by Mark Stein
But not in 1731. George II, the last British monarch born outside Great Britain, was uncertain as to his clout and allowed leadership to be exerted by Robert Walpole, who is thus recognized as England’s first prime minister. Walpole’s success was due in large part to his policy that England’s economy was best maintained and strengthened by avoiding war. Consequently, he had negotiated the Treaty of Seville in 1729, which led to the episode involving Captain Jenkins two year later. Under the treaty, England agreed not to trade with Spain’s North American colonies and, to enable verification, allowed British ships to be inspected by Spain for cargo from those ports.
The treaty was highly controversial in England. While peace was good for the economy, such severe limitations on its overseas trade were not. Nor did it sit well with the nation’s pride. Many merchants and the sea captains and crews they financed did not abide by the treaty’s prohibitions.
These violations explain, in part, Captain Fandino’s frustration and violence. From Prime Minister Walpole’s perspective, Fandino’s rage reflected Spain’s reduced circumstances. Spain was increasingly desperate to preserve its monopolies in the New World—the totality of which it had originally possessed following the voyages of Christopher Columbus. But that had been over two hundred years earlier. Spain’s efforts to control the New World’s supply of sugar and gold created a lucrative black market. Pirates engaged in hijacking, initially on their own and later with secret financing in some instances by other nations. By the time Robert Jenkins was at sea, otherwise legitimate shipping companies engaged in periodic smuggling as well.
When Jenkins returned to England in June 1731, a full account of his misfortune appeared in the press, but fame did not ensue. Such occurrences were not particularly unusual. The article in London’s Universal Spectator also included:
The Bacchus, Captain Stephens, which is arrived at Bristol from Jamaica, was taken the 27th of April by a Spanish pirate sloop or guarde costa.… They treated her captain and crew very barbarously, putting their fingers between gunlock screws till they flattened them, and some had lighted matches between, in order to extort a confession where their money [Spanish doubloons from smuggling] lay, of which they had none on board.
Still, as these depredations continued, Walpole’s efforts to avoid war met with increasing opposition. The tipping point came in 1737 with the death of Queen Caroline, through whose friendship Walpole had maintained the approval—or mitigated the occasional disapproval—of George II and the Prince of Wales (the future George III).
The future king’s opposition to his father now emerged more boldly, and with it Walpole’s political opponents commenced a drumbeat for war. Parliament held hearings regarding instances of mistreatment of British seamen by Spain. And just as the U.S. Congress has demonstrated its flair for the dramatic through the stage-managed appearances of star witnesses, Parliament’s star for 1738 was Robert Jenkins. His presentation was electrifying: he related his breathtaking experience and climaxed his testimony by unfolding a square of cotton and producing his severed ear.
Or so later accounts state. The parliamentary records of his testimony do not record the ear being displayed. Nor is it mentioned in any of the newspaper accounts that immediately followed his testimony. Nevertheless, those news accounts, augmented by politicians expressing newfound outrage, generated a public uproar. Walpole had no choice but to accede to war.
In Georgia these distant events created considerable concern, since the colony was adjacent to the Spanish colony of Florida. Fearing an attack, James Oglethorpe, Georgia’s founder, raised troops and improved defenses along his colony’s coast and nearby islands. In July 1742 the Spanish attacked, with a vastly larger force than that of Oglethorpe, and quickly overtook one of the two forts on St. Simon’s Island.
Oglethorpe still occupied the island’s second fort, which was protected by a surrounding marsh with only two roads of access. The greater number of Spaniards was countered by the Georgians’ greater knowledge of the pathways and marshes, and by Oglethorpe’s skill in creating the impression that he had more forces than he actually did. The Spanish, believing Oglethorpe’s numbers far larger, cautiously approached and were confused by the pathways. These factors enabled the Georgians to engage them successfully in what became known as the Battle of Bloody Marsh. The victory resulted in a new boundary with Spain, establishing the St. Marys River as the eastern segment of the Florida-Georgia border.
War of Jenkins’s Ear: Georgia before and after
The larger war, however, was not as successful. England suffered a massive defeat in its campaign against the Colombian port of Cartagena. The war ended soon after, as did the career of Robert Walpole. All in all, little had changed as a result of the war—except for the Georgia border.
As for Robert Jenkins, he returned to work and obscurity. For a time he administered affairs for the British East India Company on the small island of St. Helena, midway between Africa and South America, then resumed his career at sea.
· · · NEW HAMPSHIRE, MASSACHUSETTS · · ·
ROBERT TUFTON MASON
Winning New Hampshire
Prudence Gatch, aged sixteen years, servant to Robert Mason, Esq, maketh oath that Thomas Wiggins … did give her master ill language; that her master bid Thomas Wiggins several times to be gone out of the house … but he would not; that she, seeing Thomas Wiggins laying hold of her master by the cravat and hair, did run forth to call the neighbors, crying out that her master would be murthered.
—DEPOSITION OF PRUDENCE GATCH, 16861
The colonial relationship between New Hampshire and Massachusetts has a long and tangled history, hardly evident in the relatively simple line that separates the two states today. That history was, in effect, a political chess tournament, with contestants that included not only England, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire, but also individual players with particular interests. One such individual was Robert Tufton Mason. His match, as much or more than any, determined the tournament’s final outcome.
What is today Massachusetts began as an effort by the British Crown to maintain control in England amid religious turmoil. Vying for influence were Anglicans and Catholics, with Puritans and Quakers later joining the fray. To mitigate the conflicts, the Crown created a colony in America for Catholics (Maryland) and another for Quakers (Pennsylvania). Massachusetts (first settled by the separatist Pilgrims) became the colony for Puritans.
When Robert Tufton Mason was born in England in 1629, New Hampshire already existed. It had been created in 1622 when the Plymouth Colony’s parent company granted land to his grandfather, John Mason, and Ferdinando Gorges for purposes of economic development. The two later divided the land—Gorges’s portion becoming Maine, and Mason’s becoming New Hampshire. Mason’s plans for the land never got off the ground. The advance staff he sent found it not as expected, and John Mason died before ever setting foot on it. The land eventually was inherited by his grandson, Robert Tufton. Robert, however, was only a child. Consequently, the land was administered by an executor in England and the staff that had remained in America. They sold it off. During this same interval, Massachusetts came to administer jurisdictional functions in the region.
Mason grant: embryo of New Hampshire
Thus, for his twenty-first birthday, Robert Tufton got nothing except a new last name, Mason, which he acquired to comply with his grandfather’s will. He also acquired legal standing, enabling him to bring suit over the sale of his land, if he so chose. He chose not to, just yet. The year was 1650, and Robert Tufton Mason didn’t like his odds given the political climate in England and the colonies.
One year earlier, the religious conflicts in England had climaxed with the beheading of Charles I. The government was now led by Oliver Cromwell. Cromwell was a Puritan, and so were the colonists in Massachusetts, where Mason’s land was located. Both secular and church leaders wrote to the newly empowered Cromwell to express their Puritan joy: “We acknowledge ourselves in all du
ty bound, not only to take due notice of that tender care and undeserved respect your excellence hath, upon all occasions, vouchsafed unto the poor despised colony of Massachusetts,” the General Court declared.2 “Intimate our sufferings under the tyranny of the Episcopacy which forced us into exile, to our great hazard and loss, for no other offence but professing that truth which, through mercy, is now acknowledged,” wrote a leading group of ministers.3
Not only was Robert Tufton Mason not a Puritan; his relatives had actively opposed the overthrow of the king. One cousin had been Charles I’s master of bequests. Another cousin had been a member of the Parliament that Cromwell dissolved. That cousin fled to Virginia.
Puritan rule turned out not to be the Garden of Eden its backers had hoped. In England the Puritans closed theaters, prohibited dancing, and even banned celebration on Christmas. Less amusing than the suppression of amusement was the Puritan government’s confiscation of property from Catholics, accompanied by horrific ethnic cleansing in Ireland. After little more than a decade, England had had enough. Puritan rule ended when Charles II, son of the beheaded king, was restored to power in 1660.
Shortly after Charles II took his seat on the throne, Mason took a seat in his London attorney’s office. The time was right to petition the king. His plea hearkened to the king’s dethroned and beheaded father, who had “become a Sacrifice” of Puritan rule—the same Puritans who, it stated, “did surreptitiously … get a Confirmation of the [New Hampshire] Grant … [and] aspired to Extend their Bounds and spread into a Larger Territory than they had yet usurped.”4
Massachusetts indeed had some explaining to do. Extending its jurisdiction into New Hampshire was but one of a list of dubious actions it had taken during England’s years of Puritan rule. With the monarchy now restored, Governor John Endicott quickly wrote the new king:
Most Gracious and Dread Sovereign,
May it please your Majesty in the Day wherein you happily say you now know that you are King over your British Israel, to cast an Eye upon your poor Mephibosheth … we mean upon New England Kneeling, with the rest of your Subjects, before your Majesty as her restored King.… Touching complaints put in against us, our humble Request only is that … your Majesty would permit nothing to make an Impression upon your Royal Heart against us until we have both opportunity and leave to answer for ourselves.5
Charles II wasn’t looking to resume the conflicts from his father’s reign. He was looking for ways to reassemble the shattered authority of the throne. He embraced Massachusetts, while slipping Mason’s petition to his attorney general. Massachusetts heaved a sigh of relief. Mason held his breath in hope. And Charles II had some time to be everybody’s friend. Then his attorney general weighed in. “I am of the opinion,” he reported to the king, “that the Petitioner Robert Mason, who is Grandson & Heir to the said John Mason, hath a good & legal Right & Title to the Lands Conveyed by the name of New Hampshire.”6
Good news for Mason, followed by bad news for Mason. The king currently had more pressing concerns in America, where Holland and France, like Massachusetts, had feathered their jurisdictional nests during the turmoil in England. To regain his standing, Charles II needed the assistance of New England’s most populous and influential colony, Massachusetts.
The attorney general’s opinion was therefore filed away while the king, in 1665, sought New England’s help in ousting the Dutch authorities from what is today New York. Massachusetts grudgingly scraped together 200 men, who ended up not serving in what turned out to be a less than successful venture. The following year, the king urged his New England colonies to join forces and oust the French from the present-day province of Quebec. Massachusetts humbly said no. In 1673 England again sought to oust the Dutch, once more without the help of Massachusetts, which flatly rejected the request for assistance of a British commander who landed in Boston en route to war.7 This time England prevailed over the Dutch, taking control of their settlements in 1674.
With this final victory, Charles II decided the time had come to send Massachusetts a message. The case of Robert Tufton Mason was ideal for composing cutting remarks. Literally cutting: “We have been for a long time solicited by the Complaints of Our Trusty and Well-beloved Subject, Robert Mason,” the king wrote to the governor of Massachusetts, “to interpose Our Royal authority for … relief in the matter of [his] Claims and Right … to the province of New Hampshire.… We have therefore directed that … [Massachusetts] show cause why We should not afford the Petitioner that Relief.”8
Faced with the loss of New Hampshire, Massachusetts commenced legal maneuvers that were countered by Mason. The case was finally adjudicated in 1677. During the maneuverings, Mason sought to improve his chances by relinquishing to the Crown any claim to governing the land. Before the judges, Massachusetts cited an impressive list of documents and precedents. But the issue was no longer about law; it was about power. To a king seeking to solidify his control, particularly a king who had experienced recurrent difficulties in controlling Massachusetts, Mason’s pretrial move was checkmate. Mason, however, did not win. The judges concluded that because “the said lands are in the possession of several other persons not before us”—living, as they did, across an ocean—“if there be any course of justice upon the place having jurisdiction, we esteem it most proper to direct the parties to have recourse thither for the decision.”9
The place having jurisdiction? Couldn’t Their Honours have been a bit more specific? In point of fact, their lack of specificity was the significant element in this decision. No one, based on the evidence presented, had demonstrated clear jurisdiction over the disputed land. Mason may not have won his case, but he had not lost it, either. The loser was Massachusetts.
Mason’s next move was another avowal. In this instance, he promised not to demand back payments from the residents, and to sell their land to them “according to the just and true … value of all houses built by them, and of all lands … improved by them.”10
Following this avowal, Charles II was ready to continue cutting Massachusetts down to size. In 1680 he decreed to the people of New Hampshire that they were now under his direct governance. Two years later the king sealed the deal with Mason. “We have received the Opinion of Our Attorney & Solicitor General that ye said Robert Mason … has good and legal Title to ye Lands conveyed to him,” the king informed Massachusetts, nailing down his proclamation by adding, “We do strictly charge & command you to secure him, his servants & agents from any arrests & molestations whatsoever during his or their abode within ye limits of your Jurisdiction.”11 Translation: Mason had won his match.
With the king having secured the way, Mason arrived in America for the first time. What he found, however, was that selling the land in New Hampshire to its occupants was a whole other game—one at which he was less adept. In 1685 settlers Thomas Wiggins and Anthony Nutter came to the home of New Hampshire’s governor, where Mason was staying, to protest having to pay for what they viewed as their own property. Wiggins stated his views on real estate law in language so colorful that Mason decided to throw him out. Or tried to; Mason ended up being the one who got tossed. Wiggins hurled him into the fireplace, where Mason’s clothing ignited, and one leg was badly burned. The governor quickly intervened and just as quickly lost a tooth and received two broken ribs. One of Mason’s male servants, hearing the scuffle, dashed in brandishing his master’s sword. It ended up in Nutter’s possession as the two obstreperous settlers left, delighting over their prize.12
Mason returned to England later that year, having faced so much animosity he feared for his life. Now fifty-six years old, he died soon after. The conflict over New Hampshire’s sovereignty, however, continued to drag on through the following decades.
In the same year that Mason returned to England, Charles II died and James II ascended to the throne. The extent to which Charles had reassembled royal authority encouraged James to seek absolute authority. To consolidate his grip on New England, James decreed t
hat Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Maine would be combined and called the Dominion of New England. New England was now one big angry colony. Old England, for similar reasons, also became one big angry country. In 1688 James II abdicated the throne.
New Hampshire-Massachusetts border proposals
New Hampshire once again became its own province under the jurisdiction of the Crown. But not for long. It now had its own internal conflicts, one of which was the Mason grant. Robert Tufton Mason’s heirs had opted out of this conflict by selling the grant to a London merchant named Samuel Allen.13 This made no difference to those living on the land. They despised Allen as much as Mason. But as farmers on difficult soil, they were poor and virtually powerless. To augment their power, they sought to have New Hampshire given back to Massachusetts, that colony being happy to help their cause. Those with power in New Hampshire opposed the move.
In addition, a new conflict had arisen regarding Massachusetts. The original 1622 grant to John Mason, reflecting the charter of the Massachusetts Bay Company, separated New Hampshire along a line three miles north of the Merrimack River. Europeans had assumed that the Merrimack flowed along a relatively straight line. In time the colonists discovered that the river made a major turn to the north, and they wondered if the border, at that turn, instead became a line three miles east, as opposed to north, of the river. Colonists west of the Merrimack, being beyond the Mason/Allen land, preferred New Hampshire over Massachusetts since taxes were lower. They maintained that north was not east and that a new line was needed. In 1695 New Hampshire’s legislature proposed one. Massachusetts, for its part, ignored it.