Original manuscript copybook containing contemporary copies of letters written by a committee in Bermuda which was appointed to petition the British Government for the removal of the Governor of the island colony. 78 pp. plus several blank leaves, comprising some 35 letters, neatly written and very legible. 12½x8, marbled paper-covered wrappers.
Fascinating, revealing, and historically important document chronicling the efforts of the House of Assembly of Bermuda to have their Colonial Governor, Sir William Lumley, removed from office. He was accused of fiscal misconduct and abuse of power, and the Assembly appointed a committee of three persons, Benjamin D. Havvey, Thomas R. Tucker, and Francis Lighttower, to petition the British government to dismiss Lumley from office. They hired an agent in London, one Edward Ellice, Member of Parliament and sometime executive with the Hudson's Bay Company, to represent their cause, and the letters contained in the copybook are mostly to him. The letters lay out, in meticulous detail, the charges against Lumley, the legal background, the popular resentment against the governor, and the progress of the recall. Lumley, who assumed the office of governor in 1819, was called back to London in 1822 for investigation of the charges, but was reinstated the following year, having been cleared of wrongdoing. However, the committee of three did not give up, and their efforts, and letters, continued. Eventually they succeeded, though Lumley's final removal did not occur until 1825. First settled in 1609 by shipwrecked English colonists headed for Virginia, Bermuda had at the time a well-developed constituent assembly and social tradition. The citizens rankled at the oppression of a crown-appointed governor, and, as communicated in the series of letters in the copybook, the population was unified in their opposition to Governor Lumley. The copies were made by several different clerks, and each is signed in a different hand by the three members of the committee (they took turns signing for each other, it seems). The letters begin with a 25-page missive to Edward Ellice, requesting his assistance and outlining their complaints: "Bermuda, May 30th, 1821. Edward Ellice, Esq. Sir, From your respectable character and situation we are induced to take the liberty of addressing you on a matter of the first consideration to this colony. Our House of Assembly having conceived that Sir William Lumley the Governor of this Island has committed various acts of maladministration of too serious a nature to be looked over, have in an humble petition to His Majesty, complained of some of them, and prayed for the Governor's recall from this Government... The House of Assembly appointed us a Committee, with authority to employ an agent of agents...and as we deem you a fit person to undertake the agency of the business, we on behalf of the House of Assembly have to request that you be pleased to accept it..." The petition is outlined in detail. One of the most serious charges relates to the Powder Fund, which had "very much increased of the last few years...the Governor and Council had pretended to an exclusive control over it, and had actually expended large sums out of that fund for various purposes foreign to the Law on the subject..." A thorough background of the laws relating to control of the fund is given, and details of the Governor's malfeasance with regard to its dispersal are given. Other charges relate to misappropriation of treasury funds, the failure to pay the assembly the travel expenses to which they were entitled, and abuse of power. The treasury account books, and the haphazard manner in which they were kept, are described, "...in two of these books it appeared as many as twenty three entries were made on slips of paper attached with wafers, five of which numbers occurred between two leaves; and withal many of the dates of the entries on the said books were so extremely irregular as to reverse the order of time..." The investigating committee "discovered that the Treasurer had made many errors as well in favor of, as against himself, but those of the latter description were comparatively small to the former..." The next letter is to James Christie Esten, recently arrived in England from Bermuda, written one week later, "From what had passed previous to your departure we presume that you will not be surprised to hear that our House of Assembly have found it necessary to complain to His Majesty of the conduct of Sir William Lumley the Governor, and to pray for his Recall.," and asks that Esten assist Ellice if needed. More letters follow, most to Edward Ellice, relating further transgressions by the Governor, and other matters having to do with the case. On Oct. 12, 1821, "...other very unpleasant and serious measures have been adopted by the Governor, which have not only been extremely oppressive to the individuals against whom they were particularly directed, but moreover threaten the general liberties of the people, by the Governor's having undertaken to unite the powers of the Executive with those of the Judiciary, and this too without the Forms of Trial..." On May 21, 1822, "Sir William Lumley is embarked for England. His Excellency leaves here with apparent confidence of his speedy return to the government - a feeling in which those few of the inhabitants who can be numbered amongst his Friends and Coadjutors seem fully to participate with him. To make this event the more certain however addresses have been obtained approbatory of his administration from the Privy Council and the Clergy of the Island and some of the Inhabitants of the town of St. George...We have...thought it not improper to apprize you of the description of Persons by whom it was signed..." Oct. 20, 1823, "On the 15th of this month...to the astonishment and almost utter dismay of the people of this country Sir William Lumley arrived to reassume the administration... Is it nothing to consult the ease and repose of a whole loyal and unoffending population for their own sakes? Is it nothing that their laws should be outraged, their personal rights violated, and their liberty trampled on, and that the author of such acts should man the seat of judgment and passing in review his transactions in another capacity consecrate them as rules and examples of future conduct by giving them a judicial sanction and authority?..." Sept. 11, 1824, "...Sir Wm. Lumley is making no preparation that can be discovered for surrendering the government..." Finally, four years after Lumley's removal in 1825, in a letter to James Richardson, "It was with great satisfaction to ourselves and the whole population of the Island that the intelligence was received of the favorable verdict in the case of Basham against Sir Wm. Lumley... It will serve to let the English public know how very cavalierly their governors are disposed to treat those over whom they are appointed to preside in distant countries and teach governors that they are not always to indulge their humours with impunity..."