the province. One faction dominated by landowners proposed a land bank, while merchants proposed a bank that would issue silver-backed paper. The proposals polarized the Massachusetts political establishment, and Belcher was unable to take sides for fear of alienating supporters on either side. He instead sought without success to browbeat the assembly into passing a currency retirement scheme acceptable to London. In 1740 elections land bank supporters swept into office, and the bank began issuing notes. Merchant interests opposed to the land bank began widespread lobbying in London for Parliamentary relief (which came in 1741, when it passed legislation extending the 1720 Bubble Act, which disallowed unchartered companies, to the colonies) likely abetted by John Thomlinson. While this crisis brewed in Massachusetts, the ascendant Duke of Newcastle successfully pressured Prime Minister Robert Walpole to declare war on Spain in 1739. Part of the war strategy involved the raising of provincial forces to assist in operations against Spanish holdings in the West Indies. Belcher, who was expected to raise about 400 men, promised to raise 1,000, but was only able to raise about 500 in Massachusetts, and not even the 100 he had promised from New Hampshire. This was due in part on the reluctance of the extra companies to travel to the Caribbean without assurances of pay and supply. Belcher also, in pursuit of the financial agenda, vetoed bills to issue currency with which to fund the militia that were raised. The exact reasons for Belcher's dismissal have been a recurring subject of scholarly interest, due to the many colonial, imperial, and political factors at play. Two principal themes within these analyses are Belcher's acquisition of many local enemies, and the idea that good imperial governance in London eventually required his replacement. Before the issues of 1739 most of the efforts to unseat Belcher had failed: Belcher himself noted that year that "the warr I am ingag'd in is carrying on in much the same manner as for 9 years past." Historian Stephen Foster further notes that someone as powerful as Newcastle was at the time generally had much weightier issues to deal with than arbitrating colonial politics. In this instance, however, imperial and colonial considerations coincided over the need for Massachusetts to provide a significant number of troops for Newcastle's proposed West Indies expedition. In April 1740 Newcastle in effect offered Shirley the opportunity to prove, in the light