George James Bruere (born 1720/21, died 10 September 1780[1]) was the British Governor of Bermuda from 1764 until his death.
Of all Bermuda's governors since 1612, his term of office was the longest. He had a difficult time during the American Revolutionary War and is thought to have died of stress caused by the interplay of Bermudians and Continental rebels.
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Born about 1721, on 17 July 1743 Bruere married Elizabeth Neale, daughter of Richard Neale by his marriage to Anne Pendock, in St Mary's Church, Nottingham, England.[2]
After an early career as a British Army officer, Bruere was appointed as Governor of Bermuda in 1764.[3][4] Previously serving in the Army with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, he arrived in Bermuda on the Prince of Wales in August 1764, bringing with him his wife and nine children.[5]
He has been described as "a benign, simple and kindly man with a large family"[6] and by the historian Sir John William Kaye as "a staunch royalist... loyal to the core".[7] However, Kaye reports further that
Of this Governor Bruere the colonial annalists relate that he was a man of an irascible temper and overbearing disposition, living and ruling in a perpetual state of antagonism with the Assembly and the People. He was a soldier, and a good one; but he was habituated to command, and impatient of opposition.[7]
On taking up his appointment as Governor, Bruere was taken aback by the way slaves were treated in the Bermuda islands. He made a speech to the House of Assembly of Bermuda in 1766 in which he proposed the need for stricter controls, including "...haveing the Doors lock'd where they are, under the inspection of a white Person". Familiar with the control of slaves in other colonies, he advised the Bermudians:[8]
Bring your Negroes to a better regularity and due obedience... prevent their unlawfull Assemblys, Thefts, and pernicious practices of leaving their Masters Houses and going to meetings... by night.[8]
On 21 March 1767, the House of Assembly resolved to appoint a Committee consisting of its Speaker and eleven other members to address His Majesty the King on "the tyranny and oppression of the Governor" if they deemed it necessary during the House's adjournment.[9]
Bruere was interested in agriculture, and he and his wife bought 60 acres (240,000 m2) of land to the north of St George's to grow grapes, hoping to produce the equivalent of Madeira.[5]
In 1775, after the Battle of Lexington, the Continental Congress announced a trade embargo against British colonies remaining loyal to the Crown. Bermuda offered to supply the Patriots with salt, but they were unimpressed and asked for gunpowder. Meanwhile, in June 1775 Bruere lost his son John, who was killed fighting on the British side at the Battle of Bunker Hill.[5] On August 14, to the fury of Bruere, Bermudians sympathetic to the Revolution stole the island's supply of gunpowder from the Powder Magazine in St George's and shipped it to the rebels. Trade with Bermuda developed, for which Bruere was not blamed in London.[10]
On 20 August 1774, Bruere wrote to the Colonial Secretary, the Earl of Dartmouth, that some of Bermuda's planters were showing sympathy for the rebellion on the North American mainland:
As the People here, have thought themselves of Sufficient Consequence, to Choose Delegates, and Address the Congress at Philadelphia, I hope the Government will think they have Sufficient Reason to put some Check upon them and Support the few Officers of Government.[11]
In 1776, in the course of the American Revolutionary War, Admiral Lord Howe sent two Royal Navy sloops of war, HMS Nautilus and Galatea, to Bermuda with the task of stopping the trade between Bermuda and the Colonies in rebellion.[5][10] In 1777, American forces briefly seized control of the fort and battery near Wreck Hill on Bermuda's Somerset Island, a strategic position for the protection of the West End Channel, one of the few passages through the ring of reefs. The Bermudian militia men retreated, and the Americans spiked the fort's guns and destroyed its walls before withdrawing.[5] Between 1778 and 1780, Bruere commissioned several privateers, which were fitted out in Bermuda, "to cruise against the French, Spanish, and Americans".[12]
Exhausted by his last years in office, Bruere became ill in July 1780, probably a result of chronic stress, and he died in St George's on 10 September 1780, at the age of fifty-nine. He was later said by the historian Henry Wilkinson to be "the victim in the eyes of his family of five years of incessant strain and foul play", in particular caused by the dealings of the islanders with the rebel colonists. Perhaps because he was said to have died of yellow fever, he was buried under the floor of St Peter's Church, St George's.[5]
Sir John William Kaye noted that
In spite... of the internecine strife into which he plunged the islands, he governed them for nearly twenty years, and might have governed them still longer, but that, in the very crisis of the warfare, he was suddenly removed by death.[7]
Bruere was succeeded as Governor by his son, George Bruere (1744–1786), who as a lieutenant in the 18th Regiment of Dragoons had been wounded at Bunker Hill, and who in 1777 had married Martha Louisa Fatio, then aged fourteen. The younger Bruere was Lieutenant Governor of the Bermudas from 1780 to 1781.[13][14] A surviving portrait of Bruere (pictured) is attributed to John Russell, RA[4] and now hangs in the Tucker House Museum, St. George's.[5]
In 2008, Bruere's skeleton was unexpectedly found under the floorboards of St Peter's Church when archaeologists from Boston University were searching for evidence of the foundations of the original church on the site, built in 1612.[15] His wooden coffin had crumbled away, but a copper plate supposed to be from the top of the coffin was found in the skeleton's chest cavity, bearing the inscription "His Excellency / George James Bruere ESQr / Governor of Bermuda / And Lieut. Colol. In His/ Majestys Service OB / The 10 September 1780/ AE 59 Years". The vicar of the church commented that he had no record of the funeral. From the bones, it was estimated that Bruere was 5 feet 4 inches (1.63 m), in height, which was about the average for the 18th century.[16]
Bruere had at least nine children: William; George (ca. 1744–1786); John (killed at the Battle of Bunker Hill, 1775);[5] Frederick; Elizabeth; Pendock; Frances (born 18 May 1749, Bermuda, died 20 November 1813, Cheltenham); Charlotte (born 1762, at Alderston, East Lothian, died 22 February 1827); and James (1765–1838).
Bruere's son William Bruere became Secretary to the Government of the Bengal Presidency of British India and a member of the Council of India. He married Anne Sadleir, and their daughter Nancy Sadleir Bruere married in 1804 William Otter, later Principal of King's College London and Bishop of Chichester.[17]