page_title: Richard Waldron (Secretary)
section_title: Analysis
hierarchical_section_title: Richard Waldron (Secretary) / Analysis
caption_attribution_description: English: Wentworth Coolidge House council chambers
context_page_description: Richard Waldron was a major opponent of the Wentworth oligarchy in colonial New Hampshire. He supported a continued political subordination of New Hampshire to Massachusetts and opposed moves to separation from this traditional senior partner. Through his friendship with Massachusetts governor and kinsman Jonathan Belcher and his positions of Secretary, Councillor, and New Hampshire assembly speaker, for a time he was "the central authority" in colonial New Hampshire politics.
context_section_description: Sibley's states that Waldron was hampered in his aim to go to England to make his case by a lack of contributed money from supporters.  But Van Deventer states that Waldron should have absorbed the cost personally: "If Waldron had been willing to travel to England (as his old friend Belcher advised), to spend money there freely, and to attack the Wentworth clan and John Thomlinson for their profiteering through violations of the White Pine [royal navy mast] laws, he might have succeeded. But he was not and did not--his ambitions stopped at the water's edge--and Wentworth ... emerg[ed] from the conflict in 1752 with a complete victory. ..."
  "For eleven years Waldron achieved his goals as the central authority in New Hampshire politics. Moreover, the Waldron-Belcher countercoup of the 1730s and Waldron's attempt to regain power in the late 1740s had lasting impacts in New Hampshire. His actions during the 1730s helped to bring about what he sought to avoid. By provoking a desperate and ultimately successful Wentworth clan opposition, his actions led to extensive boundary changes, a separate New Hampshire governorship, and the total triumph of the Wentworth faction. His ambitions in the 1740s helped strengthen both Crown prerogatives over the assembly and a Wentworth family government that would last until the American Revolution."
caption: Council Chambers in the Wentworth mansion where Wentworth presided over provincial council meetings and where a copy of Waldron's portrait once hung[23]
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