page_title: Thomas Hutchinson (governor)
section_title: Governor of Massachusetts
hierarchical_section_title: Thomas Hutchinson (governor) / Governor of Massachusetts
caption_attribution_description: English: Proclamation by Governor Thomas Hutchinson of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, December 28, 1771.[1]
context_page_description: Thomas Hutchinson was a businessman, historian, and a prominent Loyalist politician of the Province of Massachusetts Bay in the years before the American Revolution. He has been referred to as "the most important figure on the loyalist side in pre-Revolutionary Massachusetts". He was a successful merchant and politician, and was active at high levels of the Massachusetts government for many years, serving as lieutenant governor and then governor from 1758 to 1774. He was a politically polarizing figure who came to be identified by John Adams and Samuel Adams as a proponent of hated British taxes, despite his initial opposition to Parliamentary tax laws directed at the colonies. He was blamed by Lord North for being a significant contributor to the tensions that led to the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War.
  Hutchinson's Boston mansion was ransacked in 1765 during protests against the Stamp Act, damaging his collection of materials on early Massachusetts history. As acting governor in 1770, he exposed himself to mob attack in the aftermath of the Boston massacre, after which he ordered the removal of troops from Boston to Castle William.
context_section_description: Because of the controversy over the Stamp Act, the radical faction came to control both the assembly and the governor's council in 1766, and Hutchinson was denied a seat on the governor's council.  Amid increased furor after the passage of the 1767 Townshend Acts, Governor Bernard requested and received British Army troops to protect crown officials.  Letters written by Bernard describing conditions in the province were acquired by the radical opposition and published, leading to his recall. Bernard left for England on 1 August 1769, leaving Hutchinson as acting governor.  Hutchinson was unsuccessful in his attempts to distance himself from the unpopular Bernard administration, and he continued to be attacked in the assembly and the local press.  Despite this, he continued to lobby for a formal appointment as governor.  He categorically refused to again serve as lieutenant governor under another governor, preferring instead a posting elsewhere, or to resign the lieutenant governorship.
  Hutchinson was still acting governor when protests over the Townshend taxes erupted into the Boston Massacre on 5 March 1770, when British soldiers fired into a crowd, killing five people.  Hutchinson went to the scene in the aftermath of the shooting, and promised that justice would be applied fairly. He had all of the British soldiers involved in the incident arrested the next day, but ongoing unrest in the city compelled him to request the withdrawal of British troops from the city to Castle William. Hutchinson was able to postpone the trial for almost 6 months to allow anger to settle and for Adams to prepare a solid case. The soldiers were eventually tried, and two were convicted of manslaughter, although their sentences were reduced.  The episode shook Hutchinson's confidence in his ability to manage affairs in the province, and he penned a resignation letter.
  Governor Bernard had, in the meantime, taken up Hutchinson's cause in London.  In March 1771 Hutchinson's commission as governor arrived in Boston, having been approved by the king while his resignation letter was going the other way.  (Colonial secretary Lord Hillsborough rejected his resignation.)  The instructions sent with the commission were fairly strict, and left Hutchinson relatively little room to manoeuvre politically.  Instructions that particularly galled Samuel Adams included one restricting the meetings of the governor's council, and another limiting the appointment of colonial agents to individuals having the governor's approval.
  One of Hutchinson's instructions was to relocate the provincial assembly from Boston to Cambridge, where it would be less under the influence of radical Boston politics.  This modest demand, accomplished by executive order, resulted in howls of complaint of gubernatorial arbitrariness in the assembly, and an exchange of arguments, rebuttals, and counterarguments between Hutchinson and the assembly that ran for thousands of pages and lasted until 1772. The nature of the affair furthered the radical cause, whose proponents painted Hutchinson's action as a bold and devious attempt to further the executive prerogative. The radicals were further outraged when Hutchinson announced in 1772 that his salary, which had previously been subject to appropriation by the assembly, would be paid by the crown instead. This was seen by the radicals as a further usurpation of power that rightfully belonged in the province.  Written debates with the assembly extended to the role of Parliament in governing the policies, and further deepened the divide between it and Hutchinson. They also raised flags elsewhere in the colonies and in England, where observers noted that Hutchinson's arguments had effectively driven moderates in the province to join with the political hardliners.
caption: A proclamation issued by Hutchinson in 1771
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