OLIVER (d. 1219), bastard son of King John, by a mistress named Hadwisa, who must be distinguished from Hadwisa of Gloucester, John's first wife, is mentioned, along with such men as Hubert de Burgh, as a royalist champion during Louis's attack upon England in alliance with the revolted English iMironsin the last year of John's reign. The invaders, advancing on Winchester, found their progress barred (June 1216) 'by the great castle of the king, and that of the bishop, called Wolvesey,' overlooking the city, in which last was 'Oliviers, uns fils le roi de has, qui escuiers estoit.' Later on (March 1217), under Henry III, Oliver took part with Hubert de Burgh in the defence of Dover against the French. A grant was made him of 'unum dolium vini,' under date 8 Oct. 1215, by the king at Canterbury. The 'Castnim de Tonge' was given him at Rochester on 10 Nov. of the same year, and this was confirmed by Henny III on 23 June 1217. The 'Mansio de Erdington' was granted him on 17 July 1216, and the property of Hanedon or Hamedon on 14 March 1218, to hold 'until Eva de Tracy, who claims it, shall have made satisfaction for the same with sixty marks.'
Oliver left England in 1218 to join in the fifth crusade. Early in October 1218 he arrived at Damietta with the legate Pelayo, Earl Ranulf of Chester, Earl William of Arundel, and Lord William of Harecourt Matt. Paris). In the following year he died at Damietta, but whether by disease or in battle is unknown.
[Toumoi de Ham's Histoire des Dues de Normandie et des Rois d'Angleterre, pp. 173, 180 ; Close Rolls (Rotali Litterarum Clausarum), 1215. 1218. pp. 230 b, 234. 235 b, 266, 277 b, 207. 200, 312 A, 322, 355 [edit, of 1833] ; Oliveros Scholasticus in Eccard's Corpus Historicum Medii Evii. col. 1406 ; Historia Damiatana, sub ann. 1218 ; James of Vitry's Historia Orientalis, lib. iii. sub ann. 1218, in Gesta Dei per Francos; Matth. Paris. Chron. Maj. 1218, Rolls ed. iii. 41. For Oliver's mother, Hadwisa, refer to Close Rolls, A.D. 1217, p. 326. Grant of 2 Oct. from Lambeth mentions her, along with Eva de Tracy, as possessing Hamedon.]
OLIVER, ANDREW (1706–1774), lieutenant-governor of Massachusetts, born in Boston, Massachusetts, on 28 March 1706, was son of Daniel Oliver, by Elizabeth, daughter of Andrew Belcher. His father, a member of the council, was a son of Captain Peter Oliver, an eminent merchant, and grandson of Thomas Oliver, a surgeon and ruling elder of Boston Church, who arrived in Boston from London in 1632. Andrew graduated at Harvard in 1724. He was chosen a member of the general court and afterwards of the council. In 1748 he was sent with Governor Thomas Hutchinson as a commissioner to the Albany congress that met to conclude peace with the heads of the Six Nations, and arrange a rectification of the frontier. In 1766 he was appointed secretary of the province, when the British parliament passed the Stamp Act he accepted the office of distributor of stamps, and in consequence nearly lost his seat on the council. On 14 Aug. 1765 he was hanged in effigy between figures of Lord Bute and George Grenville, on the large elm called the 'liberty tree.' In the evening the mob, with cries of 'Liberty, property, and no stamps!' demolished the structure that was building for a stamp-office. The next morning Oliver signed a public pledge that he would not act as stamp-officer.
A few months later it was rumoured that Oliver intended to enforce the Stamp Act, and on the day of the opening of parliament the 'Sons of Liberty' compelled him to march to the tree and there renew his promise in a speech, and take oath before a justice of the peace, Richard Dana, 'that he would never, directly or indirectly, take measures for the collection of the stamp-duty.' In October 1770 he was appointed lieutenant-governor. Greatly to his annoyance, some letters which he had written to Thomas Whateley, one of the secretaries of the treasury, in 1768 and 1769, fell into Benjamin Franklin's hands soon after Whateley's death, and were laid before the assembly in 1772. The worst possible construction was put upon them, and Oliver's removal demanded.
Oliver died at Boston on 3 March 1774. His remains were followed to the grave by a howling mob, and in the evening a coffin, rope, and gallows were exhibited in the window of one of the public offices. Oliver married first on 20 June 1728 Mary (d. 1732), daughter of Thomas Fitch, by whom he had two sous and a daughter, and secondly, on 5 July 1733, Mary (d. 1773), daughter of William Sanford, sister of Governor Thomas Hutchinson's wife, by whom he had seven sons and seven daughters. Two of his sons, Andrew (1731-1799) and William Sanford (1748-1813), were prominent on the royalist side during the revolution.
A photograph of his portrait by Copley is in Thomas Hutchinson s 'Diary.'
[Whitmore's Descendants of W. Hutchinson and T. Oliver, 1866; Diary and Letters of Thomas Hutchinson, ed. P. O. Hutchinson ; Appleton's Cyclop, of Amer. Biogr.]
