Samuel Shute (January 12, 1662 – April 15, 1742) was an English military officer and royal governor of the provinces of Massachusetts and New Hampshire. After serving in the Nine Years' War and the War of the Spanish Succession, he was appointed by King George I as governor of Massachusetts and New Hampshire in 1716. His tenure was marked by virulent disagreements with the Massachusetts assembly on a variety of issues, and by poorly conducted diplomacy with respect to the Native American Wabanaki Confederacy of northern New England that led to Dummer's War (1722–1725).
Although Shute was partly responsible for the breakdown in negotiations with the Wabanakis, he returned to England in early 1723 to procure resolutions to his ongoing disagreements with the Massachusetts assembly, leaving conduct of the war to Lieutenant Governor William Dummer. His protests resulted in the issuance in 1725 of the Explanatory Charter, essentially confirming his position in the disputes with the assembly. He did not return to New England, being replaced as governor in 1728 by William Burnet, and refused to be considered for reappointment after Burnet's sudden death in 1729.
Thomas Hutchinson (Massachusetts royal governor in the early 1770s), in his history of Massachusetts, described Shute's tenure as governor as the most contentious since the Antinomian Controversy of the 1630s.
Early life
Samuel Shute was born in London, England on January 12, 1662. He was the eldest of six children of Benjamin Shute, a London merchant. His mother, identified in sources as Elizabeth, Patience, or Mary, was the daughter of Joseph Caryl, a dissenting Presbyterian clergyman. His brother John, afterward Lord Barrington, became an influential member of parliament, political leader of religious Dissenters, and confidant of King George I. Shute was educated by Rev. Charles Morton, who afterward emigrated to New England. Shute then attended the Leiden University in Holland and subsequently entered the English army, serving under William III.
In the War of the Spanish Succession Shute served in the campaigns of the Duke of Marlborough in the 3rd Dragoon Guards. He was a captain of that cavalry regiment when he was wounded at the 1704 Battle of Blenheim; by the end of the war he had a full promotion to Lieutenant Colonel and a brevet promotion to colonel. Upon the accession of King George I in 1714, Colonel Elizeus Burges was commissioned as Governor of Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Massachusetts agents Jeremiah Dummer and Jonathan Belcher, representing opponents of a land bank proposal that Burges had promised to support, bribed him £1,000 to resign before he left England. Dummer and Belcher were then instrumental in promoting Shute as an alternative to Burges, believing among other things that he was likely to be well received in New England because he was from a prominent Dissenting family.
Governor of Massachusetts and New Hampshire
Shute arrived in Boston on October 4, 1716, where he began a difficult and contentious tenure in office. He signaled his partisanship by first taking up residence with Paul Dudley, son of the last-appointed governor Joseph Dudley and a land bank opponent, rather than Acting Governor William Tailer.
New Hampshire
Shute's administration of New Hampshire was not as troublesome as that of Massachusetts, but issues began early. Lieutenant Governor George Vaughan, who had been acting as governor for a year before Shute's arrival, insisted on claiming full authority to act when Shute was not present in that province. Against direct orders from Shute, Vaughan, in Shute's absence, dissolved the assembly and dismissed councillor Samuel Penhallow. In September 1717 Shute, with the concurrence of his council, suspended Vaughan, recalled the assembly, and reinstated Penhallow. Vaughan was afterward formally replaced as lieutenant governor by John Wentworth.
One positive event connected with the administration of Governor Shute was the resettlement of a large number of Scotch emigrants from the north of Ireland. In early 1718 Reverend William Boyd arrived from Ulster to petition for land on behalf of a number of Presbyterian families seeking to emigrate. Shute favorably received the emissary, and several ships with migrants arrived in August 1718. They eventually settled in New Hampshire, where they founded the town of Londonderry. This was the beginning of a major wave of Scotch-Irish migration to both New Hampshire and Massachusetts.
