Sir Francis Bernard, 1st Baronet (1712 – 16 June 1779) was a British colonial administrator who served as governor of the colonies of New Jersey and Massachusetts Bay. His uncompromising policies and harsh tactics in Massachusetts angered the colonists and were instrumental in the building of broad-based opposition within the province to the rule of Parliament in the events leading to the American Revolution.
Appointed governor of New Jersey in 1758, he oversaw the province's participation in the later years of the French and Indian War, and had a generally positive relationship with its legislature. In 1760 he was given the governorship of Massachusetts, where he had a stormy relationship with the assembly. Early actions turned the colony's populists against him, and his responses to protests against Parliament's attempts to tax the colonies deepened divisions. After protests against the Townshend Acts in 1768, Bernard sought British troops be stationed in Boston to oversee the colonists. He was recalled after the publication of letters in which he was critical of the colony.
After returning to England, he continued to advise the British government on colonial matters, calling for hardline responses to ongoing difficulties in Massachusetts that culminated in the 1773 Boston Tea Party. He suffered a stroke in 1771 and died in 1779, leaving a large family.
Early life
Bernard was born in Brightwell-cum-Sotwell, (then in Berkshire, but part of Oxfordshire since 1974), England to the Rev. Francis and Margery (Winslowe) Bernard and was christened on 12 July 1712.Higgins, p. 1:173 His father died three years later. His mother remarried, but died of smallpox in 1718.Higgins, pp. 1:174–176 He was thereafter probably raised by an aunt for several years since his stepfather was forced by a failed courtship to flee to Holland.Higgins, pp. 1:177–178 His stepfather, Anthony Alsop, returned to Berkshire a few years later, and continued to play a role in the boy's upbringing.Higgins, pp. 1:178–179
Bernard's formal education began at Westminster School in 1725, and he then spent seven years at Oxford, where Christ Church granted him a Master of Arts in 1736. He read law at the Middle Temple and was called to the bar in 1737, after only four years (instead of the typical seven) of study.Nicolson (2000), p. 25 He settled in Lincoln, where he practised law and took on a variety of municipal posts. Among his neighbours in Lincoln were the Pownalls, who had one son (John) serving in the Colonial Office, and another, Thomas, who went to the North American colonies in 1753 and was appointed governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay in 1757.Nicolson (2000), pp. 29–41
Bernard married Amelia Offley, daughter of the sheriff of Derbyshire, in December 1741, and the couple raised a large family: by 1757 the couple had eight living children.Higgins, pp. 1:193–219Nicolson (2000), p. 34 Because his prospects for further income to support this large family were unlikely in Lincoln, he apparently decided to seek a posting in the colonies.Higgins, pp. 1:215–217 John Adams later described Bernard as "avaricious to a most infamous degree; needy at the same time, having a numerous family to provide for".Adams, p. 33
Governor of New Jersey
Bernard's wife was cousin to Lord Barrington, who became a Privy councillor in 1755.Higgins, p. 1:215 Probably through his connections to Barrington and the Pownalls, he secured an appointment as governor of the Province of New Jersey on 27 January 1758, a post that became available upon the death of Jonathan Belcher.Higgins, p. 1:220Nicolson (2000), p. 41 Leaving some of his children with relatives, the couple sailed for North America with four of their children, arriving at Perth Amboy on 14 June 1758.Nicolson (2000), pp. 42–45
The colonies were in the middle of the French and Indian War at the time of Bernard's arrival. He established a good working relationship with New Jersey's assembly, and was able to convince the province to raise troops and funds for the ongoing war effort. He signed the Treaty of Easton, an agreement between New Jersey and Pennsylvania on one side, and a group of Indigenous tribes (the Minisink and Lenape being of principal concern to New Jersey) fixing boundaries between colonial and Native lands. This effort was important, for it reduced raiding on the frontiers and made possible the reallocation of provincial military strength to the war with New France.Nicolson (2000), p. 44 It and other agreements negotiated by Bernard extinguished all of the remaining Indian titles to New Jersey. Negotiations with the Lenape also resulted in the establishment of the first formal Indian reservation, Brotherton, near present-day Indian Mills. This reservation was only sparsely populated, and was abandoned in 1801 when its remaining inhabitants joined the Stockbridge Indians in upstate New York.Martinelli, pp. 70–71
Governor of Massachusetts
Through the influence of his connections in the Colonial Office, Bernard was appointed governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay in late 1759.Nicolson (2000), p. 45 Delays in communications and slow travel were such that Bernard did not arrive in Boston until 2 August 1760. Although initially warmly welcomed, his tenure in Massachusetts was difficult. Bernard sought to vigorously enforce the Navigation Acts, in part because crown officials (including the governor and the customs officials) received shares of the proceeds from the seizure of ships that were caught violating the acts. The legal actions involving these seizures were heard in a jury-less admiralty court before a Crown-appointed judge, and were extremely unpopular.Galvin, pp. 24–25 Bernard also made an early opponent of James Otis Jr. by appointing Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson to be chief justice of the colony's highest court, a post that had been promised by several previous governors to Otis' father.Galvin, pp. 22–23 Upset over the snub the younger Otis resigned his post as advocate general (i.e. the Crown's representative, equivalent to a government prosecutor) before the admiralty court, and devoted himself instead to arguing (sometimes pro bono) on behalf of the merchants in defence of their ships.Galvin, pp. 24–32 These early actions during Bernard's tenure drew a clear dividing line between the "popular party" (exemplified by the Otises) opposed to British colonial policy and the "court party" (exemplified by Hutchinson) who supported it.Galvin, p. 25
Bernard's difficulties were compounded when, after the death in late 1760 of King George II, it became necessary to reissue writs of assistance to customs tax collectors. These writs, which were essentially open-ended search warrants, were judicially controversial and so unpopular that their issuance was later explicitly disallowed by the United States Constitution. Hutchinson, who approved the writs in one of his first acts as chief justice, saw his popularity fall, and Otis, who argued the writs violated the "rights of Englishmen", gained in popularity. He was elected to the colonial legislature in May 1761, where he was well placed to continue his attacks on Bernard's policies.Galvin, pp. 28–34 In the 1761 session of the assembly Otis engineered the gift of Mount Desert Island to Bernard, a partially successful stratagem to divert Bernard's attention from ongoing customs seizures.Galvin, p. 42
Bernard's unpopularity continued through other tax measures, including the 1763 Sugar Act and the 1765 Stamp Act. While the passage of both acts occasioned protest, the response to the Stamp Act included street riots and united many factions in the colony against the governor.Galvin, pp. 74–76, 89–108 In 1767 the passage by Parliament of the Townshend Acts again raised a storm of protest in the colonies.Walett, p. 217 In Massachusetts the general assembly issued a circular letter, calling on the other colonies to join it in a boycott of the goods subject to the Townshend taxes.Walett, p. 218 Bernard was ordered in April 1768 by Lord Hillsborough, who had recently been appointed to the newly created office of Colonial Secretary, to dissolve the assembly if it failed to retract the letter. The assembly refused and Bernard prorogued it in July.Knollenberg, p. 56
Bernard commissioned Boston printer Richard Draper as the official printer for the Massachusetts colonial government and employed him to use his newspaper, The Boston News-Letter, to give voice to the Loyalist factions in Boston.Dickinson, 1951, p. 460 Maier maintains that Bernard's letters to London greatly influenced officials there, but they "distorted" reality. "His misguided conviction that the 'faction' had espoused violence as its primary method of opposition, for example, kept him from recognizing the radicals' peace-keeping efforts....Equally dangerous, Bernard's elaborate accounts were sometimes built on insubstantial evidence." Warden argues that Bernard was careful not to explicitly ask London for troops, but his exaggerated accounts strongly suggested they were needed. In the fall of 1767 he warned about a possible insurrection in Boston any day, and his exaggerated report of one disturbance in 1768, "certainly had given Lord Hillsboro the impression that troops were the only way to enforce obedience in the town". Warden notes that other key British officials in Boston wrote London with the "same strain of hysteria".G. B. Warden, Boston 1689–1776 (1970) pp 213-14
4,000 troops of the 14th Foot and 29th Foot arrived in Boston on October 1, 1768, further heightening tensions. Bernard was vilified in the local press, and accused of writing letters to the Grafton ministry that mischaracterized the situation. Although he was challenged to release those letters he refused. Opposition agents in London were eventually able to acquire some of his letters, which reached members of the Sons of Liberty in April 1769.Walett, p. 219 They were promptly published by the radical Boston Gazette, along with deliberations of the governor's council. One letter in particular, in which Bernard called for changes to the Massachusetts charter to increase the governor's power by increasing the council's dependence on him, was the subject of particularly harsh treatment,Walett, pp. 220–221 and prompted the assembly to formally request that "he might be forever removed from the Government of the Province". He was recalled to England, and Lieutenant Governor Hutchinson became acting governor. When Bernard left Boston on 1 August, the town held an impromptu celebration, decorated the Liberty Tree, and rang church bells.Walett, p. 222 His accomplishments in Massachusetts included the design of Harvard Hall at Harvard University and the construction of a summer estate on Pond Street in Jamaica Plain.
Return to England
Upon his return to England, he asked for and received a hearing concerning the colonial petition against his rule. The Privy Council in February 1770 considered the petition, and after deliberation dismissed all of the charges as "groundless, vexatious, and scandalous".Higgins, p. 2:209Nicolson (2000), p. 206 Despite this vindication, Bernard resigned as governor in 1771. He was confirmed in the ownership of Mount Desert Island, a recognition he had been seeking since it was awarded to him in 1761.Nicolson (2000), p. 210 Although he had been promised a baronetcy and a pension of £1,000 for his service, he learned after his return that the pension had been reduced to £500 (the baronetcy, of Nettleham, was awarded at crown expense).Higgins, pp. 2:205, 210–211 His appeals on the matter were at first rejected, but when Lord North became Prime Minister in 1770, the pension was raised, but shortly after replaced by an appointment as commissioner on the Board of Revenue for Ireland, which paid the same amount.Higgins, p. 2:213