And so that Assembly came to a close. The Escheat group gave it their best try, but with the British Colonial Secretary unwilling to hear their complaints most felt there was nothing more that could be done. The voters felt the same way, and Escheat candidates did not fare well in the election of 1842, with many of them going down to defeat.

Vere did not re-offer but we don’t know what his thinking was. Spending the winter months living in a boarding house in Charlotte- town and leaving Elizabeth home alone with the children must have played a part. So after that he stayed closer to home and was not as active in politics.

There had been reports that Vere also served as a member of the Legislative Council, sort of an Upper Chamber of the House. A note under his name in the Vere Beck Family Biographies says that on February 20, 1841, he was listed as a member of the Council. There was a suggestion that the item might have been from The Colonial Herald newspaper. Simon Lloyd of the Robertson Library at UPEI searched both the Colonial Herald and the Royal Gazette for that date and did not find any reference to such a story.

Boyde Beck (1.4.3A.3.6.4.) fol- lowed up on this and determined that Vere was never appointed to either the Legislative or the Executive Councils. Boyde went through the Colonial Of- fice papers covering the period 1838 to 1842. There may have been a very good reason why Vere was not a mem- ber of either Council. Boyde found an interesting letter from Governor Fitz- roy about an appointee who refused to sit.

Boyde Beck

Samuel Greene was named to the Legislative Council in 1839, but when he found out that he had to pay £25 19 shillings as a kind of registration fee, he refused, saying that he never asked to be appoint- ed, and if he had known it was going to cost so much, he would not

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