press. Two years after Bradford was established, the Assembly asked permission of the Governor "to print their journal," a request that resulted in the House being dissolved. But while Fletcher was in power, Bradford's course was prosperous and smooth, and continued so until Fletcher was succeeded by the Earl of Bellomont, who, being a reformer, believed in low salaries and much work.
A clash came after the Earl had had a long conference with the Indians—"the greatest fatigue I ever underwent in my whole life," he wrote. "I was shut up in a closed chamber with sixty Sachems who, besides a stench of bear's grease with which they plentifully daubed themselves, were continually either smoking or drinking drams of rum—for eight days." He decided that this heroic performance justified a printed report. Bradford, however, refused to print it, as he considered it a private diary and not a public paper coming within his contract. Bellomont retaliated by charging Bradford with neglecting his duty, and appointed one Abraham Gouverneur in his place. Bradford won, however, by anticipating the advice of Comte de Buffy: "Take good care of yourself; be persuaded that if you will only let your adversary die before you, it is he, not you, who has lost the case." Bellomont died before he was able to do any serious damage to Bradford, or to diminish his influence and lessen his power in the colony.
We have told in the previous chapter how the printer increased his business and how he sought, when his son Andrew became of age, to start the young man's career in Rhode Island, finally establishing him in Philadelphia in 1712. Following the new movement of the day, and imitating Andrew in Philadelphia, at the age of sixtytwo Bradford established the first newspaper in New York; in 1728, having a paper in Philadelphia owned by
