Bellomont had returned to his government in New York when, on the 5th of March, 1701, he died. It took ten days for the news to reach Boston (March 15), and four days later (March 19) word came by the roundabout channel of Virginia of the declaration of war between England and France. In the midst of the attendant apprehension, on April 7th, mourning guns were fired for the dead governor at the Sconce and at the Castle, and the artillery company gave three volleys in the middle of the town, Col. Townshend, as Sewall in his antipathy does not fail to record, wearing a wig! When Bellomont had left for New York in May, 1700, the immediate charge of the government had again fallen upon Stoughton. He did not long survive his chief, and died July 7, 1701, in his seventieth year,[188] and from this time to the coming of Dudley the council acted as executive. It was on Joseph Dudley, to a large party the most odious of all New Englanders, the ally of Andros, that the thoughts of all were now turned. It was known that he had used every opportunity to impress upon the king his fitness to maintain the royal prerogative and protect the revenue in New England. The people of Boston had not seen him for about ten years. In 1691 he had landed there on his way to New York, where he was to serve as a councillor; and during that and the following year he had made some unobtrusive visits to his home in Roxbury, till, in 1693, he was recalled to England to be made lieutenant-governor of the Isle of Wight. With the death of Bellomont his hopes again rose. Ashurst, as the senior of the Massachusetts agents, still opposed him, though his associate, Constantine Phipps,[189] was led to believe that the king might do worse than appoint the aspirant. Dudley was not deficient in tact, and he got some New Englanders who chanced to be in England to recommend him; and a letter, which he used to some purpose, came not surprisingly, considering his lineage, from Cotton Mather, saying quite enough in Dudley’s praise. Elisha Cooke and his friends were not ignorant of such events, and secured the appointment of Wait Winthrop as agent to organize a fresh opposition to Dudley’s purposes. It was too late. The letters which Dudley offered in testimony were powerful enough to remove the king’s hesitancy, and Dudley secured his appointment, which, on the death of the king a few days later, was promptly confirmed by Anne.[190]