[10][11] After forging relations based on his father's letters of introduction in London, Belcher traveled to the Netherlands to do the same with Dutch merchants, and to begin a tour of western Europe.

After seeing the sights of Rotterdam and Amsterdam he traveled to Hanover, where he was received by Electress Sophia and met the future King of Great Britain, George, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg.

[13] During these travels he was exposed to a variety of religious practices, but found regular comfort in Christian services most similar to the Calvinist-leaning New England Congregational Church.

In 1735 he reported having invested £15,000 in these ventures,[24] which failed in part because under British law at the time it was illegal to smelt copper in the colonies, necessitating the costly shipment of ores to England.

In addition to hiring an experienced metal refiner in England, he also recruited German miners;[28][29] the area near the Simsbury mine became known as "Hanover" as a consequence of their presence.

[32] Belcher, along with compatriot Jeremiah Dummer, representing opponents of a land bank proposal that Burges had promised to support, bribed him £1,000 to resign before he left England.

Dummer and Belcher were then instrumental in promoting Samuel Shute as an alternative to Burges, believing among other things that he was likely to be well received in New England because he was from a prominent Dissenting family.

[40] Belcher was elected by the assembly as an agent to London to explain the colonial position on the governor's salary, and Cooke helped raise the funds needed for the trip.

He was willing to countenance such an exemption for the relatively modest number of Quakers, but refused to support one for the more numerous and politically connected Anglicans until it was apparent in 1735 that he would be instructed to do so.

[45] In 1735, Belcher presided over a meeting in Deerfield at which the Stockbridge Indians agreed to accept Congregationalist missionaries and authorized the erection of a mission house.

Dunbar, who was friendly with the Wentworths, was also the king's surveyor, responsible for identifying trees suitable for use as ship masts and ensuring no illegal logging was taking place on ungranted lands in all of northern New England.

This work was in opposition to a significant number of Belcher's supporters, who engaged in illegal logging on those lands, behavior explicitly countenanced by the governor.

[53] The illegal logging activity by Belcher's allies eventually came to the attention of William Shirley, the crown advocate of the provincial admiralty court whose patron was the powerful Duke of Newcastle.

[56] Despite claims that he was neutral on the matter, Belcher orchestrated affairs to prefer the settlement of lands north and west of the Merrimack River by Massachusetts residents.

New Hampshire's advocates for separation from Massachusetts found an able spokesman in John Thomlinson, a London merchant with logging interests, who in 1737 convinced the Board of Trade to establish a commission on the boundary issue.

William Shirley, who sought a more lucrative position, sent his wife to London to lobby on his behalf, making common cause with Samuel Waldo, a wealthy lumber baron whose supply contracts with the Royal Navy were harmed by Belcher's support of illegal logging.

Belcher had been ordered to effect the retirement of a large amount of Massachusetts paper currency by 1741, and the legislation to accomplish this was rejected by the Board of Trade, leading to the introduction of competing banking proposals in the province.

[63] Merchant interests opposed to the land bank began widespread lobbying in London for Parliamentary relief[64] (which came in 1741, when it passed legislation extending the 1720 Bubble Act, which disallowed unchartered companies, to the colonies)[65] likely abetted by John Thomlinson.

[66] While this crisis brewed in Massachusetts, the ascendant Duke of Newcastle successfully pressured Prime Minister Robert Walpole to declare war on Spain in 1739.

[71] Two principal themes within these analyses are Belcher's acquisition of many local enemies, and the idea that good imperial governance in London eventually required his replacement.

In this instance, however, imperial and colonial considerations coincided over the need for Massachusetts to provide a significant number of troops for Newcastle's proposed West Indies expedition.

Seemingly restless and in some financial need, he expressed weak interest in the possibility of holding another colonial appointment, and in 1743 traveled to England, stopping in Dublin to visit his son Jonathan Jr.

When he arrived in London he joined the social circles of the Congregationalist and Quaker communities (the latter including among its influential members his brother-in-law Richard Partridge), and called on colonial administrators in the hopes of acquiring a new posting.

[89] Although Belcher's arrival prompted some goodwill, resulting in the passage of bills to fund the government and deal with ongoing counterfeiting of the colonial paper currency, divisions soon resurface along the same sectional lines.

However, Quaker leaders and the proprietors had expressed great reservations about the Presbyterians' drive to gain a charter for the school (on the grounds that it would be used as a vehicle for converting their children), and Governor Morris had refused to grant one.

[107] Historian Robert Zemsky wrote of Belcher, "[He] was almost a caricature of a New England Yankee: arrogant, vindictive, often impetuous despite a most solemn belief in rational action and calculated maneuver.

[109] In personal correspondence with friends, family, and supporters, he used condescending names to refer to his opponents,[110] and he applied pressure to the press in Boston to ensure reasonably favorable coverage of him.

[113] Belcher's summer home in Milton, Massachusetts, was destroyed by fire in 1776, but portions of it may have survived in its replacement, built by his widow and now known as the Belcher-Rowe House, also listed on the National Register.

)[115] Governor Belcher is twice mentioned in Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Old Esther Dudley," one of the stories that make up "Legends of the Province House," a quartet of tales that first appeared in 1838–39.

At his death Governor Belcher left instructions that he be buried with his ardent friend and cousin, Judge Jonathan Remington (1677–1745; father-in-law of William Ellery, a signer of the Declaration of Independence).