Governor Bernard's Undoing: An Earlier Hutchinson Letters Affair

Abstract

AN episode in the preliminaries of the American Revolution in Massachusetts which has been largely overlooked by historians is the Bernard letters affair. Francis Bernard, governor of Massachusetts from 1760 to 1769, was one of the most unpopular royal servants in America. A stubborn supporter of Parliamentary supremacy, he was the object of the colonists' wrath and the target of their propaganda. In 1769 a number of Goverftor Bernard's private letters to his English friends, which fell into the hands of the popular faction, was the basis of a virulent attack by the patriots, who blamed him for all the misfortunes of Massachusetts, demanded his recall, and indicted him for libel. The Bernard letters affair provided a good example of an effective way to ruin an unpopular official's reputation, and doubtless prompted the patriots to try the same thing a few years later against Bernard's successor, Thomas Hutchinson.'