William Phips

Sir William Phips (also Phipps; * February 2, 1651 near Nequasett (now Woolwich, Maine), † February 18, 1695 in London ) was a New England adventurers, military and politicians.

Life

Hailing from a poor family Phips was in 1686 suddenly rich and famous, as he hid the gold of a sunken Spanish galleon in front of Hispaniola; for this discovery, he was also beaten by the English king knighted and appointed senior sheriff of the newly formed Dominion of New England. In the first the French and Indian War, he led several military expeditions against French forts in present-day Canada. In May 1690 he came initially as a military leader, the conquest of Port Royal, the capital of Acadia; in October of him, the French inflicted a heavy defeat at the Battle of Quebec. Nevertheless, he was appointed in 1692 to the first royal governor of the now converted to a Crown Colony Massachusetts. During his tenure, the Salem witch trials, for which he 1692 the Special Court einrichtete, the precipitated under the chairmanship of William Stoughton more than 20 death sentences fall; the following year he finished, however, the ongoing processes by decree and ordered a release of all defendants to. Even otherwise, his tenure was marked by a hard transparent system network of political and personal intrigue. By Joseph Dudley and other political rivals, he was not only the inability, but also of infidelity and accused was finally loaded due to these accusations from the Board of Trade for questioning to London, where he was arrested upon his arrival in January 1695, and soon afterwards in the adhesion died even before the hearings began.