He was a judge of the New Hampshire Court of Common Pleas in 17761 777, a member (and speaker) of the New Hampshire House of Representatives from 1776 until 1782, a member of the state Constitutional Convention of 1778 and of the state Senate in 1784-1785, and in1783-1784was again a member of Congress.
Although not a trained lawyer, he was chief justice of the court of common pleas from 1730 until his death.
He graduated at Harvard in 1817, was tutor in mathematics there in 1820-1821, was admitted to practice in the court of common pleas in December 1821, and began the practice of law in Newburyport, Mass., in 1824.
Encouraged by these and other conventions in order to obstruct the collection of debts and taxes, a mob prevented a session of the Court of Common Pleas and General Sessions of the Peace at Northampton on the 29th of August, and in September other mobs prevented the same court from sitting in Worcester, Middlesex and Berkshire counties.
At the close of the colonial era there were a court of chancery, a supreme court, circuit courts and courts of oyer and terminer which were held in the several counties by the justices of the supreme court, a court of common pleas and a court of sessions in each county, and courts held by justices of the peace in the several towns.
