ade, on either side, for some time.

Mr. Willard died on the twelfth of September, 1707; and the great
question again rose as to the proper person to be called to the head of
the College. The extraordinary learning of Cotton Mather undoubtedly
gave him commanding and pre-eminent claims in the public estimation; and
he had reason to think that the favorite object of his ambition was
about to be attained. But he was doomed to bitter disappointment. On the
twenty-eighth of October, the Corporation, through its senior member,
the Rev. James Allen of Boston, communicated to the Governor the vote of
that body, appointing the "Honorable John Leverett" to the Presidency;
and, on the fourteenth of January, 1708, he was publicly inducted to
office. The Mathers could stand it no longer; but, six days after,
addressed, each, a letter to Dudley, couched in the bitterest and most
abusive terms.--[_Massachusetts Historical Society's Collections, I.,
iii., 126._] No explosions of disappointed politicians and defeated
aspirants for office, in our day, surpass these letters. They show how
deeply the writers were stung. They heap maledictions on the Governor,
without any of the restraints of courtesy or propriety. They charge him
with all sorts of malversation in office, bribery, peculation,
extortion, falseness, hypocrisy, and even murder; imputing to him "the
guilt of innocent blood," because, many years before, he had, as
Chief-justice of New York, presided at the Trial of Leisler and Milburn;
and averring that "those men were not only murdered, but barbarously
murdered."

It is observable that some of the heinous crimes charged upon Dudley,
occurred before his arrival as Governor of Massachusetts, in 1702; and
that, in these very letters, they remind him that it was, in part, by
their influence that he was then appointed, and that a letter from
Cotton Mather, in favor of his appointment, was read before "the late
King William." Both the Mathers were remarkable for a lack of vision, in
reference to the logical bearing of what they said. It did not occur to
them, that the fact of their soliciting his appointment closed their
mouths from making charges for public acts well known to them at the
time.

Dudley says that he was assured by the Mathers, on his arrival, that he
had the favor of all good men; and Cotton Mather, in his letter, reminds
him that he signalized his friendly feelings, by giving to the public,
on that occasion, the