Jonathan Belcher, lately the agent of the province, was now commissioned governor. He came of a New England stock, and his father had gained a fortune in trade, and had secured some political consideration as a member of the council. His mother was a daughter of Thomas Danforth, one of the ablest of the leading politicians under the old charter. The new governor had graduated at Harvard College; and foreign travel had added ease and attraction, with some of the wiles of the world, to a presentable person. He had been accustomed to dispense his fortune in ways to draw attention and give him consequence. He had thrown out intimations in high quarters in England that the view he once held on the prerogative had undergone a change, and that he knew the turbulent spirits of his native province well enough to manage them. Wilks and Shute had seconded his professions, and his appointment followed. With instructions pitched to a higher demand than ever before, he was sent off to try his skill with an intractable people. Meanwhile Dummer had been superseded by Tailer, a former incumbent of the lieutenant-governorship, chiefly because the naval office he was occupying was wanted for another. Tailer was at the time in New England, and received his commission before Belcher arrived, which was not till August 10, 1730. So amid the terror, from a new invasion of small-pox which had withdrawn the town from the observance of its centenary,[264] and with signs of a new life, as well as a new era, in the relief which the law was giving to the baptists and the quakers from the burden of the parish taxes, and with the stranger element of their population developing a new Irish Presbyterian church under John Moorhead,[265] the people of Boston received their recusant townsman as governor. He made his speech in due time to the General Court. Cato, he told them, went beyond reason in letting his obstinacy lure him to destruction. This reference to the salary contention did not intimidate them; for the House had information from its own agents that the jealousies of the party leaders in England were not likely to let any issue affecting the continuance of the charter be forced upon Parliament. In any event there was a disposition rather to accept parliamentary domination, whatever it might be, than surrender one jot of their principles. With such a disposition the House became stubborn,—politely so. It even voted the governor liberal grants for the services which he had rendered as agent, and he took the gratuities though he had abandoned the grantors. The allowances for his services as governor he could not well accept under such instructions as bound him; and as he needed the pay, his son solicited permission from the home government for the father to receive the usual grants. The request was allowed, and the salary contention came virtually to an end. When Belcher approved a grant of £500 to be placed in the Bank of England