LAST ROYAL GOVERNOR OF MASSACHUSETTS 23 



passed his fortieth birthday, was hoping soon to retreat 

 with his wife and children, there to spend the re- 

 mainder of his days in his favourite historical studies 

 and in rural pursuits. Like two eminent historians of 

 our own time, Mr. Bancroft and Mr. Parkman, he was 

 an expert at gardening and had a passion for flowers. 

 But it is not so easy to tear oneself away from public 

 life. In the spring of 1752, the death of his uncle, 

 Edward Hutchinson, left vacant the offices of judge of 

 probate and justice of common pleas for the county of 

 Suffolk, and the nephew accepted an appointment 

 to fill these places. Two years afterward he met with 

 an overwhelming affliction in the sudden death of his 

 wife, at the age of thirty-seven. For twenty years 

 their life had been so happy that the remembrance of 

 it kept him ever after from the mere thought of another 

 marriage. He now sought relief from sorrow in in- 

 creased devotion to public affairs. In that same ye,ar, 

 1754, he was one of the delegates to the memorable 

 Congress at Albany, where he was associated with 

 Franklin on the committee for drawing up a plan of 

 union for the thirteen colonies. It is pleasant for a 

 moment to see these two eminent men working to- 

 gether in a friendly spirit, little dreaming of their 

 future estrangement. For the conception of the 

 famous Albany Plan, Hutchinson gives the credit 

 entirely to Franklin. At that time the views of the 

 two were in harmony. No one had as yet thought 

 seriously of such a thing as separation from the British 

 empire. If this sagacious scheme for a federal union 

 of the thirteen colonies, with a parliament or grand 

 council of their own, a viceroy appointed by the crown, 

 and local self-government guaranteed to the people, 



