Belcher played the potentate with the Indians, and made his treaties with them as his predecessors had done. He met them at Falmouth (Portland) in 1732, and at Deerfield in 1735. Perhaps he was fairer in his dealings with them than he was with his fellows of the whiter skin, for he has passed into history as the least entitled to esteem of all the line of royal governors in Massachusetts,—a depreciation perhaps helped by his being born on the soil. His political paths were too devious. Hutchinson tells us that when Tailer, the lieutenant-governor, died in 1732, it was Adam Winthrop that Belcher openly favored in New England as the successor, while he intrigued with the Board of Trade to secure the appointment of Paul Mascarene; yet to no avail, for Spencer Phips, the adopted son of Sir William, succeeded to the place. [Illustration] New Hampshire had been reunited with Massachusetts under Burnet, and she had proved much more tractable than the larger colony in yielding the point of the fixed salary to the governor. She had hopes of being in some way rewarded for it. Under Belcher matters grew worse. He quarrelled with the lieutenant-governor, and David Dunbar, the surveyor-general of the king’s lands, came into the place, but without healing dissensions. Dunbar had the support of influential persons like Benning Wentworth and Theodore Atkinson; and Belcher made what he could out of the friendship of Richard Waldron, the secretary.[277] Massachusetts, as well as her governor, had grievances against her neighbor; and she prohibited by legislation the circulation within her bounds of the promissory notes of New Hampshire whose redemption was not well secured. New Hampshire and Massachusetts were never again under a single executive. Wentworth chanced to be in London when Belcher’s downfall came, and he readily slipped into the executive seat of his province.[278] [Illustration: Script