Hutchinson was blamed by British Prime Minister Lord North for being a significant contributor to the tensions that led to the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War.

Hutchinson wrote a three-volume History of the Province of Massachusetts Bay whose last volume, published posthumously, covered his own period in office.

Historian Bernard Bailyn wrote of Hutchinson, "If there was one person in America whose actions might have altered the outcome [of the protests and disputes preceding the American Revolutionary War], it was he.

"[3] Scholars use Hutchinson's career to represent the tragic fate of the many Loyalists marginalized by their attachment to the British imperial system at a time when the American nation-state was emerging.

[8] In 1732, he received some exposure to politics when he accompanied Governor Jonathan Belcher on a voyage to Casco Bay for negotiations with the Abenaki of Maine, then part of Massachusetts.

[13] He spoke out against the province's practice of issuing bills of credit (as a form of paper currency), whose inflationary drop in value wrought havoc in the economy.

[16] His continued advocacy of currency reforms so annoyed the populist faction that the need to guard his properties in Boston and Milton from possible mob action was discussed.

Most important, the report drafted by Hutchinson concluded that the colonies must be encouraged to establish "a Union of His Majesty's several governments on the continent, that so their councils, treasure, and strength may be employed in due proportion against their common enemy".

[28] In 1761 Hutchinson brought upon himself a storm of protest and criticism by issuing writs of assistance, documents that authorized essentially arbitrary searches by customs officials.

Adams and the Otises seized on the issue to rail against Hutchinson's monopolization of power (since he was also a lieutenant governor and sat on the council) and lack of legal qualifications for the post of chief justice.

Much colonial protest followed, and Hutchinson agreed with vocal opponents like the Otises (who around this time began using the phrase "no taxation without representation") that the law harmed the Massachusetts economy.

Biographer Andrew Walmsley observes that Hutchinson at this stage seriously underestimated the impact of these attacks in building a coherent opposition to crown control, and in the damage it was doing to his own reputation.

[citation needed] When the Massachusetts assembly met to draft a petition to London on the matter in October 1764, Hutchinson opposed the inclusion of the radicals' language, and eventually pushed through a more moderate statement of opposition.

The next night Hutchinson's Boston mansion was surrounded, and the crowd demanded that he formally deny arguing in favor of the Stamp Act in his correspondence with London.

Described by one architectural historian as "the first developed example of provincial Palladianism in New England,"[40] the house was broken into (Hutchinson and his family narrowly escaping) and systematically ransacked.

[41] Hutchinson's detailed inventory (reprinted by biographer James Kendall Hosmer) valued the damage done at more than £2,200, and he eventually received over £3,100 from the province for his troubles.

[45] Amid increased furor after the passage of the 1767 Townshend Acts, Governor Bernard requested and received British Army troops to protect crown officials.

[66] Hutchinson's letters, written between 1767 and 1769 to Thomas Whately, a retired former leading member of the British government, included the observation that colonists couldn't have the full rights they would have in the home country, essentially requiring an "abridgment of what are called English liberties".

[67] He made no specific proposals on how the colonial government should be reformed, writing in a letter that was not among those published, "I can think of nothing but what will produce as great an evil as that which it may remove or will be of a very uncertain event.

After it became known that other tea ships sent to North America had turned back, Hutchinson continued to justify his actions in letters to England, anticipating hearings on the matter once he arrived there.

[74][81] In May 1774 General Thomas Gage arrived in Boston to take over as governor, and to implement the "Coercive Acts" Parliament had passed as punishment for the tea party.

One part of the Government Act, the appointment by the crown of the governor's council, was something he had long opposed without formal hearings on the matter, but even colonial authorities sympathetic to his view believed events had by 1774 gone too far for the British political establishment to support alternatives.

[84] At the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War in April 1775 his Milton mansion was seized for use as an army barracks, and a trunk containing copies of much of his correspondence fell into rebel hands.

Hutchinson's argument was that the Declaration was a series of "wilful misrepresentations," "imaginary grievances," and "brutal insults" as incitements to rebellion; further, that "if no taxes or duties had been laid upon the colonies, other pretences would have been found for exception to the authority of Parliament.

He continued to be treated favorably by the King, but was compelled to refuse the offer of a baronetcy because most of his fortune was lost due to his exile,[87] and he became marginalized from power as the prosecution of the war took center stage.

His properties, like those of other exiled Loyalists, were seized and sold off by the state; his Milton home was eventually purchased by James and Mercy Otis Warren (the latter being the sister of his long-time enemy James Otis, Jr.)[89][90] Bitter and disillusioned about his forced exile, and grieving the loss of his daughter Peggy in 1777, Hutchinson continued to work on his history of the colony which was the fruit of many decades of research.

John Adams was characteristically harsh in his assessment of him, calling him "avaricious" and describing him as a "courtier" who manipulated those at higher levels of power to achieve his aims.

[97] British scholar David Kenneth Fieldhouse says his tragedy emerged because he was "a victim of the clash of two ideologies, his own archaic and static, that of his opponents contemporary and dynamic".

[98] Carl L. Becker, a prominent American historian wrote: "Nothing would have pleased him [Hutchinson] more than that New England should have shown its emancipation from provincialism by meriting the goodwill of the King.

The main piece, a parcel of land known as Governor Hutchinson's Field, is owned by The Trustees of the Reservations and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.