The Arrival of Royal Governor Samuel Shute
Samuel Shute was commissioned governor of the Provinces of Massachusetts Bay and New Hampshire by King George I on June 15, 1716.
Late in the evening of Thursday, October 4, 1716, Samuel Shute arrived in Boston on board the Lusitania. Being so late in the day, the new governor delayed his official landing until Friday morning. The welcoming celebration began about 9 a.m. and continued until early afternoon — between 1 and 2 p.m. — when “his Excellency was Publickly Entertained at Dinner, in Company with His Majesty’s Council, with the Speaker and many of the house of Representatives, and a great Number of other Gentlemen, Officers, etc. The Joy and Satisfaction of His Majesty’s good People of this Country was so much the greater upon this Occasion, because of some fears we had been under.”
The first and only newspaper announcement of Governor Shute’s celebrated arrival in Boston appeared in the October 1 to 8, 1716 edition of the Boston News-Letter (see full report below). It’s also the only newspaper announcement of Shute’s arrival because, at this time, the Boston News-Letter is still the first and only newspaper being printed in the American colonies.
As background, in 1690, Benjamin Harris published the first attempt at an American newspaper, Publick Occurrences Both Foreign and Domestick. However, the controversial first issue was printed without license and with spicy content, so it was immediately banned and all issues burned by the then Royal Governor Thomas Hinckley. In fact, as I point out in Rag Linen’s Beginning of Newspapers collection, the only original copy of Harris’s paper known to survive is held by the British Library, likely the one issue sent back to the homeland by Governor Hinckley.
Fourteen years after Harris’s attempt, on April 24, 1704, John Campbell (editor and postmaster) joined forces with Bartholomew Green (printer) to publish the Boston News-Letter, the first successful American newspaper. Despite pre-1720 circulations that rarely, if ever, exceeded 300, the News-Letter remained the only American newspaper until December 1719 when the Boston Gazette and American Weekly Mercury (Philadelphia) both began publishing.
The pictures below are from the Boston News-Letter issue dated October 1 to October 8, 1716, and includes the above-mentioned back-page report on the arrival of Samuel Shute, the new Royal Governor of Massachusetts Bay and New Hampshire in New England.
