Richard Coote, 1st Earl of Bellomont

Bellomont sailed for New York in late 1697, accompanied by his wife and her cousin, John Nanfan, who had been appointed Lieutenant Governor of New York. The voyage was exceptionally stormy, and Bellomont's ship was blown well south, eventually putting into Barbados before continuing on to New York. He arrived in New York City on 2 April 1698. Bellomont's stylish dress, good looks, and positive relationship with the king predisposed New Yorkers to like him, but he very quickly ran into difficulties and began making enemies.[18]

His attempts to enforce the Navigation Acts predictably turned merchants and traders against him. These attempts were also poorly executed by colonial officials whose interests lay more with those merchants than they did with the crown.[19] He raised the anger of Leisler's opponents by implementing the parliamentary act he had helped pass, and saw through the restoration of Leisler's properties.[20] There was so much opposition within his council to this that he ended up purging the council of those opposed.[21] Bellomont also approved the exhumation of the remains of Leisler and his son-in-law Jacob Milborne, which had been unceremoniously buried under the gallows from which they had been hanged. He sanctioned a proper burial, and provided an honour guard of 100 soldiers for the service.[22]

Bellomont's support of the Leislerians proved to be costly, not just in terms of New York politics, but in Indian diplomacy as well. Benjamin Fletcher, Bellomont's predecessor in office, had taken advantage of the long period between Bellomont's appointment and arrival to make some questionable land grants, including extended leases to properties normally allocated for the governor's use,[23] and in territories that were still claimed by the Iroquois. When the provincial assembly passed a law retracting all of these irregular grants, it predictably angered a number of large landowners.[24] Land grants made in Iroquois territory to Godfridius Dellius, the influential pastor of the Dutch Reformed Church in Albany,[25] and others were a specific subject of Iroquois complaints. Even though Bellomont's law was passed, the grantees appealed to the Board of Trade, and the bill never received royal assent.[26]

Hector de Callière was governor of New France while Bellomont governed New York.

Bellomont denied Dellius and other anti-Leislerians positions of importance in dealing with the Iroquois, resulting in the loss of experienced negotiators.[27] This affected internal Iroquois politics, since supporters of interaction with the English lost influence when their English counterparts were sidelined.[28] This came at a particularly delicate time, when Bellomont was working to strengthen the Covenant Chain that had been neglected by Fletcher.[29]

After the Treaty of Ryswick ended war between the French and English in 1697, the French continued to make war on the Iroquois (primarily through their Algonquian allies in the Great Lakes region), and inflicted significant casualties on them. The Iroquois sought the assistance of the English to combat this, threatening to make peace with the French if they did not receive help.[30] Bellomont and French Governor General Louis-Hector de Callière both claimed dominance over the Iroquois, and each refused to acknowledge the other's right to intercede on their behalf.[31] When Callière summoned the Iroquois to Montreal for negotiations in 1699, Bellomont was alerted, and successfully manoeuvred the Iroquois into not going by sending an emissary to Montreal and troops to Albany under Lieutenant Governor Nanfan.[32] The English emissary was unsuccessful in swaying the French from their course of action, and French-allied Algonquians made incursions deep into Iroquois territory in 1700.[33]

In negotiations with the Iroquois, Bellomont overlooked some of the social elements that Iroquois customs demanded, with the result that the parties ended with differing views of how successful their councils were. Bellomont believed they went well, even though it was fairly clear that the Iroquois negotiators were unhappy with how the discussion had gone.[29] He promised them the construction of a fort at Onondaga, and even convinced the legislature to appropriate £1,000 for its construction, but the Iroquois were evasive on accepting this "gift", and never showed English engineers suitable locations for a fort.[34] Bellomont's attempts to prevent the Iroquois from dealing with the French were negated by the French military successes of 1700, which brought the Iroquois to a peace council that resulted in the 1701 Great Peace of Montreal.[33]

Bellomont's Massachusetts advisor, Elisha Cooke Sr.

In May 1699 Bellomont sailed for Boston.[24] Bellomont spent 14 months in New England in 1699 and 1700, spending a few weeks of that time in New Hampshire and the rest in Massachusetts.[35] In Massachusetts he was treated politely, but his attempts to implement the crown's policies ran into trouble, as they had in New York. He was refused a salary by the colonial legislature, although the "gift" of £1,000 he received was more than that typically given to other governors of the province.[36] The legislature also made repeated attempts to limit appeals to London of judicial decisions handed down by provincial courts. Bellomont, as he was required to do, forwarded laws passed by the legislature to the Board of Trade for approval; these laws were repeatedly struck down because of provisions that attempted to limit royal prerogatives.[37] He also sided politically against Lieutenant Governor William Stoughton, who was an ally of Joseph Dudley, a Massachusetts native who had presided over the trial of Jacob Leisler. Instead, he took council with the populist leader Elisha Cooke Sr.[38]

Not long after his arrival in Boston, Bellomont engineered the arrest of William Kidd. Rumours had reached the colonies that Kidd had descended into piracy, and he came to be viewed by Bellomont and the other high-profile investors in Kidd's ship as a liability. In November 1698 the Admiralty issued orders to all colonial governors to apprehend Kidd.[39] When he was informed by an agent of Kidd's in June 1699 that Kidd was in the area, Bellomont sent a message back to Kidd, promising clemency.[40] Kidd responded that he would come, sending some of his treasures as a present to Lady Bellomont; she refused them.[41]

After Kidd's arrival in Boston on 3 July, Bellomont demanded from Kidd a written account of his travels, which Kidd, after haggling over the time, agreed to deliver on the morning of 6 July. When he did not do so, Bellomont issued a warrant for his arrest. It was executed as Kidd was en route to see Bellomont at midday the same day.[42] Kidd then attempted to negotiate his freedom, using the secret locations of his treasure and a captured prize ship as bargaining chips.[43] Although a portion of Kidd's treasure was recovered, it did not buy Kidd's freedom, and he was shipped to London in April 1700, where he was tried, convicted, and hanged.[44] In contrast to the relative secrecy with which he conducted some of his communications with Kidd,[40] Bellomont was scrupulous in his dealings with other potentially questionable merchant and pirate business, despite being offered as much as £5,000 to overlook illicit activities.[45]

Matters of frontier security and the lumber trade dominated his brief administration in New England.[46] New England was recognized as an important source of ship masts for the Royal Navy, and the Board of Trade and the Admiralty sought to reserve suitable trees for the crown's benefit. In both provinces, he encountered opposition to entrenched land and timber interests that resented the intrusion of surveyors onto their lands, and interfered with their taking of lumber from lands that had not been granted and were thus reserved to the crown.[47]

In New Hampshire the timber dispute was overlaid by ongoing disputes between local landowners and Samuel Allen, a London merchant who had acquired the territorial claims of the heirs of John Mason, the province's founder, and was pursuing them against those landowners.[48] Allen, who had been commissioned governor of the province in 1692,[49] only came to the colony in 1698 to take a direct interest in its affairs. During Bellomont's brief visit to New Hampshire in July and August 1699, Allen attempted to buy him to his side. Allen offered his daughter (with a large dowry) as a marriage match for the earl's son; Bellomont refused the offer.[48][50]

18th century depiction of an Abenaki couple

The frontier situation that Bellomont encountered during his time in Massachusetts and New Hampshire was somewhat tense, because the Abenaki of northern New England (like the Iroquois in New York) had not been involved in the Treaty of Ryswick that ended King William's War. In the aftermath of the war, they and the settlers of Maine and New Hampshire were extremely mistrustful of one another.[51] The Abenaki felt threatened by settler encroachment on their lands, and English colonists feared a return to significant French-inspired raiding of their settlements. Bellomont issued proclamations to distribute among the Abenaki denying plans to take their lands, but was unable to ease the underlying tensions.[52]

One reason for this was his naive assumption that Abenaki concerns were rooted in a French Catholic conspiracy. When English negotiators attempted to separate the Abenaki from their Jesuit missionaries, this upset ongoing trade negotiations, and did nothing to assuage Puritan New England concerns over the activities of "Popish Emissaries" intriguing to make war on them.[53] The colonial legislature passed a law banning Roman Catholics from territory claimed by the province, which included Abenaki territory claimed by Governor Sir William Phips in 1693.[54] Bellomont engaged in fruitless attempts to convince the eastern Abenaki to migrate west, where they would come under Iroquois influence; this was unsuccessful, in part because the Abenaki and Iroquois had a history of conflict.[55] Despite these difficulties, he managed to achieve a precarious peace with the Abenaki in January 1699.[56]

Abenaki relations were also complicated by misunderstandings about sovereignty. The Abenaki viewed themselves as sovereign, while the English believed them to be subjects, either to themselves or to the French. A prisoner exchange involving English held by the Abenaki and Indians held by the English was frustrated when Bellomont believed that it would be sufficient to negotiate with his counterpart in Quebec to obtain the release of the English prisoners.[55]