42 WILLIAM SHIRLEY— A lUSTORV

officeholders there under the crown was little unlike the
task of Sisyphus. Nevertheless, as an Englishman, with
that instinctive, conservative fidelity to his ideals which has
throughout the ages made men of that race saints, heroes
or fools, he without hesitation and regardless of colonial
opposition began attempting to put in practice those con-
ceptions of colonial administration generally held by Eng-
lishmen of the official class in America. Devotion to the prin-
ciples of those laws of England which were a|)p'lied through
the king's prerogative to the plantations, was evidently a car-
dinal tenet of his political philosophy.^ Shirley, however,
in following this course was listening to ambition as well
as to principle, and avowed tO' the officials at home and to
Belcher his intention to win recognition through services
to the crown. His earliest case bearing upon controversial
questions accomplished little more than tO' aline him clearly
with the prerogative party in New England."

' Shirley's attitude in America was consistently loyal to the prevailing
ministerial view in England of the binding force of the king's preroga-
tive in the colonies, as exercised by his officials there, and during
Belcher's administration this attitude appeared prominently in the
English barrister's support of the claims of the admiralty court. Shirley
perhaps had considerable familiarity with the civil law, essential as a
basis for admiralty court practice, since he brought among his recom-
mendations to Governor Belcher one from Dr. Exton Sayer, advocate-
general of the admiralty and a noted English lawyer. Bel. Ps., vol. i,
pp. 452-453. Concerning Dr. Sayer, cf. A. P, C, vol. iii, pp. 202-203,
283, 895; iChalmers, Revolt, vol. ii, p. 128; List of Vernon-Wagcr MSS.,
pp. 27, 30. ,,

' In a case in which he was employed a few days after his arrival by
the Massachusetts assembly to aid some destitute Palatine immigrants
he cut sharply athwart the current o( public opinion by bringing suit in
the admiralty court, but counter suits developing in the prcivince courts
he seems to have been unable to secure justice for his clients. The
story of the Palatines and the efforts to obtain redress in their behalf
appear in documents found in the Suffolk Files and in the SulTolk court
records as follows: Suffolk Files, nos. 