[Sir]. Last royalist governor of New Hampshire, born at Portsmouth on the 9th of August 1737; graduated at Harvard (1755), and entered upon a business life with his father. Before 1765 the province sent him to England as their agent to procure a repeal of the Stamp Act. This mission is thought to have been commemorated in Theodore Winthrop’s novel, Edwin Brothertoft. While in England, Oxford made him a doctor of laws, and on August 11, 1766, he was commissioned governor of New Hampshire and surveyor of the king’s woods throughout North America. He reached home in June 1767, and began a wise administration, wherein he attained great popularity, promoting agriculture and building roads. He gave Dartmouth College its charter in 1769, together with forty-four thousand acres of land. As troubles grew with England he maintained firm allegiance to the crown, although sympathizing keenly with the colonists in their grievances. After vain labors in the interest of conciliation, and after his house and belongings had been destroyed and pillaged, he left the country in 1776. The high quality of his mind and character is shown by the fact that, notwithstanding he had been proscribed as a royalist and his property confiscated, he rejoiced over the final establishment of the Federal constitution, and wished for the prosperity of the United States. In 1792 he was made lieutenant-governor of Nova Scotia, and in 1795 a baronet. He died in Halifax on the 8th of April 1820.
