Chapter 2 - Governor Richard Bellingham

Section I - The New World
Governor Richard Bellingham was the third Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Not as well known as his predecessor John Winthrop, he had a certain notoriety in his day for his stern upholding of the law (at least for other persons). He was depicted in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter and was one third of a colonial love triangle in an 1800's novel, A Woman of Shawmut. Despite this he appears to have been anything but a romantic figure. The historical evidence indicates he was not popular as a person or as a governor. How his name got to be placed on this Town is lost in the haze of history.
 
Bellingham was born in England in 1591. He was from a well situated family, educated as a lawyer and practiced this profession. He served as the Recorder of the borough in the English town of Boston and was a member of the Parliament of 1628 under Charles I.
 
Apparently his family was Puritan in its beliefs which led him, in 1628, to aid in drawing up the charter of the Massachusetts Bay Company. He was one of 26 original founders of the Company and he subscribed £50 for it. "The Massachusetts Bay Company was a joint stock corporation, organized very much as business corporations are today. The stockholders or freemen chose the president and board of directors -- there called Governor and Assistants -- to manage the company's affairs. Freemen and officers net quarterly in a Great and General Court, to choose officers and keep track of the Company's business."
 
Winthrop sailed on the first ship (the Arrabella) to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630. Bellingham, for whatever reason, delayed sailing until after the Colony had a foothold. He arrived in Boston in 1634 with his wife Elizabeth (Eliza) and his son Samuel. Bellingham was on the first list of 26 freemen and he and his wife joined the First Church in Boston in 1634. (Freemen were accepted by vote.)
 
After his arrival in Massachusetts in 1634 he served for a year in the General Court as deputy for Boston, and then was made an assistant and treasurer of the colony. He was a mercurial individual, melancholic and impetuous, not Winthrop's idea of a proper magistrate at all. Bellingham had equal misgivings about Winthrop's high notions of governmental authority and, perhaps from his experience in Parliament, had gained high notions of his own about the authority of the people. He and Saltonstall, who was elevated to the magistracy in 1637, generally deserted their colleagues for the side of the deputies whenever there was a dispute.
 
"But the forces which produced the revolution of 1634 were not extinct. Thomas Dudley still insisted on rigor; and among the freemen new leaders were arising to challenge Winthrop's paternalism. Israel Stoughton, as soon as his three year disqualification expired, was elected an assistant. With him stood Richard Bellingham, one of the original members of the Bay Company, and Richard Saltonstall, the son of an original member."
 
In 1635, he was deputy governor of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay to John Haines, Governor. (All elected terms were for one year as they would remain for many years.) He was also appointed that year to the Military Commission for Public Defence with extraordinary powers, including the penalty of death.
 
The earliest history of the colony, Wonder-Working Providence of Sions Saviour in New-England, by Edward Johnson, published in 1654, gave a more favorable description of Bellingham than Winthrop's, if not as understandable.
 
"At this time came over the much honored Mr. Richard Bellingham, whose estate and person did much for the civill Government of this wandering people, hee being learned in the Lawes of England, and experimentally fitted for the worke, of whom I am bold to say as followeth:
 
Richardus now arise must thou, Christ seed hath thee to plead,
 
His peoples cause, with equall Lawes, in wildernesse them lead;
 
Though slow of speech, thy counsell reach, shall each occation well,
 
Sure thy sterne looke, it cannot brook those wickedly rebell.
 
With labours might, thy pen indite doth Lawes for peoples learning:
 
That judge with skill, and not with will, unarbitrate discerning;
 
Bellingham thou, on valiant now, stop not in discontent,
 
For Christ with crown, will thee renown, then spend for him, be spent;
 
As thou hast done thy race still run till death, no death shall stay,
 
Christs work of might, till Scripture light, bring Resurection day."
 
As a magistrate and Deputy Governor, Bellingham had a larger share in law making than any other person in the colony except for the Governor.
 
In 1634 Bellingham purchased from Samuel Maverick, a homestead on Boston Harbor. This, with other holdings made him one of the largest landowners in the new colony. The major portion of these holdings, including the purchase from Maverick were in what is now Chelsea. He attempted an unusual arrangement with his land. In the English manorial fashion, he divided the land into four parts and leased each portion to a tenant farmer.
 
Bellingham gave a gift of 10£ to a public subscription for a school in Boston in 1636. He was listed third on the list. "Like Winthrop, Dudley and Bradstreet, he was a man of property above the rest." He was also a member of the first Board of Overseers for Harvard, October 28, 1636.
 
He was on a committee to draw up a code of fundamental laws based on the Bible, but the task was never accomplished. The magistrates appeared to avoid it as a transgression of the charter, looking to a natural growth of common law as a safer course. "Winthrop says, there were two great reasons which caused the magistrates and elders 'not to be very forward in this matter'. First, want of sufficient experience of the country and the people. It would be better to let customs be formed, and grow gradually into laws, like the common law of England. Second, the charter provided that the colony pass no laws repugnant to the laws of England. Any formal codification of the Law of God would certainly be repugnant to the laws of England."
 
Nathaniel Hawthorne described these early office holders as:
 
"These primitive statesmen, therefore, - Bradstreet, Endicott, Dudley, Bellingham, and their compeers, - who were elevated to power by the early choice of the people, seem to have been not often brilliant, but distinguished by a ponderous sobriety, rather than activity of intellect. They had fortitude and self reliance, and, in time of difficulty or peril, stood up for the welfare of the state like a line of cliffs against a tempestuous tide. The traits of character here indicated were well represented in the square cast of coutenance and large physical development of the new colonial magistrates. So far as a demeanor of national authority was concerned, the mother country need not have been ashamed to see these foremost men of an actual democracy adopted into the House of Peers, or made the Privy Council of the Sovereign."
 
In 1640, Bellingham was again elected Deputy Governor. Joseph Dudley was elected to his first term as Governor and was the first Governor who was not a voter in Boston. Winthrop was not reelected that year because "the freemen feared a governor for life".