Dunbar began moving supporters in London to lobby for Belcher's replacement not long after his appointment in 1731. The illegal logging activity by Belcher's allies eventually came to the attention of William Shirley, the crown advocate of the provincial admiralty court whose patron was the powerful Duke of Newcastle. Boundary dispute Belcher was unwilling to resolve longstanding boundary disputes between New Hampshire and Massachusetts. The disputed territory included areas west of the Merrimack River from its great bend near present-day Chelmsford, Massachusetts, to present-day Concord, New Hampshire. Competing grantees from the two provinces were by the 1730s engaging in increasingly tense legal action and petty violence against each other. Despite claims that he was neutral on the matter, Belcher orchestrated affairs to prefer the settlement of lands north and west of the Merrimack River by Massachusetts residents. The dispute eventually reached the highest levels of government and court in England. New Hampshire's advocates for separation from Massachusetts found an able spokesman in John Thomlinson, a London merchant with logging interests, who in 1737 convinced the Board of Trade to establish a commission on the boundary issue. Despite Belcher's attempts to orchestrate legislative proceedings to the advantage of Massachusetts (for example, allowing the New Hampshire assembly only one day to prepare a case on the dispute while that of Massachusetts had several months), the final ruling on the boundary, issued in 1739, went significantly in New Hampshire's favor. United opposition By 1736 representatives of Belcher's many political enemies began to coalesce into a unified opposition in London. William Shirley, who sought a more lucrative position, sent his wife to London to lobby on his behalf, making common cause with Samuel Waldo, a wealthy lumber baron whose supply contracts with the Royal Navy were harmed by Belcher's support of illegal logging. David Dunbar resigned as lieutenant governor in 1737 and went to London, where he provided documentation of the logging practices. These forces united with Thomlinson in an effort to orchestrate the replacement of Belcher, preferably with Shirley in Massachusetts and Benning Wentworth in New Hampshire. Matters became more complicated in 1739 due to London politics and a currency crisis in Massachusetts. Belcher had been ordered to effect the retirement of a large amount of Massachusetts paper currency by 1741, and the legislation to accomplish this was rejected by the Board of Trade, leading to the introduction of competing banking proposals in