Page:American Historical Review, Vol. 23.djvu/43

Rh bureau until 1679, when he laid down his clerkship. Then Blathwayt began to be an important person in the colonial service. His official relations with the colonies were enlarged by long service as the first incumbent of the office of auditor-general of royal revenues in America, created in 1680. But it was especially after 1685, when the secretaries of state no longer play an active part in colonial administration, that Blathwayt became a prominent figure. Williamson, Coventry, and Jenkins, of the industrious administrative type, were followed by Sunderland, Shrewsbury, and Nottingham, whose attention to the colonies was overshadowed by the feverish politics peculiar to the decade after 1685. They came into office with less experience and they attended the plantation committee with much less regularity. Colonial governors continued to recognize the authority of one or other of the principal secretaries, but a perfunctory and briefer correspondence marked the waning influence of the office. As one governor said, " I have written to the Lords of Trade and Mr. Blathwayt that I shall be brief. Blathwayt thus became, in fact if not in name, colonial under-secretary. He was endowed with an ability fitted to routine administration. John Evelyn described him as "very dexterous in business" and as one who had "raised himself by his industry from very moderate circumstances". William III., speaking from a close observation of him as secretary-at-war, said he was "dull, though hee had a good method". Blathwayt applied himself with vigor and persistence to his duties as under-secretary and as auditorgeneral. He is to be counted in that group of minor officials whose length of service, knowledge, and strict attention to business brought consistency of practice and efficiency into a system which subjected the holders of high office to the distractions and changing fortunes of politics.

The belief was current in the colonies that ministers at home were either too busy with other matters to give heed to the urgent