ooks somewhat like a want of confidence in the
legal capacity and judgment of Stoughton, owing perhaps, to the bad work
he had made at the Salem trials, the Summer before; but the whole
passage shows that Phips, conscious of his own ignorance of such things,
left them wholly to the Chief-justice.

The Records show that he sat in Council to the close of the Legislature,
on the second of July. But the main business was, evidently, under the
management of Stoughton, who was Chairman of a large Joint Committee,
charged with adjusting the whole body of the laws to the transition of
the Colony, from an independent Government, under the first Charter, to
the condition of a subject Province.

One person had been tried and executed; and the Court was holding its
second Session when the Legislature adjourned. Phips went to the
eastward, immediately after the eighth of July. Again, on the first of
August, he embarked from Boston with a force of four hundred and fifty
men, for the mouth of the Kennebec. In the Archives of Massachusetts,
Secretary's office, State House, Vol. LI., p. 9, is the original
document, signed by Phips, dated on the first of August, 1692, turning
over the Government to Stoughton, during his absence. It appears by
Church's _Eastern Expeditions_, Part II., p. 82, edited by H. M. Dexter,
and published by Wiggin & Lunt, Boston, 1867, that, during a
considerable part of the month of August, the Governor must have been
absent, engaged in important operations on the coast of Maine. About the
middle of September, he went again to the Kennebec, not returning until
a short time before the twelfth of October. In the course of the year,
he also was absent for a while in Rhode Island. Although an energetic
and active man, he had as much on his hands, arising out of questions as
to the extent of his authority over Connecticut and Rhode Island and the
management of affairs at the eastward, as he could well attend to. His
Instructions, too, from the Crown, made it his chief duty to protect the
eastern portions of his Government. The state of things there, in
connection with Indian assaults and outrages upon the outskirt
settlements, under French instigation, was represented as urgently
demanding his attention. Besides all this, his utmost exertions were
needed to protect the sea-coast against buccaneers. In addition to the
public necessities, thus calling him to the eastward, it was,
undoubtedly, more agreeable to his feel