A Royal Commission Into the Destruction of the Gaspée

1 Bailyn, Ordeal, pp. 360, 367; TH History, 3:251–52.

2 TH History, 3:253.

3 TH History, 3: Appendix V, p. 405.

4 See TH History, 3: Appendix W, pp. 406–10, for the text of TH’s message.

5 Votes and Proceedings, p. 30.

6 Brown, Revolutionary Politics, pp. 78–79.

7 The “Great Controversy” between Hutchinson and the General Court is best followed in Reid, Briefs, which provides the texts of all the messages together with Reid’s insightful commentary.

8 Bailyn, Pamphlets, 133.

9 John Adams to William Tudor, 8 March 1817, JA Works, 2:311.

10 JA Diary and Autobiography, 2:77.

11 See Nos. 1084 and 1102, below.

12 For the petition, see JHR, 49:287.

13 These resolves were later published as The Votes and Proceedings.

14 Schwartz, “Jarring Interests,” pp. 316–17; JHR, 50:viii.

15 JHR, 50:26–27.

16 Benjamin Franklin to Thomas Cushing, 2 December 1772, Franklin Papers, 19:399–413; JA Diary and Autobiography, 2:79–81.

17 JHR, 50:29.

18 JHR, 50:40–41, 58–61.

19 For the circulation of rumors related to the letters, see No. 1117, below.

20 TH History, 3:289.

21 For Adams’s statement, see No. 1113, below.

22 For TH’s belief in Story’s innocence, see No. 1171, below.

23 Bailyn, Ordeal, p. 286.

24 See No. 1120, below.

25 For Lord Dartmouth’s doubts concerning the legitimacy of the Massachusetts claim, see No. 1130, below.

26 See appendix 1, below.

27 See No. 1149, below.

28 Tyler, Smugglers & Patriots, pp. 192–93.

29 Norton, 1774, p. 13.

30 Labaree, Boston Tea Party, pp. 111–12.

31 Norton, 1774, pp. 19–20.

32 Tyler, Smugglers & Patriots, p. 203.

33 Labaree, Boston Tea Party, pp. 121–22, 124–25.

34 Labaree, Boston Tea Party, pp. 137–41.

35 Norton, 1774, pp. 35–39.

36 Franklin Papers, 20:513–16; Boston Post-Boy, 14 March 1774; Franklin Papers, 21:13–18.

37 The theory that it was Pownall was carefully worked out by Bernhard Knollenberg in “Benjamin Franklin and the Hutchinson Oliver Letters,” Yale University Library Gazette, 47 (July 1972): 1–9, and also agreed to by Bailyn, Ordeal, pp. 286–87.

38 TH Diary, 1:209, 194; Bailyn, Ordeal, pp. 286–88.

39 Israel Mauduit, Franklin before the Privy Council, White Hall Chapel, London, 1774, on Behalf of the Province of Massachusetts to Advocate the Removal of Hutchinson and Oliver (Philadelphia: John M. Butler, 1859).

40 Alfred F. Young, “George Robert Twelves Hewes (1742–1840): A Boston Shoemaker and the Memory of the American Revolution,” WMQ 38 (October 1981): 592–97.

41 See No. 1132, below.

42 Barbara Black, “Massachusetts and the Judges: Judicial Independence in Perspective,” Law and History 3 (Spring 1985): 101–62.

1 For TH’s message, delivered 2 July 1772, see JHR, 49:87–89.

2 At this point in the AC, TH wrote then crossed out with a large X the following text: “The Council seem willing to join with me and I must do them the justice of acquainting your Lordship that they are better disposed than they have been for some years past several of the members who have been first chosen within three years past having just notions of the nature of Government and opposing with freedom and good sense the absurdities which have so long prevailed. I omit nothing in my power to cultivate the good disposition of these members and to encourage it’s spread among the rest and during the present Session, there has been a decency and propriety in all the proceedings of the Council. I hardly expect to close the Session without something improper from the House but the friends of Government are more numerous than they have been and I am greatly mistaken if the majority of the people of the province are not tired of the late disordered state of affairs and do not wish to see government restored & the Faction suppressed, and we should have seen the effect of this change of temper in the change of Members of the Legislature if the enemies to Government were not more active & zealous than the friends to it. I have but little in my power to induce people to give themselves any great trouble on the side of government and they engage in this cause from a principle of virtue and a sense of duty without any views to their private or personal benefit.”

3 Thomas Scammell was inspector of the king’s timber in Maine. For his letter, see TH Correspondence, 4: No. 988.

1 On 5 June 1772, EH married Mary (Polly) Watson, the daughter of George Watson of Plymouth and Elizabeth Oliver Watson, the eldest daughter of Peter Oliver, for whom see TH Correspondence, 2: No. 241. Peggy (MH) was TH’s younger daughter, who still lived with her father. Jack Clark was most likely Jonathan Clarke (b. 1744), son of Richard Clarke, one of the consignees of the East India Company for the tea sent to Boston in 1773.

2 TH allowed WSH, his youngest son, to pass briefly through London on his way to study at the University of Edinburgh.

1 The exchange of messages concerning the governor’s salary can be found at JHR, 49:107–08, 147–52. In appendix V to TH History, vol. 3, TH asserted that the author of the House’s resolutions on the subject was Joseph Hawley.

2 TH’s adherence during the summer of 1771 to royal instructions that accompanied his commission, particularly the twenty-seventh instruction forbidding him to assent to any money bill that taxed the salaries of royal officials, sparked controversy with the General Court; see TH Correspondence, 4: No. 876.

3 The exchange of messages concerning the need for repairs to the Province House can be found at JHR, 49:137, 142–43.

4 The final compromise, whereby the House requested TH to issue a proclamation against trespass in the King’s Woods, appears in JHR, 49:126–27.

5 The territory in dispute lay west of the Connecticut River and above the Massachusetts border with New Hampshire. It eventually became the present state of Vermont.

6 For TH’s correspondence with Governor William Tryon of New York concerning the town of Hinsdale, see TH Correspondence, 4: No. 928.

7 The House approved the salaries for William Bollan and Benjamin Franklin, and the Council concurred on 14 July 1772; see JHR, 4:121–22, 124–25.

8 For the assault on Arthur Savage, the comptroller of customs at Falmouth, before the chief justice and the warrants issued, see TH Correspondence, 4: No. 931.

1 The petition to the king, which sought permission for Massachusetts to pay its own governor and for relief from that part of the Townshend Acts establishing a civil list for North America, can be found at National Archives UK, CO 5/174, f. 291.

2 Dudson Kilcup (1702–1767) was a notary and occasional government scribe. Presumably Oliver intended to write “not” in place of “it” at the end of the sentence.

3 For the vote in favor of paying Benjamin Franklin, see No. 1003, immediately above.

1 TH sought to manage public reaction in England to the House’s petition to the king by publishing his own message to them at the conclusion of their legislative session; see JHR, 49:147–52.

1 TH’s last letter to Lord Hillsborough was No. 1003, above. TH canceled all the text from this point until the end of the paragraph.

2 The reference to “taking away the Charter” may refer to the reforms Lord Hillsborough proposed, together with Sir Francis Bernard, in 1770. See TH Correspondence, 3: No. 720.

3 The first resolve contended that, according to the charter, the General Court was the sole judge of what constituted adequate provision for the governor (JHR, 49:106–07). TH provided an account of the several votes on this resolution, including the departure of some of his key allies from the session, in TH History, 3:256–57.

4 TH believed that the House’s contention should not go unchallenged, so he presented a counterargument in his concluding message of the session (JHR, 49:147–52).

5 Here TH requested that rather than vacating the charter as an immediate response to the provocative resolves of the House, that some warning of possible punitive action should be communicated to the governor first, so that the General Court would have the opportunity to rescind their resolutions.

6 Despite TH’s contention here that he disliked argumentative messages from the chair, he would be unable to resist engaging in a prolonged argument with the House concerning constitutional issues during the first months of 1773. This debate brought him a rebuke from Lord Dartmouth, who was then secretary of state.

7 Here TH once again named James Bowdoin, the father-in-law of John Temple (see BD), who had recently been appointed surveyor of customs in England, as the source of his troubles within the Council.

8 TH’s complaint regarding multiple sessions of the General Court within a single year was a frequent theme in his letters.

9 The last-minute petition to the crown was the subject of Andrew Oliver’s letter; see No. 1004, above.

10 TH refused to assent to the bill paying Benjamin Franklin’s salary as a separate agent for the House (JHR, 49:125). Both he and Sir Francis Bernard maintained that any provincial agent needed approval of all three branches of the government: the House, the Council, and the governor.

11 The exchange of messages on the condition of the Province House was printed in the House journal, see JHR, 49:137, 142–43.

12 TH appointed his brother Foster Hutchinson, who lacked legal training and was widely criticized as unqualified for the job, to a seat on the Superior Court in 1771.

1 The 64th Regiment under Captain Thomas Armstrong (no dates), an Irish regiment previously stationed at Halifax and briefly at Boston from 1768 through 1769, replaced Colonel William Dalrymple’s 14th Regiment, which was then dispatched to subdue the island of St. Vincent in the West Indies from a rebellion by the indigenous Caribs. TH’s 43rd instruction was written in such a way as to support the premise that he was still commander-in-chief of all fortifications within the province despite the fact Castle William was effectively under royal control and had been staffed by British Regulars since September 1770.

2 Colonel William Dalrymple arrived at Boston with the 14th Regiment in 1768. He assumed command as senior officer after the departure of Colonel Alexander Mackay in July 1769 (and was therefore in command at the time of the Boston Massacre). Despite the fact that Dalrymple had been considered as a possible candidate to succeed Francis Bernard as governor (see TH Correspondence, 2: No. 477), he and TH cooperated effectively during the years of Dalrymple’s command.

1 For the request of the House and Council for TH to intercede, see JHR, 49:259.

2 For TH’s trip to London in 1741 and intercession on behalf of those towns originally created by Massachusetts, see TH Correspondence, 1: Nos. 1–5.

3 Samuel Robinson (1707–1767) was a justice of the peace in the town of Bennington, in what eventually became Vermont.

4 For TH’s letter to Governor William Tryon of New York and the latter’s response, see TH Correspondence, 4: No. 928.

1 For Peter Livius, see TH Correspondence, 3: No. 684.

2 TH to John Pownall, 21 April 1772, TH Correspondence, 4:448 (calendared but not printed).

3 Livius correctly predicted the future course of events. Hillsborough ran afoul of the powerful investors in the Grand Ohio Company, who included George Washington’s brothers, Benjamin Franklin, and Sir William Johnson. Hillsborough resigned as secretary of state for the colonies on 31 August 1772, when the rest of the cabinet failed to support him concerning settlement west of the Appalachians (TH History, 3:259n). He erred, however, in his guess that Chatham would succeed Hillsborough.

4 See TH to Peter Livius, 7 May 1772, TH Correspondence, 4:449 (calendared but not printed).

1 In his letter No. 25, written 9 May 1772, TH announced he had no news to report. Therefore, it appears in the calendar but was not printed; see TH Correspondence, 4:450. For letter No. 26, dated 29 May 1772, and letter No. 28 on 15 June 1772, see TH Correspondence, 4: Nos. 986 and 990.

2 The instructions from the town of Boston, as they appeared in the Boston Post-Boy, 25 May 1772, asserted the province was governed by an “exterior power” attempting to levy “an illegal tax” that would reduce citizens to the “condition of slaves.” They also criticized TH for failing to accept a salary paid by the province and refusing his assent to both a money bill (taxing the members of the American Board of Customs Commissioners) and a bill that would have paid the salaries of the agents of the House and Council.

3 TH’s letter No. 28 recounted the compromise whereby TH saw fit to permit the return of the General Court to Boston; see TH Correspondence, 4: No. 990.

4 Henceforth, the salaries of the justices of the Superior Court would be paid by the crown.

5 John Phillips, commander of the provincial garrison of Castle William, had been without employment since the takeover of the fort by regular troops in September 1770; see TH Correspondence, 3: No. 695.

1 Charles Phelps (1717–1789) was a lawyer and land speculator in the Connecticut River Valley. TH’s letter to Lord Hillsborough, No. 33, outlined the case for Hinsdale and the other towns in New Hampshire, originally granted by Massachusetts but now threatened by New York’s new assertion of authority over the upper Connecticut Valley; see No. 1008, above.

2 For Israel Williams, see BD. No letter from London written in the spring of 1772 was found mentioning such an exchange.

3 “Outrée,” French, meaning outrageous.

4 Jonathan Hunt (1738–1823) was later lieutenant governor of Vermont.

1 For Timothy Ruggles, see BD.

2 Thompson was most likely Robert Thompson (d. 1788), who had inherited land in America from a Puritan ancestor. The Whatelys and Thompson descended from the same grandmother. See No. 1113, below. The death of Thomas Whately (see BD), an important correspondent of TH, would lead to the unauthorized publication of their letters, provoking one of the most significant crises of TH’s career as governor. Heneage Finch (1751–1812), Lord Guernsey, eventually the 3rd earl of Aylesford, was elected member of Parliament for Castle Rising on 10 June 1772.

3 Samuel Danforth (see TH Correspondence, 2: No. 350n) was the senior member of the Council and acted as its president.

4 Richard Acklom Harrison (1750–1813) succeeded his father, Joseph, as collector of customs at Boston. See also TH Correspondence, 2: No. 321.

5 Israel Mauduit (see BD) was a leading Dissenter in London and actively corresponded with Andrew Oliver concerning the affairs of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England, a missionary effort among Native Americans. There was in May 1772 a bill before the House of Lords for relieving Dissenters from subscribing to the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England to avoid civil penalties. Both Lords Chatham and Shelburne spoke in favor of the bill (Parliamentary Debates, 6:148).

6 Charles Steuart was the paymaster general for the American Board of Customs Commissioners. Lord Mansfield (see BD) had before him the famous Somerset Case, involving Steuart; see TH Correspondence, 4: No. 924n16.

7 John Williams was appointed inspector general of customs by the American Board of Customs Commissioners in November 1767 and suffered in the Liberty riot in June 1768; see TH Correspondence, 2: No. 326. Duncan Stewart (1732–1793), became collector of customs at New London in 1764 and was recently in London. He remained in his post until 1777, when as a loyalist he was forced to flee. Their dispute concerned Stewart’s claim for compensation of a boat burned in New London’s Liberty riot, the smallest of the three riots sparked by the same incident.

1 For Richard Acklom Harrison, see No. 1012, above.

2 Sir Francis Bernard suffered a stroke sometime between December 1771 and January 1772 (TH Correspondence, 4: No. 953).

3 For hints of an independent salary for judges in Massachusetts, see No. 1010, above.

4 TH proposed treating the funds from the crown as a supplement to salaries provided by the legislature in TH Correspondence, 4: No. 971.

5 For the fullest description of his reaction to the resolves of the House, which were to be presented by Benjamin Franklin as a remonstrance to the king, see No. 1006, above.

6 The House declared a royal instruction specifying a permanent salary for the governor as an invasion of the province’s charter rights (TH History, 2:285–86).

7 “Procul a jove” is a shortened version of the familiar Latin quotation “Procul a jove, procul a fulmine,” meaning “far from Jove, far from [his] thunder.”

8 For Thomas Flucker, the secretary of the province, see BD. A relation of the Bowdoin family, he had large landholdings in Maine (possibly the subject of Bernard’s intended letter).

9 Concerning the exchange of lands east of the Kennebec River for those to the west of the Connecticut River and north of the boundary of New Hampshire, see No. 1011, above.

10 Despite repeated messages from TH, the General Court refused to discourage unauthorized settlements in the territory east of the Kennebec. For the proposal to annex New Hampshire to Massachusetts Bay, see TH Correspondence, 4: No. 873.

1 The subject of this letter concerns speculation about who might succeed Andrew Oliver (whose health was poor) should he die in office as lieutenant governor. The abbreviation “JE” may stand for John Erving Jr. (see TH Correspondence, 4: No. 907), who despite being the brother-in-law of James Bowdoin, “Mr. B,” seemed well disposed to TH as governor.

2 TH could mean either Samuel or John Adams (for both, see BD), but since he wrote, “I have mentioned J A” in the penultimate paragraph, John Adams is more likely.

3 Bowdoin’s son-in-law, John Temple, was recently made surveyor general of customs in England. Neil R. Stout frames 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, “The Missing Temple-Whately Papers,” MHS Procs. 104 [1992]: 123–47).

4 Before Andrew Oliver’s appointment, the lieutenant governorship was an unpaid position. But Oliver was awarded a salary of £300, partly as compensation for his sufferings during the Stamp Act riots and partly as a way of strengthening the authority of royal government in the province (TH Correspondence, 3: No. 720).

5 It is unclear whom James Gambier would have proposed, but TH had once considered the independently wealthy Isaac Royall as a suitable successor when he himself thought of resigning the lieutenant governorship (TH Correspondence, 2: No. 253).

6 Here TH speculated that Thomas Flucker would not accept the position without a salary.

7 Once again, the likely person indicated by the “Mr. ——g” would be John Erving Jr.

8 The space left blank should be understood to be the “lieutenant governor’s.”

9 For Arthur Lee and the “Junius Americanus” Letters, see TH Correspondence, 4: No. 743. Lee’s letter of 29 January 1770 declared Andrew Oliver a “partisan against the province” (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: J. and W. Oliver, 1770]).

10 The hint, possibly pertaining to John Adams, remains obscure since the last found letter from Sir Francis Bernard was dated 13 June 1771; see TH Correspondence, 4: No. 872.

11 “J A” in this instance probably stands for John Adams and “Str.” for William Story; see TH Correspondence, 3: No. 677, and TH Correspondence, 4: No. 998. Story’s home was attacked during the Stamp Act riots while he was deputy registrar of the vice-admiralty court. He had recently returned from London, where he had been pleading for relief from his obligation to make good money owed the court by Nathaniel Wheelwright (see BD), a Boston merchant who went bankrupt in 1765. Story had accepted a note of hand from Wheelwright at John Temple’s behest and was now being sued by the advocate general of the court. Seeking to avoid deeper bankruptcy himself, Story sought forgiveness of the obligation as a sufferer in the riots.

12 In a letter to Lord Hillsborough printed in the London Public Advertiser on 10 June 1772, Junius Americanus warned that Story had already been indemnified for his losses in the riot by the Massachusetts General Court. At the same time, the writer also reprinted letters to Hillsborough by both Sir Francis Bernard and Charles Paxton (see BD), endorsing Story’s cause, implying they were both somehow complicit in a plot to defraud the government. All the letters were eventually printed in the Boston Evening Post for 24 August 1772. By “public dortor,” TH meant the common sewer.

13 The omitted words would be “John Temple” and “England.” It was Temple who first introduced TH and Whately to one another as correspondents; see TH Correspondence, 2: No. 274.

1 No letter to TH dated 12 June 1772 was found, nor was the pamphlet it contained. The language of the first sentence concerning a “debt” of letters (as well as the content of the first paragraph) strongly suggest the intended recipient was Israel Mauduit, a leading advocate for Dissenters; see TH Correspondence, 4: No. 930.

2 John Locke, A Letter on Toleration (London: Churchill, 1689).

3 For the opposition of English bishops to a bill before Parliament intended to provide relief for Dissenters, see No. 1012, above.

4 Concerning the salaries of the judges, see No. 1010, above.

5 With the accession to the British throne in 1714 of George I, the ruler of the Duchy of Hanover, Britain and Hanover became joined together under the same crown but enjoyed separate governments.

6 The description of the “gentleman in Ireland” fits TH’s correspondent John Hely Hutchinson (see TH Correspondence, 2: No. 355) but none of John Hely Hutchinson’s letters to TH was found.

7 The British revenue schooner Gaspée was burned in Narragansett Bay the night of 9–10 June 1772; see TH Correspondence, 4: No. 989.

8 The “Gentleman” was not identified.

1 The first page of the Boston Gazette for 24 August 1772 contained a lengthy letter by “A Whig Proselyte” (continued on 4 October) sharply critical of TH’s concluding message to the House, which defended his independent salary. The same letter also by implication compared the king to the seventeenth-century Stuart monarchs, Roman emperors, and the Ottoman sultan.

2 TH once again referred to John Temple’s appointment as surveyor general of customs in England.

3 Perhaps mistaking Benjamin Franklin for Michael Francklin, lieutenant governor of Nova Scotia, who was seeking to assume Sewall’s place as admiralty court judge at Halifax. See TH Correspondence, 4: No. 895.

4 Perhaps John Robinson (see BD) was seeking a customs post or appointment as vice-admiralty court judge in Charleston?

5 Concerning John Robinson’s exchange of offices with Jonathan Sewall (see BD), the attorney general of Massachusetts, who also held the post of vice-admiralty court judge in Halifax, see TH Correspondence, 4: No. 790.

6 John T. Apthorp and his wife, Hannah Greenleaf Apthorp, died at sea during a winter voyage to the Carolinas; see TH Correspondence, 4: No. 953.

7 For Admiral John Montagu, see TH Correspondence, 4: No. 890.

8 For Lieutenant William Dudingston, commander of HMS Gaspée, see TH Correspondence, 4: No. 989.

1 No letter from John Pownall bearing this date was found.

2 This reference appears to confirm John Pownall as the recipient of the unaddressed letter No. 1006, above.

3 Aaron Briggs, a sixteen-year-old mixed-race boy and indentured servant from Prudence Island, confessed to being one of the party that boarded the Gaspée and identified wealthy Providence merchant John Brown (see TH Correspondence, 4: No. 989) and Simeon Potter (1720–1806), a slave trader and privateer of Bristol, Rhode Island, as leaders of the group. He was held aboard HMS Beaver, but Captain Robert Linzee (see TH Correspondence, 3: No. 652) refused to surrender him to Governor Joseph Wanton and the Rhode Island courts. Later testimony cast doubt on the veracity of Briggs’s statement (Records of the Colony of RI, 7:93–108).

4 TH provided Livius with a letter of introduction to Pownall while apparently unaware of Livius’s ongoing conflict with New Hampshire governor John Wentworth; see No. 1009, above.

5 Among TH’s letters to Pownall, the one prior to this was dated 15 June 1772 and marked “not sent.” That draft makes no mention of the judges’ salaries. Therefore, he either sent another later letter or revised his draft to include the subject; see TH Correspondence, 4: No. 991.

1 Lord Hillsborough’s letter assured TH that he had spoken with Lord North, who agreed on the necessity for crown-supported salaries for Massachusetts judges; see TH Correspondence, 4: No. 987. TH proposed £250 as the amount to pay the associate judges in his private letter of 27 April 1772; see TH Correspondence, 4: No. 971.

2 Richard Reeve was secretary of the American Board of Customs Commissioners from 1769 through 1772; see TH Correspondence, 2: No. 353.

1 For Robert Linzee, see No. 1017, above.

2 For Lord Sandwich, now first lord of the admiralty, see TH Correspondence, 2: No. 284.

3 Linzee was being sued for alleged violations of law while making customs seizures in Rhode Island. A similar number of cases were brought against Lieutenant William Dudingston, commander of HMS Gaspée, before its destruction in Narragansett Bay; see No. 1021, below.

1 Although TH would be unaware of the change until late October, Lord Dartmouth succeeded Lord Hillsborough as secretary of state for the colonies in mid-August 1772.

2 For the resolves of the House and the remonstrance to the king, see No. 1006, above.

3 TH replied to the resolves in a message proroguing the General Court on 14 July 1772; see JHR, 49:127–32.

4 TH described the General Court’s unwillingness to fund repairs to the Province House in No. 1003, above.

5 TH mentioned the matter of the grants made by New York governor William Tryon in Hinsdale in No. 1003, above, but Dartmouth would not yet have seen TH’s fuller statement on behalf of the rights of the Massachusetts grantees there that was the subject of No. 1008, above.

6 TH lamented the refusal of the General Court to do anything to stem the rapid, unauthorized settlement of the Eastern Country in No. 1001, above.

1 Concerning provision for Captain John Phillips, see No. 1010, above.

2 “Proximus ardet” is shortened from the phrase in Virgil’s Aeneid (2:312) “proximus ardet Ucalegon,” which refers to the fact that Ucalegon’s house was already on fire, prompting Anchises and Aeneas to flee Troy. Here TH meant that the nearby problem in Rhode Island might quickly spread to Massachusetts.

1 Chief Justice Peter Oliver and Robert Auchmuty, judge of the regional vice-admiralty court (for both see BD), were appointed the royal commission of inquiry charged to bring to justice those who set fire to HMS Gaspée.

1 Henry Lloyd (1709–1795) was a Boston merchant and parishioner of King’s Chapel. He left Boston for Halifax at the time of the British evacuation in 1776 and died in London.

2 TH had asked Palmer to inquire if a British magazine would be willing to print TH’s message in response to the resolves of the House; see No. 1005, above.

3 TH requested that a new set of pulpit furnishings, one of his perquisites as a newly commissioned royal governor, be given to King’s Chapel; see TH Correspondence, 4: No. 967.

4 For WSH’s cold, see TH Correspondence, 4: No. 995.

1 For the first hint that the dispute over the Ohio Company would cause the resignation of Lord Hillsborough, see No. 1009, above.

2 For Lord Weymouth, see TH Correspondence, 2: No. 284.

3 Thus, TH had recommended between £250 and 300 as a suitable salary for the associate justices.

4 Immediately after the transfer of Castle William to royal control in September 1770, TH urged Thomas Gage and Lord Hillsborough of the need for him to maintain direct supervision over both the keeper of provincial stores at the Castle and the gunner, whose job it was to note the entrance and exit of all shipping from the harbor; see TH Correspondence, 3: No. 693.

5 On the need for a new flag at the Castle, see TH Correspondence, 4: No. 865.

1 The Massachusetts Spy for 10 September 1772 printed a letter “To the King,” signed Akolax, which reminded George III of the fates of his Stuart predecessors and directly criticized him for appointing tyrants like TH, as well as “a junto of Custom House officers and Roman Catholicks” to oppress the colonies. The piece appears in some ways to be modeled on “A Letter to the King,” reprinted from the London St. James Chronicle, which was printed in the Boston Gazette for 31 August 1772 but with fewer references to affairs in England and more to events in the colonies.

1 John Turner (see TH Correspondence, 1: No. 41) was the naval officer and deputy customs collector at Salem. John Temple accused Sir Francis Bernard of collusion in 1764 with James Cockle, the dismissed former collector; see TH Correspondence, 1: No. 72.

2 John Bernard, the actual collector, was intending to go to Salem to take up the office himself; see No. 1028, below.

1 In addition to passing along rumors of Lord Hillsborough’s resignation and discussing the case of Captain Phillips, TH urged Gage in his letter of 24 September, No. 1024, above, to divide the gunner’s job at the Castle among four men in order to maintain a twenty-four-hour watch over ships entering and leaving the harbor.

2 Sir Guy Carleton (1724–1808), later 1st Baron Dorchester, who succeeded James Murray as governor of Canada in 1768, had been in England since 1770 consulting on the disposition of civil and religious affairs in that province, which were ultimately embodied in the Quebec Act of 1774 (14 Geo. III, c. 83).

1 John Atkinson (1742–1803), a British merchant, arrived in Boston in 1770 and began a partnership with another established merchant, Richard Smith (dates unknown). Atkinson left Boston together with the British fleet in 1776 and served with a loyalist regiment during the Revolutionary War. Smith was banished from Massachusetts in 1778.

2 Turner’s letter was No. 1026, above.

1 TH’s letter to Andrew Oliver of 11 October 1772 was not found. TH Jr. married Andrew Oliver’s daughter Sarah in 1770 (Harvard Graduates, 14:289–95). “In ano” was Oliver’s decorous Latin description of an anal fistula.

2 Margaret, the daughter of Andrew Oliver, married John Spooner Jr. in 1762; see TH Correspondence, 2: No. 324.

3 For William Burch, a member of the American Board of Customs Commissioners, see BD.

4 Robert Thompson was not identified but see No. 1113, below.

5 Peter Oliver (1749–1795), Harvard College 1769, was the son of the lieutenant governor and was in London from 1771 through 1773 studying medicine at Guy’s Hospital. He eventually became a surgeon serving in the British army during the American Revolution (Harvard Graduates, 17:188–90).

1 Turner’s sent letter, which TH included in this letter to Bernard, was not found.

2 News from England of an independent salary for the judges was reported in the Boston Gazette on 28 September 1772. The town meeting adopted a petition to TH asking whether there was any truth to the matter on 28 October. The text of this petition, together with TH’s answer to it, was printed in the Boston Gazette on 2 November 1772. TH refused to disclose the contents of any confidential messages received from higher authorities.

1 In the so-called Revolution of 1772, the new Swedish king, Gustav III, in a bloodless coup d’état, forced his Parliament to adopt a new instrument of government, granting him much greater power.

2 Prince William (1743–1805), Duke of Gloucester and Edinburgh, was the younger brother of George III. The phrase “captain general” implies the highest general rank in the army, although the post of commander-in-chief was vacant since the death of William’s uncle, the Duke of Cumberland (for whom, see TH Correspondence, 1: No. 200). Henry Seymour Conway (see BD), lieutenant general of the ordnance, eventually exchanged positions with Jeffery Amherst, governor of Jersey, on 22 October 1772.

1 None of these letters from Sir Francis Bernard was found.

2 The subject of Bernard’s letter of 1 August was clearly the continuing financial embarrassments of his near-bankrupt son John Bernard, whom TH was assisting. John Bernard was indebted to the London firm of Lane, Son & Frazier (see TH Correspondence, 4: No. 872). Future loyalist Richard Lechmere (1727–1814), the Boston agent of Lane, Son & Frazier, had evidently secured a lien for them on the property in 1771.

3 John Bernard’s dispute with his former business partner Thomas Goldthwait (see BD), who was truckmaster and commander of Fort Pownall in Maine, was at the heart of his financial difficulties; see TH Correspondence, 4: No. 941. For Jedidiah Prebble Jr., whom the House chose as truckmaster instead of Goldthwait, see TH Correspondence, 3: No. 639. For Goldthwait’s request that TH acquiesce in the choice of Prebble and TH’s explanation to Lord Hillsborough, see TH Correspondence, 4: No. 970.

4 For the exchange of offices between Jonathan Sewall and John Robinson, see No. 1016, above.

5 For the judgment in August 1771 in James Otis Jr.’s (see BD) case of assault against Robinson, see TH Correspondence, 4: No. 884. The case was settled during the August term of the Superior Court and the terms reported in the Boston Gazette for 15 September 1772.

6 The arrangement proposed by Sir Francis Bernard is evident from No. 1037, below, whereby Sewall would assume the role of solicitor of customs as well as attorney general.

7 For Duncan Stewart, see No. 1012, above, and No. 1037, below.

8 For the treasonous addressed to the king that was printed in the newspapers, see No. 1025, above.

9 Thomas Flucker, the secretary of the province, owned large land holdings in Maine.

1 For TH’s letter No. 33, see No. 1008, above.

2 This earlier document may have been incorporated in the “State of the Claim of Massachusetts Bay to the Country between the Rivers Kennebec and St. Croix” listed as an enclosure to the DupRC. The renewed land claim came from William Alexander (1726–1783), who styled himself Lord Stirling—a claim not recognized by the House of Lords. He later became a major general in the Continental Army.

3 For the petition of the town meeting, see No. 1031, above.

1 John Robinson’s letter to TH by the September mail was not found.

2 For David Lisle, who was suspended as solicitor of the American Board of Customs Commissioners in 1768, see TH Correspondence, 2: No. 338. He evidently returned to his old position; see TH Correspondence, 4: No. 790. For Duncan Stewart, see No. 1033, above. For the former plan for a direct exchange between Sewall and Robinson, see TH Correspondence, 4: No. 790.

3 “Mr. Johnson” was not identified.

4 For a three-way exchange among Robinson, Sewall, and Michael Francklin (see TH Correspondence, 2: No. 477), the lieutenant governor of Nova Scotia, see also TH Correspondence, 4: Nos. 790, 895. For the apology to Lord Sandwich, see TH Correspondence, 4: No. 955.

1 For Governor Thomas Pownall, see BD.

1 For the address and TH’s response, see No. 1031, above.

1 TH’s letter No. 3 to Lord Dartmouth was No. 1039, above.

2 Dissatisfied with TH’s response to its first address, the town met again on 30 October, issuing a second address stating that judges who served at pleasure rather than during good behavior were contrary to the rights of Englishmen and requested TH to convene the General Court so that citizens might have a constitutional means of protest. See Boston Gazette, 2 November 1772.

3 The livery companies, or craft guilds, of London had the exclusive right to elect senior civic officials, such as the lord mayor, the aldermen, and the members of Parliament representing the city.

1 Only one of WSH’s two letters was found; see TH Correspondence, 4: No. 995.

2 EH married earlier that summer; see No. 1002, above. WSH’s aunt was Grizzel Sanford (see BD), who moved into the governor’s house after the death of TH’s wife, Margaret Sanford Hutchinson (see BD), to help raise his children, all grown now except for MH, his younger daughter.

1 No letter from John Wentworth written on 16 October 1772 was found. Peter Livius, while chief justice of New Hampshire, challenged the way Wentworth disposed of some lands his uncle Governor Benning Wentworth (see BD) had illegally granted himself and accused Wentworth before the Council of maladministration. The Council supported Wentworth, and Livius was removed from office for judicial partiality in 1772. See Lawrence Shaw Mayo, John Wentworth, Governor of New Hampshire (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1922), pp. 74–76.

2 For TH’s nephew Nathaniel Rogers, see BD. For Rogers’s visit to London in 1767–1768, see TH Correspondence, 2: Nos. 284, 307.

3 For William Parker, see TH Correspondence, 3: No. 684.

4 None of the newspaper pieces, allegedly by Livius, was identified.

5 This sentence is quoted from TH to John Pownall, 21 April 1772, calendared but not printed in TH Correspondence, 4:448.

6 For Livius’s complaint to the Board of Trade, see N.H. Papers, 18:623–25.

7 No articles pertaining to Livius were found in Boston newspapers for 1772.

8 The Korahites were one of the three main divisions of the House of Levi. Korah, leader of the faction, assisted by Dathan and Abiram (two particularly quarrelsome and seditious Israelites), led a rebellion against Moses and were swallowed up in a crevice (Numbers 16:1–35).

1 At its gathering on 30 October, the town meeting requested TH to convene the General Court so that a constitutional means might be found to oppose the independent salaries of the judges. In his response, TH said that to do so would cede the crown’s right to choose the time and place for the General Court to meet and encourage other towns to make similar requests. On 2 November, the town met again and appointed a twenty-one-person committee of correspondence to encourage other towns to communicate Boston’s position and request that they express their own sentiments in return (Boston Gazette, 9 November 1772). According to Richard D. Brown, Samuel Adams had in mind as early as September 1771 forming some sort of corresponding society, and TH’s message played perfectly into Adams’s hands. See Brown, Revolutionary Politics, pp. 45–48, 56–57.

2 James Otis Jr. was chair of the committee.

3 For William Molineux, see BD. For Thomas Young, see TH Correspondence, 2: No. 326. For Joseph Greenleaf, see TH Correspondence, 4: No. 926.

4 The Latin phrase “pro re nata” means literally “for the thing born,” which is generally understood as “as the situation arises.”

5 TH prorogued the General Court until 6 January 1773.

6 The salary of £200 for each of the puisne justices was £50 less than what TH thought was the minimal acceptable amount.

7 For John Robinson’s letter, see No. 1037, above. If Sewall and Robinson might be otherwise provided with adequate salaries, TH favored eliminating the Halifax vice-admiralty court, which was subject to appeal to the vice-admiralty court in Boston anyway.

8 The London merchant firm of Lane, Son & Frazier was apparently paying the necessary fees for the warrants for the judges of the Superior Court.

1 See TH Correspondence, 4: No. 984.

2 For Thomas Oliver, see TH Correspondence, 3: No. 640.

3 Thomas Oliver studied civil law at the Inns of Court but never practiced law in Boston (CSM Pubs., 28:37–66). For his cousin Richard Oliver, who played a prominent role in the “printers’ crisis” of 1771, see TH Correspondence, 4: No. 853.

1 Thomas Goldthwait’s letter to TH of 12 October 1772, calendared but not printed.

2 Beginning in 1704 and as recently as 1771, Parliament enacted bounties on colonial timber to reduce Britain’s dependence on the Baltic for this critical commodity. Ungranted lands in Maine east of the Kennebec belonged to the crown. Thus, when Maine timber was cut by illegal settlers, the king was paying a bounty on his own trees.

3 For the Massachusetts claim to lands west of the Merrimack River, see TH Correspondence, 1: Nos. 1, 5.

4 Newichawanock was the Abenaki name for the Salmon Falls River, a tributary of the Piscataqua, which together form the southernmost part of the eastern border of New Hampshire. The border north of the headwaters of the Salmon Falls was also determined by the Privy Council in 1737 (during the reign of George II).

5 For the royal patent of Sir Ferdinando Gorges to lands in Maine, see TH Correspondence, 1: No. 213, 2:496, and 4: No. 933.

6 TH initially discussed the matter in his letter No. 15, TH to Lord Hillsborough, 5 November 1771 (calendared but not printed in TH Correspondence, 4:435). Lord Hillsborough told TH he referred the matter to the Privy Council in TH Correspondence, 4: No. 934. “Primus inter pares” is a Latin phrase meaning “first among equals.”

7 The specific divorce case was not identified. “Ab mensa et toro” is a Latin legal phrase meaning from “from bed and board.”

1 Lord Sandwich’s letter was not found, but for TH’s response to it, dated May 1772, see TH Correspondence, 4: No. 975.

2 TH’s letter to Lord Sandwich was No. 1044, above.

3 For a more complete discussion of the legal doubts concerning the power of the vice-admiralty court to commit a prisoner to a Massachusetts jail, see TH Correspondence, 4: No. 975.

4 A mittimus directs a sheriff or other officer to commit a person to prison and a jailer to receive him.

1 Ansell Nickerson claimed to be the sole survivor of an attack by pirates when the fishing vessel he was aboard was discovered adrift in the waters between Chatham and Nantucket on 15 November. There was blood on the deck but no sign of his cousin, brother, brother-in-law, and a small boy, the other members of the crew. Nickerson asserted that he survived by hanging, undiscovered, over the stern of the vessel while the pirates were aboard. When the news reached TH in Boston, he found the story incredible and ordered Nickerson’s arrest. A case of piracy necessitated convening a special court of admiralty, including some the highest officials of the colony, as well as two customs collectors. After many delays, the court finally convened on 28 July 1773 with Josiah Quincy Jr. and John Adams representing Nickerson and TH presiding. A divided court acquitted Nickerson two days later. The basis of the acquittal is unclear: it may have been an insufficiency of evidence or concern that the jurisdiction of the special court did not include murder, only piracy. TH continued to believe Nickerson was guilty. The relevant letters pertaining to the case are not printed but calendared at the end of the volume: Edward Bacon to TH, 16 November 1772; TH to Unknown, 22 November 1772; TH to William Tryon, 23 November 1772; TH to John Wentworth, 23 November 1772; TH to Edward Bacon, 24 November 1772; TH to Sir Francis Bernard, 26 November 1772; TH to John Wentworth, 27 November 1772; TH to John Montagu, 30 November 1772; Peter Oliver to TH, 30 November 1772; Edward Bacon to TH, 2 December 1772; TH to John Wentworth, 3 December 1772; and TH to James Fisher, 8 December 1772. The clearest account of the case is found in JA Legal Papers, 2:335–40. TH also mentioned the case in TH History, 3:301.

1 No letters written by Sir Francis Bernard to TH after 17 June 1771 were found.

2 Alexander Leslie (1731–1794) was lieutenant colonel of the 64th Regiment. He was briefly in Boston from November 1768 to July 1769. He returned in 1772 after the departure to assume local command there. He was ordered by Thomas Gage to lead an abortive raid on Salem on 26 February 1775 to confiscate contraband weapons.

3 By “the point,” TH presumably means Dorchester Neck, that part of the mainland closest to Castle Island. Without the need to transport troops over water, soldiers could be in Boston much sooner than otherwise.

1 TH gave a letter of introduction to his son WSH to present to Peter Livius, asking the latter’s care and oversight for the young man. See TH to Peter Livius, 7 May 1772, calendared but not printed.

2 For George Meserve, stamp distributor for New Hampshire, see TH Correspondence, 3: No. 499.

1 Votes and Proceedings was divided into three parts: “First, a State of the Rights of the Colonists and of This Province in Particular; Secondly, a List of the Violations and Infringements of Those Rights; Thirdly, a Letter of Correspondence with the Other Towns.” The committee that prepared the first part included James Otis Jr. as chair, assisted by Samuel Adams and Josiah Quincy Jr. (see TH Correspondence, 1: No. 108). A committee including Joseph Warren (see TH Correspondence, 2: No. 259), Joseph Greenleaf, and Thomas Young wrote the second, and the third was the work of Benjamin Church (see TH Correspondence, 2: No. 359), Nathaniel Appleton, and William Powell. Appleton (1731–1798) was a Boston merchant and author of the pamphlet Considerations on the Slave Trade (Boston: Edes & Gill, 1767). Powell was a Boston merchant who signed the nonimportation agreement of 1 March 1768 and an agreement not to import tea of 20 January 1774.

1 In November, Captain Robert Keeler (c. 1735–1711) of HMS Mercury seized a quantity of coffee and molasses that he contended was illegally imported by Nathaniel Shaw Jr (c. 1745–1782) of New London. John Andrews (d. c. 1795), judge of the Rhode Island Vice-Admiralty Court, condemned the goods. Rather than appeal the decision to the regional vice-admiralty court in Boston, Shaw sought a prohibition from the Rhode Island Superior Court, Chief Justice Stephen Hopkins presiding. (For Stephen Hopkins, also the former governor of Rhode Island, see BD.) Hopkins issued a prohibition until the superior court could hear the case in February, but in the meantime the marshal of the vice-admiralty court sold the goods, and the ultimate disposition of the value of the cargo, the subject of several appeals, remained unresolved before the Revolution. (See Carl Ubbelohde, The Vice Admiralty Courts and the American Revolution [Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1960], pp. 168–69.) Hopkins, the author of The Rights of the Colonies Examined (Providence: William Goddard, 1765), that is, “seven years ago,” argued that charter colonies received the right to legislate for themselves and establish their own courts and were therefore not subject to acts of Parliament concerning their internal affairs if they were passed subsequent to the receipt of their charters. See also Ernest E. Rogers, Connecticut’s Naval Office at New London during the War of the American Revolution: Including the Mercantile Letter Book of Nathaniel Shaw, Jr. (New London, Conn.: New London Historical Society, 1933), pp. 241–42, 245, 247.

2 For Samuel Fitch, who was a lawyer in Connecticut before becoming advocate general of the vice-admiralty court, see TH Correspondence, 2: No. 414.

3 Votes and Proceedings, as in No. 1051, immediately above.

1 TH’s letters No. 1 and 2 were Nos. 1034 and 1038, above.

2 TH’s letter No. 35 to Lord Hillsborough, No. 1025, above, included a copy of “To the King” from the Massachusetts Spy for 10 September 1772.

1 TH drew his characteristic wavy line through the center of this and the following two paragraphs, indicating they were probably not included in the final draft of the letter.

2 This sentence was written in the margin and marked for insertion here.

3 For the Virginia Resolves, see TH Correspondence, 1: No. 101.

4 For the Declaratory Act, see TH Correspondence, 1: No. 170.

1 TH Jr. (Tommy) married Sarah, the daughter of Andrew Oliver, the lieutenant governor. They had a son, Thomas, who was baptized 23 February 1772. Peter Oliver Jr. (the son of the chief justice) married SH (Sally), TH’s elder daughter, on 1 February 1770. They had a daughter, Margaret, born 17 January 1771 and a son, also named Thomas, born 15 July 1772. Presumably they were all living in Middleborough, either in the home of the chief justice or the house he built for his son Peter when he married. Peggy, mentioned here, was likely to have been TH’s younger daughter, who may have been accompanying her older sister.

2 In all likelihood, Oliver referred here to the special court of admiralty being convened to hear the case of Ansell Nickerson; see No. 1048, above.

3 Whatever the manuscript was that accompanied Oliver’s letter was not found. The town of Middleborough pointedly ignored the call to enter into a correspondence with Boston on political affairs (Brown, Revolutionary Politics, p. 98).

4 Ebenezer Sprout (1717–1786) was a captain of the militia and tavern-keeper in Middleborough. Benjamin White (1716–1774) was the representative for Middleborough in 1772. The other three selectmen were not identified.

5 Bridgewater and Plympton are Plymouth County towns located between Plymouth and Middleborough. Taunton, just west of Middleborough, is the seat of Bristol County. For Daniel Leonard, see TH Correspondence, 4: No. 752.

1 The two Massachusetts members of the commission were Chief Justice Peter Oliver and Robert Auchmuty Jr., the judge of the regional vice-admiralty court. Joseph Wanton was governor of Rhode Island.

2 The newspapers TH enclosed with this letter contained debates over and proposed amendments to the Votes and Proceedings of the town of Boston. The last newspaper listed in the source note, however, the Boston Gazette for 21 December 1772, printed resolutions by the towns of Plymouth, Roxbury, and Cambridge opposing independent salaries for the judges, similar to those passed by Boston, and establishing their own committees of correspondence, as did the Boston Evening Post for 21 December 1772.

1 The Boston Evening Post for 21 December 1772 included an article disclosing the powers and instructions of the Gaspée Commission.

1 Thomas Gage’s letter of 20 December 1772 is calendared but not printed in this volume.

2 Daniel Horsmanden (c. 1691–1778) was chief justice of New York, and Frederick Smythe Jr. (b. c. 1732) was chief justice of New Jersey.

1 John Calef (1726–1812) was a physician and representative from Ipswich who voted to rescind the Circular Letter in 1768 and eventually became a loyalist.

2 For the Massachusetts members of the commission, see No. 1056, above.

1 John Pownall’s letter was not found.

2 No letter written by Admiral John Montagu in either December 1772 or January 1773 was found.

3 Darius Sessions (d. 1809) was deputy governor of Rhode Island from 1769 to 1775. He was the first magistrate on the scene after the burning of the Gaspée and heard many of the initial depositions. The chief justice was Sessions’s friend and neighbor Stephen Hopkins, for whom see No. 1052, above. Both men might truly say that no one from Newport was involved, since it was generally assumed the attackers were from Providence.

4 For Aaron Briggs, a mixed-race man who confessed to participation in the attack, and Simeon Potter, whom he identified as a leader, see No. 1017, above.

5 The Gaspée Commission was established to inquire into acts of alleged high treason, summon witnesses under oath, and arrange for indicted criminals to be transported by Admiral Montagu to England for trial, but removal to England could only take place after suspects had been indicted by a Rhode Island grand jury, something very unlikely to happen. As early as 1768, Lord Hillsborough had suggested to Francis Bernard that the 1543 treason statute of Henry VIII might provide a legal basis for sending those colonial offenders to England for trial (see TH Correspondence, 2: No. 335n), but as TH pointed out, the colonies did not exist in 1543 and Parliament had never extended the statute to include the colonies. For more information on the legal details of treason in the colonies, see Neil L. York, “Imperial Impotence: Treason in 1774,” Law and History 29 (August 2011): 665–68, and York, “The Uses of Law in the Gaspée Affair,” Rhode Island History 50 (November 1992): 9.

6 Parliament passed the Dockyards etc. Protection Act 1772 (12 Geo. 3 c. 24) during the previous session, which also would have allowed for the transportation of suspects to England, but when the Gaspée Commission was formed, the new law was not mentioned, in part, because it raised a question of ex post facto law, since no one in the colonies could possibly have been aware of its existence (an issue TH raised in this letter).

7 If the attack occurred on the “high seas” it would have been a matter for the vice-admiralty courts, but since the Gaspée clearly ran aground within the boundaries of Rhode Island, it was a matter for the Rhode Island courts, and the apprehension of a suspect, thus, would depend on Rhode Island magistrates. See No. 1052, above.

8 The question of whether Massachusetts could tax the salaries of the American Board of Customs Commissioners first arose in the summer of 1771, when TH refused his assent to a new tax law (TH Correspondence, 4: No. 876). He was able to avoid the issue in 1772 thanks to a large surplus in the Massachusetts treasury, which meant no new taxes were necessary.

9 “Canere surdis” is Latin, meaning “to sing to the deaf.” It is a slight misquotation of Virgil, “Non canimus surdis,” Ecologues, 10:8.

10 The remainder of the letter from this point is in TH’s handwriting.

1 TH’s letters Nos. 3, 4, and 6 were dated 30 October, 3 November, and 13 November, respectively, Nos. 1039, 1040, and 1045, above. Letter No. 5, dated 11 November, was calendared but not printed in this volume.

2 TH wrote to John Pownall on 13 November, No. 1046, above, describing, in less circumspect language than his letter to Lord Dartmouth, agitation against independent salaries for the judges and the forming the Boston Committee of Correspondence.

3 TH’s letter No. 3 of 30 October, No. 1039, above, enclosed the message of the 28 October 1772 town meeting asking whether rumors of an independent salary for the judges were true. TH had replied that, because of the confidentiality of all communication from the ministry, he was unable to disclose any information. Letter No. 4 of 3 November, No. 1040, above, informed Dartmouth of further interchanges with the town meeting and of the formation of the Boston Committee of Correspondence.

4 In a long letter written on 9 December 1772, Lord Dartmouth expressed his view that the discontent of the colonies was caused by a misunderstanding of the relationship between the colonial assemblies and Parliament. In every society, he wrote, there must be “a supreme uncontrollable Power, an Absolute authority to decide and determine.” See No. 1053, above.

5 In his letter No. 6, TH suggested that Massachusetts should relinquish all claim to land east of the Penobscot in exchange for that part of New Hampshire west of the Merrimack River that was taken in from Massachusetts when a new boundary was established between the two colonies in 1737; see No. 1045, above.

6 Thomas Scammell was appointed surveyor of the king’s woods in Maine in November 1770. Although he arrived in America in order to begin the task in the summer of 1771, the vast size of the territory, harsh weather, and wilderness conditions meant the task was still incomplete; see TH Correspondence, 4: No. 870.

7 TH’s letter No. 5 of 11 November informed Dartmouth that he had granted permission to John Bernard, the former governor’s son, a leave of absence from his job at the Naval Office to return to England for a year. This letter was calendared but not printed in this volume.

1 The Boston Gazette for 11 January 1773, which TH enclosed with this letter, contains a paragraph headed “Newport, January 4” that purported to summarize a letter from Lord Dartmouth to Governor Joseph Wanton stating the king’s intent to punish severely any of his servants who obstructed the legal trade of or in any way insulted or abused his subjects in Rhode Island. The newspaper editors were guilty of selective emphasis. Dartmouth did indeed include such language in the penultimate paragraph of his 14-page letter to Wanton explaining the establishment of the Gaspée Commission, but the main point of the letter concerns the need to apprehend those guilty of burning the king’s warship, not a desire to punish the excesses of Lieutenant William Dudingstone or over-zealous customs officers. See Dartmouth to Joseph Wanton, 14 September 1772, National Archives UK, CO 5/1284, ff. 140–47.

1 TH’s opening message to the General Court was printed in JHR, 49:138–43, but also appears in Reid, Briefs, pp. 15–23, where each document is skillfully introduced and annotated.

1 Williams’s letter to TH, dated 2 January, was not found. The two men corresponded routinely on militia and judiciary appointments for Hampshire County; see TH Correspondence, 2: No. 358.

2 TH wrote twice to Lord Hillsborough discussing the claims of the residents of Hinsdale in Nos. 1003 and 1008, above. For Lord Dartmouth’s response, see No. 1020, above. Dartmouth’s letter No. 3, dated 4 November 1772, where he mentioned the case of Hinsdale being referred to the Board of Trade has been calendared but not printed in this volume.

3 Words missing due to a hole in the MS have been supplied from the AC.

4 It appears that Williams, in his missing letter, had mentioned the act of the New York Assembly, dated 8 March 1772, extending the bounds of Albany County to the west bank of the Connecticut River; see TH Correspondence, 4: No. 986. What TH meant by “new government” is less clear. Did he mean that a new colony might be made from the lands west of the Connecticut, or that New York might attempt to assert its authority there?

5 TH believed that the early departure of some of his supporters from the western towns doomed efforts to block the resolves, adopted by the House in July, concerning the governor’s salary (TH History, 3:257). Williams failed to attend earlier sessions of the General Court, despite TH’s exhortations; see TH Correspondence, 4: Nos. 956, 980.

6 For discriminatory laws against the Baptists of Ashfield, see TH Correspondence, 4: No. 796.

1 The Gaspée Commission made little progress in its inquiries. According to TH, “Such persons as they had groundlessly suspected, they had no difficulty convening; but the persons really concerned in the fact, they either were never able to apprehend, or, if any such were apprehended, no witnesses would appear to testify against them” (TH History, 3:262n).

2 The Council presented its response to TH’s opening message on 25 January, the text of which can be found in Reid, Briefs, pp. 32–44. The House made its reply the next day, also printed in Reid, Briefs, pp. 53–73.

1 For the replies of both the House and Council, see No. 1067, immediately above.

2 TH would, in fact, reply twice to the arguments presented by the House and Council before the session was over.

1 The identification of the intended recipient is based on the first sentence of the last paragraph.

2 James Bowdoin chaired the committee that drafted the response of the Council. For the arguments of Lords Chatham (“Mr. Pitt”) and Camden, see TH Correspondence, 2: Nos. 256, 274.

1 Town leaders in Plymouth, Marblehead, and Roxbury had close personal ties to members of the Boston Committee of Correspondence and were among the first to reply, but by the end of January, 70 out of 260 Massachusetts towns had responded. The number grew by another 40 during February (Brown, Revolutionary Politics, pp. 81–82).

2 Lord Dartmouth’s predecessor, Lord Hillsborough, adamantly opposed the idea of separate agents for the House and Council and refused to receive them. TH’s official instructions forbade the practice, but TH did not receive them until 3 July 1771 (TH Correspondence, 4: No. 875). Since Dennys DeBerdt had died in April 1770, Dartmouth suggested his heirs might still be paid.

3 This paragraph pertains to a case of Ansell Nickerson, for which see No. 1048, above.

1 TH sent such a letter to Edmund Trowbridge on 5 February (calendared but not printed in this volume).

1 “Slipped your wind,” that is, died.

2 An infundibulum is a small distension of an artery or other vessel, usually in the brain.

3 Here and in several places below, the printer left blank spaces, unable to read the original manuscript. Each blank likely represents between four and six words but it is impossible to determine exactly. See also note 12, below.

4 Although TH’s letter to Peter Oliver was not found, “a certain house” presumably means the House of Representatives, which had recently responded to TH’s opening message defending the supremacy of Parliament.

5 A bilious colic is an intense pain of the upper abdomen caused by a gallstone preventing the draining of bile from the gall bladder.

6 “Suspendatur” is Latin for “let him be hanged,” the phrase traditionally uttered by English judges at the conclusion of a sentence for a capital crime.

7 A syllabub is dessert made from milk or cream curdled by an acidic or alcoholic drink, often thickened with gelatin and sweetened.

8 The oracle of Delphi, before making pronouncements, induced a trance by inhaling gaseous fumes emitted from a fissure in the rock beneath her tripod.

9 “Idis rebus nunquam [per bella peribus]” is an ambiguous Latin phrase, traditionally said to have been uttered by the oracle of Dodona (not Delphi) when consulted by a general before a battle. Depending on how one punctuates the phrase, it means either “you will go, you will return, never in war will you perish,” or “you will go, you will never return, in (the) war you will perish.”

10 Perhaps a reference to the recent communication from the House.

11 Linsey woolsey is a coarse twill fabric made from wool and cotton.

12 At this point, the printer included an asterisk directing readers to the following note: “Quere, Whether it is not probable he might have made an addition of one or two more, and so overset his ink upon the letter; for it is so blurr’d where the blanks are, that it is not possible to make out the words.”

13 The OED suggests that “rubbers,” when used in the plural in this way, derived from the game of bowls and meant “adversity” or “difficulty.”

14 Peter Oliver had been chief justice of the Superior Court since August 1772. On 21 January 1773, the General Court voted salaries for each justice of the Superior Court as a way of flushing out information concerning whether they were to be paid independent salaries by the crown. On 8 February, the General Court requested to know whether he had assented to the legislation. For TH’s response, see No. 1076, below. Although the issue of independent salaries for the judges would remain in the background throughout 1773, it remerged with a vengeance in early 1774, when each associate justice was obliged to renounce his crown salary and accept payment from the legislature. Only Oliver, paid at a higher rate by the crown, held out, resulting in demands for his impeachment. Thus, Oliver correctly foretold his own fate.

15 The reference is not exactly clear. Perhaps Oliver believed that the campaign against independent salaries for the judges was part of a pattern whereby Samuel Adams and others repeatedly raised new issues designed to lead step by step to independence and that there was no protection for those who opposed him. TH’s letter No. 1076, below, lends support to this interpretation.

1 In this instance, TH used the phrase “grand Incendiary” to describe Samuel Adams.

2 For TH’s message and the replies of the Council and the House, see No. 1067, above.

3 For James Bowdoin as the author of the Council’s response, see No. 1069, above.

4 TH was the godfather of James Gambier’s daughter Jenny (TH Correspondence, 4: No. 954).

5 John Temple was then in England, and TH suspected him of stirring up trouble for him there; see No. 1014, above.

1 TH delivered a long reply to the responses of the Council and the House on 16 February; see Reid, Briefs, pp. 84–102.

1 Gil Belcher (d. 1773) of Sheffield was accused of counterfeiting New York currency. New York authorities applied for extradition but were initially refused by Timothy Woodbridge because their warrant did not specify where the crime occurred, but another justice, John Ashley Sr. (1709–1802) of Sheffield, ordered the arrest of Belcher and his associates and had them turned over to the sheriff of Albany County. They were eventually tried and hanged in Albany. For the petition of the General Court, see JHR, 49:217–18, 246, 252–53. For a more detailed account of the legal complexities of the incident, see Taylor, “David Ingersoll,” pp. 56–60.

2 TH alluded to New York legislation, enacted 12 March 1772, extending the bounds of Albany County to the west bank of the Connecticut River; see TH Correspondence, 4: No. 986. Part of what made the Belcher case so threatening was the appearance that New York might actually attempt to assert its jurisdiction in western Massachusetts, as well as in the New Hampshire Grants. Within weeks of TH writing this letter, on 8 March the New York Assembly unanimously adopted “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,” but this language may have been a negotiating tactic aimed at forthcoming boundary talks with Massachusetts. See Journal of the Votes and Proceedings of the General Assembly of the Colony of New York, from 1766 to 1776, Inclusive, 9 vols. in 1 (Albany, N.Y.: J. Buel, 1820), 1773:92–108, 119.

3 TH referred to the so-called line of peace stipulated by the Board of Trade in 1757, parallel to and twenty miles east of the Hudson River, which constituted the provisional, unsurveyed boundary between the two colonies (Schwartz, “Jarring Interests,” p. 300).

1 On 21 January 1773, prompted by the rumors of impending salaries from the crown, the House approved grants for the justices of the Superior Court. It then inquired on 29 January if TH had assented to the provision they had voted. He replied on 4 February that although he had received word of crown salaries for the judges, they had not yet received their warrants for payment, therefore he did not know which part of the judges’ past service was covered by the crown and was temporarily withholding his assent lest they be paid twice for the same time period (JHR, 49:168,196, 208).

2 On 12 February, the House sent TH a message, in response to his previous messages, asking if he knew whether the judges would refuse their crown salaries. Then again, on 16 February, there were further messages and counter-messages on the same subject (JHR, 49:224–25, 242).

3 TH refused his assent to this legislation on 23 February. On 3 March, the House passed a series of resolutions strongly condemning payment of the judges by the crown, describing it as an “oppressive” and “despotic” measure and calling any judge who accepted such a salary as an “enemy of the Constitution” and a favorer of arbitrary government (JHR, 49:255, 281–82).

4 The salaries voted by the House on 21 January matched those provided for the associate judges by the crown but provided £100 less for the chief justice (JHR, 49:168).

5 TH once again called for repairs to the Province House on 19 February. On 25 February, the House refused to make any repairs as long as TH still received his salary from the crown (JHR, 49:247, 260–61).

1 Sir Francis Bernard’s letter of 5 August 1772 was not found.

1 The freemen of the livery companies of London, with their origins in medieval craft guilds, retained certain specified rights, among them to elect four members of Parliament, the lord mayor, sheriffs, and other civic officers.

1 This law was enacted in 1634 (Nathaniel Shurtleff, ed., Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay [Boston: By order of the legislature, 1853], 1:172).

2 TH remained deeply suspicious of John Temple’s activities while in London; see Nos. 1014 and 1073, above.

1 On 25 and 26 January 1773, the Council and House responded to TH’s opening message. TH offered a rebuttal to their messages on 16 February.

1 Thomas Cushing was the “popular man,” who as “head of the Commons” would have signed all their communications.

2 TH here alluded to failed attempts to prosecute Isaiah Thomas, printer of the Massachusetts Spy, for the letter “To the King” in the issue for 10 September 1772. See No. 1025, above.

3 Hillsborough’s letter to TH recommending a job be found for William Story was not found, but Francis Bernard’s letter of recommendation on Story’s behalf, dated 24 February 1772, was eventually published in the Boston Evening Post for 24 August 1773. For TH’s response to Hillsborough, see TH Correspondence, 4: No. 998.

4 While he was still deputy registrar of the vice-admiralty court, Story’s house was attacked during the Stamp Act riots. He was included in the same act of compensation and general amnesty that reimbursed TH; see TH Correspondence, 1: No. 230. In 1763, John Adams listed Story as a member of the North End Caucus, which often took the initiative in promoting the patriot cause (JA Diary and Autobiography, 1:238–40). Story also carried with him to London letters of recommendation from Thomas Cushing to Benjamin Franklin (Thomas Cushing to Benjamin Franklin, 2 October 1771, Franklin Papers, 18:223–24; Samuel Adams to Arthur Lee, 27 September, 2 October 1771, Samuel Adams Papers, New York Public Library).

5 Story’s letter to TH was not found but evidently threatened him with publishing letters TH would not wish to be made public if he did not find a place for Story; see Nos. 1082 and 1167, below.

1 A close comparison of this letter with No. 1081, above, suggests the intended recipient was Sir Francis Bernard.

2 Samuel Rogers (1709–1772) was a 1725 graduate of Harvard College, served as a representative from Ipswich in 1761–1763, and was appointed register of probate for Essex County in 1762.

3 TH himself was the judge of probate for Suffolk County from 1752 until he was succeeded by his brother Foster in 1769.

1 This letter from William Palmer to TH, 17 October 1772, was calendared but not printed.

1 This mildest of rebukes from Lord Dartmouth foreshadowed later criticism of TH for initiating his long debate with the General Court on the supremacy of Parliament in colonial affairs; see No. 1102, below.

1 By “soon after the charter,” TH meant the first charter of 1629. For the law passed in 1634, see No. 1079, above.

2 For Lord Chatham’s doctrine, see TH Correspondence 2: No. 274.

3 “The Gentleman of the Law” was John Adams, who drafted for the House an extremely learned response.

1 In TH’s letter of No. 1075, above, he expressed concern over the arrest of the counterfeiter Gil Belcher by the sheriff of Albany County for crimes committed within Massachusetts boundaries. Many in western Massachusetts saw the incident as an initial attempt by New York to exercise its authority in all the lands west of the Connecticut River. The opinion of the Council is described in No. 1094, below.

1 TH’s previous letter to Lord Dartmouth was No. 1076, above. It was written after his response to the answers of the Council and House but before their rejoinders to him, which came on 25 February and 2 March, respectively. It also contained material on the resolves of the House concerning the judges.

1 Sir Francis Bernard’s country house, Nether Winchendon, was located in the Vale of Aylesbury, in Buckinghamshire.

2 The Speeches of His Excellency Governor Hutchinson, to the General Assembly of the Massachusetts-Bay. At a Session Begun and Held on the Sixth of January, 1773. With the Answers of His Majesty’s Council and the House of Representatives Respectively (Boston: Edes & Gill, 1773).

1 The Remembrancer, cited in the source note above, stated that this letter was “apprehended” to be written to Sir Francis Bernard “tho it is not certain,” but also see note 2 below.

2 No letter written to anyone on 27 February 1773 was found. The date mentioned may perhaps be a slip of the pen for 23 February since TH’s short letter to Richard Jackson of that date fits the description here. See No. 1078, above.

3 In 1702, Parliament passed legislation requiring all officeholders to take an oath renouncing any allegiance to the Stuart dynasty and the temporal power of the pope (13 & 14 Will. 3, c. 6).

1 Presumably, Fenton meant the previous Harvard College commencement in June 1772.

2 “Ecclaircissement” is a word of French origin that implies a sudden enlightening of things previously obscure.

1 Here, Edes & Gill in the printed version of the letter added a footnote of their own asking why, if the E. Ludlow letter were of no concern to TH, did he present it to the Council for their consideration on 2 March.

2 The italics presumably were added by Edes & Gill, who then proceeded in a footnote to ask how many weeks “may be enumerated between the 1st of March, on which E. Ludlow first appeared, and the 11th, the Date of his Excellency’s letter.” The mistake about the dates supports a later contention that TH was confused as to which newspaper article the two men were discussing; see No. 1098, below.

3 Jonathan Sewall was the attorney general of the province.

1 TH’s letter to Fenton of 13 March was not found.

1 Neither Tryon’s letter of 1 March, nor his first letter of 8 March, mentioning Livingston, was found.

2 Tryon’s second letter dated 8 March, No. 1086, above, attempted to assure TH that the arrest of Gil Belcher and his confederates did not signal that New York was intending to exercise its jurisdiction in land claimed by Massachusetts west of the Connecticut River, even though it included the opinion of the Council described here.

3 Counterfeiting currency was a capital crime in New York but not in Massachusetts; see No. 1075, above.

1 The address complained that crown salaries for judges endangered the impartial administration of justice, since it made them completely dependent on the executive. For the letter to Benjamin Franklin, see JHR, 49:287. Franklin did not receive this letter and the enclosed petition until 2 June, at which time he also received a second letter and petition dated 24 March. He elected to present both to Lord Dartmouth simultaneously (Benjamin Franklin to Thomas Cushing, 4 June 1773, Franklin Papers, 20:221–22).

2 TH refused to give his assent to a new edition of the province laws on 12 January (JHR, 49:152).

3 This sentence was omitted from both the DupRC and the AC.

4 On 22 March, or perhaps slightly before, Thomas Cushing received a parcel of seventeen private letters, primarily written to Thomas Whately by TH and Andrew Oliver (JA Diary and Autobiography, 2:79–81). Cushing acknowledged receipt of the letters in his response to Franklin, dated 24 March, and asked to retain copies in Boston, which Franklin had requested him not to do (Thomas Cushing to Benjamin Franklin, 24 March 1773, Franklin Papers, 20:123–25). TH was already suspicious long before this time that his enemies in England might be trying to obtain copies of letters he had written to there (TH Correspondence, 4: No. 793), and more recently his worries had centered on John Temple; see No. 1014, above.

5 Lord Dartmouth’s letter No. 5, written No. 1063, above, expressed the king’s satisfaction with TH’s responses to the Boston town meeting’s inquiries about the judge’s salaries.

1 This letter appears to relate closely to No. 1089, above, which the editors think was possibly addressed to Richard Jackson, based on No. 1078, above, and No. 1133, below.

2 “Hic labor hic opus” is a common quotation from Virgil’s Aeneid, book 6, 1:129, meaning “This is the task, this is the hard work.”

1 Margaret Spooner was Andrew Oliver’s daughter; see TH Correspondence, 2: No. 324. Mary Sanford Oliver was Andrew’s wife and WSH’s aunt; see TH Correspondence, 1:53.

1 TH was told that John Fenton was the author of “To the Community” in the Boston Gazette for 8 February 1773.

2 Fenton made this demand concerning the “E. Ludlow” letter in the Boston Gazette for 1 March 1773 in No. 1090, above.

3 TH responded to Fenton’s letter in No. 1091, above.

4 The anachronism was TH’s use of the word “weeks” to describe the interval between 1 and 11 March; see No. 1091, above.

5 The published letters and Fenton’s sworn denial of authorship of the “E. Ludlow” letter appeared in the Boston Gazette for 15 March 1773.

1 In early January, Timothy Woodbridge, a justice of the peace for Berkshire County, complained that the sheriff of Berkshire County had arrested one of Gil Belcher’s fellow counterfeiters at the request of New York authorities but had not received a warrant for the arrest from anyone in Massachusetts; see Timothy Woodbridge to TH, 2 January 1773, and TH to Woodbridge, 6 March 1773, both calendared but not printed in this edition. The charge was not true. The New York warrant had been endorsed by fellow Berkshire justice John Ashley Jr. (Taylor, “David Ingersoll,” p. 58). Although Woodbridge was a key government party ally on the Council, TH had asked him to delay any further proceedings so as not to upset the forthcoming boundary discussions with New York; see TH to Woodbridge, 25 March 1773, calendared but not printed. See also Schwartz, “Jarring Interests,” pp. 310–11.

2 William Tryon sent the report of his Council together with his letter to TH on 8 March 1773, No. 1086, above. The opinion of the Council justified trial in New York for crimes committed against the laws of that province, even though the crimes may have taken place outside its boundaries.

1 The most recent session of the General Court passed “An Act to Regulate the Sale of Goods Sold at Public Vendue and Limit the Number of Auctioneers” (JHR, 49:292). In his letter to the Lords of Trade, 26 March 1773 (calendared but not printed), TH stated he believed that the power to limit the number of auctioneers ought to be given to the governor and not to the selectmen as the legislation provided.

2 The Boston town meeting for 25 March 1773 unanimously adopted the report of the committee chaired by Samuel Adams charged with defending the town against the “gross Misrepresentations and groundless Charges” in TH’s message to both houses of the legislature. It defended the legality of the town meeting, which had adopted the Votes and Proceedings and the right of the town to act as a corporation (Boston Gazette, 29 March 1773).

1 The word “Irish” was sometimes used colloquially in a derogatory sense, meaning illogical, paradoxical, or foolish (OED).

2 The Boston Evening Post for 5 April 1773 carried a long “Letter from a Gentleman to His Friend,” which refuted a number of points TH made in his final speech before proroguing the General Court. Samuel Dexter was the councilor from Dedham, but no other evidence than TH’s claim links him to the article.

3 For the attacks made on TH for misrepresentation of the town of Boston, see No. 1100, immediately above.

4 The most recent letter from Israel Williams the editors found was dated 5 March 1772, so clearly the reference to the New York line appeared in a missing letter (TH Correspondence, 4: No. 951).

5 In the hilly country of the New York–Massachusetts border, an “air line” of twenty miles distant from the Hudson River would extend much farther than a line measured with surveyor’s chains on the surface of the earth. A measurement of 140 rods would constitute .44 miles.

6 A slip of the pen. TH meant “east.”

1 TH’s letters Nos. 11, 12, and 13 were Nos. 1067, 1068, and 1076, above.

1 In the AC, TH began the letter with the material below, then cancelled them and began the letter again: “The Persons who have the principal influence on all the publick members of this Province triumph much in having the concurrence and approbation of the Virginia Assembly; and have published in the news papers a set of Resolves which they allege that they have received from them: These Resolves are said to have been in consequence of Letters from hence and I have no doubt that like Letters were sent by the same persons to some of the other Colonies if not to all of them. There came one to Rhode Island while the Commissioners were sitting. The Assembly then declined taking any notice of it. If these Resolves said to be from Virginia are genuine its probable other Assemblies will follow the example.

“An affair of less moment the Council of this Province have advised and desired me to transmit an Account of to your Lordship. A Warrant has been issued by a Justice of Peace for apprehending Persons charged with counterfeiting the Bills of credit of New York. The Warrant was issued by a Justice in that Government but enforced by a Justice in this and the Sheriff of Berkshire apprehended them in this Province and carried them to the bounds of New York according to the temporary line agreed upon and delivered them to the Sheriff of the County of Albany where they were tried for Facts committed within this Province found guilty by the Jury & Sentence of death was passed upon them. Whilst under sentence they made repeated Application to me to interpose with Governor Tryon in their behalf and the Council and Assembly applied to me likewise to the same purpose. The Council of New York were of opinion that a fact of that nature though committed in another Government might be tried and punished in the Government of New York according to their laws and the men have been since executed. In compliance with the advice and desire of the Council of this Province I will cover Copies of the several Letters & papers upon the Subject.”

In the second cancelled paragraph, he recapitulated the case of Gil Belcher, first discussed in No. 1075, above, but then in the final draft omitted any mention of it, perhaps because Belcher was already dead and TH did not wish to exacerbate further the pending negotiation of the New York boundary.

The Boston Gazette for 12 April 1773 printed a “Letter from a Gentleman of distinction in Virginia to his Friend in this town,” which included resolutions by the Virginia House of Burgesses establishing a committee of correspondence. It was followed by a letter from “Candidus,” a frequent penname of Samuel Adams, asserting that no measure taken by the town in defense of liberty had been so significant as the establishment of the committee of correspondence by the town meeting of 20 November 1772.

2 For the record of a conference between TH and Orenay of the Penobscot tribe, see National Archives UK, CO 5/763, ff. 155–56.

3 “An Act against Jesuit and Popish Priests,” Mass. Acts and Resolves, 1770, chap. 1, 423.

1 Franklin held out the hope that the tea duty might be repealed but warned, “In the mean time I must hope that great Care will be taken to keep our People quiet, since nothing is more wish’d for by our Enemies, than that by Insurrections we should give a good Pretence for increasing the Military among us, and putting us under more severe Restraints” (Benjamin Franklin to Thomas Cushing, 9 March 1773, Franklin Papers, 20:98–100).

2 Thomas Danforth, Harvard College 1762, was the second son of Samuel Danforth, the senior member of the Council. Although he shared many of his father’s scientific interests, he became a lawyer. In April 1773, he sailed for England seeking preferment. He returned later that same year as the register of the court of vice-admiralty, a position he held until the evacuation of Boston. He accompanied Lieutenant Governor Thomas Oliver to England and was proscribed as a loyalist (Harvard Graduates, 15:217–20).

1 No such letter from WSH was found.

2 TH wrote to William Robertson, the renowned Scottish historian, in May 1772 asking him to watch over WSH while he was studying at the University of Edinburgh, where Robertson was a professor (TH Correspondence, 4: No. 981). Robertson’s response was not found.

1 A rebate on customs duties paid on exports from Great Britain and a reduction of duties paid in America were all part of the discussion surrounding efforts to aid the troubled East India Company. Lower prices, it was hoped, would rekindle demand for English tea in North America (Labaree, Boston Tea Party, pp. 67–73).

1 For the circular letter, see Lord Dartmouth to TH, 2 February 1773, calendared but not printed in this volume.

2 For the case of murder on the high seas, see No. 1070, above. The final disposition of the case is described in TH History, 3:300–02.

3 For the law establishing commissions for the trial of pirates, see also No. 1070, above.

4 28 Henry 8, c. 15, allowed for the transportation to England for trial of those accused of murder and piracy on the high seas.

5 TH probably had not yet have received Lord Dartmouth’s letter of 3 March 1773, No. 1084, above, expressing reservations that TH had entered so particularly into the constitutional issues between the colonies and Great Britain in his messages to the General Court. Dartmouth’s letter of 3 February, No. 1070, above, merely expressed the wish that the colonies might be reconciled to a more proper acknowledgment of the authority of Parliament.

6 Prior to the receipt of this letter, TH had refused to give his assent to any grants to either Dennys DeBerdt (or his heirs) for his service as the separate agent of the House; see No. 1070, above.

7 For the Massachusetts law taxing the salaries of the commissioners of the customs, see No. 1065, above.

1 For the opinion of the Council of New York that offenses against New York law committed outside the province could still be tried in New York, see No. 1094, above.

2 The two councilors not reelected (whom TH had in mind) were Harrison Gray and Thomas Hubbard, both government party men. A third councilor, Thomas Sanders of Gloucester, was also not reelected.

3 The three councilors whom TH vetoed were Jerathmiel Bowers, William Phillips, and John Adams.

1 The Tea Act of 1773, one of Parliament’s efforts to aid the troubled finances of the East India Company, had received the royal assent just three weeks earlier.

2 For the law establishing commissions for the trial of pirates, see No. 1070, above. Written in the margin at this point is “4 Mar 1762. History of Board of Trade.”

3 For the law from the time of Henry VIII allowing suspects in cases of murder committed abroad to be tried in England, see No. 1107, above.

4 The law Lord Dartmouth questioned was “An Act against Piracy and Robbing upon the Sea,” Mass. Acts and Resolves, 1696, c. 4.

1 The previous fifteen words were written sideways in the lefthand margin.

2 The previous sentence was written sideways in the lefthand margin.

1 TH’s letter to Lord Dartmouth No. 20 was dated 1 June 1773, No. 1108, above.

2 This is the case of Gil Belcher and his fellow counterfeiters, described in No. 1075, above.

3 These were the inhabitants of Nobletown, where the border dispute first turned violent in July 1766, an event most fully described in Papers of Francis Bernard, 3:199–207, but referred to a number of times by TH; see TH Correspondence, 2: No. 275; 3: No. 497; 4: No. 997.

4 After reviewing the various messages and counter-messages between TH and the General Court during the previous winter, Lord Dartmouth ordered TH to avoid entering into further debate over constitutional issues; see No. 1102, above.

1 There is a strong possibility Dartmouth never sent this document. No received copy has been found (it was unusual for TH not to retain a copy of a letter from the secretary of state). Also, Dartmouth’s secretary docketed it only as a draft and not as a letter sent. P. D. G. Thomas posited in Townshend Duties Crisis (p. 245) that Dartmouth did not send the letter because he failed to obtain agreement from the rest of the cabinet for his proposals.

2 The manuscript bears no date, but because it was intended to enclose a copy of Dartmouth’s letter to Franklin it could not have been written before 2 June. P. D. G. Thomas believed it to have been written in mid-June, after the cabinet had considered and rejected the proposal it contained concerning the salaries of the judges.

3 It must have been Thomas Danforth who told Lord Dartmouth of this opportunity. Lord Dartmouth’s letter to Franklin conveyed a stern rebuke from the king to the Massachusetts petitions of 14 July 1772 and 6 March 1773. Such doctrines, the crown believed, could not possibly emanate from the people of Massachusetts but must be “the Artifices of a few who seek to create groundless Jealousy and Distrust, and to disturb that Harmony and Union, the Preservation of which is so essential for the mutual Interest both of the Mother Country and of the Colonies” (Lord Dartmouth to Benjamin Franklin, 2 June 1773, Franklin Papers, 20:222–24).

1 No letter addressed to TH and written on 9 April was found.

2 This was Samuel Adams, one of the four members from Boston and clerk of the House.

3 The conditions were that the originals were to be returned and that no copies were to be made, either in print or in manuscript.

4 TH’s letters were TH Correspondence, 2: Nos. 322, 328, 334, 350, 357, and 432, dating from 18 June 1768 to 20 October 1769. For Andrew Oliver’s four letters dated 7 May 1767 to 12 August 1769, see Letters Sent to Great-Britain, pp. 18–36.

5 William Whately, a London banker, was the brother and executor of Thomas. Oliver’s letter to Whately was dated 1 June 1773. His letter to Robert Thompson (not otherwise identified) was written two days later. Both are reproduced in TH Diary and Letters, 1:84–85.

6 Thomas Cushing, speaker of the House, declared to TH that the intent in founding the Boston Committee of Correspondence was to draw all the colonies together in a network of opposition; see No. 1079, above.

7 Lord Hillsborough urged TH to “endeavour to bring back the Assembly from these Excesses, by Argument and Persuasion”; see TH Correspondence, 4: No. 925.

1 This letter appears likely to be a response to a lost letter from Richard Jackson, based not only on TH’s description of how much it pained him to be at variance with his correspondent but also on the advice contained in the last paragraph concerning the value of lands in Maine, about which TH previously wrote to Jackson; see TH Correspondence, 4: Nos. 787, 804.

2 “Inops concilii” is a Latin legal term meaning “without counsel.”

3 Here again, TH appealed to his previous instructions from Lord Hillsborough; see TH Correspondence, 4: No. 925.

4 By the congress at New York, TH meant the Stamp Act Congress of 1765.

1 The House first resolved to ask for the removal of TH and Andrew Oliver on 16 June. The formal address was passed and signed on 23 June (JHR, 50:58–61, 75–76).

2 For the publication of Francis Bernard’s letters, see TH Correspondence, 2: Nos. 368–73.

1 No letter from Smith written on 12 June 1773 was found. Smith (see TH Correspondence, 2: No. 286) was together with TH, one of the chief architects of the compromise that led to the resolution of the border controversy with New York. Nevertheless, he represented a number of New York landholders in the previously disputed area still on appeal in England (Schwartz, “Jarring Interests,” pp. 306–07).

2 For the vote of thanks, see JHR, 50:85.

3 TH had been considering resigning his office since early June; see No. 1110, above.

4 One issue the commissioners skirted in their meeting at Hartford was the highly conjectural claim by Massachusetts to territory west of the Great Lakes, which TH regarded as “a mere ideal visionary project” (Schwartz, “Jarring Interests,” pp. 315–16).

5 Smith married Janet Livingston (1730–1819).

1 No letter written by Bernard on 5 May 1773 was found.

2 “Mr. P” in this instance was presumably John Pownall.

3 In addition to the letters from TH, Andrew Oliver, Nathaniel Rogers, and Robert Auchmuty, there were also in the parcel four letters to Whately from Thomas Moffat, written from New London or Boston, dated from 7 February through 15 December 1768; one letter from George Rome in Rhode Island dated 22 December 1767; and one from Charles Paxton aboard the Romney dated 20 June 1768. Only Paxton’s letter requested troops be sent. See Letters Sent to Great-Britain, p. 37. MH’s handwriting ended and TH’s handwriting began with “Rh. Isld. or Conncut.”

4 JHR, 50:75, recorded the vote in the House as eighty yeas and eleven nays. The Boston Gazette for 28 June 1773 recorded eighty-two and twelve.

5 For TH’s request for a leave, see No. 1115, above.

6 For the original text of the letter, see Benjamin Franklin to Thomas Cushing, 6 May 1773, Franklin Papers, 20:199–203.

7 Bernard’s country house, Nether Winchendon, was located in the Vale of Aylesbury.

1 The resolution concerning the judges was passed on 28 June and the letter to Lord Dartmouth approved on the morning of 29 June, the day the General Court was prorogued (JHR, 50:94, 97).

2 TH addressed the irregularity of such a meeting in his letter to Whately dated 10 December 1768 (TH Correspondence, 2: No. 350).

3 Here TH referred to his letter to Whately (see TH Correspondence, 2: No. 328). It informed Hillsborough of the extension of the nonimportation agreement and did not mention a need for troops.

4 The grants to Dennys DeBerdt’s estate, as well as to William Bollan and Benjamin Franklin, were among the first actions of the new session (JHR, 50:25).

1 WSH was studying in Edinburgh.

1 The chief justice was Daniel Horsmanden, who was serving on the Gaspée Commission.

2 In this sentence, the first H stands for “Hancock” and the second and third for “House.”

1 TH’s letter No. 23 was No. 1118, above.

1 “The chief incendiary” in this instance was Samuel Adams. According to No. 1113, above, Adams had made such a statement of intent before the House.

2 Lord Shelburne wrote to Francis Bernard on 17 September 1767 commending him for his veto of several persons who had been chosen as members of the Council the previous spring (Papers of Francis Bernard, 3:407–08). After the letter finally arrived in February 1768, Bernard provided the House with the letter so that it might be read but insisted that no copy be taken. The House believed that such a letter from the secretary of state could only be the result of misrepresentations by Bernard and fired off an angry response. The message of the House, which was printed in the Boston Gazette on 22 February 1768, contained lengthy extracts from Shelburne’s letter, thus violating the conditions under which the letter was made available. See TH Correspondence, 2: Nos. 299, 302, as well as Boston Gazette, 22, 29 February 1768.

1 Isaac Lyman (1724–1810) was born in Northampton, Massachusetts; graduated from Yale in 1747; and became the minister of the First Church in York, Maine in 1749.

2 Lyman’s letter to TH was not found.

3 Meaning a great noise and confusion, a running pursuit. The origin of the phrase comes from a popular fifteenth-century English ballad recounting a Scottish border skirmish (OED).

4 TH was rebuked by Sir Francis Bernard for his reluctance to advocate for a crown-appointed Council (TH Correspondence, 4: No. 742).

5 “Decens & rectum” are Latin words meaning “decent and upright.”

1 According to No. 1113, above, Samuel Adams made this declaration before the House.

2 TH referred to the resolutions charging him with undermining the constitution and requesting his removal, first passed by the House on 16 June (JHR, 50:58–61).

3 Here TH shortened a phrase from Horace’s Epistles, book 1, part 1, 1:13–14, “Nullius addictus iurare in verba magistri,” which literally means “not being obliged to swear [allegiance] in words to a master” but should be understood as “on the word of no one” or “taking nothing for granted.”

1 TH’s previous letter to Sir Francis Bernard was of 29 June 1773, No. 1117, above, in which he appeared to be responding to a letter from Bernard, not found, dated 5 May.

2 TH regarded the petition for his removal as the joint work of Samuel Adams in the House and James Bowdoin in the Council.

3 After the demise of the Dominion of New England, the Plymouth Colony sought its own charter but was included in Massachusetts Bay under the new charter of 1691.

4 Maine, Sagadahoc (the territory from the Kennebec to the St. Croix), and Acadia (modern New Brunswick and modern Nova Scotia) were incorporated into Massachusetts Bay by the charter of 1691 (TH History, 2:4–5). Acadia remained a contested area between England and New France for nearly a century, only gradually becoming part of the British Empire from 1667 until 1763.

5 At this point, TH wrote in his own hand and then canceled the following: “I think now that if this Proceeding be presented with spirit in England it will humble the Party here more than is generally expected. Some that they draw in repent already and even A—— discovers a concern in his countenance not usual, but he retains all his malignity against both you and me. I hope the June Packet will bring Letters from you.”

6 On 30 June, Thomas Cushing acknowledged receipt of a letter from Benjamin Franklin dated 6 May. The next surviving letter from Franklin is dated 7 July and does not match TH’s description of its content. Therefore, TH may be referring to a missing letter; see Franklin Papers, 20:271–76.

7 This paragraph was written in TH’s hand on f. 518 and marked for insertion at the end of the letter.

1 For TH’s letter of [10] August 1768, see TH Correspondence, 3: No. 328.

2 “Of our kidney” is a colloquial expression that means “of our mind or way of thinking.”

3 TH was not alone in believing Franklin to be the author of An Historical Review of the Constitution and Government of Pennsylvania (London: R Griffiths, 1759). Franklin had commissioned TH’s friend Richard Jackson to write it, and Franklin’s son William supplied Jackson with many of the materials. See Joseph E. Illick, “The Writing of Colonial Pennsylvania History,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 94 (January 1770): 3–25. As late as 1779, TH still believed Franklin to be the author. See TH Diary, 1:252.

4 Franklin’s letter to Thomas Cushing of 7 July defended himself against censures of the House but appeared to be a reply to a lost letter from either Cushing or the House; see Franklin Papers, 20:271–76.

5 The letter was presumably from Admiral Samuel Hood, commander-in-chief of the North American station from 1767 to 1770.

1 TH’s letters first appeared in print as excerpts surrounded by the Council’s commentary on them in the Boston Gazette for 28 June 1773.

2 TH placed a wavy X over the first two paragraphs of the letter, suggesting they were excised from the final copy.

3 According to the JHR, 50:58–61, the House voted to accept the draft of the petition by a vote of eighty-three to twenty-eight.

1 For the opinion of the Council of New York, see No. 1094, above.

2 For the discussion of land now within the boundaries of New York but first acquired by residents of Massachusetts through purchase from the Indians, see Nos. 1108 and 1111, above. “Mokockhonnock” may be a misspelling of the name of the Housatonic Indians, who were the original owners of land along the border.

3 TH’s letter No. 20, dated 1 June 1773, No. 1108, above, as well as containing his prediction about the character of the new assembly, also included his apology for exacerbating poor relations between the crown and Massachusetts by raising constitutional issues in his debate with the General Court, which Dartmouth thought best left in abeyance.

1 The concentration of mast trees in the area east of the Kennebec was considered such an important imperial resource that, according to the Massachusetts Charter of 1691, the granting of new townships in the region by the General Court needed to be confirmed by the crown before they became valid (JA Legal Papers, 2:247–48).

2 For the claim of Massachusetts to lands in Maine, Acadia, and Nova Scotia as described in the 1691 charter and the extent to which English subjects actually occupied them, see TH History, 2:4–5, 65–74. For how changing fortunes of war with the French may have affected land claims in Sagadahoc, the area between the Kennebec and St. Croix Rivers, see TH History, 2:169. For the case laid before the attorney general in 1731 that upheld the Massachusetts claim, see TH History, 2:288. The Latin legal phrase “jure postliminii” provides a shorthand description of the legal principle that property lost by subjects to a foreign power during a war must be restored to them if it is reconquered. TH provided an extended answer to Dartmouth’s concern about the Massachusetts claim to Sagadahoc in the various drafts of TH to Lord Dartmouth, 16 October 1773, Nos. 1159–61, below.

1 Dartmouth’s letter of 2 June, No. 1109, above, urged TH that “Questions that have been so unhappily agitated [in his debate with the General Court] maybe avoided & the public business of the Province carried on with that harmony and Good Humour that ’till of late Years distinguished its Councils.”

2 The commission was summoned to decide the case of Ansell Nickerson, who was accused of an act of piracy off Cape Cod; see No. 1070, above.

1 The crown salaries for the associate judges were to be £200 each, and that of the chief justice £400; see No. 1024, above. The interlineation is in TH’s hand.

2 The salaries voted by the General Court were £250 each for the associate justices and £300 for the chief. On 25 June 1773, treasurer Harrison Gray reported to the House that the justices elected to draw only half the amount of their provincial salaries for 1772, since they assumed they would be paid during the second half of the year by the crown (JHR, 50:86–87).

1 TH’s previous letter was likely to have been No. 1114, above.

2 TH initially suspected James Bowdoin as one of the figures behind the plot to disclose the Whately letters, thinking TH had slighted him by not paying sufficient regard to Bowdoin’s arguments in the reply to TH’s opening message to the General Court concerning the supremacy of Parliament. The principal co-conspirators in the House were likely Samuel Adams and Joseph Hawley. See No. 1125, above.

3 The way in which John Hancock came by copies of the letters and, therefore, enabled them to be printed without breaking the engagement to Franklin was first described in No. 1121, above.

4 The resolves of the House, first passed on 16 June, which were the basis for the petition to the king, described the content of TH’s and Andrew Oliver’s letters as criminal (JHR, 50:58–61).

5 The publication in January 1769 of letters written by Francis Bernard, the previous governor, led to calls for his removal; see TH Correspondence, 2: Nos. 368–73, 394–98.

6 No letter from Jackson dated 22 May 1773 was found.

7 Such a belief would be a logical extension of Franklin’s letter to Thomas Cushing of 2 June 1773 (Franklin Papers, 20:222–24).

8 “Ultima ratio” is short for the Latin proverbial expression “ultima ratio regum,” meaning the last argument of kings, that is, force of arms.

1 No letter from John Pownall dated 25 June 1773 was found.

2 For Dartmouth’s letter to Franklin, see No. 1133, immediately above.

3 Without Pownall’s letter to TH of 22 June, it is difficult to know what proposals the ministry was considering, but the second appears to have been the elimination of the Massachusetts provincial vice-admiralty court, since the regional vice-admiralty court also was based in Boston.

4 TH was referring to the resolves to petition the king to remove TH and Andrew Oliver from office (JHR, 50:58–61).

1 TH’s messages can be found at JHR, 50:70, 72. The correct dates of the messages were 21 and 22 June 1773.

1 TH recommended consideration of the petition of the Wampanoag Indians of Martha’s Vineyard for recognition of their claim to Chappaquiddick in his opening message to the General Court on 26 January 1774; see JHR, 50:102.

2 TH’s description of the need for the treasurer to be a “favorite of the people” obscures the fact that the incumbent treasurer, Harrison Gray, often supported TH in the deliberations of the Council. Gray would, however, fail to be reelected in 1774.

3 TH Jr. was appointed a justice of the Inferior Court of Common Pleas for Suffolk County on 31 December 1772.

1 The only letter found written by WSH within the previous year was WSH to TH, 22 June 1772; see TH Correspondence, 4: No. 995.

2 The letter to this point is in TH’s handwriting. The remainder is in MH’s hand.

3 WSH was secretary to Attorney General Jonathan Sewall prior to his departure for Britain.

4 TH to the Duke of Grafton, 20 August 1773, calendared but not printed in this edition.

1 The Virginia House of Burgesses established its own committee of correspondence on 12 March 1773 and called on all colonial assemblies to do likewise. After news of Virginia’s action appeared in the Boston papers, TH wrote both Lord Dartmouth on 17 April and John Pownall two days later, Nos. 1103 and 1104, above. Since TH mentioned in the following sentence his reluctance to put what he was saying in a public letter, the recipient of this letter was clearly intended to be John Pownall and is presumably a draft for No. 1140, immediately below.

2 Metcalf Bowler (1726–1789) was speaker of the Rhode Island House of Deputies. Rhode Island was the first colony to respond affirmatively to the Virginia Resolves, on 7 May. The New York Assembly adopted its own committee of correspondence on 20 January 1774, soon after the session opened.

3 TH was in Hartford the preceding May, meeting with delegates from New York to resolve the disputed western boundary of Massachusetts. William Samuel Johnson (1727–1819), Yale College 1744, was a member of the upper house of the Connecticut legislature and a judge of that colony’s Supreme Court. A prominent Anglican, he was a delegate to the Stamp Act Congress and opposed the Townshend Acts, but he had misgivings about independence and refused election as a delegate to the first Continental Congress. Nevertheless, he played a prominent role in the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and was one of the first senators from Connecticut.

4 The Speaker of the House was Thomas Cushing.

1 For Robert Thompson and William Whately, see No. 1113, above.

2 This description fits John Temple, whom TH suspected of prompting Thomas Whately to cease corresponding with him; see No. 1014, above.

3 William Bollan was the other suspect described here, since TH repeatedly vetoed payments to Bollan as the separate agent of the Council. Indeed, Bollan did transmit to Massachusetts letters that, when published, rendered it impossible for Francis Bernard to continue as governor.

4 Beginning in 1769, a quarrel within the First Church in Bolton, Massachusetts, led to an attempt to dismiss its minister, Reverend Thomas Goss (1716–1780), Harvard College 1737. Neither side agreed to recognize the authority of a council of neighboring ministers when it attempted to arbitrate. In the summer of 1771, the town constable physically restrained Goss from taking the pulpit, and a ministerial colleague in nearby Sterling who supported Goss was also later driven out by his congregation. A council of leading clergymen, led by Charles Chauncy, denounced any effort by Bolton to call a new minister independently without consulting the neighboring ministerial association. Eventually, the controversy spilled over into the newspapers and the courts. A council of Congregational ministers meeting in Boston in May 1773 published a pamphlet, entitled Observations upon the Congregational Plan of Church Government, Particularly as It Respects the Choice and Removal of Church-Officers, Supported by the Testimony of the Fathers of New-England, and Unanimously Offered to the Consideration of the Churches, by the Convention of the Ministers of the Province of the Massachusetts-Bay, at Their Annual Meeting in Boston, May 26, 1773, and Continued by Adjournment to July 23 (Boston: John Boyle, 1773), which asserted that the authority of clerical councils was superior to the more democratic will of the members of an individual congregation. A second convention met again in Boston on 24 August, and Boston newspapers throughout September were full of letters taking issue with the conventions’ conclusions (Harvard Graduates, 10:175–85; Joseph S. Clark, A Historical Sketch of the Congregational Churches of Massachusetts [Boston: Congregational Board of Publication, 1858], pp. 212–14; Robert E. Cray, “The Congregational Way Assailed: The Reverend Thomas Goss in Revolutionary Massachusetts,” Historical Journal of Massachusetts 43 [Winter 2015]: 125–43).

5 The bishop of St. Asaph hailed the remarkable growth of the colonies and urged a revival of good will between them and the mother country “without enquiring too curiously into the grounds of past animosities.” He further observed, “The true art of government consists in not governing too much.” See A Sermon Preached before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts; at Their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-le-Bow, on Friday February 19, 1773, by the Right Reverend Jonathan Lord Bishop of St. Asaph ([Boston]: Thomas and John Fleet, 1773).

1 The issue first arose in November 1771, when TH wrote to Lord Hillsborough about a difference in opinion between the Council and himself (TH to Lord Hillsborough, 5 November 1771, calendared but not printed, TH Correspondence, 4:435). Lord Hillsborough responded that he had referred the matter to the Privy Council (TH Correspondence, 4: No. 934), and TH once again reminded Lord Dartmouth, the new secretary of state, of the issue in No. 1045, above.

2 The response of the House on 26 January 1773 concluded with this sentiment, regretting that TH’s opening speech to the General Court forced it to either meekly accept or contest his assertions of parliamentary supremacy (JHR, 49:190).

1 TH’s letter No. 25 was No. 1131, above.

2 Samuel Adams and John Hancock were the two town representatives attending the annual commemoration of the first Stamp Act riot on 14 August 1773 in Roxbury; see No. 1146, below.

3 The person refusing to serve on the petit jury was William Molineux; see Molineux’s application to be relieved of the fine levied for his nonattendance (William Molineux to TH, 4 February 1774, calendared but not printed). His exchange with Chief Justice Andrew Oliver was reported in the Massachusetts Spy on 2 September 1773. The statement made by the grand jury to the court on 31 August was summarized in the Boston Gazette for 6 September and printed in its entirety the following week.

1 George Rome wrote a letter to Thomas Moffat, whose correspondence was also dispatched from England together with TH’s and Andrew Oliver’s. Rome was jailed for contempt by the Rhode Island Assembly for refusing to answer its questions; see No. 1176, below.

2 William Story threatened TH with the information that he had seen letters in England that would be damaging to TH if publicly known in Massachusetts; see No. 1081, above. Thus, TH initially suspected Story of having brought the Whately letters from England; see No. 1176, below.

3 Thomas Goldthwait, the former business partner of Sir Francis Bernard’s son John, contributed to John Bernard’s near bankruptcy when Goldthwait sued Bernard for debt; see TH Correspondence, 4: No. 941.

1 Thomas Gage returned to England with his family in June 1773.

2 TH here hinted that either James Bowdoin or John Temple might succeed him as governor.

1 For the statements by the grand jury and the request of the petit juror to be excused, see No. 1143, above.

2 The judges of the Superior Court were appointed by the governor and received their commissions from him; consequently, they had previously been paid out of the province treasury with the approval of the General Court. If the justices were now to receive salaries from the crown, perhaps they should have royal commissions as well? But there was no mention of the crown’s appointing Massachusetts justices directly in reforms to the charter suggested by Bernard and Hillsborough in late 1770 or in any of Bernard’s letters that have been found (see Papers of Francis Bernard, 6:331–36).

1 William Tryon’s letter to TH of 27 August 1773 was calendared but not printed in this edition.

2 Such a claim probably rested on the account Benjamin Franklin included in his letter to Thomas Cushing, dated 6 May 1773, of his interview with Lord Dartmouth, in which Dartmouth severely criticized TH for his role in the long debate with the General Court the previous winter (Franklin Papers, 20:199–203).

1 Lieutenant John Crosse (d. 1773) assumed command of HMS Tamar in March 1773, together with Lieutenant James Montagu, the admiral’s nephew. He died 10 August “at Carolina” according to the Boston Evening Post, 13 September 1773. Montagu then assumed sole command of the vessel. The letter mentioned, TH to [John] Crosse, [August 1773], was calendared but not printed in this edition.

2 John Adams was the first lawyer mentioned. The second was not identified but was perhaps Joseph Hawley.

3 Thomas Whately was the initial recipient of TH’s letters. For suspicions concerning James Bowdoin’s role in the affair, see No. 1133, above.

4 This account of John Hancock’s receiving a second copy of the letters, so that the House might print them without breaking the conditions under which the originals were dispatched, was first described in No. 1121, above.

5 The “Man of honour & in great favour with the Ministry” would aptly describe Thomas Pownall, or to a lesser extent Benjamin Franklin.

6 In this instance, TH intended A——s to mean Samuel Adams.

1 On 5 July 1773, Dartmouth wrote a circular letter to all the colonial governors (calendared but not printed in this volume) requiring them to answer a certain number of queries related to agriculture and industry in each of their provinces. TH’s answers appear as Appendix 1 to this volume.

2 The first essay by “A,” which appeared in the Boston Gazette for 13 September 1773, attacked the idea that salaries for judges should be paid by the crown but credited Lord Dartmouth as a man with good intentions who wished for reconciliation. In the same essay, “A” termed TH a “soft & oily tongued” tool of Lord Hillsborough. A second essay by “A” the following week criticized Dartmouth’s wish that the colonies would cease to assert their constitutional ideas.

3 This decision was a reversal of the justices’ earlier determination to receive only half of their £250 yearly salary paid by the General Court. They had done so anticipating that a pending warrant from the crown would cover the second half of the year; see No. 1132, above.

1 TH previously attributed a similar opinion to John Adams; see No. 1148, above.

1 A tear in the MS caused the loss of some material, which has been supplied in brackets from context.

1 Reverend Eli Forbes (1726–1804), Harvard 1751, was minister of the Second Church in Brookfield, Massachusetts. Following the Stamp Act, he tried to remain politically neutral, but in 1771 he delivered the Artillery Sermon, an important occasion in Boston, and dedicated it to TH. He became increasingly unpopular as political tensions rose afterward and requested to be dismissed from his parish in 1775, when he moved to Gloucester.

2 An obsolete definition of the word “feint” is “phantasm” (OED).

3 The pamphlet was Letters Sent to Great-Britain, containing the printed text of the Whately letters.

4 In the 24 June 1773 Boston Weekly News-Letter, Jonathan Sewall began writing a series of letters defending TH under the pen name “Philalethes.” Sewall examined what the printed letters actually said in order to contradict the various assertions made about TH and Andrew Oliver in the resolutions of the House and Council.

5 Christ’s response to the Pharisees in Matthew 22:17–22, “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s,” is often cited as an admonition that affairs of state and religion should remain separate.

6 “Colonii” is the Latin word for “colonies.”

7 Reverend Joshua Eaton (1714–1772), Harvard 1735, began a career as lawyer but was converted by George Whitefield and became minister of the First Church in Spencer, Massachusetts. Eaton was politically conservative and wrote TH on 10 February 1772, recommending the appointment of Colonel John Murray (1720–1794) as a justice of the peace (TH Correspondence, 4:443). Murray represented Rutland in the General Court from 1751 through 1774, when he became a mandamus councilor. His lands were confiscated during the Revolution, and he died in exile in New Brunswick, Canada. Eaton’s friend Eli Forbes collected and published seven of Eaton’s sermons after this death, which Forbes sent TH together with this letter. See Some Short Account of the Life and Character of the Reverend Joshua Eaton of Spencer, ed. Eli Forbes (Boston: Rochard Draper and John Boyles, 1773). See also Harvard Graduates, 9:533–38.

8 In his second letter in the Boston Weekly News-Letter, printed 1 July 1773, “Philalethes” wrote, “We ought . . . judge as we wish to be judged, remembering that it may be our own Turns next—— the Fence is broke and we are all liable to have our most private Communications betrayed by false Friends or unprincipled Enemies.”

9 No letter from Forbes to TH regarding Jeduthan Baldwin (1731–1788), selectman and town clerk of Brookfield, was found. After Baldwin’s death, his wife, Lucy, married Eli Forbes in 1793, after he removed to Gloucester.

1 No letter sent by Israel Mauduit in the summer of 1773 was found, so it is impossible to know who was meant by “the person of artful address,” but the balance of the letter suggests that TH was beginning to suspect some involvement by Benjamin Franklin. The “other person” based on TH’s earlier suspicions was likely to be John Temple; see No. 1148, above.

2 Franklin was indeed in regular correspondence with House Speaker Thomas Cushing and Reverend Dr. Samuel Cooper but, curiously enough, not with James Bowdoin.

3 Franklin’s reputation for influence was greatly enhanced by reports of his recent interview with Lord Dartmouth; see No. 1147, above. The other person recently introduced to Dartmouth was not identified, but the third possibility, “a Gentleman who has been in the place formerly,” was clearly Thomas Pownall.

1 TH’s “Answers to Queries” are printed as appendix 1 in this volume. A copy of the Massachusetts tax valuation list for 1761 was enclosed with this letter. The list for 1771 is a widely used research tool, see Bettye Hobbs Pruitt, The Massachusetts Tax Valuation List (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1978).

2 Tétouan in northern Morocco is that country’s second major port on the Mediterranean Sea.

3 For Guy Carleton, governor of Canada, see TH Correspondence, 4: No. 801. The River Chaudière extends 115 miles south from Quebec, almost to the border with Maine. Carleton’s letter was not found.

1 Dartmouth’s letter No. 10 and his separate letter both were dated 4 August 1773, Nos. 1129 and 1130, above.

2 For the inhabitants of Nobletown, see No. 1111, above.

3 In his separate letter of 4 August, Lord Dartmouth expressed doubts about the Massachusetts claim to the lands in Maine between the Penobscot and St. John Rivers.

1 Edward Montagu (1717-1798) was the brother of Admiral John Montagu, commander-in-chief of the North American Station. 

1 The date of the Stamp Act was 1765. The Seven Years’ War ended in 1763. Thus, the earlier date would include the Revenue Act of 1764 (Sugar Act) as one of the objectionable pieces of legislation.

2 TH included among the moderate group Speaker of the House Thomas Cushing, Reverend Dr. Samuel Cooper, and James Bowdoin and his allies among the Council.

3 Here TH identified Samuel Adams as the chief advocate for total independence.

4 TH’s letter No. 27, dated 16 September 1773, No. 1149, above, included the first essay by “A,” which appeared in the Boston Gazette for 13 September 1773. TH believed “A” to be Adams.

5 “Quamdiu se bene gesserint” is a Latin legal phrase meaning “during their good behavior.”

1 Although a rift developed between Samuel Adams and John Hancock in 1771 (see TH Correspondence, 4: No. 922), it was subsequently repaired, and TH offered no corroborating evidence for his claim that Adams and Hancock disagreed over the use of the Whately letters.

1 For the terms of Dartmouth’s proposal and background in TH History on how the changing fortunes of war may have affected the Massachusetts claim to the area, see No. 1130, above.

2 The remainder of this paragraph was written sideways in the lefthand margin.

3 For the petition of Massachusetts to be relieved of the expense of defending Port Royal from French attach, see TH History, 2:68. Pemaquid Point in present-day New Harbor, Maine, was the site of a series of English forts near the mouth of the Damariscotta River.

4 From 1676 through 1700, Jean-Vincent d’Abbadie, 3rd Baron de Saint-Castin (1652–1707), commanded the French and Indian settlement adjacent to Fort Pentagoet at the mouth of the Penobscot estuary (the present site of Castine, Maine). The Treaty of Ryswick, ending King William’s War in 1697, officially returned Acadia to French control.

5 Important historical documents were scattered in the street when TH’s house was looted during the Stamp Act riots of 1765; see TH Correspondence, 1: No. 136.

6 Massachusetts governor Francis Nicholson seized Port Royal a second time in 1710, but Acadia was once again returned to France by the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713; see TH Correspondence, 4: No. 767.

7 For Samuel Waldo, the victor of the siege of Louisburg and investor in Maine lands, see TH Correspondence, 1: No. 138; 2: No. 403. In March 1630, John Beauchamp (c. 1595–c. 1652) of London and Thomas Leverett (d. 1650) of Boston, England, obtained a thirty-six-square-mile grant of land, known as the Muscongus Patent, from the Council for New England. The claim lay dormant until the company was reorganized by the heirs of Beauchamp and Leverett in the 1720s. Waldo obtained a controlling interest in the group and successfully challenged a conflicting grant made to Colonel David Dunbar, lieutenant governor of New Hampshire and surveyor of the king’s woods in 1729. See By His Excellency Jonathan Belcher Esq; . . . A Proclamation: Whereas at a Council Holden at the Court at Kensington . . . upon the Petitions of Divers . . . Proprietors of the Lands Lying between the Rivers of Kennebeck and St. Croix, in the Improvem[ent of Which] They Were Interupted by David Dunbar Esq; . . . Given at the Council Chamber in Boston, the Sixteenth Day of February 1732 (Boston: J. Draper, 1732 [i.e., 1733]). Henceforth, the tract was known as the Waldo Patent.

8 For Sir William Phips, see TH Correspondence, 4: No. 767.

9 “Civilian,” meaning an expert in Roman or modern civil law. For “jure postliminii,” see No. 1130, above.

10 Thomas Coram (1668–1751) was an English merchant who in 1718 unsuccessfully petitioned to settle poor families in Maine where they would produce hemp and naval stores. Coram finally obtained an order to occupy the land in 1730, but it was soon revoked by the same order that blocked Dunbar’s attempt at control of the region, as in note 6, above; see TH History, 2:199, 288.

11 “Salus populi” is a Latin phrase meaning the “health, or good, of the people.”

1 For the unsuccessful petition of William Armstrong for a grant of lands in Sagadahoc, see TH History, 2:169.

1 Pierre Dugua de Mon(t)s (c. 1558–1628), lieutenant general of Acadia, explored the Maine coast looking for a more salubrious location after the failure of the French settlement at the mouth of the St. Croix River in 1604–05.

2 Jeremiah Dummer (1681–1739), Harvard 1699, was agent for the province of Massachusetts from 1710–1721. For his proposal, see TH History, 2:169.

1 TH intended to send an earlier version of this letter and its enclosure on 10 October (TH to Dartmouth, 10 October 1773, calendared but not printed), but the ship sailed before the letter could be put on board.

2 TH referred to his private letter of 9 October, No. 1157, above.

3 TH enclosed the letter Eli Forbes wrote him on 26 September, No. 1152, above.

4 At this point in the AC, TH wrote then crossed out the following: “In closing this letter to your Lordship I also cover a News paper which is a continuation of the same design & suppose to be wrote by the same person, who wrote the piece in the paper the week before, and it corresponds with what he is continually inculcating upon the people never to be satisfied with any Partial concessions.” The newspaper TH evidently considered sending was the Boston Gazette for 20 September containing a second letter by “A” (who TH assumed was Samuel Adams). That letter disparaged Dartmouth’s wish that the colonies would cease to assert their constitutional ideas.

1 TH was replying to Eli Forbes, No. 1152, above.

2 Some Short Account of the Life . . . of Joshua Eaton; see No. 1152, above.

1 Benjamin Franklin wrote to the House of Representatives on 7 July 1773, “It would be best and fairest, for the Colonies in a general Congress now in Peace to be assembled, or by means of the Correspondence lately proposed after a full and solemn Assertion and Declaration of their Rights, to engage firmly with each other that they will never grant aids to the Crown in any General War till those Rights are recogniz’d” (Franklin Papers, 20:277–86).

1 For Franklin’s long letter to the House, see No. 1164, immediately above.

1 The ruling of the attorney and solicitor general evidently pertained to the dispute over the Muscongus Patent among Samuel Waldo, Thomas Coram, and David Dunbar; see No. 1149, above.

2 “Ex abundanti” is short for the Latin legal term “ex abundanti cautela,” meaning “out of an excess of caution.”

1 No letter written by Edward Montagu on 23 August 1773 was found.

2 On 27 September 1773, the Boston Gazette printed on its first page a public letter from Junius Americanus addressed to Lord Dartmouth, which first appeared in London in the Public Advertiser on 29 July 1773. In it, Junius Americanus speculated that Lord Dartmouth should not have been surprised if upon reading the letters that TH and Andrew Oliver had written to Whately, the people of Massachusetts had risen up and “put the authors of them to an instant DEATH.”

3 TH assumed the “chief manager” to be Samuel Adams and the “brother Representative” to be John Hancock.

4 TH believed Adams, clerk of the House of Representatives, was both the author of its messages as well as the newspaper writer of many of the most critical articles attacking him.

5 TH continued to believe that John Temple obtained the letters from Whately’s estate without the awareness of William Whately, his brother’s executor; see No. 1141, above. TH began to suspect Franklin of having transmitted the letters; see No. 1148, above.

6 For William Story’s threat, see No. 1081, above. For TH’s initial suspicion that Story brought the letters from England, see No. 1176, below.

7 For Andrew Oliver’s efforts to find out who obtained the letters, see No. 1113, above.

8 Edward Montagu (1717-1798) was the brother of Admiral John Montagu, commander-in-chief of the North American Station. He was admitted to the Middle Temple and practiced law as a Master in Chancery. He acted also as the agent for the Virginia House of Burgesses (1759-1773). “Nunc dimittis” are the opening words of the Vulgate translation of the Song of Simeon (Luke 2:29–32) upon first seeing the Christ child, “Now lettest thy servant depart in peace.”

1 William Whately, the banker, was the executor of his brother Thomas’s estate; see No. 1167, immediately above.

2 For James Pitts, see TH Correspondence, 2: No. 365. Pitts married Elizabeth Bowdoin, the sister of James, in 1732. John Temple married Bowdoin’s only daughter (also named Elizabeth) in 1767.

3 Although the Council took these words out of context, they are very close to what TH actually wrote: “There must be an abridgment of what is called English Liberty.” See TH Correspondence, 2: No. 357.

4 The biblical King David was proverbial for his unshakeable faith in God.

5 The quoted words may represent what TH intended to say but they do not match anything in Letters Sent to Great-Britain.

6 The Latin words “currente calamo” mean “offhand” or “without due reflection.”

7 The Committee on Plantations exonerated New Hampshire governor John Wentworth from the charges of maladministration brought by Peter Livius, the former chief justice, on 29 July 1773. TH previously wrote Wentworth a long letter explaining his relationship with Livius and pleading that he had no involvement in the charges; see No. 1042, above.

8 Among the people to whom TH wrote in August 1773, Richard Jackson and James Gambier stand out as possible intended recipients of this letter. Jackson was slightly more likely than Gambier since TH wrote to Gambier on 2 January 1774, No. 1214, below, apologizing for leaving Gambier’s letter so long unanswered.

1 The scribe likely miscopied this number. It was Dartmouth’s dispatch No. 11, No. 1135, above, which granted TH permission to go to England.

2 At this point in the margin are the words “1st. Sept. 1773.”

3 TH first acquainted Lord Dartmouth with this long-pending issue in No. 1142, above.

1 TH was summarizing the contents of No. 1135, above.

2 These words were directly quoted from Benjamin Franklin to Thomas Cushing, 24 August 1773, Franklin Papers, 20:374–75.

1 For the early rumor that Story brought the letters and his denial of it, see Nos. 1081, above, and 1176, below.

2 This statement tends to confirm the editors’ contention that TH’s letter written on 24 May 1768 to an unknown correspondent was TH’s first letter to Thomas Whately; see TH Correspondence, 2: No. 315.

1 In this instance, TH may have given too much credit to the committees of correspondence. The idea of forcing the resignation of the consignees was first suggested by Thomas Mifflin writing as “Scaevola” in a Philadelphia broadside on 9 October. It was reprinted in the Boston Gazette on 25 October, which evidently provided the impetus for the anonymous messages delivered to the consignees’ houses on the night of 1 November (Norton, 1774, pp. 13–14).

2 The other consignees, besides TH’s sons TH Jr. and EH, were Richard Clarke & Sons and the firm of Joshua Winslow & Benjamin Faneuil Jr. Faneuil (1701–1785) was the nephew of Peter Faneuil and left Boston with the British fleet in March 1776, eventually moving from London to Bristol after having lost most of his wealth. Winslow the tea consignee (1727–1801) has long been confused with another Joshua Winslow (1737–1775), of the firm Joshua & Isaac Winslow, who were primarily West India merchants and distillers. The tea consignee, after participating in the fall of Louisbourg, became commissary general of Nova Scotia and developed wide business interests on the Chignecto Peninsula. He returned briefly to Boston for the education of his daughter but moved to live with his relatives in Marshfield soon after the incident at Clarke’s warehouse. During the war, he was arrested as a loyalist but later fled to Canada, dying at Quebec (Robert Wilson III, “‘We Were Declared Enemies to the Country’: Two Letters from Joshua Winslow, a Consignee of the East India Company,” WMQ 94 [December 2021]: 564–78).

3 The meeting at the Liberty Tree to which the consignees were summoned but did not appear took place on 3 November 1773.

4 Nathaniel Hatch (1723–1784) of Dorchester, a graduate of Harvard College in 1742, was a member of the Suffolk County Court of Common Pleas and later a mandamus councilor and loyalist refugee.

5 Hugh Finlay (1732–1801), previously postmaster at Quebec, became surveyor of post roads by 1773 and kept a journal of his travels. For more on the route from the Chaudière to the Kennebec, see No. 1154, above.

6 No. 4 was established in 1744 as a frontier outpost on the upper Connecticut River to guard against incursions by the French and their Indian allies on land claimed by Massachusetts. It is now in southern New Hampshire.

1 The proceedings of the town meetings and the response of the consignees were printed in the Boston Gazette, 8 November 1773.

1 The Romney left Boston on 14 October (Boston Gazette, 15 October 1773).

2 Hood used the word “killed” here in a figurative sense. On 13 November, Edmund Burke delivered a witheringly sarcastic attack on Lord Barrington, the secretary of war, over the impending war with Spain (W. Cobbett and T. C. Hansard, Cobbett’s Parliamentary History of England: From the Norman Conquest, in 1066. To the Year, 1803 [London: T. C. Hansard, 1813], 16:1044–48). The editors are indebted to Neil York and Colin Nicolson for this reference.

3 Hood’s father, Reverend Samuel Hood (1689–1777), vicar of Butleigh in Somerset and a prebendary of Wells Cathedral, was apparently not as near death as he assumed.

4 For the letter to Lord Hillsborough, see No. 1151, above.

1 A letter from George Rome, a London merchant residing in Rhode Island, dated 22 December 1767, was included in the packet of letters dispatched by Benjamin Franklin to Thomas Cushing in the spring; see No. 1117, above. The letter was sharply critical of the Rhode Island government and courts. The Rhode Island Assembly summoned Rome to appear in South Kingstown in October 1773, and after questioning him declared his answers evasive and contemptuous. He was imprisoned and remained there until the end of the legislative session. Rome’s testimony and the proceedings against him were printed in the Newport Mercury, 8 November 1773.

1 Lord Dartmouth’s observation can be found in No. 1129, above.

2 For Rome’s letter and the Rhode Island Assembly’s proceedings against him, see No. 1175, immediately above. Tape and a fold have obscured parts of the text; the bracketed material is supplied from context.

3 There was perhaps greater danger than TH realized. At the request of members of the Rhode Island Assembly, Thomas Cushing, speaker of the Massachusetts House, wrote to Benjamin Franklin in an attempt to have Rome’s letter or an attested copy sent back to the colonies (Thomas Cushing to Benjamin Franklin, 18 September 1773, Franklin Papers, 20:406–08).

4 For the letter from England stating that William Whately suspected William Story rather than John Temple, see No. 1168, above.

5 TH had already written William Whately on 31 October 1773, No. 1171, above.

1 John Ashley’s letter of 23 September 1773 was not found. For John Ashley Sr., see No. 1075, above.

2 The gentleman who had been in the opposition was not identified.

1 William Tryon’s letter of 4 November 1773 was not found.

1 Reverend Stephen Williams (1693–1782) was minister of the First Church in Longmeadow, Massachusetts, from 1716 through 1782.

2 No letter sent to TH on 25 October 1773 was found.

3 “Principibus placuisse viris” is a Latin quotation from Horace’s Epistles, book 1, 17:35–36, meaning “to have won the approval of important people is not the last degree of praise.”

1 William Molineux acted as spokesman for the committee. For an account of the same event and the newspaper version of it, see No. 1172, above. TH also enclosed with that letter two first-person accounts of the confrontation from Joseph Green and Benjamin Davis (National Archives UK, CO 5/762, ff. 422–25).

2 Jonathan Clarke, a junior member of Richard Clarke & Sons, had been in England.

3 For TH’s permission to leave for England and the reassurance not to worry about his reputation there, see No. 1135, above.

1 Benjamin Labaree speculated that the recipient of this letter may well have been Andrew Oliver (Labaree, Boston Tea Party, p. 118).

2 This was the language of the report of the Boston committee of correspondence, approved by the town meeting on Thursday, 30 November 1772, and published as The Votes and Proceedings of the Freeholders and Other Inhabitants of the Town of Boston.

3 The Latin words “inter nos” mean “between us.”

1 TH appears to have assumed that John Temple obtained the letters and Benjamin Franklin dispatched them to Massachusetts.

2 For TH’s reasons for exonerating William Story, see No. 1171, above.

1 The AC itself is dated 8 November, but since it mentions the arrival of the tea ships, the 2 was clearly omitted.

1 James Hall was the captain of the Dartmouth, owned by the Rotch family of Nantucket and Dartmouth (now New Bedford), Massachusetts. It was the first of the tea ships to arrive on 28 November 1773. The Body of the Trade met on 29 November at Old South Meeting House in order to accommodate the large crowd. TH’s unlikely claim that Adams and Hancock were part of the guard is unsupported by town clerk William Cooper’s list of volunteers. See www.masshist.org/database/viewer.php?item_id=425&mode=large&img_step=3&pid=2&br=1#page3.

2 The painter John Singleton Copley (1738–1815), Richard Clarke’s son-in-law, appeared before the town meeting to plead for more time for the consignees to gather and consider the instructions they had just received from England the night before. The meeting adjourned until the next morning when the consignees declared it was not in their power to return the tea, but they proposed storing it until they could receive further directions from the East India Company (Boston Gazette, 6 December 1773).

3 Talbot was not further identified. Following TH’s instructions, Sheriff Stephen Greenleaf appeared before the meeting and read TH’s order to disperse. The gathering voted to disregard the governor’s instruction but adjourned until the afternoon, hoping to hear from Richard Clarke, James Hall, and Francis Rotch (1750–1822).

1 James Hall was the captain of the vessel, and Francis Rotch appeared as the representative of the family firm; see No. 1185, immediately above.

2 Once the vessel was entered at the Custom House, it could not be cleared without paying duty on the tea. The purpose of this regulation was to prevent fraudulent applications for drawbacks on the duties already paid in England. The twenty-day limit, by which time the ship would need to be unloaded and the duty paid, would expire on 17 December.

3 John Rowe (see BD) was one of Boston’s principal merchants and the owner of the Eleanor, the third tea ship, not yet arrived.

4 TH did indeed summon the justices of the peace and enjoin them to do their duty to prevent riots, as well as notify John Hancock, the commander of the Company of Cadets, Boston’s elite militia unit, to stand by to enforce order (Boston Gazette, 6 December 1773).

1 TH’s letters Nos. 27, 28, and 29 were dated 16 September, 1 October, and 8 October 1773, Nos. 1149, 1154, and 1155, respectively, above. In his letterbook, TH did designate his letter of 2 September 1773 as No. 26, but both versions of it were marked “not sent.” He later stated parts of No. 26 were incorporated into No. 27; see TH to Dartmouth, 13 March 1774, calendared but not printed in this volume.

1 Although undated, this private letter is likely to have been written at nearly the same time as the public letter immediately above, since the contents pertain to TH’s letter to Lord Dartmouth of 9 October 1773, No. 1157, above, which Dartmouth mentioned having received in that communication. TH’s letter was docketed as received on 8 November.

2 “Quamdiu se bene gesserint” is a Latin legal phrase meaning “during their good behavior.”

1 TH’s letter No. 31 was No. 1173, above.

2 Jonathan Clarke arrived home from London earlier in the day; see No. 1181, above.

3 For the petition of the consignees and the reluctance of the Council to act, see No. 1181, above.

4 For sending the sheriff to order the meeting to disperse, see No. 1185, above.

5 For Colonel Leslie, see No. 1049, above.

1 The Council first met to consider the petition of the consignees on Friday, 19 November, but the matter was continued until Tuesday the 23rd, when a committee was formed to prepare a response. The committee returned swiftly with a report that TH suspected had been prepared in advance by James Bowdoin and was intended for publication. TH warned that the language of the report might lead to calls in England for a change in the way the Council was chosen. The Council requested another delay until the 29th, when the report, very little altered, was unanimously adopted, although TH claimed three or four members were really opposed including Samuel Danforth, the Council’s senior member (TH History, 3:306–08).

2 The lawyer was not identified.

3 The AC included the following postscript, crossed out by TH’s characteristic wavy X: “I have directed the Secretary to endeavour to [procure] [illegible] of the doings [of particular persons] & of their [writings?] and determinations but he does not yet find any persons who dare to give it.

“The whole of the proceedings of the proper town meeting as distinguished from the mob meeting or what they call the body of the people may I doubt not be blind from the town records whenever called for & I suppose there is no part of the proceedings [of this body] as the Leaders of it have published them but what persons may be found to give oath to what [stndd?] mostly to hear what passed and never approvd of or joined in any one act but then a regular process will be necessary that they may not [three illegible words] but on the contrary to be committed to what they do. [I beg your Lordship] that the contents of [illegible] and of what I distinguish as private letters & write with the greatest confidence in your Lordship especially may not return here. I am with the greatest respect Your Lordship’s faithful humble Servant.” The material in square brackets has been deciphered from TH’s personal code and should be considered conjectural.