John Winthrop

During the winter of 1674/5, Winthrop turned sixty-nine, still governor of Connecticut, but hopefully free at last of extraordinary public crises. His physical condition remained precarious; as late as the preceding August he had decided not to risk a journey to the Bay and had confined himself to brief rides in the immediate neighborhood of Hartford. His private affairs continued chaotic. Many of his debts- especially those to the merchant, John Harwood, and to his sister-in-law, Priscilla Reade- remained unpaid, and his overseas letters were heavy with the pleas and reassurances of a frontier entrepreneur: wheat blast (which now afflicted Connecticut and "you know very well that corne is the mony of these parts"), cargo losses, anticipated (but usually unfulfilled) sales of land, and the intricacies of commodity exchange.

Other distresses included the prospect of Fitz's marriage to a certain widow (the father advised caution), Fitz's dissatisfaction at having to share the Pequot lands with his sister Lucy, the mortgage- and the lack of fencing- upon Fishers Island, a boundary controversy with William Parks, and a vexing shortage of salt (which meant driving his Connecticut livestock to the Boston market). His medical activities were probably less discouraging; the outcome of his treatment of a severe accidental gunshot wound is unknown, but somehow there had come to his attention the virtues, as a tonic, of cod liver oil.

On Thursday, May 13, 1675, the assembly reelected him governor as a matter of course. Winthrop protested orally- though he permitted himself to be sworn- and precisely a week later submitted a written request that he be allowed to step down, citing the "troubles & paines of some infirmities" and a desire to visit England. That his intentions were genuine is obvious from the tone of his letter, which verged on the pathetic. Somehow the magistrates and deputies induced him to stay on, if only temporarily. But on June 24 he addressed another letter of resignation, with seal affixed, to Leete and the assistants, and on July 28, he executed a power of attorney in preparation for an early departure.

Nonetheless, he found himself postponing his plans, both for repose and for England, before the middle of August. Less than a year remained to him, yet now he faced, simultaneously and still as governor, two of his colony's most profound emergencies. The first derived from Whitehall, which had fallen into another of its efforts to perfect the organization of its overseas empire. There had been a typical rearrangement of structure, the Council for Trade and Foreign Plantations being replaced by a select committee of the Privy Council itself, and there were special hearings wherein it was charged that the New England colonies had taken improper advantage of the recent war. A "census" of New England- with emphasis upon Massachusetts- was compiled, and a small regional library (25 titles) was recatalogued. One receives the impression of an administrative reform, a redefinition in the interests of precision, with little reference to political wisdom, the kind of process of which the Duke of York was becoming the symbol.