Chapter 2 - Governor Richard Bellingham

"This 6th of the 10th moneth, 1641. At a generall Towns meeting, upon Publique warning. There are chosen for the Affayres of the Town for these six months next ensueing, Richard Bellingham, esqre. Governor, John Winthrop, esqre, William Tynge, Treasurer, Captaine Gibones, William Calbron, Jacob Elliott, Valentine Hill, James Penne, John Olivr"
 

Winthrop's history described the election as follows:
 

"I must here return to supply what was omitted concerning the proceedings of the last court of elections. There had been much laboring to have Mr. Bellingham chosen, and when the votes were numbered he had six more than the others; but there were divers who had not given in their votes, who now came into court and desired their liberty, which was denied by some of the magistrates, because they had not given them in at the doors. But others thought it was an injury, yet were silent, because it concerned themselves, for the order of giving in thier votes at the door was no order of court, but only direction of some of the magistrates; and without question, if any freeman tender his vote before the election be passed and published it ought to be received."
 

Every freeman of the colony could vote either in person or by proxy. Bellingham was chosen by six votes out of 1400 over Winthrop. When the vote was announced, some men who had not voted when they entered the room, as was the custom, asked to be allowed to do it then, but they were refused.
 

The election of Bellingham was so popular the General Court immediately repealed the Governor's annual grant of 100£, and he was left with no salary for the year. In October 1643 he was voted 50£ by the General Court for that year.
 

After arriving in Boston, Bellingham settled on a tract of land near what is now King's Chapel. His grand house was on Tremont Street opposite to King's Chapel burying ground. It was immortalized by Nathaniel Hawthorne in The Scarlet Letter when:
 

"Hester Prynne went, one day, to the mansion of Governor Bellingham, with a pair of gloves, which she had fringed and embroidered to his order, and which were to be worn on sone great occasion of state; for though the chances of a popular election had caused this former ruler to descend a step or two from the highest rank, he still held an honorable and influential place among the colonial magistracy."
 

"The Book of Possessions," p.5, records this as "One house and Lott, about a quarter of an acres, bounded on the east with the street; Christopher Stanley, John Biggs, James Browne and Alexander Becke on the south; Joshua Scott on the west; and Mr. William Tynge on the north." The lot upon Cotton Hill, upon which Governor Bellingham built his mansion, is described in "The Book of Possessions," as "a garden plott, bounded with Mr. John Cotton and Daniell Maude on the north; the highway uppon the east; John Coggan on the south."
 

Carpenter described it in A Woman of Shawmut:
 

"It was one of the most pretentious of the dwellings of the colony, and stood upon the slope of Cotton Hill, the hill afterwards called Pemberton. It was built of brick imported from Holland, as was the old Province House, a few years later. When Mr. Bellingham first arrived in Boston, from Old Boston, in the year 1634, he purchased of Henry Symons, after being admitted an inhabitant, a dwelling upon the slope of what was then known as Cornhill, now the lower portion of Washington Street. Later he purchased a lot upon the eastern slope of Cotton Hill, and erected a fine mansion. Across the highway, even then known as Tremont Street, was Boston's earliest burial place, where, a century later, Sir Edmund Andros, the royal governor of the province, erected the first King's Chapel."
 

Further described in "The Scarlet Letter":
 

"This was a large wooden house, built in a fashion of which there are specimens still extant in the streets of our elder towns; now moss grown, crumbling to decay, and melancholy at heart with the many sorrowful or joyful occurences, remembered or forgotten, that have happened, and passed away, within their dusky chambers. Then, however, there was the freshness of the passing year on its exterior, and the cheerfulness, gleaming forth from the sunny windows, of a human habitation, into which death had never entered. It had, indeed, a very cheery aspect; the walls being overspread with a kind of stucco, in which fragments of broken glass were plentifully intermixed; so that, when the sunshine fell aslant-wise over the front of the edifice, it glittered and sparkled as if diamonds had been flung against it by the double hadful. The brilliancy might have befitted Aladdin's palace, rather than the mansion of a grave old Puritan ruler. It was further decorated with strange and seemingly cabalistic figures and diagrrams, suitable to the quaint taste of the age, which had been drawn in the stucco when newly laid on, and had now grown hard and durable, for the admiration of after times."
 

" With many variations, suggested by the nature of his building materials, diversity of climate, and a different mode of social life, Governor Bellingham had planned his new habitation after the residences of gentlemen of fair estate in his native land. Here, then, was a wide and reasonably lofty hall, extending through the whole depth of the house, and forming a medium of general communication, more or less directly, with all the other apartments. At one extremity, this spacious room was lighted by the windows of the two towers, which formed a small recess on either side of the portal. At the other end, though partly muffled by a curtain, it was more powerfully illuminated by one of those embowed hall-windows which we read of in old books, and which was provided with a keep and cushioned seat. Here on the cushion, lay a folio tome, probably of the Chronicles of England, or other such substantial literature; even as, in our own days, we scatter gilded volumes on the centre-table, to be turned over by the casuual guest. The furniture of the hall consisted of some ponderous chairs, the backs of which were elaborately carved with wreaths of oaken flowers; and likewise a table in the same taste; the whole being of the Elizabethan age, or perhaps earlier, and heirlooms, transferred hither from the Governor's paternal home. On the table - in token that the sentiment of old English hospitality had not been left behind - stood a large pewter tankard, at the bottom of which, had Hester or Pearl peeped into it, they might have seen the frothy remnant of a recent draught of ale."
 

"On the wall hung a row of portraits, representing the forefathers of the Bellingham lineage, some with armor on their breasts, and others with stately ruffs and robes of peace. All were characterized by the sterness and severity which old portraits so invariably put on; as if they were the ghosts, rather than the pictures, of departed worthies, and were gazing with harsh and intolerant criticisms at the pursuits and enjoyments of living men."
 

"At about the centre of the oaken panels that lined the hall hung a suit of mail, not, like the pictures, an ancestral relic, but of the most modern date; for it had been manufactured by a skilful armorer in London, the same year in which Governor Bellingham came over to New England. There was a steel head-piece, a cuirass, a gorget, and greaves, with a pair of gauntlets and a sword hanging beneath; all, and especially the helmet and breastplate, so highly burnished as to glow with white radiance, and scatter an illumination everywhere about upon the floor. This bright panoply was not meant for mere idle show, but had been worn by the Governor on many a solemn muster and training field, and had glittered moreover, at the head of a regiment in the Pequod war. For though bred a lawyer, and accustomed to speak of Bacon, Coke, Noye, and Finch, as his professional associates, the exigencies of this new country had transformed Governor Bellingham into a soldier as well as a statesman and ruler."
 

"Governor Bellingham, in a loose gown and easy cap, - such as elderly gentlemen loved to endue themselves with, in their domestic privacy, - walked foremost, and appeared to be showing off his estate, and expatiating on his projected improvements. The wide circumference of an eleaborate ruff, beneath his gray beard, in the antiqued fashion of King James' reign, caused his head to look not a little like that of John the Baptist in a charger. The impression made by his aspect, so rigid and severe, and frost-bitten with more than autumnal age, was hardly in keeping with the appliances of worldly enjoyment wherewith he had evidently done his utmost to surround himself. But it is an error to suppose that our grave forefathers - though accustomed to speak and think of human existence as a state merely of trial and warfare, and though unfeignedly prepared to sacrifice goods and life at the behest of duty - made it a matter of conscience to reject such means of comfort, or even luxary, as lay fairly within their grassp."
 

Sometime after 1636 and before 1641 Eliza Bellingham died. This unfortunate circumstance brought Bellingham to his greatest personal and public crisis.