.

Thomas Hutchinson (September 9, 1711 – June 3, 1780) was the American colonial governor of Massachusetts from 1771 to 1774 and a prominent Loyalist in the years before the American Revolutionary War.

Hutchinson was born in Boston, where his father, the great-grandson of Anne Hutchinson, was a wealthy merchant and ship owner. He married Margaret Sanford in 1734-a granddaughter of Rhode Island Governor Peleg Sandford and a great granddaughter of both Rhode Island Governor William Coddington and of Anne Hutchinson.

As his career advanced he became involved in the civil leadership of the colony, first as a selectman in Boston in 1737. Later in the same year he was chosen a representative to the General Court of the Colony and at once took a strong stand in opposition to the views of the majority with regard to a proper currency. In 1742 he was re-elected to the General Court, and was chosen annually to the General Court until 1749, serving as the Speaker from 1746 to 1749. He continued his advocacy of a sound currency, and when the British Parliament reimbursed Massachusetts in 1749 for the expenses incurred in the Louisburg expedition, he proposed the abolition of the bills of credit, and the utilization of the parliamentary repayment as the basis for a new Colonial currency.

On leaving the General Court in 1749 he was appointed at once to the Governor's Council.

In 1758 he was appointed Lieutenant Governor, and in 1760 Chief Justice, of the Province.

In 1769, upon the resignation of Governor Francis Bernard, he became acting Governor, serving in that capacity at the time of the Boston Massacre, March 5, 1770, when popular clamor compelled him to order the removal of the troops from the city.

In March, 1771, he received his commission as Governor, and was the last civilian governor of the Massachusetts colony. The publication, in 1773, of some letters on Colonial affairs written by Hutchinson, and obtained by Franklin in England, still further aroused public indignation, and led the ministry to see the necessity for stronger measures. The temporary suspension of the civil government followed, and General Gage was appointed military governor in April, 1774.

Hutchinson had built a country estate in Milton, Massachusetts. Although the house is now gone, the original "ha-ha" of the estate remains today beside Governor Hutchinson's Field, maintained by the Trustees of Reservations.

In England, still nominally Governor, he was consulted by Lord North in regard to American affairs;

His American estates were confiscated, and he was compelled to refuse a baronetcy on account of lack of means.

He wrote a History of Massachusetts Bay (volume i, 1764; This article incorporates text from an edition of the New International Encyclopedia that is in the public domain.

Literature

Bernard Bailyn, The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson (Cambridge, 1974) J. Hosmer, Life of Thomas Hutchinson (Boston, 1896) Vernon Parrington, Main Currents in American Thought (1927), online Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Thomas Hutchinson