“This afternoon General Gage arriv’d from New York”

The Boston Whigs’ dispatch for 15 Oct 1768 reported that the British army’s hunt for deserters had achieved results:

A deserter from the 14th Regiment was brought in the last evening by one of the decoy parties, sent into the country, also a labouring man from Roxbury, with a soldier’s regimentals on his back, he was confined for some time in a tent, without lawful warrant, and afterwards committed to prison by Mr. Justice [Foster] Hutchinson,—

Imagine the tyranny of the army confining a local farmworker for doing something as unsuspicious as wearing a soldier’s uniform!

But the big news 250 years ago today was that Gen. Thomas Gage had arrived from New York to see how the soldiers under his command were settling in. The Boston Whigs were actually glad to see him, or at least said they were:

This afternoon the troops were drawn up, on the Common, on the appearance of General Gage; at sunset there was 17 discharges from the field cannon; he passed the front of the battalion in his charriot, preceded by a number of aid de camps on horseback.—The arrival of this gentleman from N. York at this time, is a very agreeable circumstance, to the friends of their country; as his mild and judicious behaviour in that province, has been justly applauded; and he comes here determined to see and judge for himself.

Some New Yorkers would have disputed that judgment, though the biggest conflicts between soldiers and civilians there were still to come.

Deacon John Tudor wrote about the day:

This afternoon General Gage arriv’d from New York just before sunset when the Troops where drawn up in the common to receive him & his Retennu, 17 discharges from the field cannon was fir’d to honour him, who came in his Chariot & 4, his Aid de camps on Horseback, all together with the Regiments made a gallant Show; Many disputes arose between the Governor Council, Justices & Selectmen aboute Quartering & Biliting the Troops. 

Local elected officials were still pushing for the troops to be moved out to Castle William.

Merchant and selectman John Rowe had his own take:

General Gage arr’d from New York at Major [Robert] Byards at Roxbury. The regiments were under arms & made a Good Appearance. The General with his attendants came into Town abo. four P.M. The Artillery saluted with 17 Guns. They passed & marched along the Front of both Regiments & Capt. [John] Wilsons two Companies who were formed in the Center.

Robert Bayard, who appears to have hosted Gen. Gage the night before he came into Boston, was from a New York mercantile family. He had been a captain in the Royal American Regiment during the French & Indian War under Gen. James Wolfe. Bayard married Rebecca Apthorp, the youngest surviving daughter of Charles and Grizzell Apthorp, who had been Boston’s wealthiest couple. The Bayards had a daughter baptized in Boston in 1768, but Rebecca died four years later. Robert Bayard appears to have then returned to New York and married Elizabeth McEvers, who was both the widow of a partner in his family firm and another Apthorp daughter, thus his sister-in-law. The Bayards moved to Britain during the war, their New York properties confiscated. Elizabeth died in 1800, Robert in 1819, said to be the last British officer surviving from the Battle of Québec. But I digress.

Rowe’s diary entry for the next day says:

This morning I waited on Colo. [James] Robertson who came with Gen. Gage. He received me very Politely. I had a full hour’s discourse with him abo. the troops. I find him to be a Gentleman of Great Abilities & very cool & dispassionate. I took a walk & met Gen. Gage & Colo. [William] Dalrymple. Gen. Gage engaged me to wait on him tomorrow morning.

Robertson was deputy quartermaster general for the army in North America, the man in charge of ensuring the troops were housed and fed. Rowe was one of the Boston selectmen disputing about where those troops should live. But he was already renting space to army officers, pleased to meet with Robertson, and, as his diary reveals, eager to socialize with Gen. Gage.

Soldiers “scourged in the Common”

On 14 Oct 1768, 250 years ago today, the Boston Whigs renewed their ongoing complaint about the royal army taking over the seats of local government, and they highlighted another grievance:

The troops still keep possession of Faneuil Hall, the Court House, Representatives Chambers, &c, guards placed at the passage way into the town, near the Neck. Patrolling companies near the ferry ways, and parties sent into the country to prevent desertions:

In the forenoon one Rogers, a New-England man, sentenced to receive 1000 stripes, and a number of other soldiers, were scourged in the Common by the black drummers, in a manner, which however necessary, was shocking to humanity; some gentlemen who had held commissions in the army, observing, that only 40 of the 170 lashes received by Rogers, at this time, was equal in punishment to 500, they had seen given in other regiments.

As I discussed [gulp] eleven years ago, those “black drummers” came from the 29th Regiment. In 1759 its colonel received a batch of black teen-aged boys as a gift from his brother, an admiral. Being sent off to the army was probably a lucky break for those young men, given that they were already enslaved. It got them out of the death traps of Caribbean plantations, and they earned freedom and even a measure of status from their military service.

In eighteenth-century European armies, drummers were a crucial part of a regiment’s training and maneuvers, and military musicians could earn extra money through their unusual skills. The British army assigned another responsibility to each regiment’s musicians: they carried out corporal punishment on enlisted men.

Of course, in North America’s slave society, most people saw a black man whipping a white man as a dangerous inversion of proper order. The Boston Whigs had already complained, “to behold Britons scourg’d by Negro drummers, was a new and very disagreeable spectacle.” Writing for an audience in New York and points south, where slavery was a bigger institution and the enslaved population larger, the Whigs knew that this report would be provocative.

Another element of their complaint was the number of lashes that Rogers had to suffer. As strict as Puritans were, they adhered to Deuteronomy 25:3’s prohibition against giving a man more than forty strokes. In the king’s army and navy, however, a thousand lashes was not unusual (though they weren’t all applied on one day). And the Boston Whigs claimed this particular whipping was harsh even for the army.

Naturally, I was curious to know more about Rogers, the unfortunate soldier. Alas, the 29th Regiment was lousy at filing its muster rolls in this period. That paperwork was supposed to be done monthly. Instead, the commander’s company supplied one roll to cover all the time from 16 July 1765 to 24 Apr 1769, or “1379 Days.” Other companies were similarly lax. That makes it much harder to track individual men.

However, in the spring of 1769 the Boston Chronicle and several other New England newspapers ran an advertisement dated 23 May over the signature of brigade major Capt. Charles Fordyce. It announced that Gen. Alexander Mackay would pardon deserters who returned to the army by the end of June. However, the same ad promised three guineas to anyone who apprehended eighteen specified men “whose crimes are of such a nature, as to oblige him to exclude them from any promise of PARDON.”

One of the deserters beyond pardoning was Daniel Rogers of the 29th Regiment. He therefore looks like the best candidate for being the “New-England man” whipped on Boston Common seven months before. Perhaps he’d been convicted of theft or some other crime, or had already tried to desert. Either way, the whipping doesn’t appear to have kept him from leaving by May. As a New Englander, he had a better chance of finding sympathetic help and blending back into civilian society.

Halifax Reacts to the Occupation of Boston

In 1768 the royal governor of Nova Scotia, which included modern-day New Brunswick, was Lord William Campbell, shown here.

According to Emily P. Weaver’s 1904 paper “Nova Scotia and New England During the Revolution,” as of 1766 the royal government counted only 9,789 subjects in the whole province. This page from Statistics Canada gives the number 11,779. Either way, that was considerably smaller than Boston on its own.

That number didn’t include the soldiers stationed in the province or the crews of the Royal Navy ships that stopped at Halifax. Those men, and their families, were seen as transient. With such a small local population, however, they shaped the society greatly. Though Halifax had seen some anti-Stamp Act protests, it stayed close to the royal authorities through the Revolutionary turmoil. The Nova Scotia legislature ignored Massachusetts’s Circular Letter, for example.

On 25 June 1768, Gen. Thomas Gage sent important orders to the highest-ranking army officer in Halifax, Lt. Col. William Dalrymple of the 14th Regiment. Dalrymple was to consolidate all forces in the province and prepare them to sail to Boston. Gage wrote:

There is now at Halifax, one entire Regiment, and five Companies of another, and if you have Time to put the Orders in execution, which are transmitted to you, concerning the withdrawing the Troops from Louisbourg, St: Johns Island, and Fort Frederick, before any Requisition is made for the Aid of the King’s Forces; you will then have under your Command, and ready for immediate Service, a number of Troops equal to two Regiments, and three Companys.

You will embark therefore, if your Assistance is required, with the Whole, or any Part of those Troops, as Governor [Francis] Bernard shall demand, and if the Governor should be of Opinion, that it wou’d be requisite you should bring Artillery with you, the Detachment of the Royal Regiment of Artillery at Halifax, will be embarked at the same time, with such a Number of Pieces of Artillery, as they shall be Able to manage.

You will pay no Regard, in effecting this Service, to the leaving Halifax without Troops: it will be sufficient, that you leave there one Company, or a Detachment equal to a Company.

Gov. Bernard managed to slip out of demanding troops as Gage wanted him to do. Thus, he could claim to the Massachusetts Council that the decision to station soldiers in Boston came entirely from the Secretary of State in London, Lord Hillsborough, and he was merely following orders.

On 13 October, 250 years ago today, the Boston Whigs shared their understanding of how Halifax had experienced that redeployment:

A private letter from Halifax contains some particulars relative to the Boston expedition, not known before, viz. “That in consequence of orders received Sept. 11th, from this place, all the workmen in the King’s yard, necessary to equip the ships, were set to work on Sunday; a strict embargo laid, and guard vessels sent to the mouth of the harbour to prevent intelligence being sent, and more caution used than when fixing out for the Louisbourgh expedition; the embargo so strict, that an open shallop going a mackerel catching, was stopt and sent back to town; and that the troops embarked in as great hurry as was ever known in time of war.[”]—

What a tragi-commick scene is here presented! and how must it be viewed by European politicians?—

Another letter mentions, that as Halifax must sink without the support of troops and ships of war, some of their patriots were about erecting a liberty pole, and employing some boys to sing the Liberty Song through the streets, in hopes it may procure the return of those ships and forces or a larger number from Britain, in order to quell such disturbances.

If anyone from Halifax made such a remark, it was a joke. But the local economy really did depend on supplying the army and navy. On 12 September, the day after Dalrymple received his orders to sail, Lord William Campbell wrote to Hillsborough asking him to send those regiments back north as soon as possible. The royal governor warned that Nova Scotia’s “chief dependence was the circulating cash spent by the troops.”

“A general disposition to desert from the regiments here”

When the Boston Whigs wrote their “Journal of Occurrences” dispatches for newspapers in other American ports, their main theme was how badly the presence of the British troops was damaging the fabric of Boston society.

But an important secondary theme was how stationing those regiments in Boston was also harming the British army, constitution, and state.

In the report dated 12 Oct 1768, 250 years ago today, the Whigs highlighted the desertions by British sailors and soldiers:

The rumor of Castle William being delivered up by the G——r to the King’s troops, arose from his having permitted a number of mariners from the ships of war, to land at Castle Island, six of whom it is said went off in a boat the last night.

Reports of great desertions and a general disposition to desert from the regiments here, which it is said left Halifax under great dejection of spirits; about 21 of the soldiers absconded the last night, and parties from the troops with other clothing, instead of their regimentals, are sent after them.—

Some of the consequences of bringing the troops into this town, in direct violation of the act of Parliament, and disregard to the advice of his Majesty’s Council, instead of quartering them in the barracks on Castle Island, are like to be the scattering proper tutors through the country, to instruct the inhabitants in the modern way of handling the firelock and exercising the men, and also in the various manufactures which the ingenuity and industry of the people of Great Britain have hitherto furnished us with.—

According to Don Hagist of British Soldiers, American Revolution, army records consistently show a rise in desertions just before and just after regiments made a major move. Soldiers may have been reluctant to leave a post where they had forged ties, so they maneuvered to stay behind or to return. Alternatively, they may have noticed that it was easier to desert when commanders were preoccupied, didn’t know the local ground, or couldn’t send anyone back to the old station to hunt men down.

It’s therefore not surprising to see sailors and soldiers releasing themselves from the royal military on their own recognizance in these weeks. It’s startling to see American Whigs talking about how army deserters would make “proper tutors” for the local militia, with an unstated threat underneath. In 1774 and 1775 New England Patriots did indeed recruit soldiers for that purpose and boasted of their militia’s strength. But in 1768 political leaders were trying to tamp down calls for resistance by force.

As this additional item shows:

This night a surgeon of one of the ships of war being guilty of very disorderly behaviour was committed to gaol by Mr. Justice [Edmund] Quincy, as was also a person not belonging to this province, by Mr. Justice [Foster] Hutchinson, on complaint of a soldier, that he had been enticing him to desert; said stranger was first taken and confined by Captain [John] Willson, in the Town House for some time, without warrant or authority from any magistrate—If the oaths of soldiers who are promised 10 guineas for such discoveries, are to be taken as sufficient proof, we know not what proscriptions may take place.

The Boston Whigs thus made a point of blaming “a person not belonging to this province” for encouraging desertion, not a local.

Of course, those Whigs also complained that an army captain had confined that suspect outside of civil authority based on questionable evidence. Worse yet, that confinement happened inside the building that normally housed the provincial legislature, still occupied by troops!

We’ll have to keep a watch on Capt. Willson.

Call for Papers on “Children, Youth & Labor on the Eve of Independence”

Robin P. Chapdelaine and Lara Putnam have issued a call for papers on “Children, Youth & Labor on the Eve of Independence.” Chosen scholars will present their papers at a workshop in Pittsburgh in March 2019, with a selection published in an edited volume or journal.

The call says:

The aim of the project is to reflect the various ways in which adults and children interpreted the work performed by children and youth throughout the colonies.

In recent years, scholarship on children, youth and labor throughout the ‘Empire’ has increased substantially. Often, discussions about child labor, in a colonial context, focus on child slavery, child trafficking and exploitation. While it is true that various forms of colonial labor forcibly incorporated children, what is unclear is how children and adolescents related their work to the colonial state.

Taking into consideration that children were indoctrinated to become productive and patriotic citizens through engaging in social activities, clubs, schooling and religion-how then did they understand their labor as a form of (imperialistic) nationalism? Or did their work represent autonomy, agency and perhaps anti-imperial efforts? In what other ways was child labor understood?

The organizers define “labor” and the temporal and geographic parameters of their topic broadly. They encourage “analyses that focus on class, gender, and masculinity” and any “re-consideration/articulation of patriotism, nationalism, citizens, subjects and labor.”

Proposals should include a 400-word abstract and curriculum vitae for each author, sent to duqyouthlabor@gmail.com by 2 Nov 2018. The organizers will accept up to twenty proposals for the workshop. Papers must be submitted by 22 Feb 2019.

Those papers will be pre-circulated to participants in the workshop scheduled for 29-30 March at Duquesne University. The event will be hosted by the university’s Department of History and Center for African Studies and co-sponsored by the University of Pittsburgh’s Department of History. Selected papers will be prepared for publication through editing and peer review.

“Unintimidated by all the obloquy cast upon me”

As described yesterday, in the late 1760s Timothy Pickering, newly appointed an officer in the Essex County militia, took up the cause of halting the tradition of “firing,” or discharging muskets (without balls) at or near officers or other people for fun.

He addressed that crusade in a characteristically long newspaper essay published in the 30 Oct 1770 Essex Gazette. Here’s a taste:

The practice appeared to me so foolish and unreasonable, that, young and inexperienced as I was with the manners of men, I had no conception of any difficulty attending the execution of my design. Yet I had no sooner begun to exert myself for that end, than I had, not the soldiers only, but almost the whole town upon my back. I was reproached with being a stiff, obstinate, severe, precise fellow, afraid of gun-powder, a coward, and I know not what. Many who did not approve, but condemned the firing, thought, as it had been the practice time out of mind, that I was to blame in opposing it. “But none of these things moved me.” [Echoing Acts 20:24.]

Unintimidated by all the obloquy cast upon me, I still persevered in my design. I found the practice I was endeavouring to eradicate was condemned by many thinking, judicious people: that strengthened my hands; and by degrees I learned to bear unmerited reproach without uneasiness. And at length my endeavours, seconded by some of my brethren, have been crowned with success, to the no small comfort and quiet of the town.

That I have not relaxed in my endeavours to form an orderly, well disciplined militia, maugre [i.e., despite] all opposition, the whole town is witness. And the last training-day affords a fresh proof that I have not sought-----that I do not seek---popularity, by falling in with the prevailing humour and inclination of the people, when that humor and inclination militates with truth, with reason, and, in the instance referred to, with the rules of the military art.

There are at least three notable things about Pickering’s essay. First, the articles he was replying to didn’t actually say anything about how he led the militia. They complained that he was too close to friends of the royal government. He got onto the militia topic on his own.

Second, at the end of this quoted passage Pickering added, “What happened on that day is well known in the town, and need not be related.” So what happened on that day? His son suggested that might refer to when he hit a man for firing at his feet, but we’ll never know.

Finally, for all of Pickering’s efforts to ward off accusations of being “a stiff, obstinate, severe, precise fellow,” his critics got that absolutely right.

“Some would fire at all sorts of persons”

Yesterday I posted a Boston Evening-Post advertisement from 1768 asking the public to identify the militiaman who “discharge[d] his Musket against the Legs of a Gentleman then passing thro’ the Town-House” on 22 September.

That was, Boston 1775 readers may recall, the same date that the Massachusetts Convention of Towns opened in Faneuil Hall. The town’s Whigs were complaining about the imminent arrival of British regiments. They were using a short-lived scare about war with France to justify talk of strengthening local self-defense. So how did musket fire in the Town House fit into the routine of the Massachusetts militia?

Unfortunately, it was pretty standard. Timothy Pickering, a vociferous critic of shenanigans during militia drills, reported that startling citizens with musket fire was a common prank on training days. Writing as “A Military Citizen” for more than a page in the 21 Jan 1769 Essex Gazette, Pickering complained:

Did any awkward, or uncommon Figure of a Man unfortunately come in Sight of these Heroes,—by a sudden Excursion, they surprized, surrounded, and for a while buried him in Fire and Smoke, then, with self-approving Shouts, and Breasts glowing with the Thoughts of their valourous Deeds, they made a gallant Retreat, and again joined the main Body.

Writing under his own name in the 30 Oct 1770 Essex Gazette, Pickering said the prank was so institutionalized there was even a name for it:

I will instance in the article of firing. It had been the custom in Salem from my earliest remembrance, and for 50 or perhaps 100 years before, to fire at the officers, under the senseless notion of doing them honour. And not content with this, some would fire at all sorts of persons; and it gave them singular satisfaction to make women the objects of their dangerous diversion. Nor did strangers escape the hazard and inconvenience of their inhuman, inhospitable sport. This base custom I set myself to oppose and destroy.

Pickering’s son Octavius later said in a biography: “On some occasion a soldier in Mr. Pickering's company saluted him by firing at his feet; whereupon Mr. Pickering struck him with the flat of his sword.” Commissioned a lieutenant in 1766 and a captain in 1769, Pickering was determined to wipe out that “dangerous diversion.”

TOMORROW: And how did that go, Capt. Pickering?

Boston’s Well-Regulated Militia

From the 26 Sept 1768 Boston Evening-Post.

Whereas a Person belonging to the Militia in this Town did, on Thursday last [i.e., 22 September], about 2 o’Clock P.M. designedly and maliciously, as appeared to several By-standers, discharge his Musket against the Legs of a Gentleman then passing thro’ the Town-House, and thereby hurt him so much as to occasion his Confinement:

This is to give Notice that if any Person then present, or any other, will discover to the Printers the Name and Abode of the above Offender, so that he may be apprehended, he shall receive of the said Printers One Guinea, and no Use shall be made of his Name.

Boston, Sept. 25, 1768.

TOMORROW: What’s up with that?

Renting Property “for the quartering of troops”

The longer the 14th Regiment of Foot bunked inside Faneuil Hall and the Town House, the harder Boston’s selectmen found it to get those soldiers out again.

The Whigs kept making that an issue. On 5 October, for example, their “Journal of Occurrences” complained: “The Council now met, and were obliged to pass the guards placed in the passage way, entering their chamber.” And the next day they added:

This day, by order of Governor [Francis] Bernard, the south battery was delivered up to Col. [William] Dalrymple. If this people had not more patience and loyalty, than some others have tenderness and sound policy; what a scene would soon open!

At the same time, the Whigs objected to any hint that supporters of the royal government might solve that problem by providing other places for the soldiers to stay. Back on 4 October their “Journal” had sneered:

Report, that James Murray, Esq; from Scotland, since 1745, had let his dwelling house and sugar houses, for the quartering of troops, at £15 sterling per month, and that Mr. [James] Forrest from Ireland had let them a house lately purchased for about £50 sterling, at the rate of £60 sterling per annum.

Murray (shown above) was Scottish by birth. The reference to “since 1745” was a reminder of that year’s Jacobite rebellion—no matter that Murray had settled in North Carolina ten years before that. Forrest was likewise not a New England native and known for Loyalist politics.

As it worked out, Murray did rent a large sugar-distillery on Brattle Street to the army. It wasn’t actually his property, though. He was agent for his sister Elizabeth and her second husband, James Smith. That building thus became known as both Murray’s barracks and Smith’s barracks.

As for Forrest, there doesn’t appear to be any evidence that he rented a house out for barracks.

Meanwhile, another property owner who did rent to the army was selectman John Rowe. On 7 October, 250 years ago today, he wrote in his journal: “Let one of my houses to Capt. [Brabazon] Ohara yesterday & the other this day to Major [Jonathan] Furlong—both at £20 Ster’g per annum.”

Capt. O’Hara of the 14th was a witness to the fight between James Otis, Jr., and Customs Commissioner John Robinson in 1769. According to one document, he testified about the Boston Massacre in 1770. The regiment was transferred to the West Indies after that, and he died on the island of Saint Vincent in 1773.

Maj. Furlong of the 14th had a less eventful time in Boston. The start of the war found him in St. Augustine, Florida, commanding a small garrison there. He died in 1782, having attained the rank of colonel.

Back in October 1768, O’Hara and Furlong weren’t looking for homes for their men. They were renting genteel accommodations for themselves, paying out of their own money. After all, we shouldn’t expect British military gentlemen to share quarters with ordinary soldiers. Many Bostonian householders rented rooms to officers like that, and it wasn’t as controversial as supplying buildings for barracks.

That said, the Boston Massacre trial testimony refers to “Rowe's Barracks,” otherwise unidentified. So it’s likely that Selectman Rowe did rent a large building to the army as well.

A Portrait Vandalized at Harvard

On 26 Nov 1765 the Harvard Corporation made the following decision:

Whereas Governr. [Francis] Bernard, as we are inform’d by our Treasr. hath offer’d to give his Picture to the College, Thereupon unanimously Voted, That We thankfully accept it.

Bernard was already fairly unpopular in the midst of the Stamp Act protests, but he was an influential benefactor for the college. And hey—it was a free painting.

The record doesn’t state who made that portrait, but if it was done locally the artist was almost certainly John Singleton Copley, Boston’s most accomplished and fashionable portraitist in the 1760s. The Swiss artist Pierre Eugène Du Simitière saw Gov. Bernard’s portrait at Harvard when he passed through Massachusetts in 1767.

On 6 Oct 1768, 250 years ago today, the “Journal of Occurrences” that the Boston Whigs wrote and sent to the New-York Journal stated:

From Cambridge we learn, that last evening, the picture of ———— ————, hanging in the college-hall, had a piece cut out of the Breast exactly describing a heart, and a note—that it was a most charitable attempt to deprive him of that part, which a retrospect upon his administration must have rendered exquisitely painful.

Lest there be any doubt about which picture that was, John Tudor wrote in his private diary the same day:

Last evening the picture of Governor Bd. hanging in College Hall had a piece cut out of the Breast like a Heart & a Note left, giving the Reason.

Notably, no Boston newspapers reported this vandalism at the time, though some reprinted the item from the New York paper a few weeks later.

The next month, the Harvard Corporation agreed to frame Bernard’s painting and display it in the college’s Philosophy Chamber, which was more secure. The board moved portraits of two other benefactors, Thomas Hancock and Thomas Hollis, into that room as well. Left unstated was the college was going to spend money to repair the damaged canvas of the governor.

On 14 Mar 1769, “Journal of Occurences” reported:

G—r B—d’s picture has been lately returned to Harvard-College to be hung up in the Library: Our American Limner, Mr. Copely, by the surprising art of his pencil, has actually restored as good a heart as had been taken from it; tho’ upon a near and accurate inspection, it will be found no other than a false one.—

There may it long remain hanging, to shew posterity the true picture of the man, who during a weak and w[icke]d Ad[ministratio]n, was suffered to continue in the S[ea]t of G[overn]m[en]t, a sore scourge to the people, until he had happily awakened a whole continent to a thorough sense of their own interest, and thereby laid the foundation of American greatness.

By then Bernard was thoroughly unpopular, and he left Massachusetts for good a few months later.

The painting of Bernard is no longer in Harvard’s inventory. It might have disappeared during the war, when the college became a barracks for the Continental Army, or in the following years. It’s also conceivable that the painting quietly went back to Bernard and is the same Copley portrait that he presented to his alma mater, Christ Church College at Oxford.

I see scholars writing two different things about that painting (shown above). Some Copley experts date the Christ Church portrait to the mid-1770s, saying it was made in Britain after the artist had moved there for good.

Others suggest that Bernard donated that painting in 1772 when he received an honorary degree at Oxford, meaning Copley must have completed it in the 1760s before the governor sailed. I don’t know if that canvas has been examined for repairs in the chest area. Of course, Copley could have supplied Gov. Bernard with two copies of his portrait to give away.