The April Session of the General Court

1 TH History, 3:225–26.

2 JHR, 47:183–84.

3 Parliamentary History, 17:1220–62.

4 TH History, 3:240.

5 JHR 48: 62–64.

6 JHR, 48:109.

7 Joel D. Meyerson, “The Private Revolution of William Bollan,” New England Quarterly 41 (1968): 546.

8 Benjamin Franklin first suggested this idea in a letter to Samuel Cooper, but it gradually became patriot orthodoxy throughout the colonies (Benjamin Franklin to Samuel Cooper, 8 June 1770, Franklin Papers, 17:160–65).

9 Philip J. Schwartz, “‘To Conciliate the Jarring Interests’: William Smith, Thomas Hutchinson, and the New York–Massachusetts Boundary,” New-York Historical Society Quarterly 59 (1975): 299–319.

10 Neil York, “Tag-Team Polemics: The ‘Centinel’ and His Allies in the ‘Massachusetts Spy,’” MHS Procs., 107:100–03; TH History, 3:249–50.

11 Neil R. Stout frames a convincing argument that Temple obtained this appointment by blackmailing Thomas Whately, then a member of the North administration, with threatening to publish their earlier correspondence (Neil R. Stout, “The Missing Temple-Whately Papers,” MHS Procs., 104:123–47).

12 Donald C. Lord and Robert M. Calhoon, “The Removal of the Massachusetts General Court from Boston, 1769–1772,” Journal of American History (1969): 735–55.

13 Though noted, the rift between Hancock and Adams in the spring of 1772 has not yet been thoroughly examined in recent biographies: William M. Fowler Jr., Samuel Adams: Radical Puritan (New York: Longman, 1997); William M. Fowler Jr., The Baron of Beacon Hill: A Biography of John Hancock (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co, 1980); and John K. Alexander, Samuel Adams the Life of an American Revolutionary (Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield, 2011).

1 For the contents of Hutchinson’s house at the time of the looting and the watches specifically, see TH Correspondence, 1: No. 127.

1 TH’s letter No. 41 was TH Correspondence, 3: No. 733. FB’s letter No. 40 was TH Correspondence, 3: No. 683.

2 For Commodore James Gambier, see BD.

3 In TH Correspondence, 3: No. 683, Bernard reported that Timothy Ruggles of Hardwick was appointed one of the surveyors of the King’s Woods.

4 John Temple was on his way to London, hoping to vindicate his conduct from the aspersions made by his fellow commissioners. The Privy Council, however, dismissed Temple and appointed Benjamin Hallowell as commissioner in his place (Henry Hulton, 149). James Murray, a staunch government party ally, had been made a justice of the peace by Francis Bernard in 1768, in an attempt to provide justices in Boston willing to call upon the troops to suppress mob actions. See TH Correspondence, 2: No. 492.

5 Mr. Antin was not identified. By young Quincy, TH meant Josiah Quincy Jr. as opposed to his elder brother Samuel Quincy.

1 TH’s letter of 28 October was TH Correspondence, 3: No. 732.

2 In his letter of 28 October, TH requested that the firing of salutes be limited to smaller cannon in order to economize on the use of gunpowder.

1 TH’s letter of the previous evening was No. 738, above.

2 Frank Bernard, the governor’s eldest son, showed signs of mental instability beginning in the summer of 1769. By late October, he was temporarily confined to the Castle under the care of Dr. John Perkins but released about a month later to the private care of Charles Pelham (TH Correspondence, 2: No. 499). By September 1770, he seemed well enough to contemplate returning to England. A hectic, or intermittent, fever was associated with consumption and other wasting diseases (OED).

3 For Walter Logan, see TH Correspondence, 2: No. 394.

4 Frank received his secondary education at Westminster School.

1 Secretary Andrew Oliver wrote an account of the council meeting of 6 March, the day after the Boston Massacre. TH sent a copy to Bernard, which eventually found its way into publication as part of A Fair Account of the Late Unhappy Disturbance at Boston and caused the Council to charge Oliver with misrepresentation of its views. when the pamphlet appeared back in Boston. TH expressed alarm at the publication of what he regarded as a confidential document, in TH Correspondence, 3: No. 700.

2 Bernard advised Lord Hillsborough that the Massachusetts Council should be appointed by the king and thus would no longer be subject to annual election. Royall Tyler, whom Oliver represented as stating he had knowledge of a preconcerted plan to drive the troops out of Boston, was the person most embarrassed by the publication of A Fair Account.

3 Both TH and Bernard advised that should the Council be royally appointed, the change would be more acceptable to the people if the incumbents remained in office.

4 George Montagu-Dunk, the 2nd Earl of Halifax (see BD) was lord privy seal at the time.

5 A question had arisen whether John Bernard, the governor’s second son, who had recently been appointed to the Naval Office, could appropriately accompany his mother to England. See TH Correspondence, 3: No. 700.

6 A copy of A Fair Account at the Massachusetts Historical Society identifies the author as Francis Maserès (1731–1824), attorney general of Quebec from 1766 through 1769, who wrote a pamphlet arguing the need for colonial representation in Parliament upon his return to England.

7 Bernard himself had suffered great embarrassment when his own confidential letters were published in the months prior to his departure from Massachusetts in August 1769.

8 The Council’s official account of the Massacre closely followed the town’s version as printed in A Short Narrative of the Horrid Massacre. James Bowdoin was a principal author of both.

1 TH’s letter would presumably have been TH Correspondence, 3: No. 718, and perhaps an undated letter, also to Hillsborough, of mid-October, No. 721, but both letterbook versions of the former bear so many alterations, it is difficult without the receiver’s copy to say what advice TH finally gave.

2 Bernard perhaps assumed what he wished TH to think. None of TH’s previous letters ever explicitly endorsed a royally appointed Council, although he and others often expressed the wish that Parliament would respond more forcefully to the General Court’s denials of parliamentary supremacy and the nonimportation agreements. Later he would reluctantly, and perhaps only temporarily, acquiesce in the idea of a Council appointed by the king in order not to obstruct ministerial plans.

1 Pownall wrote just such a letter, which was printed in the Boston Gazette; see TH Correspondence, 3: No. 651.

2 Samuel Adams.

3 Presumably James Bowdoin and Dr. Samuel Cooper recommended Franklin.

4 Arthur Lee (1740–1792) of Stratford, Virginia, was both a physician and lawyer practicing in London. Writing under the pseudonym “Junius Americanus,” he was closely tied to reformist political circles in England. During the Revolutionary War, he became an American commissioner to France and Spain, as well as a member of the Continental Congress. Joseph Reed (1741–1785), a lawyer who studied at the Middle Temple in London, became secretary of New Jersey in 1767. He married the daughter of Dennys DeBerdt, the recently deceased agent for Massachusetts in 1770. After the outbreak of the war, he became Washington’s first military secretary in 1775 and later adjutant-general of the Continental Army. He was president of the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania from 1778 to 1780.

1 Gage’s letter was No. 739, above.

1 A Spanish force seized Port Egmont in the Falkland Islands on 10 June 1770, raising the possibility of war with Spain.

2 Gage meant the 28th ultimo; see TH Correspondence, 3: No. 732.

3 Hiller Zobel, the leading legal scholar of the Boston Massacre trials, regarded the selection of the jury as the critical turning point in Preston’s trial, after which the verdict became a foregone conclusion (Zobel, Boston Massacre, p. 246).

1 For Jeffery Amherst, see BD.

2 Major John Phillips, the commander of the provincial garrison, wept when he was ordered to turn over the Castle to the Regulars. See TH Correspondence, 3: No. 697.

3 The letter Bernard forwarded to Lord Hillsborough was TH Correspondence, 3: No. 697.

4 TH called attention to the loss of employment of the displaced provincial garrison in TH Correspondence, 3: No. 697.

1 This reference must pertain to copies of confidential letters to the ministry written by TH, Colonel William Dalrymple, and Cadwallader Colden, the lieutenant governor of New York, that arrived in Boston in late September. See TH Correspondence, 3: Nos. 704, 705.

2 TH had not yet received any part of the £200 supplement to his salary as chief justice. It was to be disbursed from a fund created by the income from the Townshend duties at the discretion of the commissioners of customs. See TH Correspondence, 3: No. 704.

3 Bernard had seen a copy of TH’s letter to Lord Hillsborough of 9 October 1770 and perhaps his undated letter of mid-October responding to Hillsborough’s queries pertaining to reforms in the Massachusetts constitution then under consideration. Bernard was disappointed that TH avoided endorsing a royally appointed Council. See No. 742, above. TH’s letter had exactly the effect Bernard predicted, providing Hillsborough’s colleagues within the cabinet an excuse not to proceed with the reform of the Massachusetts Charter (Thomas, Townshend Duties Crisis, p. 208).

4 For Phillips, see No. 746, above.

5 For George Grenville and William Pitt, Lord Chatham, see BD. Both were sharp critics of the North administration.

6 The office of lord keeper merged with that of lord chancellor after the accession of George III. The chancellorship had been in commission since the death of Charles Yorke, 20 January 1770. William de Grey, the attorney general who led the prosecution of John Wilkes, may have been considered for lord chancellor in 1770. He certainly was in 1780 when he was created Baron Walsingham instead, but he never actually held the office (British Establishment, 1:245–46).

7 At this point, Bernard referred only to TH’s attention to the failing health of his eldest son, Francis, and the tangled finances of second son, John. He would not yet have received news of Frank’s death; see No. 740, above.

1 TH’s letters 23–27 were TH Correspondence, 3: Nos. 687, 695, 696, 705, 719, respectively.

2 See TH Correspondence, 3: No. 705, relating to TH’s concern that a new round of confidential letters to the ministry had reached Boston.

1 For John Cotton, deputy secretary of the province, see TH Correspondence, 2: No. 303n.

2 For the action of the House concerning Oliver’s petition, see JHR, 47:137, 167. James Bowdoin played a principal role in drafting both the town’s account (Short Narrative) and the Council’s report.

1 After being rebuffed by TH, the committee was successful in taking depositions from John Phillips, the former commander of the provincial garrison, and Stephen Hall, the chaplain (JHR, 47:173–74).

2 TH appeared well aware that Arthur Lee was the author of the “Junius Americanus” letters.

3 For the action of the House concerning the agents’ salaries, see JHR, 47:127.

4 Robert Charles (d. 1770) was agent for New York from 1748 to 1770. At the time he first became agent, the DeLancey family controlled the New York legislature and secured his appointment against the wishes of George Clinton (circa 1686–1761) by including his salary amid other routine appropriations. See Nicholas Varga, “Robert Charles: New York Agent (1748–1770),” WMQ 18 (April 1961): 211–35.

5 TH prorogued the General Court on 20 November 1770 until 23 January 1771.

1 TH’s letter was No. 744, above.

1 The letter was not found.

2 Customs Commissioner John Robinson quarreled with John Temple when he was collector at Newport and Temple was surveyor general for the northern district. Temple also charged Bernard with collusion with James Cockle, the disgraced collector at Salem. For the charges against Robinson and Cockle, see Papers of Francis Bernard, 3: Appendix 3.1, 3.2.

3 In the midst of the session, the House objected to the traditional preamble of over thirty years’ standing that each law was enacted by “the Governor, Council, and House of Representatives.” A committee composed of Samuel Adams, Daniel Leonard (1740–1829) of Taunton (a future loyalist and traditionally assumed to be the coauthor of the “Massachusettensis” letters), John Adams, Joseph Hawley, and David Ingersoll Jr. (1742–1796) of Great Barrington (another future loyalist) wished to add the words “in the General Court assembled.” All the committee men except Samuel Adams were practicing lawyers. TH regarded the change as trivial and a waste of legislative time, but the House believed its style was correct since it mirrored the style of the House of Commons. For TH’s exchange of messages with the House, see JHR, 47:128, 134, 146, 159, 182.

1 The AC has “sunk” instead of “hurt.”

2 Unauthorized settlement in these lands was a source of continuing concern, see TH Correspondence, 3: No. 649.

3 For TH’s salary, see JHR, 47:125, 252.

4 For the grants to Bollan and DeBerdt, see No. 750, above.

5 For the appointment of Franklin and Lee, see No. 750, above.

6 A venire is a panel of jurors from which the jury is eventually chosen.

1 Pownall’s letter was not found. TH discussed the constitution of the city of New York in his letter to Lord Hillsborough of 26 July; see TH Correspondence 3: No. 663. As Hillsborough’s secretary, Pownall would have read it.

1 TH’s recommendation was part of his message at the opening of the session of the General Court (JHR, 47:80). For the appointment of the committee, including James Russell and William Brattle for the Council, see JHR, 47:151.

1 Based on the description of content, the letter in question appears not to have been Worthington’s letter of 15 September 1770; see TH Correspondence, 3: No. 698. Therefore, the “unhappy criminal” was not identified. John Cotton was deputy secretary of the House of Representatives.

2 TH complained of the time taken up by the House’s concern with the language of the preface to enactments by the General Court in No. 752, above.

3 In response to TH’s opening message to the General Court on 25 July, the House, in a reply drafted by Samuel Adams, described as an “impudent mandate” Lord Hillsborough’s order of June 1768 to rescind the Circular Letter (JHR, 47:63–71). The message went on to assert that the royal prerogative could only be employed when it was consonant with the public good, the General Court’s most extreme challenge to royal authority thus far. TH transmitted a copy of the House’s message with his letter to Lord Hillsborough of 5 August 1770, which must have arrived in London while Hillsborough was still in Ireland. Upon his return, Hillsborough commended TH for his reply to the House (JHR, 47:73–78) when he prorogued the General Court on 3 August. Pownall’s response was presumably contained in his letter to TH (not found) dated 13 October 1770.

4 TH alluded to Timothy Ruggles and Benjamin Day, Worthington’s fellow representative from Springfield. See TH Correspondence, 3: No. 698.

5 The justice was not identified. Colonel Joseph Buckminster (1697–1780) represented Framingham from 1737 to 1770. Colonel Williams was Israel Williams, whom TH frequently consulted concerning appointments in Hampshire County.

6 “Turpius ejicitur quam non admittitur hostis,” Latin, meaning “It is harder to cast the devil out than to keep him out.” From Jeremy Taylor, “A Dissuasive from Popery” (1686), in Reginald Heber, ed., The Whole Works of Jeremy Taylor (London, 1828), 11:293.

7 Sykes was not identified.

8 The Province House was the official residence of the royal governors of Massachusetts after 1716. It had been vacant since Francis Bernard’s departure in the summer of 1769 and fallen into disrepair.

1 Gage’s letters to TH were Nos. 739 and No. 745, above.

2 The lawyer performing the investigations was Sampson Salter Blowers (1742–1842), a future loyalist. On the importance of the jury selection, see No. 745, above.

3 TH had in mind perhaps their message on the style by which laws were enacted and the “surrender” of the Castle, or the resolutions of 16 November they appended to their journal (JHR, 47:159–63, 171, 183–84).

4 For Arthur Lee as Junius Americanus, see No. 743, above.

5 For the grants to William Bollan and Dennys DeBerdt, see No. 743, above.

6 The anonymous ship captain implied the Falkland affair would be resolved peaceably, though he was not privy to the negotiations.

1 Henry Young Brown (1730–1795), initially of Haverhill, was granted 11,000 acres of land along the Saco River, the present site of Brownfield, Maine, for his conspicuous service in the French and Indian War.

2 For the House’s message, see JHR, 47:134–35.

3 By the “affair of last March,” Brown meant the Boston Massacre.

4 Major Joseph Hawley was one of TH’s principal critics in the House. See TH Correspondence, 2: No. 237.

1 For the messages of TH and the House on the preamble of newly enacted laws, see JHR, 47:128, 134, 146, 159, 182.

2 The first letters of Junius Americanus were publicly addressed to Lord Hillsborough and attacked the actions of the administration, but beginning on 23 October 1769, Junius began to criticize Sir Francis Bernard at a time when the petition of the Massachusetts General Court for his removal was coming before the Privy Council. In a letter of 9 March 1770, Junius called TH “a creature of His Excellency [Bernard]” and mocked TH’s charge to the jury urging it to prosecute libelous articles in the Boston newspapers. In a letter of 22 March, Junius Americanus declared TH was “a second Bernard” for proroguing the House when it was preparing charges against Bernard after the governor’s departure. ([Arthur Lee], Political Detection or the Treachery and Tyranny of Administration Both at Home and Abroad Displayed in a Series of Letters Signed Junius Americanus [London, 1770]).

3 For the messages of the House concerning Castle William, see JHR, 47:111, 172–73.

4 There is no evidence other than TH’s assertion here that Samuel Adams threatened the forcible seizure of the Castle.

5 For the transmission of Council papers to Benjamin Franklin, see JHR, 47:177.

6 In a petition dated 9 November 1770, Jonathan Longfellow (1736–1819) complained of being assaulted in the street by inhabitants of Machias and sought to resign his office of justice of the peace to which he was appointed on 9 May. A second petition of the same date, signed by over twenty-five inhabitants of Machias, supported Longfellow (National Archives UK, CO 5/759, ff. 375–76, 377–78).

The Regulators of western North Carolina opposed what they believed to be the arbitrary and corrupt administration of Governor William Tryon, in league with Tidewater planters who dominated the legislature. The Regulators refused to pay taxes, closed courts, and destroyed public records. Their first riot occurred in 1765, but the movement was not entirely suppressed until the Battle of the Alamance on 16 May 1771.

7 William Brattle served on the committee to investigate these illegal settlements, but the committee’s recommendations were not accepted by the General Court; see No. 755, above.

8 Here TH alluded to the transfer of Castle William to royal control as a preliminary step in the ministry’s efforts to punish the colony for its continued resistance to parliamentary authority.

9 Jesse Saville, a minor employee in the customs service, had been attacked previously in 1768. Civil law suits from that incident were under appeal when he was attacked again at Gloucester on 23 March 1770. George Penn, “a molatto man-slave,” was the only person found guilty in the assault. (Zobel, Boston Massacre, pp. 215–67).

10 Richard Silvester, innkeeper, testified in a deposition on 23 January 1769, witnessed by TH, that Samuel Adams had called on citizens to take up arms, both prior to the landing of the troops and after the Liberty riot (National Archives UK, CO 5/758, ff. 54–55).

11 Among the perquisites of a new royal governor were a portrait of the king and a set of communion silver that could be presented to the Anglican parish of his choice. TH’s friend Henry Caner (1700–1793) was rector of King’s Chapel from 1747 until March 1776 when he left Boston for Halifax with the British fleet. He was eventually given a customs post at Cape Ann, but was arrested by the patriot authorities. He left Massachusetts in October 1776.

12 For the Province House, see No. 756, above. For TH’s complaint about its dilapidated condition, see JHR, 47:227.

13 Lady Amelia Bernard intended to return to England aboard HMS Tweed, which had brought Lord Dunmore, the new governor, to New York. See TH Correspondence, 3: No. 683.

1 TH’s letter No. 29 to Hillsborough was dated 20 November 1770; see No. 753, above. TH initially seems to have responded to that letter in a letterbook draft dated 26 November, which he marked “not sent.” It largely covered the same material as the letter printed here.

2 For Charles Cushing, sheriff of Lincoln County, see TH Correspondence, 3: No. 613.

3 For TH’s letter to Wentworth, see No. 755, above.

1 On the importance of the jury selection, see No. 745, above.

2 The lawyer who was rumored to be “not so faithful” to his clients “as he ought to be” was John Adams, as the rest of the sentence makes clear. Adams was elected as a Boston representative on 6 June 1770 to fill the space vacated by James Bowdoin’s elevation to the Council.

1 The question of war with Spain over the Falkland Islands was not yet resolved.

2 The address of the Lords in response to the king’s speech of 13 November 1770 can be found at Parliamentary Debates, 5:339; that of the Commons at 5:401–03; and Lord North’s speech at 5:400–01.

3 Bernard perhaps meant Thomas Pownall, the former governor of Massachusetts and prominent critic of the administration in Parliament; see TH Correspondence, 3: No. 634.

4 The divisions occurred on a call for papers related to the Falkland Island crisis. For the Lords, see Parliamentary Debates, 5:359, and for the Commons, 5:406.

5 The commissions being dispatched were for TH as governor, Andrew Oliver as lieutenant governor, and Thomas Flucker as secretary.

1 For Junius Americanus, see No. 760, above.

2 Richard Lyttleton (1718–1770) was a lieutenant general, governor of Minorca from 1763 to 1766, and governor of Guernsey at the time of his death. He was the younger brother of George, 1st Baron Lyttleton (1709–1773), and the older brother of William Henry Lyttelton (1724–1808), who became governor of South Carolina in 1755 and Jamaica in 1760.

1 Privates Matthew Kilroy and Hugh Montgomery were the only two soldiers who could be proven to have fired their guns and killed someone (Zobel, Boston Massacre, p. 294).

2 For Murray, see No. 738, above.

3 See enclosure in the source note for this letter. The young lawyer was not identified.

1 Matthew Kilroy and Hugh Montgomery.

1 TH discussed the state of the Eastern Country and enclosed two petitions concerning an assault of the justice of the peace in Machias in No. 761, above. What further disorders occurred after that have not been identified.

2 Sir William Phips (1651–1695), a native of Maine, made a fortune as a treasurer hunter in the West Indies, was knighted, seized Port Royal (modern-day Annapolis Royal) in Acadia from the French in 1691, and became the first governor of Massachusetts under the new charter.

3 Francis Nicholson (1655–1728) captured Port Royal on 2 October 1710. The French ceded Acadia to Britain in the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, which concluded the War of Spanish Succession.

4 Thomas Pownall erected Fort Pownall at the mouth of the Penobscot in 1760 during the late phases of the Seven Years’ War in America.

5 In 1621, James I granted William Alexander (1567–1640), 1st Earl of Stirling, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and much of Maine to form a Scottish colony. It was ceded to the French in 1632. The British retook the area in 1654, and Cromwell granted the region to Sir Thomas Temple (1614–1674) and William Crowne (1617–1682), who exercised authority as far south as Castine, Maine. The land was returned to France by the Treaty of Breda in 1667.

1 In his additional notes to TH History, TH wrote, “Montgomery afterwards acknowledged to one of his counsel that he was the man who gave the word fire which was supposed by some of the witnesses to come from the Captain; that being knocked down & rising again, in the agony from the blow he said Damn you, fire and immediately he fired himself & the rest followed him.” (Catherine Barton Mayo, Additions to Thomas Hutchinson’s History of Massachusetts Bay [Worcester, Mass.: American Antiquarian Society Proceedings, 1949], p. 330).

2 For the foreman of the jury, see No. 770, below.

3 See The Trial of William Wemms et al. (Boston: J. Fleeming, 1770).

4 The New York Weekly Journal appeared on Mondays, whereas John Holt (ca. 1721–1784), the favorite printer of the New York Sons of Liberty, published the New York Gazette or General Advertiser on Thursdays.

5 The interlineation was not included in the AC.

1 No letter from TH to Sir Francis Bernard has been found from 5 December (the date the jury gave its verdict in the trial of the soldiers) and the date of this letter, 10 December. For James Murray, see No. 738, above.

2 Captain Joseph Mayo (1721–1776) of Roxbury was presumed by some to be a patriot. TH promoted him to major in 1771 (CSM Pubs., 5:64).

3 TH’s first letters after the conclusion of the trial found fault with the verdict of manslaughter for Privates Kilroy and Montgomery; see Nos. 765 and 768, above.

4 James Bowdoin was the chair of the committee that drew up the Short Narrative and dispatched copies to many persons of influence in England. Prince Henry, Duke of Cumberland (1745–1790), was a younger brother of George III.

5 For the text of the Council’s letter to Bollan, dated 30 October 1770, see Speeches of the Governors, 273–78. The single instance they admitted to meeting without the governor present occurred in July 1769 when Bernard prorogued his final session of the legislature prior to his departure. Despite knowing the Council was preparing a remonstrance against him, he allowed them to complete their work (Papers of Francis Bernard, 5:308).

6 The House chose John Preble Jr. as truckmaster in May 1770, replacing the longtime incumbent Thomas Goldthwait, the commander of Fort Pownall. See TH Correspondence, 3: No. 639.

7 The Tweed had been delayed since its arrival in New York in mid-October by celebrations welcoming Lord Dunmore, the new governor of Virginia.

1 For Captain John Montresor, see TH Correspondence, 3: No. 702.

2 Gage’s letter was actually No. 764, above.

3 In a letter of 8 October 1770, Gage had expressed hope that the General Court might continue the salaries of the storekeeper and gunner at Castle William, the two members of the provincial garrison TH retained after the Castle came under royal control.

1 For the charges to the jury, see Zobel, Boston Massacre, pp. 264–65.

2 On the indisposition (nervous or otherwise) of Justices Trowbridge, Lynde, and Cushing, see TH Correspondence, 3: Nos. 549, 618.

3 Most likely an abbreviation for “puisne,” meaning associate justices.

1 See No. 817, below.

2 In a message to the House on 3 August 1770, TH called attention to the use of the word “impudent” to describe Hillsborough’s instruction to Bernard that ordered the House to rescind its Circular Letter in 1768 (JHR, 47:73). Hillsborough’s letters to TH of 31 July, 4 August, and 3 October 1770 approved of TH’s defense of the royal prerogative to convene the General Court in places other than Boston (TH Correspondence, 3: Nos. 670, 672, 711).

1 TH’s letter was TH Correspondence, 3: No. 734.

2 The proceedings of the Council against Andrew Oliver may be found in JHR, 47:255–90. They were also printed as Proceedings of His Majesty’s Council of the Province of Massachusetts-Bay, Relative to the Deposition of Andrew Oliver, Esq; Secretary of the Said Province, Concerning What Passed in Council in Consequence of the Unhappy Affair of the 5th of March 1770 (Boston: Edes & Gill, 1770).

3 Hillsborough’s separate letter is printed immediately below.

1 Hillsborough’s circular letter to governors dated 28 September (calendared but not printed in TH Correspondence, 3: p. 469) concerned the possibility of war over the Falkland Islands. His letter of 3 October is TH Correspondence, 3: No. 711.

2 The four civilians acquitted for allegedly firing into the crowd from the second floor of the Customs House were Edward Manwaring (see TH Correspondence, 3: No. 540); Hammond Green, the porter of the Boston Customs House; Thomas Greenwood, the son of the Customs House messenger; and John Munro, who lodged at the same house as Manwaring and provided him an alibi.

3 Charles Bourgatte (or Bourgate), Manwaring’s French servant, was ultimately convicted of perjury (Hinderaker, Boston’s Massacre, p. 220).

4 A fellow prisoner with Bourgatte testified that William Molineux induced Bourgatte’s false testimony with bribery and threats, but no charges were ever filed against Molineux (Zobel, Boston Massacre, pp. 297–98). For Molineux’s defense of his conduct, see the Boston Gazette, 18 March 1771.

1 For Captain Collier, see TH Correspondence, 3: No. 683.

2 All the commissioners except John Temple thought it prudent to absent themselves from Boston after the Massacre. Charles Paxton had been staying with friends in Cambridge, while William Burch and Henry Hulton took up residence at Castle William after Hulton’s country home was attacked in late June. John Robinson carried the first official accounts of the Massacre to London, departing Boston on 16 March.

3 TH’s meaning is obscure. According to Thomas Wood’s An Institute of the Laws of England, 3rd ed. (London, 1736), the comitatus a comitando were the assizes, or county court of sessions convened by the sheriff. TH could mean the change occurred in each locality as the word spread through the meeting of the courts, or he could mean the change manifested in the shires or backcountry.

4 The jury convicted Ebenezer Richardson of murder on 21 April 1770, despite abundant evidence of self-defense. The four judges all instructed that manslaughter or innocent were more appropriate verdicts. They demurred in passing sentence, since the only possible penalty for murder was death (Zobel, Boston Massacre, p. 238). Richardson had remained in prison since his trial.

5 TH’s commission was dispatched 7 December 1770; see No. 769, above. TH mentioned the king’s picture in No. 760, above.

6 Members of the Council objected to the display of portraits of the absolutist Stuart kings in October 1769; see TH Correspondence, 2: No. 434.

7 Presumably these portraits were lost during a fire on the second floor of the Town House in 1747.

8 For TH’s refusal to sign the grants for Bollan’s salary, see No. 750, above.

1 The entire letter was written in TH’s vowelless shorthand. All words except ampersands have been silently expanded.

2 In his instructions, Judge Peter Oliver expressed the view that “innocent” was the appropriate verdict; see TH Correspondence, 3: No. 575. See also TH History, 3:206.

3 It was Samuel Quincy who moved for a new trial (Samuel Quincy to Robert Treat Paine, 16 December 1770, http://www.masshist.org/database/2729, accessed 30 August 2021). See also JA Legal Papers, 2:424–30.

4 Matthew Hale, Historia Placitorum Coronae (London, 1736), was an influential treatise on the criminal law.

5 TH’s letter to Hillsborough was TH Correspondence, 3: No. 575.

1 Date assigned on the basis of No. 780, below.

2 TH refers to the public letters of Junius Americanus.

3 John Temple left for England in late November in order to defend himself against charges from his fellow commissioners; see No. 752, above.

1 TH’s letter by Boas was No. 777, above.

1 TH’s letter was No. 737, above.

2 The postscript was written in TH’s vowelless shorthand. All words except ampersands have been silently expanded.

3 TH’s Latin motto, presumably of his own devising, translated means “I love liberty; I detest license.”

1 The Tweed departed Boston 25 December (Boston Gazette, 31 December 1770).

2 Francis Bernard was an amateur architect. He provided designs for the reconstruction of Harvard Hall in 1766 (Papers of Francis Bernard, 2:291–92).

3 See No. 774, above.

1 Falmouth was the earlier name for the present city of Portland, Maine.

1 Lord Hillsborough was secretary of state for the colonies.

2 See No. 775, above.

3 Bernard’s pension was £600 per annum. He had initially hoped for £1,000.

1 Benjamin Hallowell was promoted from comptroller to commissioner of customs while he was in England. Pownall’s letter was of 13 October 1770 (TH Correspondence, 3: No. 722).

1 For David Phips and Bernard’s dispute with Christ Church, Cambridge, see TH Correspondence, 3: No. 712. The sheriff of Suffolk County was Stephen Greenleaf. Phips himself was the sheriff of Middlesex.

2 R.T. was not identified. Perhaps Robert Temple, John’s brother; see TH Correspondence, 2: No. 272.

3 For Joseph Lee, see TH Correspondence, 3: No. 712. Following note 2 above, the blank T——s could be read as “Temples,” both Robert and John.

4 Bernard’s letter No. 42 was TH Correspondence, 3: No. 713. TH’s letter to Hillsborough was TH Correspondence, 3: No. 679.

5 Anticipating the death of Andrew Belcher, the current registrar of the court of vice-admiralty, TH wrote Sir Edward Hawke seeking the post for John Cotton and enclosed that message in a letter to Bernard (TH Correspondence, 3: No. 677). Despite the fact Bernard also proposed his own son John for the office, he forwarded the letter; see TH Correspondence, 3: No. 713.

6 In his letter No. 43 (TH Correspondence, 3: No. 715), Bernard urged continuing to meet the General Court in Cambridge.

7 Both Bernard and TH favored Parliament amending the charter rather than abolishing it, but Bernard thought it would be a “degradation” of Parliament’s authority to take advantage of the General Court’s apparent forfeiture of the charter by refusing to meet; see TH Correspondence, 3: No. 720.

8 TH had forwarded Bernard a letter from Thomas Goldthwait describing disorder in the Eastern Country (TH Correspondence, 3: No. 671). Both TH and Bernard were angered by the House’s decision to dismiss Goldthwait as truckmaster at Fort Pownall.

9 For the increase in Bernard’s pension, see No. 784, above.

1 Jackson’s letter to TH of 4 September 1770 concerning property he acquired in Maine was not printed (TH Correspondence, 3: p. 467).

2 TH is perhaps referring to Charles Cushing; see No. 761, above.

1 TH’s letters to Hillsborough Nos. 29, 30, and 31 were Nos. 753, 761, and 765, respectively, above.

2 Just prior to being prorogued, the House refused to renew the provincial Riot Act, voted salaries for William Bollan and the deceased Dennys DeBerdt, and selected Benjamin Franklin as its new agent.

3 TH regarded the innovation of separate agents for both House and Council (not approved by the governor) as unconstitutional and therefore refused to assent to their salary grants.

4 TH retained two members of the provincial garrison of Castle William under his direct control: a storekeeper and the gunner, who registered the departure and arrival of vessels in the harbor.

1 For the message of the House concerning the “style of the laws,” see No. 752, above. For its message on the exchange of garrisons, see No. 758, above.

2 For the acquittal of Manwaring and the others accused of firing from the Custom House, see No. 776, above.

3 Pownall’s letter was not found.

1 The letter was misdated. Its context makes clear it was written in January 1771.

2 James Boutineau, merchant, was the father-in-law of John Robinson, the customs commissioner. See TH Correspondence, 2: No. 448.

3 Jonathan Sewall was made judge of vice-admiralty at Halifax as a supplement to what was regarded as his inadequate provincial salary as attorney general, but he resided in Boston. Returning to Boston would be difficult for Robinson following his caning of James Otis Jr. and suspicion of his participation in the Boston Massacre; see TH Correspondence, 2: No. 448. Michael Francklin was lieutenant governor of Nova Scotia; see TH Correspondence, 2: No. 477.

4 For James Putnam, see TH Correspondence, 2: Nos. 402 and 414.

5 When he returned from England, Benjamin Hallowell took up his position as a newly appointed member of the American Board of Customs. David Lisle was suspended as solicitor of customs for allegedly sowing dissension between the board and Sewall. See TH Correspondence, 2: Nos. 338 and 367. He was exonerated by the treasury in 1769 and given a customs position in Piscataqua, Maine (Papers of Francis Bernard, 5:158), but eventually returned to Boston.

6 Samuel Fitch became advocate general of the vice-admiralty court when Sewall resigned the post to become a vice-admiralty judge in Halifax. See TH Correspondence, 2: No. 414.

1 For the vote on Bollan’s and DeBerdt’s salaries, see JHR, 47:127.

1 Williams’s letter of 26 December 1770 was not found.

2 Samuel Adams began writing a series of letters denouncing the verdicts in the Massacre trials under the pseudonym “Vindex” in the Boston Gazette on 10, 17, 24, and 31 December 1770, and 7, 14, 21, and 28 January 1771.

3 Jonathan Sewall, writing as “Philanthrop,” replied to Adams in the Boston Evening-Post on 24 December 1770, 14 and 28 January, and 2 and 18 February 1771.

4 By “lawyer Adams,” TH meant John Adams.

5 A partial quotation from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, book 7, “Video meliora, proboque, deteriora sequor,” which translated means, “I see a better way, and approve it, but I follow a worse.”

6 Without Williams’s letter of 26 December 1770, TH’s meaning is obscure.

1 Hillsborough’s letter of 15 November was No. 748, above. His circular letter to governors dated 28 September (calendared but not printed, TH Correspondence, 3: p. 469) concerned the possibility of war over the Falkland Islands.

2 James Grant (1720–1806) served as governor of East Florida from 1763 to 1771. William Bull II (1710–1791) was lieutenant governor of South Carolina from 1759 to 1775. The island of St. John (presently known as Prince Edward Island) was created as a separate colony from Nova Scotia in 1770. Walter Paterson (ca. 1735–1798) was the colony’s first governor until 1787.

3 The printed record of the trial was The Trial of William Wemms et al. (Boston: J. Fleeming, 1770).

4 Samuel Adams writing as “Vindex” and Jonathan Sewall as “Philanthrop” maintained a spirited argument in the Boston newspapers concerning the verdicts in the Massacre trials. See No. 792, above.

5 TH wrote to Hillsborough on 28 September 1770 complaining that the Boston representatives had received “another Budget of Letters” that had been laid before the House of Commons, including one written by TH; see TH Correspondence, 3: No. 705.

6 The letter in question was evidently TH Correspondence, 2: No. 446, in which TH described to Hood a tarring and feathering and the attack on John Mein.

7 The person who forwarded the copies of the letters was not identified.

1 Hillsborough’s letter No. 43, No. 748, above, was the source of the two quoted passages but included no mention of war with Spain; the assessment, therefore, must come from Pownall’s letter, which was not found.

2 Perhaps Thomas Pownall? Pownall eventually offered a motion to inquire into the circumstances of the changeover of the garrison at the Castle on 8 May 1771 (Parliamentary Debates, 5:323–24).

3 The source of this quotation was No. 747, above.

4 For the letters by the Mercury, see No. 793, above.

1 TH expressed his skepticism of a royally appointed council and the willingness of anyone to take a seat on a such a body in his private latter to Lord Hillsborough, TH Correspondence, 3: No. 718.

2 TH alluded to plans to fortify Fort Hill in TH Correspondence, 3: Nos. 726 and 727.

3 The illegal harvesting of mast trees reserved by the king for the use of the Royal Navy had long been an important concern of Lord Hillsborough; see TH Correspondence, 3: No. 649.

4 Lord Hillsborough’s letter of 2 Jan. 1771, No. 788, above, approving the retention of these two officers had not yet arrived.

5 For TH’s concern for Phillips, see TH Correspondence, 3: No. 697.

1 TH made a similar defense of his reluctance to advocate a royally appointed council in No. 795, above.

2 Concerning these hints see Nos. 744 and 751, above.

3 Colonel John Chandler (1721–1800) was a representative from Worcester and Petersham, member of the Council from 1765 to 1767, sheriff of Worcester County from 1751 to 1762, probate county judge of Worcester County from 1762 to 1774, and ultimately a loyalist.

4 Another version of the same petition from Major John Phillips, commander of the provincial garrison at Castle William, which Bernard had advised TH to help him prepare, was enclosed in TH’s letter to Lord Hillsborough, immediately above.

5 Hillsborough wrote on 2 January 1771, No. 788, above, to inform TH that the payment of royal salaries for William Burbeck and William Salisbury was approved. For Burbeck and Salisbury, see TH Correspondence 3: No. 693.

6 Neither the letter nor its author has been identified.

7 Ashfield, Massachusetts, had been a predominantly Baptist settlement. Massachusetts law exempted Baptists living within a five-mile radius of a Baptist meetinghouse from paying rates for the support of the established church, but only if a Congregational church had already been established. When a number of residents of Ashfield petitioned the General Court for exemption from paying rates in May 1768, the petition was denied and some Baptists’ estates were destrained for nonpayment of taxes. In 1770, Boston-area Baptists wrote to the Philadelphia Baptist Association, drawing attention to Ashfield’s plight, and their letter provides the fullest account of the incident. See Minutes of the Philadelphia Baptist Association, from A.D. 1707 to A.D. 1807: Being the First One Hundred Years of Its Existence (Philadelphia: American Baptist Publication Society, 1851), pp. 115–16.

8 Samuel Stillman (1737–1807), born in Philadelphia, was one of the thirty-five original trustees of what ultimately became Brown University and in 1765 became the minister of the First Baptist Church in Boston. By urging Stillman to use John Pownall’s influence to have the law disallowed in England, TH neatly avoided further controversy with the legislature in order to provide relief for the Baptists.

9 Ashfield was located in what was then Hampshire County, and although any Hampshire representative might have inserted the key language, TH might be blaming his old enemy Joseph Hawley.

10 TH warned the General Court against the dangers of further inaction concerning the waste of the king’s timber by intruders in lands of far eastern Maine in his speech to the opening of the legislative session on 27 September 1771. The answer of the House to TH’s message sidestepped the issue and reverted to the controversy concerning where the legislature should sit. See JHR, 47:80–81, 86.

1 Neither letter was found. A missing letter from Williams of 26 December 1770 was mentioned in No. 792, above.

2 The probate case described here was not identified.

3 The enclosed document was probably a satirical letter intended for the Boston newspapers that Williams wrote at TH’s request; see No. 773, above, and No. 817, below.

4 This was the advice of the pre-Socratic philosopher Thales of Miletus (ca. 624–ca. 546 bce) about the proper time for marriage.

1 The letter has not been found.

2 No. 767, above.

3 Josiah Quincy Jr.’s instructions to Boston’s representatives in the General Court, adopted 15 May 1770, suggested that the royal prerogative could only be exercised to advance the public good, and that in instances that did not promote the general welfare (such as ordering the Court to meet at Cambridge) the instructions of the king’s ministers could not be binding.

1 Thomas Whately had been Grenville’s private secretary. Grenville died on 13 November 1770.

2 It is not clear where TH heard this rumor. Thomas Young remained in Boston until 1774.

1 The rioters assaulted Justice of the Peace Jonathan Longfellow on the street at Machias on 9 May 1770, and he subsequently sought to resign his office (No. 760, above).

2 For Charles Cushing, see No. 761, above.

3 Judge Peter Oliver’s opinion was not found.

4 Jonathan Lowder (1733–1814) was the gunner at Fort Pownall.

1 Samuel Mather Sr. (1709–1785), minister of the Bennett Street Church, had married Hannah (1714–1752), TH’s sister, on 23 August 1733. TH fled to Mather’s house at the time his own home was looted in August 1765. Samuel Mather Jr. (1745–1809) left Boston with the British fleet in 1776 but later returned to New England.

2 The enclosed letter to Lord North is listed in the calendar, also dated 30 January 1771.

3 For Jeffery Amherst, see BD. Welbore Ellis, 1st Baron Mendip (1712–1802), British politician and placeholder, had served in both the administrations of John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute, and George Grenville and was vice-treasurer of Ireland in 1770. James Murray (ca. 1719–1794) served as a brigadier general at Quebec in 1758 and was governor of that province from 1760 to 1766. Guy Carleton, 1st Baron Dorchester (1724–1808), was lieutenant governor of Quebec and succeeded James Murray as governor in 1766. He later became commander-in-chief of British forces in North America in the closing years of the American Revolution.

4 Charles Chauncy was one of Boston’s leading patriot clergymen; see TH Correspondence, 3: No. 495.

5 Richard Reeve became secretary of the American Board of Customs Commissioners when Samuel Venner was dismissed in 1769 as a scapegoat in the quarrel between Jonathan Sewall and the customs commissioners; see TH Correspondence, 2: No. 353.

1 No letter written to TH on 15 January was found, but the context makes it clear that TH was writing to one of his supporters among the country members of the General Court.

2 Adamses.

3 John Adams “began life to promise well.” Samuel Adams was the author of the Vindex (meaning “champion”) letters. “Malignus” and “invidus,” Latin, meaning “ill-natured” and “hostile.”

4 By “Parchments,” TH meant his commission, as well as Andrew Oliver’s as lieutenant governor and Thomas Flucker’s as secretary.

1 John Green (1727–1787) and Joseph Russell (1734–1795) were the printers of the Boston Post-Boy and Advertiser (1759–1769) and subsequently the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy and Advertiser (1769–1773). John Mein was driven out of Boston in October 1769 because of his satirical attacks on the patriots and the nonimportation agreement.

1 Richard Jackson speculated in undeveloped real estate in Maine. The land was probably sold to him by Francis Waldo, the second son of General Samuel Waldo, while the former was in England; see TH Correspondence, 2: No. 403.

1 TH alluded to a series of articles in the Boston Gazette written shortly after the verdicts by Samuel Adams as Vindex.

1 The crisis over the Falkland Islands had prompted fears of an attack by the Spanish fleet.

1 Lady Agnes Suriage Frankland (1726–1783) was an American barmaid who married Sir Harry Frankland, former collector of the port of Boston. Her husband died in 1768.

1 The Needles are three sharp chalk outcroppings off the western tip of the Isle of Wight.

2 Henry Howard (1739–1779), 12th Earl of Suffolk, became the de facto leader of Grenville’s followers after their leader’s death. He joined the North ministry in 1771 as secretary of state for the Northern Department. Alexander Wedderburn (1733–1805) had previously attacked Lord North on the floor of the House but became solicitor general in 1771 (British Establishment, 1:471–72; 2:914–15). Thomas Whately joined the Board of Trade and served Suffolk as an undersecretary of state.

3 For William Beckford, see TH Correspondence, 2: No. 395n; for Earl Temple, see TH Correspondence, 1: No. 206n. For Lord Shelburne, see BD. The Bill of Rights Society was founded on 20 February 1769 to support the cause of John Wilkes but expanded its advocacy to include radical parliamentary reform. Its chief leaders were John Glynn (1722–1779) and John Horne Tooke (1736–1812). The society broke apart because of internal disputes in 1771.

1 David Chesebrough managed TH’s Rhode Island lands for him. Mr. Sanford (not further identified) was a tenant.

2 TH no longer resided at his home in Garden Court Street but lived at the Province House, the official governor’s residence, instead.

3 Vindex and Philathrop continued to retry the Massacre trials in the pages of the Boston Gazette and Boston Evening-Post, but Vindex did not attack TH directly. “Sidney,” however, in the Boston Gazette for 14 January 1771, characterized TH as both a pensioner and favorer of standing armies.

4 Dr. Peter Oliver Jr., the son of Judge Peter Oliver, married Sarah (Sally), TH’s elder daughter. They resided in Middleborough with their young daughter, Margaret Hutchinson Oliver.

5 The three remaining family members at home were Grizzel Sanford, TH’s sister-in-law; Margaret (Peggy), his younger daughter; and William Sanford Hutchinson.

1 Bernard’s letter No. 52 was No. 784, above.

2 Bernard’s letter No. 47 expressed his annoyance that TH failed, at a critical juncture, to support a royally appointed council; see No. 742, above.

3 TH previously vetoed salary grants to the separately appointed agents of the House and Council; see No. 750, above.

4 The agent for the Council was William Bollan, though his letter to TH of 15 April 1771 certainly expressed no consciousness of impropriety.

5 The House chose Benjamin Franklin in October 1770 to be its agent after the death of Dennys DeBerdt.

6 The House elected Jedidiah Prebble Jr. truckmaster instead of Thomas Goldthwait in April 1770; see TH Correspondence, 3: No. 582. Since all forts in the province were under the governor’s control, TH retained Goldthwait as commander of Fort Pownall. Prebble resigned the position of truckmaster after a year.

7 To minimize the possibility of fraud or trade in unlicensed items, control of trade with Native Americans was usually given to royal governors, but the Massachusetts General Court traditionally elected a truckmaster as the only person authorized to conduct such trade.

8 TH suggested in his letter to FB of 30 November 1770, No. 760, above, that Richard Silvester, who had given a damaging deposition against Samuel Adams, be rewarded with a government job.

1 Although not marked as such, No. 32 was probably No. 765, above. No. 33 was No. 776, above.

2 The sole witness testifying that Manwaring and the others fired shots from the Custom House was the French servant boy Charles Bourgatte. Rumors circulated that William Molineux, and perhaps other leading patriots, suborned Bourgatte; see No. 776, above.

1 On 21 April 1770, the jury found Ebenezer Richardson guilty of the murder of Christopher Seider, but the judges refused to pass sentence, believing manslaughter to be the more appropriate verdict.

1 The Speaker of the House was Thomas Cushing. For Stephen Sayre, see TH Correspondence, 3: No. 653.

2 These were part of a so-called new budget of letters that arrived in September 1770; see TH Correspondence, 3: Nos. 704 and 705. Which was the excerpted letter to Hood is not clear; it could have been TH to Samuel Hood, 23 February 1770, which described the death of Christopher Seider or, more likely, a letter not found, dated 24 March 1770, describing the Boston Massacre; see TH Correspondence, 3: No. 528 and p. 453. TH’s letter to Bernard of 12 March 1770 was his first account of the Massacre written to the governor; see TH Correspondence, 3: No. 543.

3 For TH’s suspicions of Briggs Hallowell’s role in the sacking of his house, see TH Correspondence, 1: No. 142.

1 Robinson’s letter to TH was not found.

2 The Boston merchants, led by William Molineux, began legal action against what they regarded as the excessive fees charged by the Customs House and the Naval Office in early December 1769. See TH Correspondence, 2: Nos. 473 and 483.

1 Latin, meaning “to write is to act.”

1 For Richard Draper, see TH Correspondence, 2: No. 429.

2 In his letter of 10 December 1770, No. 773, above, TH suggested to his friend Israel Williams that a letter from Hampshire County to one of the Boston newspapers showing how activities in the metropolis were regarded there would be a great service to the government cause. Williams evidently wrote such a letter, which TH acknowledged in No. 797, above. Despite the misgivings he expressed, it appears TH eventually delivered the letter to Draper, which produced this apology.

3 On 31 January, Draper published in the Boston News-Letter that Elizabeth Davies, wife of Captain William Davies, had died from a disorder occasioned by the fright she received when witnessing Patrick McMasters being carted through the streets for noncompliance with the nonimportation agreement.

4 Members of the General Court.

5 John and Thomas Fleet were the publishers of the Boston Evening-Post; see TH Correspondence, 1: No. 86.

1 The enclosed letter was not found.

2 TH perhaps referred to the wife of his friend and pastor Ebenezer Pemberton of the Second (New North) Church in Boston.

3 Neither Spear nor Wilmot was identified.

4 In all likelihood these were papers pertaining to John Bernard’s impending bankruptcy.

1 Kenny was presumably one of the rioters who assaulted Jonathan Longfellow, the justice of the peace at Machias; see Nos. 760 and 800, above.

2 Material in brackets here and below, due to tears in the MS, have been supplied from the AC.

3 “Possibility” in the AC.

4 Thomas Flucker, the newly appointed secretary of the province, was evidently anxious to receive his commission (written on parchment) enabling him to take up his office.

5 The reference is obscure. Charles Chauncy, Boston’s leading Whig clergyman, may be saying that if Chatham returned to power, Chauncy himself would wager his own head that Flucker would never be appointed secretary of the province.

1 The possibility of war with Spain over the Falkland Islands remained unresolved.

2 Gage referred to John Wilkes and his partisans in the Society of Supporters of the Bill of Rights.

1 A dedimus is a writ empowering a private person to perform an action normally performed by a judge; see TH Correspondence, 3: No. 648.

2 Jeremiah Moulton Jr. (1714–1777) was sheriff of York County until he was succeeded by his son Jotham in April 1771.

3 The bell-ringing marked the first anniversary of the Boston Massacre.

1 TH worried that representatives of the House might already be traveling to Boston before news of the prorogation reached them. The Boston Gazette was presumably under the “inspection” of Samuel Adams, clerk of the House, who met regularly with other leading patriots at the office of Edes & Gill on Sunday nights.

2 In the aftermath of the Boston Massacre, a number of towns passed resolutions supporting the nonimportation agreement; among the most radical were the Abingdon Resolves, adopted on 10 March 1770. The resolves justified forcible resistance to British troops and argued that unconstitutional actions by Parliament had caused the colonies to revert to a state of nature. The text was printed in the Boston Gazette, 2 April 1770.

1 Hillsborough’s letter of 7 December 1770, No. 769, above, informed TH of his official appointment as governor.

2 Twenty-nine of the anonymous letters of Junius critical of George III and the Grafton and North administrations were addressed to the “printer of the Public Advertiser,” Henry Sampson Woodfall (1739–1805). Woodfall was tried before Lord Mansfield for seditious libel. After an initial mistrial, Woodfall was eventually acquitted. John Almon, another printer who had published a single letter from Junius, was convicted but never punished.

3 TH had retained under his own control the position of keeper of the Castle stores and the office of gunner, who recorded ships’ arrivals and departures from the harbor.

1 Even out of power, George Grenville retained a substantial following in the House of Commons. After Grenville’s death on 13 November 1770, the North administration offered Thomas Whately, Grenville’s former secretary, a seat on the Board of Trade as an enticement for the support of the now dispirited Grenvillites; see No. 810, above.

2 Hillsborough’s letter of 11 December 1770, No. 774, above, expressed his pleasure at Preston’s acquittal. Preston himself left Boston on 6 December, carrying the news of the “not guilty” verdict in the trial of the soldiers.

3 The new commissions included not only TH’s own as governor but also Andrew Oliver’s as lieutenant governor and Thomas Flucker’s as secretary.

1 Josias Lyndon (1704–1778), with the exception of a one-year stint as governor in 1768–1769, was the clerk of the Rhode Island Assembly from 1728 until just before his death.

2 Elisha Sanford (1650–1691) was the son of Bridget Hutchinson (1618–1698), the sister of TH’s great-great-grandmother Anne. The Sanfords joined Anne Hutchinson in exile in Rhode Island when she was banished during the Antinomian Crisis. Elisha’s older brother Peleg Sanford (1639–1701) was governor of Rhode Island from 1680 to 1683 and the grandfather of TH’s wife, Margaret Sanford Hutchinson.

3 Jahleel Brenton (1691–1767) was the father of Rear Admiral Jahleel Brenton (1729–1802).

1 For Charles Cushing, see No. 761, above.

2 TH’s letter of 23 November 1770 has not been found.

3 Nathaniel Sinkler (not otherwise identified) eventually became a justice of the peace at Machias (Maine Documentary History, 14:313). Charles Cushing married Elizabeth Sumner (1748–1817) of Roxbury in 1768. Her brother was Increase Sumner (1746–1799), a lawyer, associate justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court from 1782 to 1797, and governor of Massachusetts from 1797 to 1799. Stephen Jones (1739–1826?) lived for some time at Weston before settling in Machias where he became a justice of the peace and later judge of the court of common pleas; see No. 917, below.

4 Coussens has not been identified. Sullivan may have been Daniel Sullivan (1739–1781) of Lincoln County, Maine, who was a captain of the militia during the Revolution and the brother of Major General John Sullivan (1740–1795) of New Hampshire, a delegate to the Continental Congress and third governor of New Hampshire. Another brother, James Sullivan (1744–1808), practiced law in York County. In March 1776, he became an associate justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court and later served as the seventh governor of the commonwealth. Jonathan Longfellow, justice of the peace at Machias, received similar rough treatment from its inhabitants; see No. 760, above.

1 No letter from TH to Thomas Gage dated 15 March has been found; however, there is a letter to Gage in TH’s letterbook letter dated 17 March; see No. 824, above. Perhaps the received copy of the letter bore an earlier date.

1 On 16 November 1770, the House adopted a number of resolves protesting the meeting of the General Court in Cambridge and demanding to know the reasons why regular troops had replaced the provincial garrison at Castle William (JHR, 47:183–84). At more or less the same time, the Council also took depositions contesting Andrew Oliver’s account of the Council meeting the day after the Boston Massacre and petitioned for his removal as secretary (JHR, 47:255–89).

2 This sentence is in TH’s handwriting.

1 Although TH’s house in Milton was destroyed in 1936, surviving engravings and photographs make clear that TH followed Bernard’s plans closely in building a portico for his country retreat.

1 When the third session of the General Court ended on 20 November 1770, TH intended to reconvene it on 23 January 1771, but he later continued the prorogation until 3 April (JHR, 47:182).

2 32 Henry VIII, c. 38, An Act Concerning Pre-Contracts of Marriages, and Touching Degrees of Consanguinity, was silent on this question, but Archbishop Matthew Parker’s (1504–1575) The Tables of Kindred and Affinity of the Church of England, promulgated in 1560, forbade such a marriage. Edward Coke in his comments on Cawdrey’s Case in 1595 reasoned that since the king is supreme head of the Church of England, royal law should supersede canon law (The Reports of Sir Edward Coke, Kt. [London: E. and R. Nutt and R. Gosling, 1738], 5:1–41).

3 Leviticus 18:18 forbids a man from wedding two sisters at the same time, but such a union would presumably be permissible once the first wife died. Although early Massachusetts law often followed both English practice and Levitical law, it did not in this instance; see No. 837, below.

4 It was the custom at the arrival of a new governor for various corporate bodies (the merchants, the bar, the clergy of various denominations) to present loyal addresses. The language of such addresses tended to be pro forma, but that of the Congregational clergy of Boston to TH was notably cold, and Hutchinson responded in kind. Likewise, the House of Representatives considered a congratulatory address but decided against it; see TH History, 3:240.

1 Gage’s letter of congratulations on TH’s accession as governor, dated 25 March 1771, No. 827, is printed above; the second letter of the same date has not been found.

2 For the pending removal of the 64th and 65th Regiments from Halifax, see No. 827, above.

3 For the recruiting of troops to augment forces in anticipation of war with Spain, see No. 820, above.

4 In March 1769, Thomas Pownall proposed amendments to the Mutiny in America Act, enabling colonial assemblies to avoid the parliamentary act by adopting their own laws adapted to the same ends (Parliamentary Debates, 5:79–80). The Act for 1770 extended the previous year’s law without modification (Dandy Pickering, ed., Statutes at Large [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1771], 28:287).

5 For Hillsborough’s instructions concerning the payment of the storekeeper and gunner at Castle William, see No. 788, above.

6 Peter Oliver owned an iron foundry near his home in Middleborough, Massachusetts.

1 Israel Williams, at TH’s suggestion, evidently wrote a satirical article for the Boston press. Richard Draper declined to print it, fearing retaliation against his business. See Nos. 773, 797, and 817, above.

2 TH alluded here to Joseph Hawley, also of Hampshire County.

3 For the letter expressing the king’s approbation of Andrew Oliver’s conduct, see No. 775, above.

1 Both letters were indeed inadvertently numbered 34.

2 For Hillsborough’s instructions concerning the payment of the storekeeper and gunner at Castle William, see No. 788, above.

3 For the need for repairs at Castle William, see Nos. 794 and 806, above.

4 For the petitions concerning rioting in the Eastern County, see No. 761, above.

5 Samuel Holland (1728–1801), royal engineer and surveyor general of British North America, had proposed to Lord Hillsborough on 19 December 1770 that Maine be made a separate province. Hillsborough in reply avoided the jurisdictional question but acknowledged that discussions were underway of the need to survey the region in order to protect the king’s timber (Alex Johnson, The First Mapping of America: The General Survey of British North America [London; I. B. Tauris, 2017], chap. 7).

1 TH received official word of his appointment as governor-in-chief on 9 March 1771 but did not publish his commission until 14 March to allow time for the arrangement of the usual ceremonies.

2 Letter No. 2, No. 775, above, expressed the king’s approval of Andrew Oliver’s conduct with regard to the disputed Council meeting of 6 March 1770 and ordered that the letter be entered into the Council’s journal.

3 Hillsborough’s circular letter of 11 December 1770 (calendar only) urged governors to recruit more soldiers to replenish the ranks of thinning regiments as part of a general augmentation of troops in anticipation of war with Spain.

4 After initial threats to the contrary if it were not removed to Boston, the House did proceed to business and eventually voted salaries for the judges of the Superior Court (JHR, 47:207).

1 On 2 April 1771, Charles Chauncy began the commemoration of the Massacre with an opening prayer. Schoolmaster James Lovell (1737–1814) gave the oration. In it he denied parliamentary supremacy by saying, “The claim of the British Parliament over us is not only ILLEGAL IN ITSELF, but A DOWN-RIGHT USURPATION OF HIS PREROGATIVE as KING OF America” (James Lovell, An Oration Delivered April 2d, 1771. At the Request of the Inhabitants of the Town of Boston; to Commemorate the Bloody Tragedy of the Fifth of March, 1770 [Boston: Edes & Gill, 1771], p. 16).

2 In letter No. 798, above, TH mentioned that in a letter from Pownall dated 15 November (not found), Pownall hinted “very decisive measures” were under consideration if the soldiers accused in the Massacre were not acquitted. Perhaps a parliamentary limitation on town government was one such measure?

3 Since the Massachusetts governor was now to be paid a salary from the crown, TH refused the compensation the House voted him (JHR, 47:252).

4 TH complained to Gage in his letter of 31 March 1771, No. 831, above, of his difficulty in finding a copy of the current version of the Mutiny Act.

5 For the House proceeding to business, see No. 834, above.

6 The congratulatory addresses to TH upon receipt of his commission can be found in the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy and Advertiser, 18 March 1771.

1 William Fitzwilliam (1749–1810) was the son of Richard Fitzwilliam (1711–1776), 6th Viscount Fitzwilliam, an Irish peer. The editors are indebted to J. L. Bell for this reference.

1 No letter written by Williams on 8 March 1771 was found.

2 Presumably Williams discussed Hannan’s estate (not further identified) in his letter of 8 March.

3 Any discussion of military affairs, most likely the possibility of war with Spain or militia appointments, must have been mentioned in the missing 8 March letter as well.

4 Williams posed the question of whether a man might marry his father’s brother’s wife in his letter of 28 March 1771, No. 830, above. TH’s citation of Massachusetts law appears in The Charter of Granted by Their Majesties King William and Queen Mary to the Inhabitants of the Province of Massachusetts Bay in New England (Boston: Samuel Kneeland, 1759), 59. The editors are indebted to David Warrington for this reference.

5 TH evidently chose to interpret literally Williams’s question in his letter of 28 March about whether there were any indecencies at the publishing of his commission, choosing not to mention the address of the Congregational clergy of Boston or the refusal of the House to send any congratulatory address.

6 Once again, TH alluded to Joseph Hawley, who was disbarred for his public libel of TH, only to be restored through TH’s intercession.

7 The House began its session by insisting that it could legally meet nowhere except Boston but then relented by proceeding to business anyway; see No. 834, above.

1 James Boutineau, the father-in-law of Customs Commissioner John Robinson, had proposed a £300 supplement to Jonathan Sewall’s salary as attorney general, which would enable Sewall to relinquish the post of vice-admiralty court judge in Halifax to which he was recently appointed. Robinson would then assume the vacant judgeship in Halifax, since he feared returning to Boston following his caning of James Otis Jr.; see No. 790, above.

2 Both Hillsborough and Bernard favored a change in the Massachusetts charter that would enable the king to appoint the members of the Council. The plan was postponed for fear the ministry lacked sufficient votes to carry it through, especially in the wake of the acquittal of the soldiers indicted for the Boston Massacre. In his letter No. 796, above, TH expressed his recent thoughts on a royally appointed council.

3 TH had written on 3 February to express concern that John Mein was attempting to have himself appointed printer and stationer to the commissioners of customs instead of Green & Russell. Grey Cooper was the undersecretary of the Lords of the Treasury; see TH Correspondence, 1: No. 263.

4 In his letter No. 801, above, TH proposed his nephew Samuel Mather Jr. as a candidate to replace Richard Reeve as first clerk of the commissioners of customs, should the post become vacant. “Mr. Robinson” was John Robinson (1727–1802), secretary to Lord North and an undersecretary of the treasury.

5 TH requested Bernard to be on the lookout for a secondhand coach in his letter of 7 February 1771, No. 807, above.

6 Brass Crosby (1725–1793) was a lawyer and supporter of John Wilkes. While lord mayor of London, he released a printer who was brought before him for publishing parliamentary debates, which were hitherto “privileged” matter. He was summoned before the House to explain his actions and committed to the Tower of London on 27 March but later released at the end of the session. Crosby’s arrest was the last attempt to prevent the publication of parliamentary debates until 2009 (DNB).

1 For an account of Lady Bernard’s passage, see No. 808, above.

2 For the congratulatory addresses, see No. 835, above.

3 TH was advising the governor’s son John Bernard how best to extricate himself from a failed business relationship with Thomas Goldthwait; see No. 818, above.

1 The same Order in Council of 6 July 1770 that mandated the transfer of Castle William to royal control also ordered that the principal rendezvous of the Royal Navy in North American waters would no longer be Halifax but Boston; see TH Correspondence, 3: No. 649.

2 TH’s private letter to Lord Hillsborough dated 22 January 1771, No. 795, above, also recommended against royally appointed councilors. The docketing indicates it was received 30 March 1771.

1 TH addressed the same subjects with Lord Hillsborough in a letter written on the same day; see No. 840, above.

1 For moving the 64th and 65th Regiments from Halifax, see No. 827, above.

2 TH complained to Gage in his letter of 31 March 1771, No. 831, above, of his difficulty in finding a copy of the current version of the Mutiny Act.

3 Hillsborough specified that the two officers TH retained at Castle William were to be paid by the army and not by the province; see No. 788, above.

4 Peter Oliver mistakenly supplied the wrong sized cannon balls for Castle William. TH urged Gage to pay for them anyway; see No. 831, above.

1 Here Bollan alluded to a letter of the Council, dated 15 April 1769 to Lord Hillsborough, for which see The Papers of Francis Bernard, 5: Appendix 4. Hillsborough refused to receive it, and Bollan left it with his secretary.

2 The “noble lord higher up in the administration” has not been identified. Possibly Lord North?

3 “Totis viribus” is a Latin phrase that in this instance means “with all my might.”

4 “Qui faciunt per alius qui facit per se” is a Latin legal term that means those who act through others do the act themselves.

5 “Minus caute,” Latin, translated as “without due care.”

6 On 10 March 1770, Bollan presented a petition to the House of Commons on his own behalf, after the House previously refused to receive a petition he presented on behalf of the Council (since it had been meeting without the governor present). The text of his petition is in the Bowdoin-Temple Papers, MHS Colls. 9 (1897): 161–64.

7 One of the eight resolutions proposed by Hillsborough and adopted by the House of Lords on 15 December 1769 would enable those accused of acts of treason in the colonies to be transported to London for trial according to the Treason Act (35 Henry VIII c. 2).

8 “Exabundanti,” Latin, meaning “superfluously.”

9 Bollan acknowledged that if TH had refused to follow Hillsborough’s orders, as in case of the transfer of Castle William to the crown, he would have been dismissed and replaced with someone worse.

1 For James Lovell’s oration on the anniversary of the Boston Massacre, see No. 835, above.

2 For the Virginia Resolves of 16 May 1769, see TH Correspondence, 2: No. 375.

3 The remainder of the letter is in TH’s hand.

1 James Lovell’s oration was mentioned in the previous letter. The vote of the town of Boston thanked him for his words and ordered the text printed; see the title page of An Oration Delivered April 2d, 1771. At the Request of the Inhabitants of the Town of Boston; to Commemorate the Bloody Tragedy of the Fifth of March, 1770 (Boston: Edes & Gill, 1771).

1 By Lord Hillsborough’s order the gunner and storekeeper at Castle William were to be paid by the army; see No. 788, above. For TH’s transcripts of the certificates, see Massachusetts Archives, SC1/series 45X, 27:152.

2 The 64th and 65th Regiments from Halifax were expected to arrive at Boston while in transit to points further south, but a question had arisen whether the movement of troops would be unnecessary since the prospect of war with Spain had diminished; see No. 847, below.

3 This news was public confirmation of the rumored political changes TH had heard about the previous month; see No. 824, above.

1 TH reported difficulty finding the most recent version of the Mutiny Act in his letter to Gage of 31 March 1771, No. 831, above.

1 TH was assisting the former governor’s son, John Bernard, in closing out his near-bankrupt mercantile concern; see No. 818, above.

2 TH vetoed Thomas Cushing, John Hancock, and Samuel Adams as commissaries, and William Crawford and John Wheelwright as truckmasters; see JHR, 47:220, 224, 228, 218, 221.

3 Most probably, TH sent the lead essay in the Boston Gazette for 22 April 1771 by “Johannes in Eremo,” questioning whether the colonies were subject to the authority of Parliament or only the king and their own legislatures.

1 John Temple was in England attempting to vindicate his conduct. Several councilors were related to him by marriage: James Bowdoin, John Erving Sr., and James Pitts.

1 For the earlier failure of the House to congratulate TH on his appointment as governor, see No. 830, above. Near the end of the session, the House noted his appointment with much softer words; see JHR, 47:241–42.

2 Hillsborough’s letter was No. 774, above.

3 TH alluded to the same group of councilors in No. 850, above.

4 Massachusetts Archives, series SC1/series 45X, 86: Records of the Council, 1770–1776, 23 April 1771.

5 TH stated his reasons for refusing the salary supplied by the legislature in a message to the House on 26 April 1771; see JHR, 47:252.

6 TH discussed these vetoes in No. 848, above.

7 For the vote and veto of the salary grants to Bollan and DeBerdt, see JHR, 47:200–01, 246.

8 For TH’s request for repairs to the Province House and the General Court’s response, see JHR, 47:227, 237, 247.

1 During the so-called printers’ crisis of 1771, alluded to in No. 838, above, Richard Oliver (1735–1784), who succeeded the recently deceased William Beckford as alderman for Billingsgate, committed a messenger of the Speaker of the House of Commons to jail. In response, the House ordered Oliver taken to the Tower on 27 March together with Lord Mayor Brass Crosby. They were not released until the end of the session on 8 May. Two remonstrances of the City of London to the king earlier in March were the prelude to these arrests. When George III appeared to summarily dismiss the city’s grievances, mobs surrounded Parliament, cutting off access.

1 This letter appears to be a response to a letter written by Goldthwait (not found) answering No. 819, above, concerning a projected trip to Machias.

2 Mr. Jones was presumably Stephen Jones; see No. 826, above.

3 For TH’s vetoes of other candidates as truckmaster, see No. 848, above.

1 No letter No. 57 by Francis Bernard was found.

2 TH was assisting Francis Bernard’s son John in trying to close out his tangled business affairs.

3 TH was probably alluding to an article by “An Elector in 1771,” which appeared in the Boston Gazette for 6 May 1771. The author, identified by Harbottle Dorr as James Lovell, warned Massachusetts voters that TH intended to “strip you of every badge of freedom and brand you every mark of slavery.” He went on to mock TH for his refusal to accept a salary from the province.

4 For the reasons why Brass Crosby, the lord mayor, suddenly became a hero of the opposition, see No. 838, above.

5 For reasons of health, John Adams retired to Braintree in the spring of 1771 (JA Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, 3:296–97).

1 No letter from Gage dated 3 May 1771 was found.

2 TH evidently hoped to capitalize on fears of war with Spain to render the strengthening of parliamentary authority more acceptable in the colonies.

3 The Boston Gazette for 13 May 1771 contained a special supplement describing the arrest of the printers of the Middlesex Journal and London Evening Post in response to a royal proclamation. (The printers published accounts of the proceedings of the House of Commons.) They were subsequently released by John Wilkes and the lord mayor in their capacities as magistrates in the City of London. Part of the controversy surrounding the arrests was that the men were not tried by a jury of their peers for their alleged crime but instead condemned by an act of the House of Commons. TH evidently hoped that Parliament would proceed in a similar way with those who challenged its authority in the colonies.

1 Whately was given a seat on the Board of Trade for bringing the remnants of George Grenville’s followers to support the North ministry after their leader’s death.

1 Hillsborough’s circular letter of 22 January 1771 (calendar only) informed royal governors that there would be no war with Spain. The date of TH’s letter No. 3 was 10 May 1771, No. 855, above.

2 The “instrument” that accompanied letter No. 5 was a royal pardon for Ebenezer Richardson; see No. 812, above.

1 TH’s short letter by Jarvis was not found.

1 Middlecott Cooke (1705–1771) was the son of Elisha Cooke Jr., served as a selectman of Boston, and was clerk of both the court of general sessions and the court of common pleas for Suffolk. He was also the partner of Ezekiel Goldthwait in the merchant firm of Cooke & Goldthwait. John Cotton was TH’s brother-in-law and, at the time, deputy secretary of the province. Ezekiel Goldthwait (1740–1776), merchant, was a notary public, justice of the peace, registrar of deeds, and, like Cooke, clerk of both the court of general sessions and the court of common pleas. His half-brother was Thomas Goldthwait, commander at Fort Pownall (MHS Procs., 15:48–53).

2 Ezekiel Price (see BD), Ezekiel Goldthwait’s cousin, was deputy registrar of the vice-admiralty court. TH would have known of Price’s leading role among the Boston Society for Encouraging Trade and Commerce, but he may not have been aware that Price’s insurance office wrote policies for a number of the town’s leading smugglers (Tyler, Smugglers & Patriots, pp. 13–16). John Hill, John Avery Sr., and Richard Dana were all justices of the peace for Suffolk County. Hill and Dana took depositions from witnesses to the Boston Massacre that were later compiled for the town as part of A Short Narrative of the Horrid Massacre.

3 By “the other part of the office,” TH meant the job of clerk to the court of common pleas. The two courts were distinct in Massachusetts and had separate functions (Michael S. Hindus, “A Guide to the Court Records of Early Massachusetts,” CSM Pubs., 62:521–22).

4 Francis Bernard secured the job of registrar of vice-admiralty for his son John in March 1771; see No. 786, above. Price was already in place as deputy registrar having succeeded William Story after his resignation in 1765; see TH Correspondence, 3: No. 677.

5 William Sheppard, tide surveyor of the Boston customs district, did succeed Arodi Thayer as marshal of the vice-admiralty court in 1771 (instead of Cotton) when Thayer took up the same position in Philadelphia (Carl Ubbelohde, The Vice Admiralty Courts and the American Revolution [Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1960], p. 141). By Captain Hallowell, TH meant Benjamin Hallowell, the customs commissioner, not his brother the collector.

6 Lord Sandwich was first lord of the admiralty; see TH Correspondence, 2: No. 284.

7 William Palmer, TH’s principal mercantile correspondent in London, paid the fees for TH’s commission on his behalf (TH Correspondence, 2: No. 345).

8 Sir Edward Hawke preceded Sandwich as first lord of the admiralty.

9 Sir Hans Sloane, 1st Baronet (1660–1753), Irish physician and naturalist, bequeathed his collection of over 71,000 items to the British nation forming the basis of what later became the British Museum, British Library, and the Natural History Museum.

1 The anonymous letter was not found.

2 Benjamin Franklin was at that time serving as agent to the House of Representatives. In a letter to Thomas Cushing, dated 5 February 1771 (Franklin Papers, 18:27–28), Franklin informed him he was contemplating leaving England for Ireland and would leave the province’s affairs in the hands of Arthur Lee, whom the House chose to act as Franklin’s deputy in case of absence; see No. 743, above.

3 This is exactly what happened when Brass Crosby and Richard Oliver were released from the Tower on 10 May, but TH, having received no London mail later than early April, could not have known that yet; see No. 853, above.

4 Brass Crosby was committed to the Tower on 27 March 1771.

5 Boston voters were theoretically required to hold twenty pounds sterling in property, but, according to TH, voter qualifications were rarely scrutinized upon entry to the town meeting (William Pencak, “The Social Structure of Revolutionary Boston: Evidence from the Great Fire of 1760,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 10 [1979]: 270).

1 The “business at the Treasury” pertains to TH’s wish to block the appointment of John Mein as government printer and retain Green & Russell; see No. 803, above.

2 TH expressed concern about the unauthorized circulation of his letters in his letter No. 813, above.

3 In his letter No. 818, above, TH mentioned receiving an anonymous letter “hatched at one of those Meetings of the holy Sisters which you have heard of such as Pembertons wife used to frequent.” Bernard here compared them to the conventicles presided over by TH’s great-grandmother Anne Hutchinson.

4 This Latin quotation from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, 7:20–21, when translated means “I see and approve of the better, but I follow the worse.”

5 In his speech at the opening of the last session of the General Court in September 1770, TH urged it to check unauthorized settlement on the far side of the Penobscot in order to protect the king’s timber, but to no avail (JHR, 47:80).

6 TH previously asked Bernard to consult with William Palmer concerning the purchase of a used coach; see No. 807, above.

7 Bernard regularly collected his official mail from the colonies at John Pownall’s office.

1 The secretary at the time was Thomas Flucker.

2 Unlike during the opening of past sessions, the remonstrance of the House, dated 29 May, pleaded for the return of the General Court to Boston without challenging the royal prerogative (JHR, 48:7–8).

1 In his letter No. 6, No. 833, above, Lord Hillsborough discouraged making further improvements at Castle William.

2 The two new councilors were Caleb Cushing (1703–1797) of Salisbury, who continued to serve on the Council through 1779, and Timothy Woodbridge (1709–1774) of Stockbridge, who was appointed to the Mandamus Council in 1774 shortly before his death. TH vetoed John Hancock and Jerathmiel Bowers.

3 TH’s opening speech to the General Court appears in JHR, 48:9. The House evidently replied with a message concerning the inconvenience of meeting in Cambridge (not printed but probably similar to their earlier message presented before the election; see JHR, 48:6), which produced a response from TH promising to plead their case to the ministry (JHR, 48:11).

4 For the “trifling” argument over the “form of the Writ,” see No. 753, above.

5 In his opening speech to the General Court, TH once again urged the need to prevent unauthorized intrusions into the lands east of the Penobscot in order to protect the king’s timber.

1 Both the Boston Gazette and Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy and Advertiser for 3 June 1771 carried the election results.

1 This letter does not appear to be a response to either of the two letters TH received dated 6 April 1771 that were found: one from William Fitzwilliam (calendar only) and one from Francis Bernard, No. 838, above.

2 TH’s two vetoes during the May elections were John Hancock, “too much at the head of the late disorders,” and Jerathmiel Bowers, “a very indifferent character.”

3 The two Fox Islands comprise the present towns of North Haven and Vinalhaven, Maine.

4 Tarrance Harbor does not match any existing locations in Maine. TH may have meant Tenants Harbor on the western side of the mouth of Penobscot Bay.

1 The content discussed strongly suggests John Pownall was the addressee.

2 For the House’s acknowledgment of this right, see No. 866, above.

3 Samuel Adams was a representative from Boston at the time.

1 Thomas Scammell. “master mastmaker at Woolwich,” was appointed inspector of His Majesty’s woods in North America, 15 November 1770; see Alexander Johnson, The First Mapping of America: The General Survey of British North America (London: I. B. Tauris, 2017).

1 Beginning in 1765, dissatisfied inhabitants of the interior of North Carolina challenged what they perceived as heavy taxes caused by their underrepresentation in the legislature and the alleged corruption of the administration of Governor William Tryon. Fighting broke out along the banks of the Alamance River on 16 May 1771, when outnumbered militia led by Tryon dispersed a much larger but poorly organized force of Regulators. The hanging of six of the rebel leaders effectively ended the movement in North Carolina. News of the armed clash between the governor and Regulators appeared in the Massachusetts Spy, 13 June 1771. It included excerpts from an article in the Cape Fear Mercury dated 22 May.

1 For Thomas Goldthwait and Bernard’s possible usefulness to him, see TH Correspondence, 3: No. 639.

2 John Bernard appears to have been dealing with Lane, Son & Fraser, London merchants engaged in the North American trade. The principals were Thomas Lane (1707–1784), John Lane (1743–1784), and Thomas Fraser (dates unknown).

1 The text of the protest, dated 22 June 1771, can be found in the Boston Gazette for 24 June 1771, as well as JHR, 48:62–64.

1 Hillsborough’s letter vindicating Oliver’s conduct was No. 775, above.

2 The three bills to which TH refused his assent are discussed in sequence in the following paragraph.

3 For Lord Hillsborough’s letter enclosing the pardon of Ebenezer Richardson for the murder of Christopher Seider, see No. 812, above.

1 Hillsborough’s letter No. 7 was not found.

2 For the exchange between TH and the House, see No. 877, below.

3 For TH’s final speech to the House before proroguing it, see JHR, 48:115–17.

1 TH’s letterbook copy did not name an addressee, but the printed version in the Boston Gazette named John Pownall as the recipient.

2 TH’s twenty-seventh instruction restrained him from assenting to any revenue bills that included taxes on salaries paid by the crown (JHR, 48:107).

3 The response of the House to TH’s veto of the tax bills included the sentence: “We know of no Commissioners of Customs, nor of any Revenue His Majesty has a right to establish in North America” (JHR, 48:109).

4 For the complaint of the commissioners about the taxing of the salaries, see TH Correspondence, 2: No. 488.

5 The General Court refused to give in to Governor William Burnet’s demand for a fixed salary in 1728–1729, causing a legislative impasse for a year and a half (TH History, 2:252–68).

6 For TH’s speech concerning settlements east of the Penobscot, see JHR, 48:67–68. For the legislation concerning Machias, see JHR, 48:102.

7 For the letter given to Scammell, see No. 870, above.

8 The remainder of the letter from this point on is written vertically in the left-hand margin. The conclusion of the text has been lost due to wear on the paper edge.

1 The message of the House refused to recognize the legitimacy of the commissioners of customs and denied the right of Parliament to enact revenue bills in North America.

1 Exporters of tea to the American colonies were allowed a drawback of 12 shillings per pound from inland revenue duty paid in England, if they produced certificates from customs officials in the colonies showing the tea was landed there (Tyler, Smugglers & Patriots, p. 162).

1 For the consequences of the last minute arrival of his instructions, see No. 877, above.

2 Benjamin Franklin, being the agent of the House alone and not of the province (approved by House, Council, and governor), was not officially recognized by the ministry. Franklin was, however, the official agent of New Jersey, Georgia, and the Pennsylvania assembly.

3 Arthur Lee, under the pseudonym “Junius Americanus,” wrote a series of articles in 1769–1770 vigorously criticizing Sir Francis Bernard and calling TH Bernard’s “creature.” See No. 760, above.

4 The king’s speech, delivered 8 May 1771, warned, in an oblique reference to the opposition, against those who sought to stir up “animosities” among the people and prevent them from “enjoying the blessings of a mild and legal government” and regard “as their most dangerous enemies [those] who . . . would persuade them to violate those laws and undermine that authority”; see Parliamentary Debates, 5:394–95.

1 TH’s fifth instruction forbade the meeting of the Massachusetts Council without first being summoned by the governor. TH was required to read the instruction to the Council, and it further specified that the instruction should be recorded in the Council’s minute book. If any councilors persisted in meeting without the governor’s approval, TH was to veto their reelection (Leonard Woods Labaree, Royal Instructions to British Colonial Governors, 2 vols. [New York: Octagon, 1935], 1:48–49).

2 The sixth instruction forbade TH as governor from signing grants to separate agents for either the House or Council (Labaree, Royal Instructions, 1:387).

3 The SC in Sparks 10 adds the following note at this point: “This paper contains an elaborate panegyric upon Hutchinson and his measures. [Massa. Gaz. 8 Augt. 1771].”

4 Governor William Tryon’s arrival at New York on 8 July was noted in the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter, 18 July 1771. Presumably the letter was kept open until then.

1 For Francis Waldo, see No. 804, above. Although he was deputy collector of customs at Falmouth from 1768 until the fall of 1771, he was in London, assisting with the sale and management of his family’s lands in Maine.

2 For the “rash answer” of the House to TH’s message, see No. 877, above.

3 For Jonathan Longfellow and the assault, see No. 760, above. For the report of the commissioners (William Brattle, James Bowdoin, and Thomas Hubbard), see Maine Documentary History, 14:137–43.

4 Thomas Scammell was inspector of the woods for the Eastern Country.

1 TH’s nephew Nathaniel Rogers married Elizabeth Wentworth Gould, a cousin of Governor John Wentworth; see TH Correspondence, 2: No. 288.

2 Lord Dunmore (see TH Correspondence, 3: No. 621) replaced Cadwallader Colden, who became acting governor of New York after the death of Sir Henry Moore. Within six months, Dunmore was transferred to Virginia, following the death of Norbonne Berkeley, 4th Baron Botetourt. The occasion for embarrassment concerned the presence of a former governor within the colony when the new one arrived.

1 The Boston Gazette for 22 July 1771 printed a letter from the Massachusetts House of Representatives to their newly appointed agent, Benjamin Franklin, dated 6 November 1770.

2 Samuel Adams was the clerk of the House.

3 “Instar omnium” is a Latin legal phrase meaning “like all” or “a specimen of the whole.”

4 The verdict against John Robinson was printed in the Boston Gazette, 29 July 1771.

5 The SC contains the words “from New York” at this point.

6 Passages within brackets in this letter are written in TH’s private code.

7 The text from “We have no precedent . . .” to this point does not appear in the SC.

1 Hillsborough’s letter No. 8 was No. 864, above.

2 The circular letter notifying royal governors of the birth of a prince is not printed in this volume but noted in the calendar.

1 It is not clear whether TH was responding here to a letter from Pownall that has not survived, but Pownall moved the repeal of the Townshend duty on tea in 1770 and was a sharp critic of the Grafton administration and Lord Hillsborough.

1 Both “Centinel” and “Mucius Scaevola” attacked Tryon as a corrupt politician and a blood-thirsty villain in the pages of the Massachusetts Spy for 27 June 1771. The Boston Gazette for 15 July 1771 also carried a satirical “address” allegedly written by a party of Quakers portraying Tryon’s suppression of the Regulators as unnecessarily cruel (Neil L. York, “Tag-Team Polemics: The ‘Centinel’ and His Allies in the ‘Massachusetts Spy,’” MHS Procs., 107:94–97).

1 Henry Barnes, a merchant in the town of Marlborough, was threatened with arson and tarring and feathering for his violations of the nonimportation agreement. TH included the minutes of the Council that led to the proclamation of a reward for the apprehension of those who had threatened Barnes in his letter to John Pownall, Hillsborough’s secretary; see TH Correspondence, 3: No. 647.

2 This sentence was omitted from the SC.

1 TH received a letter dated 25 May from Francis Bernard, No. 862, above, which in part discusses the Eastern Country, the subject of the first paragraph of this letter. A letter from Bernard dated 31 May was not located.

2 The most recent found letter from Goldthwait is No. 800, above, but No. 854, above, appears to be a response to a missing letter concerning a projected trip to Machias, which may have been forwarded to Hillsborough.

3 William Palmer, as TH’s business correspondent, paid most of his incidental expenses in England out of money credited to TH’s account. John Tutte was chief clerk in the office of trade and plantations; see TH Correspondence, 3: No. 569. He was handling arrangements for a gift of communion silver and “chapel furniture,” originally intended for Kings Chapel, which were among the perquisites of a newly appointed governor; see Nos. 892 and 967, below. See also Lord Hillsborough to the Lord Chamberlain, 16 October 1770, National Archives UK, CO 5/765, f. 190.

4 What compromise regarding the agents’ salaries TH hinted at is unknown, though he may have expressed a willingness to approve a payment to Bollan for work done before he became the exclusive agent of the Council. It may also pertain to something Bernard wrote in the missing letter of 31 May.

5 This paragraph must also be a response to what Bernard wrote on 31 May.

1 William Palmer’s letter of 14 June was not found. TH’s letter mentions “the loss of Smith” and the need to settle drawbacks for tea that was onboard, which presumably explains the phrase “[the Brig is settled].”

2 For TH’s letter to Lord Hillsborough, see No. 890, above

3 For Tutte and arrangements for the perquisites of TH’s office, see No. 891, above, and No. 967, below.

4 The two churches in the country to whom TH chose to make the gift in specie were not identified.

1 Hillsborough’s letters Nos. 9 and 10 were both dated 3 July 1771. No. 9 is No. 875, above. No. 10 is calendared but not printed in this volume.

2 TH’s letter No. 8, dated 6 July 1771, No. 876, above, was written shortly after proroguing the General Court. In it he reported on the House’s protest that denied the legitimacy of the commissioners of customs and the right of Parliament to tax the colonies.

3 In his letter No. 9, Hillsborough asked TH to explain the objection of the Massachusetts judges to the form of the royal pardon he had dispatched for Ebenezer Richardson.

4 Lord Hillsborough’s letter No. 10, dated 3 July 1771, instructed TH to give all possible aid to Thomas Scammell, the new surveyor of the king’s woods. It is calendared but not printed in this volume.

5 TH issued an order to assist Scammell in No. 870, above.

6 The AC replaces “of the doings” with “at Machias.”

7 For the commission of the Council to inquire into the conduct of Jonathan Longfellow, see No. 882, above.

8 For the report of the commissioners, see Maine Documentary History, 14:137–43.

1 TH’s letter of 25 August 1771 (also private), No. 890, above, addressed the subject of smuggled tea, which this letter continues. The letter of 31 May, which the SC dated to 30 May, has not been found.

2 At this point, the SC continued, “We have not virtue enough to become obnoxious to the people merely from a sense of duty: It seems therefore that it would be best to have . . .”

1 This letter from which TH proceeds to quote has not been found. It was presumably a response to No. 790, above, in which TH passed along a proposal from the merchant James Boutineau for a three-way exchange of offices and salaries between Sewall, Customs Commissioner John Robinson, and Michael Francklin, the lieutenant governor of Nova Scotia.

2 Missing word supplied here due to a hole in the MS.

3 MS torn here and three times elsewhere.

4 For Francis Waldo, see No. 804, above. The lawsuit involving Robinson was his case for assault against James Otis Jr.

1 No letter from Francis Bernard dated 18 July was found. That letter may well be the missing letter from which TH quoted in No. 895, above.

2 Nathaniel Ropes II (1726–1774) of Salem was a key government party ally in the General Court until he was dropped from the Council in May 1769. William Cushing (1732–1810), Harvard 1751, was the son of associate justice John Cushing. Both he and Ropes were duly appointed to the Superior Court in 1772. Cushing was the only sitting justice of the provincial court to serve in the new Massachusetts Supreme Court. As its chief justice, he presided over the Quock Walker Case, which found slavery incompatible with the new state constitution. He became one of the first associate justices of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1790, where he served until his death.

3 TH did not see sufficient cause to justify so large a difference between the salaries of the chief and puisne justices, unless the chief sat in single-justice sessions, as in the royal colonies or the Courts of Westminster (i.e., Westin Hall).

4 TH’s letter was No. 895, above.

5 For the verdict in the Otis case, see No. 884, above.

6 This letter from John Pownall to TH was not found.

7 Charles Paxton was a member of the American Board of Customs Commissioners, and Jonathan Williams Sr. was inspector general for customs, whose home had been attacked in the Liberty riot; see TH Correspondence, 2: No. 326.

8 For Francis Waldo, see No. 804, above. It is unclear what Waldo sought and whether it related to his post within the customs service or his landholdings in Maine.

9 TH hoped to secure the position of deputy registrar of the Massachusetts vice-admiralty court for John Cotton, his brother-in-law. See No. 898, below.

10 For TH’s efforts to extricate John Bernard from his tangled financial affairs, see No. 839, above.

11 “Felo de se” was Latin for a crime against oneself, or a suicide. The councilors in their report (Maine Documentary History, 14:137–43) argued that the detection of those illegally harvesting the king’s timber (mast trees not on private land that were at least 24 inches in diameter, 12 inches off the ground) would be easier in settled areas than in remote areas, since at least there were people present to inform against the trespassers.

12 The case of Jeffries v. Donnell began in the Lincoln County Court of Common Pleas in September 1764. David Jeffries, clerk of the Kennebec Company, was the tenant of Sylvester Gardiner, one of its proprietors. The company’s claim to the lands in question rested ultimately on a grant by James I to the Council of Plymouth. Joseph Donnell, who occupied the land, purchased it from a man who claimed to have bought it from Native Americans. The court found for Donnell, and the proprietors appealed to the Massachusetts Superior Court meeting in Falmouth on 25 June 1765. The Superior Court also favored Donnell. The proprietors then appealed for a review, which continued by delays until June 1766, when the court refused to reverse its earlier verdict. Despite the fact that the Massachusetts charter did not allow appeals to the King in Council in cases of real property, the Kennebec Proprietors appealed anyway, on the ground that all subjects were entitled to appeal to the king. On 26 February 1768, the King in Council agreed to hear the case, which finally transpired on 14 June 1771 (Gordon E. Kershaw, The Kennebec Proprietors, 1749–1775 [Somersworth: New Hampshire Publishing, 1975], pp. 174–90).

13 The Privy Council’s ruling was ambiguous. On the one hand, it found the proceedings of the Massachusetts Superior Court erroneous and decreed the proprietors were entitled to a new trial. But the Council’s ruling was silent on the key question of the validity of claims based on Indian deeds (Kershaw, Kennebec Proprietors, p. 190). “Gardner’s letter” mentioned by TH may well have been a letter to the Kennebec Proprietors written by their counsel in England, Thomas Goosetrey; see Thomas Goosetrey to the Kennebec Proprietors, 3 July 1771, Kennebec Purchase Papers, Loose Papers (1760–1790), Maine Historical Society, Augusta.

14 James Otis Jr. argued the case when it was being reviewed before the Superior Court in 1766. The laws of both Massachusetts and the Plymouth Colony did not recognize the validity of Indian deeds. Otis maintained that the same should be true in Maine, but TH and the other justices believed the law never extended to Maine (Kershaw, Kennebec Proprietors, p. 179).

15 The Charter and General Laws of the Colony and Province of Massachusetts Bay (Boston: T. B. Wait, 1814), pp. 307–08, 408–09.

16 Sewall’s response was not found.

17 Pemberton had entered into an agreement with Francis Bernard’s son Frank to share the proceeds of the Massachusetts Naval Office. After Frank’s death, Pemberton retained the entire amount of the proceeds, refusing to share them with John Bernard, who had succeeded his brother. See Papers of Francis Bernard, 6:194.

18 Benjamin Pemberton bought an estate in Jamaica Plain from Benjamin Faneuil in 1760; see Francis S. Drake, The Town of Roxbury, Massachusetts: Its Memorable Persons and Places, Its History and Antiquities with Numerous Illustrations of Its Old Landmarks and Noted Personages (Roxbury, Mass.: By the Author, 1878), p. 412.

19 The house of William Story, the deputy register of the vice-admiralty court, was attacked during the Stamp Act Riots. Story resigned the office soon after and was traveling to England in 1771 to press his case for either monetary compensation or another office. At the urging of John Temple, then surveyor general of customs, Story accepted, on behalf of the vice-admiralty court, a note of hand from Nathaniel Wheelwright prior to the latter’s spectacular bankruptcy in 1765. Story was now being held responsible for the deficiency. It appears, on the basis of this letter, that John Ruddock, the shipwright and patriot magistrate, was also liable in some way.

1 Pownall’s letter of 11 June 1771 was not found.

2 TH quoted here the end of a line from Virgil’s Georgics, book 2, verse 458, “O fortunatos nimium sua si bona norint, agricolas,” meaning “The farmers would count themselves lucky, if they knew how good they had it.”

3 James Otis Jr.

1 For William Sheppard, see No. 860, above.

2 For TH’s desire to provide additional income for John Cotton, see No. 860, above.

3 Robert Auchmuty (see BD).

4 TH was alluding to plans to supplement the salaries of the provincial attorney general and solicitor general with funds derived from customs duties to encourage them to be active in undertaking unpopular cases for the support of the crown. If the advocate general (holding the analogous position to the attorney general in the provincial vice-admiralty court) was not included in these plans, TH was suggesting it would discourage prosecutions for customs violations.

1 For Corbyn Morris, see TH Correspondence, 2: No. 448n. Morris’s most recent publication was Remarks upon Mr. Mill’s Proposals for Publishing a Survey of the Trade of Great Britain, Ireland, and the British Colonies (London: Robert Davis, 1771).

1 James Fisher was a London tailor TH occasionally employed.

2 All words in square brackets were written in TH’s personal code. Solomon Davis was indeed a smuggler. In a marginal note on his transcription of the letter, Malcom Freiberg speculated that R stood for John Rowe, with no guess about who C might be; see Tyler, Smugglers & Patriots, pp. 15, 25–26, 190–91.

1 No letter was found addressed to TH and dated 9 June 1771.

2 By “Executive Courts,” TH meant the judiciary, that is, he would appoint no judges who did not recognize the supremacy of Parliament.

1 TH’s last public letter to Lord Hillsborough, No. 11, was dated 9 September 1771.

2 The following additional sentence was written then cancelled in the AC at this point: “It is said Something is necessary to prevent this whole Country being swallowed up.”

3 Here the following words appear in the AC: “without a Shadow of Title.”

1 Although TH’s letterbook does not mention an addressee, the Boston Gazette, when it printed the letter on 4 December 1775, identified the recipient as Sir Francis Bernard, and TH did indeed send a letter to Bernard via Davis as described in the penultimate paragraph of the letter; see No. 896, above.

2 For speculation about who the owners of the vessel might be, see Tyler, Smugglers & Patriots, pp. 190–92, as well as No. 900, above.

1 No letter from Francis Bernard No. 60 was found.

2 TH asked Sandwich to appoint John Cotton marshal of the vice-admiralty court; see No. 898, above.

3 TH was referring to the Massachusetts tax act that included the salary of the commissioners of customs; see No. 877, above.

1 The Boston Gazette for 7 October 1771 contained a letter by “George Wampanatus” written in broken English intended to simulate Native American speech. It charged, “Prnaknin tu, riteum smooth alswun glass, he so big cuning, he lubit crate fokes too much,” and compared Franklin unfavorably with Arthur Lee (Junius Americanus).

2 The Boston Gazette for 22 July 1771 printed a letter from the Massachusetts House of Representatives to Franklin dated 6 November 1770; see No. 884, above.

1 Martin Howard (see TH Correspondence, 1: No. 192n), whose house in Rhode Island was pulled down in the Stamp Act riots, became chief justice of North Carolina. TH was congratulating him on the defeat of the Regulators. Howard and John T. Apthorp (1730–1772) both married daughters of Stephen Greenleaf, sheriff of Suffolk County.

1 No letter from Jackson dated 13 July was found.

2 Latin, meaning “never despair.”

3 The protest of the House in early July (see JHR, 48:109) denied it knew of any commissioners of customs for North America.

4 The Boston Gazette for 7 October 1771 printed a letter from Candidus (whom Harbottle Dorrr identified as Samuel Adams) attacking the independent salaries of both the governor and the judges and decrying Hillsborough as “a weak and arbitrary minister.”

5 Alexander Wedderburn was Lord North’s solicitor general and would ultimately take the lead in questioning Benjamin Franklin when the latter was accused before the Privy Council of the theft of Hutchinson’s letters in 1774. George Erving (1738–1806), the son of Captain John Erving (see BD) signed the nonimportation agreement, but his continued importations were exposed by John Mein. Although he carried with him on this visit a letter of introduction to Benjamin Franklin from James Bowdoin, he offered to help pay for the tea destroyed in the Boston Tea Party, served as a mandamus councilor, and departed with the British fleet in March 1776 (Harvard Graduates, 14:151–57).

1 No letter received by TH dated 14 August 1771 was found.

1 No letter from Thomas Pownall dated 26 July 1771 was found.

2 For the satirical article in the Boston Gazette on which TH based this opinion, see No. 905, above.

1 The date of TH’s public letter No. 12 was 1 October 1771, No. 902, above.

2 The St. Georges River lies just west of the mouth of Penobscot Bay.

1 Levi Willard (1725–1775) of Lancaster, Massachusetts, devised a method of manufacturing potash, an alkali used in the manufacture of soap and glass. Francis Bernard was interested in potash as a potential product from his lands on Mount Desert Island. He wrote a letter to the Royal Society of Arts describing Willard’s process on 13 August 1763 (Papers of Francis Bernard, 1:20).

2 Major John Phillips, former commandant of the provincial garrison at Castle William, lost his place when the Castle was turned over to royal control in 1770; see TH Correspondence, 3: No. 693.

3 Probably she was the daughter of Christopher Prince (1729–1799), a sea captain turned merchant who left Boston for Nova Scotia at the outbreak of the Revolution.

4 Walter Logan was Francis Bernard’s friend and business agent, who handled his affairs in Massachusetts; see TH Correspondence, 2: No. 394n.

5 Samuel Adams wrote essays under the pseudonym “Candidus” in the Boston Gazette on 10 and 17 June 1771, as well as 1 July.

1 For the publication of Franklin’s correspondence and the article sent to Sir Francis Bernard, see No. 905, above.

2 For the law complained of by the Baptists, see No. 796, above. For its disallowance, see John Pownall to TH, 7 August 1771 (calendar only).

1 The Kenduskeag Stream joins the Penobscot at the location of present-day Bangor, where the river ceases to be tidal. The Penobscot Indians, then and now, claim Old Town Island, twelve miles above Bangor, as their seat of government. See Micah Pawling, “Wabanaki Homeland and Mobility: Concepts of Home in Nineteenth Century Maine,” Ethnohistory 63, no. 4 (2016): 622.

1 William Burch, one of the commissioners of customs, lived in Dorchester, conveniently on the way to TH’s country house in Milton; see TH Correspondence, 3: No. 640. Since Sally now lived in Middleborough, having married Peter Oliver Jr., TH was presumably accompanied by his younger daughter Peggy.

2 By Lady William, TH means the wife of Lord William Campbell (ca. 1732–1778) who was the fourth son of the Duke of Argyll (ca. 1693–1770), an officer in the Royal Navy and governor of Nova Scotia from 1766 to 1773. He later became governor of South Carolina from 1773 to 1776.

3 Customs Commissioner John Robinson, then in England, married the daughter of James Boutineau.

4 Charles Paxton was evidently prone to taking naps after dinner.

5 Doctors, clergy, and gravediggers would all profit by such unhealthy consumption of food and drink. (Modern readers may find TH’s attempt at humor somewhat heavy-handed.)

6 TH and William Burch were both godparents to John T. Apthorp’s recently born son. Apthorp and his wife were going to the Carolinas to escape the winter weather; see Henry Hulton, p. 263.

1 For the failure of the boundary conference at New Haven in 1767, see TH Correspondence, 2: No. 276.

2 William Smith Jr., a leading New York lawyer and member of the Council there, was one of the delegates at the 1767 conference; see TH Correspondence, 2: No. 286.

1 For Stephen Jones, see No. 826, above.

1 At this point in the Massachusetts Archives AC, TH added, “The failure of the September Packet which I am informed by a person from Falmouth was repairing retards the Intelligence which I impatiently wish to receive.”

1 For Arthur Savage, see TH Correspondence, 3: No. 527.

1 For copies of the documents dispatched, see Maine Documentary History, 14:147–49.

1 Gage’s letter of 24 November 1771 was not found.

2 For Richard Oliver, see No. 853, above.

1 The last found letter from Israel Williams was dated 28 March 1771, No. 830, above, and was answered by Hutchinson by two letters in early April. This letter appears to be a response to a letter not found. Therefore, the law in question cannot be identified.

2 “Essere in littera,” Latin, meaning “to be in the letter.” In other words, TH believed that Williams’s interpretation was a limited and very literal interpretation of the law in question.

3 For the original message of the House, which seemed not to challenge the royal prerogative, and TH’s response, see JHR, 48:6, 9.

4 For the protest of the House, which denied the legitimacy of the commissioners of customs and challenged the right of Parliament to enact revenue laws for the colonies, see JHR, 48:109.

1 No letter from Sir Francis Bernard bearing these dates was found.

2 For the quarrel between John Hancock and Samuel Adams, see No. 922, above.

3 For the quarrel between John Wilkes and Richard Oliver, see No. 922, above.

4 For Otis’s alleged vow, see Papers of Francis Bernard, 3:276.

5 As part of the controversy over TH’s independent salary from the crown, Candidus (Samuel Adams) attacked TH in the 11 November Boston Gazette, asserting that kings and governors can be usurpers and cause their people to sin, as in the case of Jeroboam, who led the rebellion of the northern tribes of Israel against the House of David. “Mucius Scaevola” followed in the Massachusetts Spy for 14 November, stating, “A ruler who is independent of the people is a monster in government” and urged that the Council, according to the charter, should take on the functions of the governor, since TH, without a salary paid by the people, was no legitimate governor at all. Writers in the Drapers’ paper, the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter, defended TH in its 14 November edition. The “young printer,” Ezekiel Russell (1743–1796), was the younger brother of Joseph Russell, printer of the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy and Advertiser. His magazine The Censor began publication 23 November and ceased barely six months later. Among its contributors were Andrew and Peter Oliver.

6 TH suggested that as punitive measures Parliament might not only remove Maine from the control of Massachusetts but also enlarge Rhode Island by adding the former Plymouth Colony, the islands of Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard (which prior to 1691 were part of New York), and that part of Connecticut east of the Connecticut River.

7 For the incident at Casco Bay (Falmouth), see No. 920, above.

8 Charles Steuart (1725–1797) was paymaster general of the American Board of Customs. He is perhaps most famous as the owner of James Somersett, the slave who was set free by Lord Mansfield’s ruling in June 1772 that slavery was unsupported by the common law in England and Wales. By coincidence, the case began in the Court of King’s Bench on the same day TH wrote this letter.

9 John Bernard had begun investing in shipping as a way out of his tangled financial affairs, a measure TH thought risky; see TH to Sir Francis Bernard, 24 October 1771 (calendar only).

1 TH’s letters Nos. 11 and 12 were dated 9 September and 1 October 1771, Nos. 893 and 902, above. Letter No. 14 was dated 24 October 1771, No. 913, above. No public letter No. 13 was found, although he wrote a private letter dated 15 October 1771, No. 910, above.

2 For TH’s twenty-seventh instruction, which forbade him giving his assent to bills taxing crown salaries, see No. 877, above. The reply of the House, which later became known as its protest, denied the legitimacy of the commissioners of customs and Parliament’s right to tax the colonies (JHR, 48:109).

3 Ebenezer Richardson, the customs informant convicted of the murder of Christopher Seider, remained in jail even after TH received Hillsborough’s letter of 12 February 1771, No. 812, above, communicating his pardon, because the judges of the Massachusetts Superior Court refused to recognize the form of the writ.

1 On 14 November 1771, the Massachusetts Spy published a letter by “Mucius Scaevola” denouncing TH as “a monster in government” and suggesting the Council assume the governor’s powers since TH, no longer being paid by the General Court, could not possibly be a legitimate holder of that office. For the letter of Mucius Scaevola in the 14 November Massachusetts Spy, see No. 924, above, and William B. Warner, “Communicating Liberty: The Newspapers of the British Empire as a Matrix for the American Revolution,” ELH 72, no. 2 (2005): 352.

2 The Council summoned Joseph Greenleaf (1720–1810), who had recently joined Isaiah Thomas as a publisher of the Spy, to demand he reveal the pseudonymous author’s name. When Greenleaf failed to appear, the Council relieved him of his office of justice of the peace for Plymouth Country. (Greenleaf had only recently moved to Boston from Abingdon, where he had been the principal author of the Abingdon Resolves in the weeks following the Boston Massacre.) For the Abingdon Resolves, see No. 822, above.

The search for the identity of “Mucius Scaevola” continued well into the new year and still remains uncertain: Neil York believed it was indeed Greenleaf, though Greenleaf attempted to conceal his authorship through disingenuous denials. J. L. Bell believed that these denials were never explicit and, thus, Greenleaf was always the author. Because the Council did indeed dismiss Greenleaf, Colin Nicolson also believed Greenleaf was indeed Mucius Scaevola. Richard D. Brown and Samuel Forman, however, believed it was Joseph Warren. The incident brought criticism of Hutchinson from both sides of the Atlantic for interfering with the freedom of the press. See Neil L. York, “Tag-Team Polemics: The ‘Centinel’ and His Allies in the ‘Massachusetts Spy,’” MHS Procs., 107:105; J. L. Bell, “The Mystery of Mucius Scævola,” Boston1775 (blog), 13 December 2017, https://boston1775.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-mystery-of-mucius-scvola.html; Richard D. Brown, Revolutionary Politics in Massachusetts: The Boston Committee of Correspondence and the Towns, 1772–1774 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970), 63; and Samuel Forman, Dr. Joseph Warren: The Boston Tea Party, Bunker Hill, and the Birth of American Liberty (New York: Pelican, 2017), pp. 158–59.

3 These letters appear in the calendar but are not printed in this volume.

1 For Lord Hillsborough’s notice of Scammell’s appointment, see No. 875, above.

2 For TH’s instructions to the commander of Fort Pownall, see No. 870, above.

1 These words are an interlineation, and although a caret appears after the period, it may belong to the previous sentence.

2 John Monson (1693–1748), 1st Baron Monson, was president of the Lords of Trade and Plantations in 1741. Martin Bladen (1680–1746) was an influential member of the same board.

3 For TH’s trip to London and intercession on behalf of the inhabitants of Hinsdale and other towns, see TH Correspondence, 1: Nos. 1–5.

4 Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Howard, 3rd Earl of Effingham (1746–1791) of the First Foot Guards, was granted ten thousand acres along the Connecticut River (in land claimed by New York) by a mandamus from the Privy Council with the proviso that the grant not interfere with land already granted by New Hampshire. Tryon believed that the land in Hinsdale, since it had been granted to the settlers there by Massachusetts rather than New Hampshire, would be suitable for Howard. On 22 January 1772, Tryon wrote to TH urging the settlers in Hinsdale to come to some arrangement with Howard rather than contest his claim in court, where they might lose everything; see William Tryon to TH, 22 January 1772 (calendar only). See also “The Will of Col. Thomas Howard,” Proceedings of the Vermont Historical Society 53 (1900): 85–87. Howard resigned his commission at the outbreak of the Revolution rather than take up arms against the American colonists.

1 No previous letter from Sir Francis Bernard addressing the topics discussed in this letter was found.

2 The bracketed words here and below were rendered in TH’s private code.

3 For plans to establish a bishop of the Church of England in America, who would have only spiritual rather than temporal jurisdiction, see TH Correspondence, 2: No. 323.

1 Timothy Ruggles was a surveyor of the king’s woods; see TH Correspondence, 3: No. 683.

2 TH here alluded to the protest of the House, refusing to recognize the commissioners of customs and denying Parliament’s right to tax in America; see JHR, 48:109.

1 Enoch Freeman (1706–1742), Harvard College graduate in 1729, was a major in the militia, selectman, and representative for Falmouth. He was also a justice of the peace, a deputy collector, and judge of common pleas for Cumberland County.

2 Freeman refused to administer the oath to Arthur Savage’s nephew when he sought to testify against the rioters. Savage then went to Boston, where TH convened a meeting of the Council on 27 November to review the evidence, resulting in issuing warrants against three of Savage’s assailants (Memorial of Arthur Savage, National Archives UK, CO 5/761, ff. 5–8; Maine Documentary History, 14:145–47).

1 A slip of the pen, Scammell meant not “21st instant” but 21 December; see No. 927, above.

2 Colonel Jonathan Bagley (1717–1780) served in the Seven Years’ War and helped survey the border between New Hampshire and Maine. For Dr. Sylvester Gardiner, see BD. Gardiner had established a mill and settlement at the head of navigation of the Kennebec River near its confluence with the Cobbosseecontee Stream, in the present town of West Gardiner, Maine.

3 William Gardiner (1732–1787) looked after his father’s interests in Maine.

4 Captain Thomas Fletcher was a militia officer in St. George’s who later served the Continental Army as a translator with the Penobscot Indians.

5 The Eastern River is a fourteen-mile tributary of the Kennebec, which joins the larger river about fourteen miles south of Gardiner, therefore, it is a waypoint en route to Blue Hill Bay, Fort Pownall, and Condeskeag at the head of navigation on the Penobscot.

1 A committee of the Kennebec Proprietors (James Bowdoin, James Pitts, Sylvester Gardiner, and Benjamin Hallowell) requested TH to transmit their petition to the Lords of the Treasury on 3 January 1772 (National Archives UK, CO 5/761, ff. 37–38). The proprietors had purchased the patent of the Plymouth Company. They now proposed a financial incentive be granted to those discovering suitable mast trees on their property, in order to discourage the larger trees from being cut up into boards. For the Proprietors’ case of Jeffries v. Donnell, see also No. 896, above.

2 TH had not yet received Scammell’s response to TH’s letter of 21 December 1771, No. 927, above. The response was sent from Portsmouth on 2 January 1772, No. 932, above. TH wrote to Hillsborough again on 10 January (calendar only) after receiving Scammell’s letter, suggesting that Scammell had done his best despite the fact he was unable to complete his report before the opening of Parliament.

3 For the prosecution of further suspects involved in the assault on Arthur Savage, see No. 931, above.

1 TH’s letter No. 15 to Lord Hillsborough was written 5 November 1771 and is included in the calendar but not printed in this volume. In it, he explained he had requested guidance concerning what to do when the opinion of the governor differed from that of the majority of the Council while they were sitting as a court to determine cases pertaining to disputed wills or matters of divorce. Letter No. 16 was No. 920, above.

1 TH’s letter of 3 January 1772, concerned exclusively with the debts of John Bernard, appears in the calendar but is not printed in this volume.

2 TH worried that staff composed of regular army officers would be appointed for the Castle, undercutting his position that he, as governor-in-chief, had not given up authority over the Castle but merely transferred control from the provincial garrison to the king’s troops. TH sought to maintain his own appointees as storekeeper and gunner, as well as to find some office for John Phillips, the former commander of the provincial garrison.

3 WSH apparently was serving as a clerk to Jonathan Sewall before his trip to England and Scotland.

4 Colonel William Dalrymple was commander of the 14th Regiment and senior officer at Boston; see TH Correspondence, 3: No. 494.

1 TH’s letter to Freeman was No. 931, above.

2 I.e., Seal (not further identified) was released on his own recognizance, meaning he was not required to post bail but agreed to appear before the justice when summoned.

3 I.e., the witnesses exonerated William McLellan and Andrew Titcomb.

1 Francis Waldo returned to New England in the fall of 1771. It is unclear what the paper against Waldo said that TH thought so defamatory or who would have circulated it.

2 Disappointed with the size of the pension he was granted in England, Bernard was under consideration as a member of the Irish Revenue Board (Papers of Francis Bernard, 6:212–15).

3 Upon becoming acting governor in 1769, TH had appointed Benjamin Lynde to serve as chief justice. When Lynde and John Cushing both resigned in 1771, TH appointed his brother Foster to the Superior Court, and in January 1772 he appointed Peter Oliver to be chief justice. Nathaniel Ropes and John Cushing’s son William became associate justices but only after TH heard from Peter Oliver that John Worthington did not wish to be appointed to a seat on the Superior Court (Portrait of a Patriot, 5:886). See also TH to John Worthington, 16 January 1772 (calendar only).

1 William Bollan’s letter to Samuel Danforth, dated 31 October 1771, accords with what TH says in the following paragraphs about the unlikelihood of separate agents for the House and Council to function effectively but is silent on the Eastern Country and taxing the salaries of the commissioners, and does not use the word “bagatelle” (Bowdoin-Temple Papers; see MHS Procs., 9:274–75).

2 For Benjamin Franklin’s proposed trip to Ireland, see No. 861, above.

3 For the rift between John Hancock and Samuel Adams, see No. 922, above.

1 No letter from Bernard dated 12 October 1771 was found.

2 For Benjamin Church, see TH Correspondence, 2: No. 329. This is an early instance of Church’s double-dealing. Ultimately, he would be arrested for passing information to General Gage during the siege of Boston. See John Nagy, Dr. Benjamin Church, Spy: A Case of Espionage on the Eve of the American Revolution (Yardley, PA: Westholme, 2013), pp. 39–41.

3 Timothy Folger, a Nantucket merchant, was dismissed from his position in the customs service soon after the arrival of the commissioners of customs. Some alleged his loyalty to John Temple (Bernard’s sworn enemy) was the cause of his dismissal rather than alleged corruption (TH Correspondence, 2: No. 487). Whale oil was one of the chief commodities in which John Hancock speculated, therefore a resident agent on Nantucket would be particularly useful to him. John Mein, printer of the Boston Chronicle, memorably satirized John Hancock as “the milch cow of the Well-Disposed,” a way of commenting on his key role in funding the patriot cause (Boston Chronicle, 23–26 October 1769).

4 Here TH alluded to the recent tax bill passed by the General Court to which he had refused to give his assent because it was inconsistent with his royal instruction not to allow the taxing of crown salaries by the province.

1 John Bernard’s financial entanglements with his partner Thomas Goldtwait were at the heart of his threatened bankruptcy.

2 TH probably suspected John Temple, who was in England at this time, of having discredited him with Thomas Whately, since it was Temple who had introduced the two to a correspondence; see TH Correspondence, 2: No. 274.

1 For the exchange between Jonathan Sewall and John Robinson, see No. 895, above.

2 William Pynchon (1723–1789) of Salem was a lawyer and future loyalist (Harvard Graduates, 11:295–301).

3 For James Putnam, see No. 790, above.

4 Probably Nathaniel Taylor (1734–1806), who served as John Bernard’s deputy in the Massachusetts Naval Office (Papers of Francis Bernard, 6:89).

1 The burning of limestone in kilns to create lime continued to be an important industry in the Penobscot region well into the nineteenth century (Grant E. Finch and George F. Howe, “The Lime Industry at Rockland, Maine,” Economic Geography 6 [October 1930]: 389–97).

2 Here TH alluded to John Hancock and his reputed split with Samuel Adams; see No. 922, above.

1 For William Robertson of the University of Edinburgh, one of the most renowned British historians of the age, see TH Correspondence, 1: No. 89.

2 TH Original Papers.

1 TH’s letter reported the proceedings of the Council against Joseph Greenleaf for his involvement in the Mucius Scaevola letter, No. 926, above.

1 TH Original Papers.

2 TH was mistaken: neither Edward (1732–1779) nor Charles Dilly (1739–1807) played a role in the London edition of TH History, volume 2, which was published by J. Smith.

1 John Hely Hutchinson evidently replied to TH’s letter of 18 January [1769] (see TH Correspondence, 2: No. 355), but the reply was not found.

2 The literal translation of the Latin words “nolo episcopari” is “I do not wish to be bishop,” the traditionally modest and expected response to an ecclesiastical advancement that is in fact desired.

3 TH began writing the third volume of TH History in the summer and early fall of 1776, but it was not published until 1828 (Bailyn, Ordeal, pp. 360–61).

4 TH Original Papers.

5 These words were part of William Pitt’s speech in the debate over the repeal of the Stamp Act, delivered before Parliament on 14 January 1766; see The Celebrated Speech of a Celebrated Commoner (London: Stephen Austin, 1766).

6 The explicit denial of the commissioners’ authority was part of the protest of the House; see No. 874, above.

7 An examination of Rome’s treatment of her colonies as described in the 27th and 29th books of Livy was an important part of “A Dialogue of an American and European Englishman”; see TH Correspondence, 2: Appendix 3.

8 For William, the husband of Anne Hutchinson, see TH Correspondence, 2: No. 355.

9 William’s brothers were Samuel (1590–1667), Edward (1607–aft. 1669), and Richard (1598–1670). Samuel died in New England, whereas the other two brothers returned to Lincolnshire after a short stay; see TH Correspondence, 2: No. 355.

10 Susanna Hutchinson (1564–ca. 1646).

11 Richard Hutchinson did have one son named Edward, though the birth order of his sons is difficult to determine. Edward, who later shortened his name to Hutchins, was born in 1624. TH’s great-grandfather was also named Edward (1613–1675).

12 Eliakim, son of Richard Hutchinson, was born in 1639 and died in Boston in 1718; he was a member of the Massachusetts Council from 1695 to 1717. TH’s grandfather was Elisha Hutchinson (1641–1717).

13 Eliakim Hutchinson (1711–1775) graduated from Harvard in 1730, was a member of the Council from 1744 to 1746, was a member of the Suffolk County Court of Common Pleas from 1741 to 1752, and was also its chief judge from 1752 to 1774 when he was named a mandamus councilor. He married Elizabeth Shirley (1722–1790), the daughter of William Shirley (1694–1771), governor of Massachusetts from 1741 to 1756 and governor of the Bahamas from 1758 to 1767.

14 William Hutchinson (1747–1792) was a classmate of TH’s son Elisha at Harvard in 1762 and became a member of the Council of the Bahamas in 1767 and later receiver general and treasurer, as well as register of the admiralty (Harvard Graduates, 15:268–69). Sir Thomas Shirley (1727–1800), the son of William, succeeded his father as governor of the Bahamas in 1768.

15 Katherine (1615–ca. 1650), the daughter of Richard Hamby of Ipswich, married TH’s great-grandfather. It was his great-grandfather Edward Hutchinson, not Richard Hamby, who was captain of the horse and died in King Philip’s War.

16 Elisha Hutchinson (1641–1717), TH’s grandfather, was a member of the Council from 1691 to 1715 and chief judge of the Suffolk County Court of Common Pleas from 1692 to 1717.

17 Thomas Hutchinson (1675–1739), TH’s father, was a member of the House from 1708 to 1713 and a member of the Council periodically from 1714 to 1739.

18 Colonel John Hutchinson (1615–1664) sat in the House of Commons from 1648 to 1653 and again in 1660. Although he was one of the fifty-nine commissioners who signed the warrant for the execution of Charles I, he was pardoned at the Restoration. He was the son of Sir Thomas Hutchinson (1547–1643) and therefore not related to the Edward Hutchinson identified in note 9, above.

19 John Hely Hutchinson married Christiana Nickson (or Nixon), 1st Baroness Donoughmore (1732–1788), the great-niece of Richard Hutchinson of Knocklofty in County Tipperary. Because she was the sole heir of her great-uncle’s considerable fortune, her husband added the name Hutchinson to his own at the time of their marriage. It was the possible family connection that initially prompted TH to write Hely Hutchinson in 1769.

20 George Townshend (1724–1807), 1st Marquess Townshend, was a soldier and politician. He took command of the British forces at Quebec after the death of James Wolfe, served as lord lieutenant of Ireland from 1767 to 1770, and became master general of the ordnance from 1772 to 1784 (except for one year when the Marquess of Rockingham was in power). He was the brother of Charles Townshend, the chancellor of the exchequer from 1766 to 1767, and the friend of Charles Paxton.

1 TH evidently enclosed his letter No. 948, above, with this letter to Sir Francis Bernard.

1 TH’s letter No. 18 was No. 933, above. No. 19, TH to Hillsborough, 10 January 1772, is calendared but not printed in this volume. It forwarded a letter from Thomas Scammell.

2 For the assault on Arthur Savage, see No. 919, above.

1 Colonel Oliver Partridge (1712–1792) of Hatfield was a friend and neighbor of Williams. Major Timothy Dwight III (1726–1777) of Northampton married Elizabeth, the daughter of the Reverend Jonathan Edwards. Eleazer Porter Jr. (1728–1797) of Hadley married Susanna, another daughter of Jonathan Edwards.

2 Elijah Williams (1712–1771) graduated from Harvard College in 1732, was a major in the militia, and was frequently chosen as the representative from Deerfield.

3 Captain Joseph Root (1713–1786) voted to rescind the Massachusetts Circular Letter when he represented the town of Sunderland. He was named a justice of the peace for Hampshire County on 12 April 1772. For John Worthington, see BD.

4 For New York’s claim to the Connecticut River as its boundary with Massachusetts, see No. 986, below.

1 Lord Hillsborough’s letter No. 11 was No. 925, above.

2 TH made this suggestion in No. 893, above.

3 The AC includes at this point, “and, as I find by experience that it is best to give the people as much time as may be to deliberate upon points in which they are violently though erroneously engaged I will endeavour to keep off the raising any monies for the Supply of the Treasury for.”

4 The AC includes at this point, “In the mean time I will neglect nothing which is in my power and which may tend to convince them of the false notions which they have formed of their independence on Parliament which are the only causes of the continuance of the irregular proceedings in this Province for the exception taken to the Kings giving Instructions to be obligatory upon his Governor is so trifling that I shall treat it as if they were not in earnest and I believe they expect nothing else from me.”

5 Josiah Martin (1737–1786) succeeded William Tryon as governor of North Carolina. Lord William Campbell was governor of Nova Scotia but had married a South Carolinian and would eventually become governor of that colony in 1773.

6 Walter Paterson (1735?–1798) was the first governor of St. John’s Island after it separated from the colony of Newfoundland in 1769.

1 For Ebenezer Richardson’s release from jail, see No. 952, above.

2 For Sir Francis Bernard’s possible removal to Ireland, see No. 937, above. Bernard was appointed one of five commissioners of excise, but since the position was a sinecure, he would not be required to reside in Ireland. The interruption in correspondence occurred, however, because Sir Francis had suffered a stroke, probably in late December 1771 (Papers of Francis Bernard, 6:212–13, 14).

3 John T. Apthorp married Hannah, the daughter of Sheriff Stephen Greenleaf. Both he and his wife perished in a winter storm after their vessel left New York in mid-November for the Carolinas (Henry Hulton, p. 263).

1 Neither letter from James Gambier was found.

2 For the death of the Apthorps, see No. 953, above.

3 TH was the godfather of Gambier’s daughter Jenny; see “Baptisms,” 28 January 1771, The Colonial Records of Kings Chapel, ed. James Bell and James Mooney, CSM Pubs., 91:637.

4 Neither of the two “good old men” was identified.

1 No letter written on 18 July was found. Nevertheless, the content of No. 896, above, makes clear the letter was from Sir Francis Bernard. Mr. Lane cannot be positively identified, but it seems likely he was a member of the London merchant firm Lane, Son & Fraser; see No. 872, above.

1 For Israel Williams’s letter and the militia commissions he desired, see No. 951, above.

1 For TH’s letter to Sir Francis Bernard concerning Sewall’s anxiety, see No. 955, above.

2 TH was in suspense concerning instructions as to when and where to meet the General Court; see No. 948, above.

3 For Ebenezer Richardson’s discharge from jail, see No. 952, above.

1 For the Censor, see No. 924, above.

2 For “the piece signed A Z.,” see Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter, 5 March 1772.

3 Two staunch patriots, Henderson Inches and Jonathan Mason, failed to be reelected as selectmen after they opposed making Joseph Warren’s Massacre oration an official town meeting. In the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter for 19 March 1772, the loyalist writer “P. Q.” hinted that they had failed to please the party “dictator” Samuel Adams and therefore were stricken from the list of acceptable candidates. When three more members of the board who had been reelected resigned, P.Q. claimed they did so out of indignation at the treatment of Inches and Mason. A strongly worded refutation by “J.F.” appeared in the Boston Gazette four days later.

1 Here TH alluded to the mysterious nervous indisposition he suffered in the spring of 1767, which was cured by vigorous horseback riding; see TH Correspondence, 2: No. 259.

1 For the intent of all three justices to resign at the end of 1771, see No. 896, above.

2 For TH’s opinion on the proper salary of the chief justice, see No. 911, above.

3 For rumors of a decision not to provide for the attorney general, see No. 955, above.

4 The description fits Edmund Trowbridge, who was formidably learned in the law but appeared timid amid the public pressure surrounding the Massacre trials; see TH Correspondence, 3: No. 671.

1 While in England, John Mein attempted to secure the printing contract for the American Board of Customs Commissioners. TH interceded to see that the business remained with John Green, one of the printers of the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Post-Boy and Advertiser; see No. 803, above. Bernard responded, reassuring TH there would be no change, on 6 April 1771; see No. 838, above. John Fleming (or Fleeming) was the co-publisher, together with John Mein, of the Boston Chronicle; see TH Correspondence, 2: No. 443.

1 No addressee was provided in the letterbook, but the identification was made on the basis of TH to John Wentworth, 6 April 1772, and John Wentworth to TH, 9 April 1772; both letters are calendared but not printed in this volume.

2 Both the Massachusetts Spy and the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter for 3 April contained accounts of the imprisonment on 17 January of Caroline Matilda (1751–1775), queen consort of Denmark and the youngest sister of George III, because of the suspicion that she and her lover, the royal physician Friedrich Struensee, were attempting to seize power from her mentally ill husband, King Christian VII. Among the queen’s most hostile critics were the Dowager Queen Juliana Maria of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel and her son Prince Frederick. The threat of armed British intervention secured the queen’s freedom, although she was sent into exile.

1 From this point on the letter is in EH’s hand.

2 For George III’s concern for his sister’s safety, see No. 963, above.

3 During the later phases of the Russo-Turkish War (1768–1772), a Russian fleet entered the eastern Mediterranean and was cooperating with rebels against Ottoman rule in the Levant.

4 Displeased by the marriage of one of his brothers to a commoner in 1771, George III proposed the Royal Marriages Act, which forbade members of the royal family from marrying without the monarch’s formal consent. The act became law on 1 April 1772.

1 Neither of these circular letters was printed in this collection.

2 The Acts and Laws of His Majesty’s Province of the Massachusetts Bay (Boston: Samuel Kneeland, 1759), p. 380, “An Act to Enable Creditors to Receive Their Just Debts Out of the Effects of Their Absent or Absconding Debtors.”

3 Hillsborough’s letter No. 13 was dated 5 February 1772, No. 946, above. No. 12 was dated 11 January 1772, No. 934, above, and TH eventually acknowledged its receipt in his letter No. 970, below.

4 For TH’s speech, see JHR, 48:121–22. On 10 April 1772, John Hancock proposed a response to TH’s message that would not insist on the General Court sitting in Boston as a matter of right but as one of convenience. Hancock’s version failed to win a majority, and the House later voted a message describing the summoning of the General Court to meet in Cambridge as a misuse of the king’s prerogative (JHR, 48:127–28).

5 TH’s letter No. 17 dated 11 December 1771, No. 926, above, concerned the Mucius Scaevola letter.

6 For the assault on Arthur Savage, see No. 919, above.

1 Although no recipient was listed in TH’s letterbook, the letter bears a marked similarity in tone with other letters written to John Pownall. It also seems likely TH would turn to Pownall, during Sir Francis Bernard’s indisposition, to carry out tasks he believed too insignificant to mention to Lord Hillsborough himself.

2 Hancock’s proposed response to TH’s message (the principal news contained in this letter) was voted down the morning of 10 April, so this letter could not have been written before that date.

3 For the plight of John Phillips, see TH Correspondence, 3: No. 697.

4 For John Fleming’s effort to take the printing contract from John Green, see No. 962, above.

5 For the failure of Hancock’s proposed answer to TH, see No. 965, above.

1 No letter from William Palmer bearing any of those dates has been found.

2 Hutchinson’s daughter Peggy (Margaret) was still at home.

3 For “Mr. Tutte,” see No. 891, above. By “chapel furniture,” TH probably meant “pulpit furnishings,” textiles to adorn the pulpit and altar; see Jane Nylander, “Toward Comfort and Uniformity in New England Meeting Houses, 1750–1850,” in The New England Meeting House, 1630–1850, ed. Peter Benes (Boston: Boston University, 1979), pp. 93–100.

4 TH directed that his personal mail might also be sent to him through John Pownall, the undersecretary of state.

1 TH’s letters Nos. 20 and 21 were dated 24 and 31 January 1772, Nos. 938 and 944, above. The former informed Hillsborough of the retirement of Chief Justice Benjamin Lynde.

2 Various difficulties, principally the size and rugged terrain of the Eastern Country, delayed the report of Thomas Scammell, surveyor of the king’s woods; see No. 932, above.

1 For the text of the act, see Mass. Acts and Resolves, 1771–1772, chap. 18.

2 The royal governor was always chair of the board of overseers of Harvard College.

3 Joseph Hawley, a lawyer from Northampton, was chosen as commissioner along with William Brattle and John Hancock; see JHR, 48:176.

1 Hillsborough’s letter No. 12 was No. 934, above, in which Hillsborough informed him that a new Massachusetts law which TH declined to sign was referred to the Privy Council.

2 For the debate over the response of the House to TH’s message, see No. 965, above.

3 TH already wrote Tryon the day before; see No. 969, above.

4 Jedediah Prebble Jr. (1734–ca. 1782) was chosen truckmaster in the place of Thomas Goldthwait (JHR, 48:152).

1 For the failure of the motion to augment the justices’ salaries, see JHR, 48:165.

2 The Son of Liberty was not identified.

1 For the text of TH’s speech and the House’s reply, see JHR, 48:121–22, 127–28.

1 In his final speech to the House on 25 April, TH defended once again the royal prerogative to summon the General Court to meet anywhere in the province (JHR, 48:195).

2 No such hint was found in a letter from Sir Francis Bernard, but both had apparently considered making a separate province of Sagadahoc, see Nos. 795 and 810, above.

1 Lord Sandwich’s letter was not found, but TH initially wrote to Sandwich on 23 September 1771 seeking the post of marshal of the Boston District Vice-Admiralty Court for his brother-in-law John Cotton (No. 898, above).

2 In the above paragraph, TH explained to Sandwich why there would be little business for a provincial court of vice-admiralty in Massachusetts, since the vice-admiralty court for the entire New England region also sat in Boston.

3 TH presumably gave his son instructions to present Sandwich with the second London edition of his work, since TH’s distance from London prevented him from correcting errors to the first Boston edition of volume 2.

1 No letters from Gambier were found.

2 By his “noble Patron,” TH meant Lord Hillsborough.

3 TH did not provide enough information to identify the “pliable” member of “the Common” (House of Representatives), but the first sentence of the next paragraph makes clear that the member of the Council was James Bowdoin.

4 “Inter nos,” Latin, meaning “between us.”

5 John Temple, Bowdoin’s son-in-law, after being removed from the American Board of Customs Commissioners, was appointed surveyor general of customs in England (British Establishment, 2:852). Neil Stout framed a convincing argument that Temple obtained this appointment by blackmailing Thomas Whately, then a member of the North administration, with the publication of their earlier correspondence (Neil R. Stout, “John Temple, and Thomas Whately: ‘The Missing Temple-Whately Papers,’” MHS Procs., 104:123–47). William Burch and Charles Paxton were members of the American Board of Customs Commissioners and Temple’s antagonists.

6 William Vassall (1753–1843), named after his father, was a member of the Harvard class of 1771, the year after WSH. After studying in Edinburgh and Lincoln’s Inn, he never returned to America but lived off the income of his family’s estates in Jamaica (Harvard Graduates, 17:653–54).

7 For the death of John T. Apthorp and his wife, Hannah, the daughter of Sheriff Stephen Greenleaf, see No. 953, above.

8 The Latin word “illicebrae” might be translated as “allurements” or “enticements.”

1 For the present to Lord Sandwich, see No. 975, above. To the two volumes of the London edition of his history, TH evidently added a copy of TH Original Papers.

1 The last letter found from Williams was dated 5 March 1772, No. 951, above, although this letter makes clear that at least one more letter may have intervened, since the March letter included no anecdote related to either Belcher or Dudley.

2 The General Court enacted a bill on 25 April 1772 naming Joseph Hawley among the commissioners appointed to negotiate the boundary with New York; see JHR, 48:176.

3 Hawley was a bitter critic of TH ever since the case of the Berkshire rioters at the time of the Stamp Act. He was disbarred from practicing before the Superior Court in 1767 for his public criticism of the chief justice, yet TH, as he expressed in this letter, had no reservations about signing a bill appointing Hawley as one of the commissaries to resolve the border dispute with New York; see No. 969, above.

4 In referring to “the Commonwealth of Plato,” TH alluded to the ideal state as described in Plato’s Republic. Romulus was the legendary founder of Rome and its first king.

5 Marcus Porcius Cato Uticensis, or Cato the Younger (95–46 bce), tireless opponent of Julius Caesar and the First Triumvirate, was regarded by his fellow Roman citizens as a man of incorruptible integrity and by eighteenth-century Britons as a paragon of civic virtue.

6 John Cotton, as deputy secretary of the province, would have been responsible for issuing government commissions.

1 For Joseph Harrison, collector of customs at Boston who was assaulted in the Liberty riot, see TH Correspondence, 2: No. 321.

1 For William Sheppard, John Cotton, and the office of marshal of the court of vice-admiralty, see No. 984, above.

2 For Arodi Thayer’s time as marshal, see also No. 860, above

3 For Ezekiel Price as register of the vice-admiralty court, see No. 860, above.

4 Thomas Bernard (1750–1818) was Sir Francis Bernard’s third son (Harvard Graduates, 16:442–47). Earlier, Charles Howard (dates unknown) was storekeeper of the Harwich dockyard and naval officer for that port. He was appointed marshal of the Boston District Vice-Admiralty Court in September 1769; see Carl Ubbelohde, The Vice-Admiralty Courts and the American Revolution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1960), p. 141.

1 For Sir Francis Bernard’s stroke, see No. 953, above.

2 Walter Logan, his agent, watched over Bernard’s affairs in America; see TH Correspondence, 2: No. 394.

3 Harrison Gray was a longtime friend of the government party. TH admitted Stephen Hall to the Council in 1770 with some misgivings (see TH Correspondence, 3: No. 704), whereas William Brattle only recently switched allegiance.

4 TH vetoed only John Hancock and Jerathmiel Bowers following the 1771 elections. Joshua Henshaw (1703–1777) of Dedham was first elected to the Council in 1768 and resigned in 1771.

5 Samuel Phillips Sr. (1715–1790) was first elected to the Council in 1772 and served through 1774.

6 Bowers was the only person vetoed in 1772.

7 William Phillips (1722–1804), a wealthy patriot merchant, was elected as a Boston town representative in 1772 and eventually admitted to the Council in 1774.

8 James Bowdoin for several years led the opposition in the Council and evidently played a key role within the Council in opposing an effort to indict the printers of the Mucius Scaevola letter; see No. 926, above.

9 For John Temple’s new appointment, see No. 976, above. William Molineux, Samuel Adams, and William Cooper, all key patriots, evidently rejoiced in the news.

10 Despite rumors of their deteriorating relationship, Hancock evidently made this public show of his friendship with Samuel Adams.

11 “The white liverd fellow” was not identified.

12 The instructions of the town of Boston appeared in the Boston Gazette, 25 May 1772.

1 Hillsborough’s letter No. 14 was No. 950, above.

2 The town of Boston’s instructions to its representatives (Thomas Cushing, Samuel Adams, John Hancock, and William Phillips) were printed in the Boston Gazette, 25 May 1772, and included numerous complaints about TH’s conduct as well as against protests “for illegal” taxes.

3 TH’s letter to Tryon was No. 969, above.

4 The report was not quite accurate. On 8 March 1773, the New York Assembly did unanimously adopt “A State of the Right of the Colony of New York with Respect to Its Extreme Boundary of Connecticut River.” That report described the claim of Massachusetts to any land west of the river as being no better title “than a possession acquired by force and intrusion.” They did not, however, create a new county, and they did empower new commissioners to negotiate the dispute (Journal of the Votes and Proceedings of the General Assembly of the Colony of New York, from 1766 to 1776, Inclusive [Albany, N.Y.: J. Buel, 1820], pp. 92–108, 119).

1 TH’s letters to Hillsborough Nos. 22, 23, and 24 were dated 12 March, 10 April, and 27 April, Nos. 952, 965, and 971, respectively, above.

2 In his letter, No. 952, above, TH explained that the judges of the Superior Court had, at last, accepted the form of Ebenezer Richardson’s pardon as registered with the recorder of London.

3 TH enclosed with his letter No. 965, above, a copy of his speech to the opening of the General Court on 8 April explaining that if the Court would only petition to move its place of meeting from Cambridge to Boston as a matter of convenience and not an issue of charter rights, he would be at liberty to grant their request (JHR, 48:121).

4 TH observed in his letter No. 971, above, that despite the unwillingness of the General Court to give up the constitutional issue concerning its place of meeting, the session was the least contentious in seven years.

5 TH reported in his letter No. 965, above, the failure of the grand jury to indict the printer of the Mucius Scaevola letter.

6 The refusal of the House to grant adequate salaries to the judges of the Superior Court was one of the subjects TH touched upon in his letter No. 971, above.

7 TH began attempting to find relief for Captain John Phillips ever since he was superseded as commandant of Castle William; see TH Correspondence, 3: No. 696.

1 Thomas Flucker (see BD) became secretary of the province in 1770.

2 For Admiral John Montagu, see No. 890, above. The Swan was a fourteen-gun sloop under Montagu’s command.

1 Beginning in March 1772, Lieutenant William Dudingston, commander of HMS Gaspée, was involved in an escalating series of incidents, angering Rhode Islanders as he searched for smugglers in Narragansett Bay. The Gaspée was purportedly lured aground on 9 June. Providence merchants, perhaps including the wealthy John Brown (1736–1803), then organized a party of longboats, which attacked the schooner, captured Dudingston and his crew, and burned the vessel to the waterline just before dawn the next morning.

2 Joseph Wanton (1705–1780) served as governor of Rhode Island from 1769 to 1775. He was a Quaker and remained neutral during the Revolution.

1 In the Dft, TH included the following paragraph, which he subsequently crossed out: “I shall transmit under this cover the several Messages which have passed between me and the House the present Session and the Advice of Council when required to give it upon their Oaths that consistent with the Instructions I had received I might remove the Court to Boston. I was jealous of a design in the heads of the Opposition to take the advantage, after I had removed them, of declaring they had continued to deny the Kings Authority to instruct the Governor, but I find it to be the express declaration of the Members in general when they were out of Court that they had no double intention and that they intended to avoid in their answer to my Speech whatsoever might be construed to be a denial of my Obligations to observe His Majestys Instructions. This opinion spread through the Province and an apprehension was prevailing that I had deceived them & never really intended to remove the Court to Boston.”

2 The RC has a hole in the MS. Material in brackets was supplied from the AC.

3 At this point in the Dft, TH added and then cancelled, “in the best manner I could consistent with the peace and quiet of the Province and I thought myself warranted.”

1 Thomas Cushing and John Hancock.

2 The text of TH’s short speech can be found in JHR, 49:8–9.

3 The answer to the governor’s message from the House appears in JHR, 49:11–12.

4 TH’s response to the House offered a compromise formula whereby if it did not appear necessary to him (in his sole judgment as governor) to call the General Court to meet somewhere other than Boston, he believed his instructions would permit them to return to their traditional location (JHR, 49:15).

5 On 4 June, TH desired that House clarify when it said meeting in Cambridge “appeared not to be necessary” they meant at present or in 1770 when he first summoned them there (JHR, 49:23).

6 On 13 June, TH adjourned the General Court to reconvene in Boston on the 16th (JHR, 49:52).

7 Among those elected to the Council in the spring of 1772, TH vetoed only Jerathmiel Bowers, although John Hancock did decline to take his seat as described (JHR, 49:7–8).

8 TH wrote Pownall asking him to intercede on behalf of a Plymouth, Massachusetts, seaman who was being held indefinitely in Lancaster Castle because he lacked the money to pay the fine he had incurred by illegally importing a cask of rum on his own behalf; see TH to John Pownall, 7 June 1771 (calendar only).

1 No letter to William Tryon from TH dated 1 June 1772 was found.

2 William Nicoll (1702–1768) of Shelter Island, New York, served as Speaker of the New York Assembly from 1759 until shortly before his death in 1768. He was one of the New York commissioners at New Haven in 1767 but is not to be confused with his nephew William Nicoll (1715–1780), who was a commissioner when the issue was finally resolved in 1773.

3 Tryon’s initial letter proposed splitting the small tract of land still in dispute after 1767; see No. 915, above.

4 The Massachusetts Act simply appointed commissioners to negotiate the boundary without specifying the terms of the agreement they were empowered to reach (Mass. Acts and Resolves, 1771–1772, chap. 18).

5 In its most extreme claim, New York contended its eastern boundary was the Connecticut River; see No. 915, above.

1 Charles Ward Apthorp (1727–1797) was born in Boston but resided in New York after his marriage. He was a member of the governor’s council there from 1763 through 1783. He inherited his father’s business as a military contractor for both the army and navy. Because he was a loyalist, his lands in Massachusetts and Maine were confiscated during the Revolution.

2 In 1772, Elisha Hutchinson married Mary (Polly) Watson, the daughter of Colonel George Watson of Plymouth. William Apthorp (1748–1779) was the youngest brother and business partner of Charles Ward Apthorp. He resided in Boston until he left with the British fleet in March 1776. William Burch (see BD) was one of the American Board of Customs Commissioners.

3 William Molineux was the factor, or resident agent, of Charles Ward Apthorp, despite Molineux’s role as a leader in several patriot crowd actions.

1 Thomas Pownall’s letter of 1 April 1772 was not found.

2 This sentence summarized the position of the House of Representatives in its opposition to TH’s insistence on meeting the General Court in Cambridge.

3 On 8 May 1771, Pownall gave a long speech denouncing the takeover of Castle William and concluding with a motion to inquire into the circumstances whereby the ministry ordered it (Parliamentary Debates, 5:312–24).

4 Soon after the change of garrisons, TH attempted to explain to Pownall that he still retained ultimate control of the Castle, as the Charter specified; see No. 743, above.

5 This is a partial quotation from the eighth line of Virgil’s fourth Eclogue: “nova progenies caelo demittitur alto,” meaning, “a new lineage has been sent down from high heaven.”

1 Sir Francis Bernard suffered a stroke sometime in late December 1771; see No. 953, above.

1 William Tryon’s letter was laid before the House for its consideration on 23 June 1771 (JHR, 49:68).

1 For William Story’s trip to England to seek compensation and employment, see No. 896, above. Hillsborough’s private letter, which was not found, must have urged TH to find some provincial office for him.

2 For the text of the new law, see Mass. Acts and Resolves, 1771–1772, chap. 3.

3 TH’s public letter was No. 29, No. 997, above.

4 The Dutch West India Company granted Kiliaen van Rensselaer the manor of Rensselaerwyck in 1630.

5 By “one of their best lawyers,” TH presumably meant William Smith Jr., a member of the Council and TH’s chief ally among the New York commissioners in pushing the issue through to a settlement; see Philip J. Schwartz, “‘To Conciliate the Jarring Interests’: William Smith, Thomas Hutchinson, and the New York–Massachusetts Boundary,” New York Historical Society Quarterly 59 (October 1975): 299–319.

6 The inhabitants of Nobletown (present-day Hillsdale, New York) purchased their lands from the Stockbridge or Wappinger Indians, whose claim was recognized by Massachusetts. Stephen van Rensselaer II’s efforts to enforce his authority in the area led to violence in 1766 (Papers of Francis Bernard, 3:199–200, 201–02, 221–22, 304–05).

7 At this point, TH wrote then cancelled, “also which makes it immaterial whether the line be in the air or on the ground. I know that no ill behaviour of our people will have any influence upon a judicial proceeding before His Majesty in Council but the nature of such proceedings is not understood and considered by the Members of the General Court and the fear of an unfavorable determination has had not an ill influence upon the Members of some of the Towns especially which ly West of Connecticut River about 40 of which New York is said to have comprehended in the late Act of their Assembly.”

1 For James Murray’s departure for England in the fall of 1770, see No. 738, above.

2 Lord Hillsborough’s private letter to TH was not found.

3 TH intervened in the quarrel between Thomas Goldthwait and the former governor’s son John Bernard; see No. 941, above.

4 Colonel William Dalrymple was commander of the 14th Regiment and senior officer at Boston. His regiment and the 65th from Halifax were ordered by Thomas Gage to St. Vincent in the West Indies, where they arrived in August to subdue a rebellion by the indigenous Caribs.

1 TH was attempting to manage the General Court by periodically inviting a number of them to dine with him, since they were now meeting in Boston and not Cambridge; see No. 985, above.