Considering Thomas Crafts the Coroner

As recounted yesterday, two documents at the Boston Public Library establish that one of the coroners holding inquiries after the Boston Massacre was Thomas Crafts.

Does that evidence restore that milestone in my mental narrative of Thomas Crafts, Jr.’s rise from a member of the Loyall Nine to artillery colonel and judge in the new republic?

Unfortunately not. Because, as the name implies, Thomas Crafts, Jr., wasn’t the only Thomas Crafts in Boston in 1770.

Thomas Crafts, Sr. (1706–1789), was a housewright of standing. He had moved into Boston from Roxbury and joined the First Baptist Meeting. He and his wife Anne had seven children between 1729 and 1752. Starting in 1745 he held town offices like surveyor of boards, fence viewer, and warden. In 1766 he got the contract to frame the new town jail.

In contrast to his father, Thomas Crafts, Jr. (1740–1799), was a decorative painter. At the time of the Massacre, he was still only twenty-nine years old. He married Frances Pinkney Gore in 1763, and they had two children by 1770. Thomas, Jr., was a member of the St. Andrew’s Lodge of Freemasons and an officer in the militia artillery company. He was on his way up. But he wasn’t yet a respected elder.

Back here I noted that The Massachusetts Civil List for the Colonial and Provincial Periods, 1630-1774 didn’t list any Thomas Crafts among the Boston coroners in the third quarter of the eighteenth century. But that book did list Thomas Crofts, who could be our man. (The Crafts family genealogy notes Craft and Crofts as alternate spellings used in the 1600s.)

If Gov. Francis Bernard appointed Thomas Crofts/Crafts as a coroner in 1761, that definitely wasn’t Thomas, Jr., since he was barely legal at the time. But Thomas, Sr., was then fifty-five years old, the sort of weighty neighbor whom people would trust as a coroner.

Did Crafts the coroner fill out the verdict forms himself? If so, then we could compare his handwriting and the signature on the fifth line to other documents by the two Craftses.

Until such additional evidence arises, I’ll make my best guess based on the social evidence and say that Thomas Crafts the coroner of 1770 was the housewright father, in his mid-sixties with experience in several town offices. He was an example to his sons, but Thomas, Jr., hadn’t yet achieved the same political stature.

TOMORROW: Examining the coroners’ examinations.

The Coroners Who Oversaw Inquests after the Boston Massacre

The most famous piece of coroners’ paperwork from the Boston Massacre is a verdict from the inquest into the death of Michael Johnson—or Crispus Attucks, as he was soon to be identified.

That document is in the collection of Revolutionary Spaces and has been on display in the Old State House. It’s been reproduced and transcribed in several places. Here’s an article about its conservation.

The coroner for that proceeding was Robert Pierpont, a Whig who lived at the far southern end of town.

I knew that the Boston Public Library’s Special Collections Department holds several more inquest documents. Mellen Chamberlain collected those papers for the library in the late 1800s, for both their historical value and their autographs.

Last last month, therefore, I made an appointment to look at the Chamberlain Manuscripts. I’ve done research at the B.P.L. for years, but the Special Collections Department upgraded its facilities and tightened its procedures since my last visit, so this required making an appointment and learning some new procedures.

I’m pleased to report that I found the verdicts of two inquests overseen by coroner Thomas Crafts. One examined the body of James Caldwell on 5 Mar 1770, and the second examined Samuel Maverick the next day.

In addition, Chamberlain acquired verdicts from two inquests headed by Thomas Dawes (shown above). He handled the cases of Samuel Gray (6 March) and Patrick Carr (15 March).

The collection also includes testimony for the Gray inquest from Richard Palmes, Robert Goddard, Joseph Petty, and Richard Ward, plus a deposition about aggressive soldiers from John Leach, Jr., that Dawes took in on 6 March. All but one of those witnesses also testified for Boston’s Short Narrative of the Horrid Massacre report or the trials or both. (Frankly, they couldn’t shut Palmes up.)

Thus, we should list Thomas Dawes among the coroners who did the first investigations of the Boston Massacre. In fact, he did more than Pierpont, and more evidence from his inquiries survive.

TOMORROW: So am I satisfied that Thomas Crafts, Jr., was a coroner in 1770?

“Mr. Craft producd the Ball in Court”

Yesterday I showed a list of the men appointed as coroners in Suffolk County from 1747 to 1774. And that list made me nervous.

For nearly two decades now I’ve been writing that Thomas Crafts, Jr., member of the Loyall Nine and reader of the Declaration of Independence on 18 July 1776, was a coroner at the time of the Boston Massacre.

In my mind, that position showed how he was rising in society from the middling mechanical class into gentility, and how he was involved in all the political events of his time.

I think I saw that statement first in The Legal Papers of John Adams. Volume III quotes thus from John Adams’s notes on the soldiers’ trial for the Massacre: “Mr. Craft producd the Ball in Court.” A footnote adds: “The reference is probably to Thomas Crafts, the Suffolk County Coroner, and is presumably JA’s note, not the witness’ testimony.”

Hiller B. Zobel, one of the editors of those Adams papers, shortly afterward wrote in The Boston Massacre about the morning of 6 Mar 1770: “County Coroners Robert Pierpoint and Thomas Crafts were arranging for inquests on Johnson and the other victims.”

Note, however, that the only primary source I had on hand referred to “Mr. Craft” with no given name.

Now look back at the list of coroners yesterday, from The Massachusetts Civil List for the Colonial and Provincial Periods, 1630-1774. The name “Thomas Crafts” doesn’t appear anywhere.

There was a “Thomas Crofts” appointed or reappointed on 5 Nov 1761, and that could be an easy error for “Thomas Crafts.” But it could just as easily be an easy error for “Thomas Cross,” first named on 18 Apr 1749.

Furthermore, William Crafts was made a coroner on 11 Apr 1768. Based just on that list, the coroner called “Mr. Craft” in Adams’s notes would be William, not Thomas. Indeed, that list offers no confirmation Thomas Crafts, Jr., was ever appointed a coroner at all.

Newspapers also reported the governors’ appointments of new coroners in formulaic lines, as in the 18 June 1772 Boston News-Letter:

At a General Council held on Thursday the 4th of June Instant [i.e., of this month], at Boston, His Excellency the Governor was pleased to nominate,…

Thomas Allen, Esq; to be a Justice of the Peace for the County of Suffolk.

Mr. Isaac Greenwood, to be a Coroner for said County…

To which Nominations His Majesty’s Council did advise and consent.

(All the new justices of the peace were labeled “Esq.” while the coroners were ordinarily “Mr.,” showing the gap in prestige between the two offices.)

I couldn’t find such a newspaper item for Thomas Crafts, Jr., however. (Nor for the other Crafts/Crofts/Cross coroners discussed above.)

Thus, at the beginning of this month I was contemplating the possibility that Thomas Crafts, Jr., wasn’t a coroner in 1770 after all. I needed to see some original documents.

TOMORROW: To the archives!

The Coroners of Suffolk County, 1747–1774

Early this month I started to discuss the office of coroner in pre-Revolutionary Boston. Then came Pope Night, followed by postings about the espionage of Dr. Benjamin Church, Jr. Now I’m going back to pick up the coroners’ thread.

Coroners were royal appointees: chosen by the governor, who was chosen by the ministry in London, who was chosen with the approval and authority of the king.

As such, their commissions lapsed six months after the death of the king in whose name they were appointed. The new monarch could remove them before that date or authorize new appointments.

The same rule applied to many other legal documents issued in the king’s name, such as the writs of assistance that granted Customs officials the power to search buildings for smuggled goods.

The death of King George II on 25 October 1760 started that clock ticking. In January 1761 sixty-three Boston merchants with James Otis, Jr., as their attorney sued to challenge the validity of new writs of assistance under Massachusetts law. Customs official Charles Paxton responded with his own filing, and the case was argued before Massachusetts judges in February and November 1761.

The merchants lost. But John Adams’s memory of the case (and his wish to put Massachusetts ahead of Virginia in challenging Crown policies) made the Writs of Assistance Case a milestone on the way to independence and eventually the Fourth Amendment.

When it came to the coroners, there was much less trouble. With the advice and consent of the Council, Gov. Francis Bernard simply issued new appointments in the name of King George III for what appear to have been all the existing coroners, and perhaps some new ones, on 5 Nov 1761.

In 1870, William H. Whitmore went through government records, compiled a list of every man elected or appointed to Massachusetts offices before independence, and published The Massachusetts Civil List for the Colonial and Provincial Periods, 1630-1774. You can read it here, though it’s not that sort of book.

Here are scraps of The Massachusetts Civil List’s section on Suffolk County coroners. Recall that Suffolk County then included all of today’s Norfolk County, so this list includes men who examined unexpected deaths in rural towns well outside Boston.

That list doesn’t say when a coroner left office, usually by becoming a potential subject for a coroner’s inquiry. But it should include the names of the Boston coroners in 1770, the year of the Massacre, and 1774, the year of William Molineux’s death.

That’s why I started to worry I’d tripped into a Boston 1775 emergency.

TOMORROW: A chill of doubt.

Call for Proposals for “Rebellion, Resistance & Refuge” Symposium

Slavery North has issued a call for proposals for a scholarly conference to be held at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, on 8-12 July 2026 on the topic “Rebellion, Resistance, and Refuge: Slavery and Border-Crossing during the American Revolution.”

The call says:

Like all conflicts, the Revolutionary War (1775–1783) brought disruption, violence, and uncertainty. However, because it unfolded at a moment when Transatlantic Slavery was yet to be abolished in the regions that were to become Canada and the USA, for the enslaved, the war also brought large-scale upheaval of forced inland and maritime migration which opened opportunities for escape and emancipation. On the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Slavery North invites proposals for papers that rethink the cultures, events, and experiences of the war across the liminal borders (regional and proto-national) of British North America.

While scholars of early America have centered studies on the political motivations and military maneuvers that influenced the rebels, the grassroots impact of sedition, and the interpretation of constitutional debates, most scholarship on the Canadian side of the border has been regionally and thematically biased towards a celebratory focus on White Loyalists in the Maritimes.

Meanwhile, little scholarship – Canadian or American – has been devoted to recuperating and understanding the experiences of the enslaved across regions, origins, identities, climates, geographies, and circumstances. Nor has attention been paid to the turmoil that ensued when White Loyalist enslavers, those they enslaved, and newly freed Black Loyalists were all evacuated into northern (Canadian) territories which had already been shaped by Transatlantic Slavery.

Slavery North invites abstracts for 20-minute papers in Humanities and Fine Arts disciplines that engage new approaches and perspectives, interrogate un(der)studied archives, and tackle original topics and themes on the art, cultural, material, and traditional histories of the Revolutionary War on both sides of the 49th parallel. We especially encourage contributions that recuperate and center the aspirations, resistance, perspectives, and experiences of enslaved people and communities.

Slavery North therefore “invites proposals for 20-minute papers from graduate students, scholars, professors, and cultural and heritage workers.” Those proposals must include:

• Name, title, affiliation/institution, and location (city, province/state, country)
• Paper title
• Abstract (200-300 words)
• Two-page c.v. (featuring research highlights)

The submission deadline is Friday, 19 December. Proposals should be sent via email as P.D.F. files to Emily Davidson.

Scholars whose proposals are accepted in January will be expected to participate fully in the in-person symposium program in Amherst. The organizers will cover the costs of travel, accommodation, and some meals.

The Vanishing of Mary Wenwood?

As recounted earlier, Gen. George Washington had Mary Wenwood brought his headquarters to answer questions about a ciphered letter she had given to her former husband to pass on.

The woman held out against the general’s questioning for hours. But still under guard the morning after she arrived, she gave up the name of the cipherer: her lover, Dr. Benjamin Church.

After that, Mary Wenwood fades from the historical record. She had every reason to adopt a low profile. Gen. Washington kept her name out of his official report and paperwork. No surviving informal comment on the episode mentions her name. 

But men had a lot to say about her character. Indeed, just as she vanished as a person, she started to appear as a character in a moral fable—the downfall of a doctor.

James Warren, speaker of the Massachusetts house, called her “a suttle, shrewd Jade” and “an Infamous Hussey.” The Rev. Ezra Stiles of Newport said she was “a Girl of Pleasure,” and had carried the ciphered letter “in her stocking on her Leg.” How did he know?

Lt. Ebenezer Huntington of Norwich, Connecticut, told his brother: “the Plot was discoverd by his [Church’s] Miss who is now with Child by him and he owns himself the father (for he has Dismissed his Wife).” Huntington was stationed in Roxbury, far from Washington’s headquarters, and had no link to people in the case. No one closer to the investigation said the woman was pregnant. Some other details in Huntington’s account are wrong. Therefore, unless other evidence turns up, I think this was probably baseless gossip.

Here are further facts possibly about Mary Wenwood.

The 14 December 1775 New-England Chronicle reported that the Cambridge post office was holding mail for a woman named Mary Butler—which was Mary Wenwood’s maiden name.

Mary was the most common given name for women, and Butler a fairly common surname. Wainwood/Wenwood/Wanewood was much less common. Indeed, all mentions of “Wenwood” and its variants in late-1700s New England newspapers lead back to Godfrey Wenwood, Mary’s former husband.

That said, Newport vital records show that another Mary Wenwood, wife of Frederick Wenwood, gave birth to a baby girl named Mary in December 1785, and that couple baptized a baby girl named Mary (perhaps a new one) in June 1787. Even an uncommon name isn’t necessarily unique.

The most tantalizing clues are that a Mary Wainwood/Wanewood was in and out of the Boston almshouse after the war:

• Admitted 6 May 1785, left 30 May 1786.
• Admitted 29 Feb 1792.
• Admitted 12 Jan 1793.
• Admitted 25 Apr 1797, died 23 May 1797.

And that last entry stated that the woman was from Rhode Island.

“Tradition gives us a graphic scene connected with her arrest”

In his biography of George Washington, published in the late 1850s, Washington Irving included a vivid description of how Mary (Butler) Wenwood was brought to the commander-in-chief’s headquarters.

Irving wrote:

Tradition gives us a graphic scene connected with her arrest. Washington was in his chamber at head-quarters, when he beheld from his window, General [Israel] Putnam approaching on horseback, with a stout woman en croupe behind him. He had pounced upon the culprit.

The group presented by the old general and his prize, overpowered even Washington’s gravity. It was the only occasion throughout the whole campaign on which he was known to laugh heartily.

He had recovered his gravity by the time the delinquent was brought to the foot of the broad staircase in head-quarters, and assured her in a severe tone from the head of it, that, unless she confessed everything before the next morning, a halter would be in readiness for her.

So far the tradition;…

This anecdote is consistent with other stories about Putnam.

However, there’s no contemporaneous support for this tale, nor did Irving explain how he came by all those details, especially the picture of the general laughing in his own bedroom.

In fact, even Irving seemed dubious, twice labeling this story “tradition.” But he couldn’t resist including it.

And some other authors, including George Washington Greene, repeated it in their books.

It can serve to signal how Mary Wenwood was about to be transmuted from a real woman into the embodiment of all female dangers.

“i expeted you would have arote to me be for this”

Several of the questions after my talk in Watertown about Dr. Benjamin Church, Jr., involved his lover Mary (Butler) Wenwood.

Unfortunately, we have lots of rumors and little hard evidence about this woman, and I’m wary of overstating what we know. But I can share some more information and leads for further research.

We have a note in Mary Wenwood’s own handwriting, preserved in the George Washington Papers at the Library of Congress.

This note is undated, but it appears to have prodded her former husband, Godfrey Wenwood, into showing a ciphered letter she’d previously left with him to the Patriot authorities in Rhode Island. That happened in September 1775, so it’s likely Mary Wenwood wrote this note that month.

She addressed it “To Mr. godfrey wenwood / Baker / in Newport” but added no signature. Neither the handwriting nor spelling is clear:

Dear sir—

i now Sett Down to right a fue Lines hoping thay will find [you] in good helth as thay Leave me

i expeted you would have arote to me be for this But now i expet to Sea you hear every Day i much wonder you never Sent wot you promest to send if you Did i never reseve it so pray Lett me know By the furst orpurtnuty wen you expet to be hear & at the Same time whether you ever Sent me that & wether you ever got a answer from my sister i am a litle unesey that you never rote

thar is a serten person hear wants to Sea you verey much So pray com as Swon as posebell if you righ[t] Direct your Lettr to mr Ewerd Harton Living on Mr t apthorps farm in Little Cambrig

It’s tempting to treat personal details in the letter—the “sister,” “the serten person hear [who] wants to Sea you verey much”—as clues. But those could just as well have been parts of a cover story, to fool Godfrey or someone else who might see the note into thinking it’s all about a family matter.

The real tenor of this note is anxiety about having received no answer to the earlier, ciphered letter. Mary was even suspicious that Godfrey hadn’t sent it on (which he hadn’t). She wanted to know what was happening. Dr. Church was probably hoping some money was on its way to him.

The information about how to send a reply to Mary Wenwood must therefore have been sincere. “Little Cambridge” was the portion of that town on the south side of the Charles River which we now call Brighton. The local historian Lucius Paige found an Edward/Edmund Horton living there in 1776.

The note suggests Horton was living on the estate of Thomas Apthorp (1741–1818), one of several younger sons of Charles and Grizzell Apthorp. In 1858 the Rev. Nicholas Hoppin wrote, “James and Thomas Apthorp Esqrs., brothers of the missionary [Rev. East Apthorp], also had houses…in what is now Brighton, then called Little Cambridge,” but James (1731–1799) moved to Braintree in 1768.

That same year, Thomas lobbied to become a deputy paymaster for the army, as his father had been. With that affiliation, he would have been inside Boston when the war broke out, and he would leave with the British troops in March 1776. Horton might have been looking after Apthorp’s country estate.

Mary Wenwood could have been living on that estate, or she could have been living nearby. Godfrey showed up at her home toward the end of September, asking about the ciphered letter. Mary refused to answer his questions. So Gen. George Washington ordered her brought to his headquarters.

TOMORROW: Rumors and unanswered questions.

“Writing this has employed a day”

Dr. Benjamin Church, Jr., used a variety of ways to send messages into Boston after the start of the war, including:

• crossing the siege lines himself in April 1775 and pretending to have been placed under arrest.
• having a letter “sewed in the waist of [a paid confederate’s] breeches.” That unnamed man was stopped and “confined a few days,” but the letter wasn’t found.
• possibly piggybacking on a letter from Gen. Charles Lee that Church arranged to be sent into Boston in early July.
• meeting a Crown agent in Salem. William Warden told the Loyalists Commission “he was sent by General [Thomas] Gage to Salem and Marblehead to receive intelligence from Dr. Benjamin Church, but failed to execute his business.” Church wrote in July, “I have been to Salem to reconnoitre, but I could not escape the geese of the capitol.”
• asking Gen. George Washington’s staff to send in a letter through the channel they established to communicate to their agent, John Carnes. That document was sent through the hands of military secretary Joseph Reed, Lt. Col. Loammi Baldwin, a man named Tewksbury raising sheep what’s now Winthrop, and a waterman going into Boston.
• And of course asking his mistress, Mary (Butler) Wenwood, to arrange for someone she knew in Newport, Rhode Island, to deliver a letter to a royal official there to pass into Boston. Unluckily for them, she chose her ex-husband, Godfrey Wenwood.

Of those communications, only the last letter survives and can be connected with a transmission route because it was intercepted, proving to be Church’s undoing.

For that letter through Newport, Dr. Church used a cipher for added security. One of the many fine questions asked after yesterday’s presentation on Dr. Church was if there were any other ciphered letters from him in Gen. Gage’s papers. I don’t think there are others. And in fact, since the one that incriminated Dr. Church was never delivered, there aren’t any at all.

As part of his defense Dr. Church displayed and translated a letter from his brother-in-law, John Fleeming, written using the same cipher. The doctor said Fleeming had asked him to use the cipher. That letter survives only in printed translations. Earlier Church told Washington that he had received and destroyed another ciphered letter from Fleeming, but that might have been the same one he later displayed.

In General Gage’s Informants, Allen French identified other letters from Dr. Church in the general’s papers on the basis of internal detail (the writer was about to leave for Philadelphia) or handwriting. Those were all in plain English.

As is the long letter written on 24 Sept 1775 and published in Henry Belcher’s The First American Civil War, which I identified in this post as probably Church’s last report to his royal handlers.

It appears, therefore, that Church used the cipher only in exchanges with Fleeming. Why not all the time?

One reason is that having a cipher and sending lots of coded letters might have raised questions. In one of those letters in Gage’s files Church said that an encounter with an angry man named Timothy had prompted him to destroy his cipher lest people suspect him.

Another factor may simply have been time. It took extra effort to copy each letter symbol by symbol. In the intercepted letter the doctor complained, “Writing this has employed a day.”

We might say that using every means to conceal a spy letter would be time well spent. But in Church’s case, the cipher roused Godfrey Wenwood’s suspicions and was soon broken, but the letters the doctor sent in other ways remained secret for over a century.

“Let not that man be trusted who can voilate private faith”

The Massachusetts Whigs were flabbergasted by the evidence that Dr. Benjamin Church, Jr., was corresponding with someone behind enemy lines.

By the fall of 1775, those men had worked alongside Dr. Church for a decade. He had helped to compose instructions for representatives, correspondence to Whigs in Britain, and political verse for engravings.

The doctor had delivered the Massacre memorial oration in 1773. He had represented Boston in the Massachusetts Provincial Congress and then the General Court, serving on the most sensitive committees.

His fellow legislators had chosen Church to take important documents to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, and then to escort Gen. George Washington across the state from Springfield. He was serving as the top doctor in the Continental Army.

Church’s erstwhile colleagues wrote to each other in astonishment.

One group of Massachusetts Patriots who didn’t express such surprise, however, were the Massachusetts Whigs’ wives.

Those women had noted Church’s habit of extramarital affairs, rumored as early as 1769. By 1774 he was maintaining a mistress outside of Boston. To other men’s wives, the doctor’s betrayal of Sarah Church made it easy to believe he’d betrayed his political movement as well.

Abigail Adams wrote to her husband John on October 9:

You have doubtless heard of the viliny of one who has professd himself a patriot, but let not that man be trusted who can voilate private faith, and cancel solem covanants, who can leap over moral law, and laugh at christianity.

Mercy Warren, wife of Massachusetts house speaker James Warren, added her voice three days later:

I fear a Late Instance of perfidy and Baseness in one who Rancked Himself among the Friends to the Rights of society and the Happiness of the Community Will occasion many Inviduous Reflections from the Enemies of the American Cause.

I was Ever sorry that there should be one among the Band of patriots Whose Moral Character was Impeachable for when the Heart is Contaminated, and the Obligations of private Life Broken through, And the man has thrown of[f] the Restraints Both of Honour and Conscience with Regard to His own Domestic Conduct, what Dependance is to be Made on the Rectitude of His public Intentions.

Abigail Greenleaf, wife of the publisher Joseph Greenleaf, wrote to her brother Robert Treat Paine on 14 October:

How Sir, did you receive the news of the Perfidy & treachery of Docter Church? Was it not in Silent astonishment? It will I believe, bow down the grey hairs of his Father & Mother, with Sorrow to the grave. His Poor wife too, is an object of the Pitty, & Compassion of every one. She still Loves him, tho, he has treated her in so base a manner. If she looses her senses I think twill not be strange; but it will be melancholy.

Abigail Adams came back to the topic on 21 October:

What are your thoughts with regard to Dr. Church? Had you much knowledg of him? I think you had no intimate acquaintance with him.

“A foe to God was ne’er true Friend to man
Some sinister intent taints all he does.”

The wise response to such questions from a spouse was of course: ‘I agree with you, dear. I barely knew the man. You’re so right.’

“A proper Method for bringing Dr. Church before the House”

As described yesterday, on 17 Oct 1775 the Massachusetts General Court decided to summon Dr. Benjamin Church to Watertown to explain why he’d sent a ciphered letter into British-occupied Boston.

Dr. Church’s first response to that action arrived on 23 October, as reported by James Warren: “The Speaker communicated to the House a Letter received from Dr. Church, wherein he expresses a Desire to resign his Seat in the House of Representatives.”

The previous month, Church had also tried to resign as Surgeon-General of the Continental Army, following a month of turf disputes with regimental surgeons. Gen. George Washington and his aides had urged him to stay, only to be blindsided by that ciphered letter. Those two resignations suggest that Church was realizing what a hole he’d dug for himself and just wanted to go away.

The legislators didn’t want to let Church go, though. Particularly Speaker Warren. He’d been immersed in this case since Washington had called him to Cambridge to share the first hints of the doctor’s dealings.

Back on 1 October, Warren had written to his friend John Adams:

Dr. C——h has been detected in a Correspondence with the Enemy at least so far that a Letter wrote by him in Curious Cypher . . .

We all thought the Suspicion quite sufficient to Justify an Arrest of him and his Papers, which was done, and he is now under a Guard. He owns the writeing and sending the Letter. Says it was for [John] Fleeming in Answer to one he wrote to him, and is Calculated, by Magnifying the Numbers of the Army, their regularity, their provisions and Ammunition &c, to do great Service to us. He declares his Conduct tho’ Indiscreet was not wicked.

Something had to be done. The legislature therefore voted on 23 October to let Church’s resignation letter “lay on the Table, till the Committee who are directed to consider a proper Method for bringing Dr. Church before the House shall report.”

As Warren and others understood by this time, the Continental Army rules and regulations didn’t allow a court-martial to sentence a spy to death. Gen. Washington was therefore holding off on formal proceedings. His most recent council had decided “to refer Doctor Church for Tryal & Punishment to the General Court of Massachusetts Bay.”

On 26 October the house committee came back with their recommendation. They started by stating that Church “has been convicted by the Judgment of a Council of War, at which his Excellency [Gen. Washington] presided, of having carried on a criminal Correspondence with the Enemy.”

In fact, Washington’s councils weren’t courts and had no power to convict anyone. But neither did the legislature have the power to try and punish Church as the last council suggested—all the General Court could do was expel the doctor. Each body was pushing for the other to take on the authority of judging Dr. Church. And everyone was still waiting for guidance from the Continental Congress.

The General Court voted:

…whereas the said Benjamin Church is also a Member of this House, and the Charge brought against him is of so criminal a Nature, that it is the Duty of the House to make strict Enquiry into the Fact, and upon Proof of the same to manifest their utter Abhorrence thereof:

Therefore, Resolved, That Mr. William Howe, the Messenger of this House, be and he hereby is directed on Friday the 27th of October Instant [i.e., this month], to apply to his Excellency George Washington, Esq; for a sufficient Guard, safely to conduct the said Benjamin Church to and from the Barr of this House, and being furnished therewith, to take the Body of the said Church and bring him to the Barr of the House accordingly, at Ten o’Clock in the Forenoon of the same Day.

On that Friday morning, there was a motion “That there be fixed in the Alley [i.e., aisle] a Bar, at which Dr. Church will be brought.” The stage was set.

I’ll speak about what happened next in Watertown on Sunday afternoon, as detailed here.

TOMORROW: Records of the case.

“The House being jealous of their Priviledges”

As recounted yesterday, on 4 Oct 1775 Gen. George Washington and his fellow generals realized that the Continental Congress’s articles of war weren’t strict enough about passing information to the enemy.

Which was a problem since they had just uncovered evidence that the head of the army’s hospitals, Dr. Benjamin Church, had been doing just that.

In reporting the situation to John Hancock as chairman of the Congress, Washington respectfully wrote that he was “suggesting to their Consideration, whether an Alteration of the 28th Article of War may not be necessary.”

Dr. Church didn’t just have a military appointment. He was also one of Boston’s four representatives in the Massachusetts General Court, elected back on 18 July. Of course, that town meeting hadn’t happened inside British-held Boston. Instead, the “dispersed” inhabitants had gathered in the meetinghouse at Concord.

Dr. Church was active in the first few days of the legislative session in Watertown’s meetinghouse. But in August he took up his new job overseeing the medical care of the army. Two of the other men chosen to represent Boston, Samuel Adams and John Hancock, were away in Philadelphia. That left John Pitts to speak for the town. But that assembly couldn’t do much to affect life in Boston then anyway.

Then in early October came the bombshell news that the army had put Church under arrest. People were soon hearing about why, but this was the house’s first formal response on 14 October:

ORDERED, That Mr. [James] Sullivan bring in a Resolve making a proper Application to General Washington, relative to the imprisonment of one of the members of this House, viz. Doctor Benjamin Church.

The resulting resolution said:

…the House being jealous of their Priviledges, and desirous to know the Cause of said Imprisonment:—— Therefore

Resolved, That the Speaker [James Warren], Mr. Sullivan and Major [John] Bliss, be a Committee to apply to is Excellency George Washington, Esq; requesting him as soon as may be to certify to this House the Cause of the Detention and Imprisonment of said Benjamin Church, Esq; that they may advise thereon.

On 17 October, Warren reported that he had received from Joseph Reed, Washington’s military secretary, “a Letter from Dr. Church to the Enemy, as decyphered by the Rev. Mr. [Samuel] West.” The house voted:

Resolved, That Dr. Church ought to be brought to the Bar of this House, to shew Cause, if any he has, why he should not be expell’d the same.

The next day, Gen. Washington sat down for a council with Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Harrison, and Thomas Lynch from the Continental Congress and with officials from the New England governments. That meeting would run through 24 October and cover many topics. One item on the agenda was “What Steps are necessary to be pursued with Regard to Dr Church?”

The developments in Watertown offered an out: “Upon a Discussion of all Circumstances it was agreed to refer Doctor Church for Tryal & Punishment to the General Court of Massachusetts Bay.” As for what the army should do, given the articles of war, Washington would wait for the Congress’s guidance.

TOMORROW: Dr. Church makes his move.

“Examining Dr. Church” in Watertown, 9 Nov.

As previously announced, on Sunday, 9 November, the Historical Society of Watertown and Watertown Free Public Library will host me speaking about “Examining Dr. Church: The Trials of the Revolutionary War’s First Notorious Spy.”

Our event description:

In October 1775, Massachusetts politicians gathered in Watertown to try one of their own on the charge of supplying intelligence to the king’s army.

Dr. Benjamin Church, Jr., had been a leader of Boston’s resistance and then Surgeon-General of the Continental Army. The rebel authorities had collected the reluctant testimony of Church’s mistress and a letter written in cipher—but was that evidence strong enough to impeach the doctor as an enemy spy?

This Sestercentennial talk will start at 2 P.M. in the Watertown Savings Bank Room on the library’s first floor. It will be free and open to the public, thanks to a grant from the Watertown Community Foundation.

Here’s how this inquiry into the Continental Surgeon-General’s actions came to be held in Watertown.

On 14 June, 1775, the Continental Congress created a committee “to bring in a dra’t of Rules and regulations for the government of the army.” To chair that committee, the delegates chose George Washington, formerly colonel in charge of the Virginia regiment, just as they had put him in charge of previous committees on military topics.

However, the next day the Congress voted to make Washington commander-in-chief of that army. So the task of completing those rules shifted to other committee members—probably Silas Deane, Thomas Cushing, and Joseph Hewes. On 17 July the Pennsylvania Packet printed “the rules and articles of war agreed to by the Congress.”

Among those articles was:

Art. XXVIII. Whosoever belonging to the continental army, shall be convicted of holding correspondence with, or of giving intelligence to, the enemy, either directly or indirectly, shall suffer such punishment as by a general court-martial shall be ordered.

In late September, Gen. Washington learned that Dr. Church had broken that rule, at least the part about secretly corresponding with people inside Boston. As serious as that charge was, a Continental court-martial couldn’t order just any punishment. Its options were limited by another article:

Art. LI. That no persons shall be sentenced by a court-martial to suffer death, except in the cases expressly mentioned in the foregoing articles; nor shall any punishment be inflicted at the discretion of a court-martial, other than degrading, cashiering, drumming out of the army, whipping not exceeding thirty-nine lashes, fine not exceeding two months pay of the offender, imprisonment not exceeding one month.

The commander-in-chief called his generals together as a council of war on 4 October. According to the notes of that meeting:

after examining the Regulations of the Continental Army & particularly the Articles 28 & 51—

It was determined from the Enormity of the Crime, & the very inadequate Punishment pointed out that it should be referr’d to the General Congress for their special Direction & that in the mean Time he be closely confined, & no Person visit him but by special Direction.

The Continental commanders couldn’t ignore what Church had done. But they also couldn’t proceed against him, lest they have to let him off with punishment that would be, though degrading to a gentleman, far less than they thought a traitor deserved.

TOMORROW: Passing the buck.

“The English have a great festival”

Back in July, I discussed how Simeon Potter of Rhode Island had commanded a privateer in 1744 and attacked “Fort d’Oyapoc,” a small French settlement in Guyana.

In Historical Scenes from the Old Jesuit Missions, the Right Rev. William Ingraham Kip included a translation of a long report from Father Elzéar Fauque about that raid.

Writing from the port of Cayenne on 22 Dec 1744, Father Fauque described this exchange with Capt. Potter:

“Monsieur,” he said to me, “do you know that tomorrow, being the fifth of November, according to our method of computation” [for we French people count it to be the fifteenth], “the English have a great festival?”

“And what is the festival?” I asked him.

“We burn the Pope,” he answered, laughing.

“Explain to me,” I said; “what is this ceremony?”

“They dress up in a burlesque style,” he said, “a kind of ridiculous figure, which they call the Pope, and which they afterwards burn, while singing some ballads; and all this is in commemoration of the day when the Court of Rome separated England from its communion. To-morrow,” he continued, “our people who are on shore will perform this ceremony at the fort.”

After a while, he caused his pennon and flag to be hoisted. The sailors manned the yard-arms, the drum was beaten, they fired the cannon, and all shouted, five times, “Long live the King!” This having been done, he called one of the sailors, who, to the great delight of those who understood his language, chanted a very long ballad, which I judged to be the recital of all this unworthy story.

You see in this, my Reverend Father, an instance which fully confirms what all the world knew before, that heresy always pushes to an extreme its animosity against the visible Head of the Church.

This anecdote confirms the popularity of the holiday called Pope Night in New England and Guy Fawkes Day in Britain today. This Rhode Island crew was even exporting the practice into Catholic territory.

It also confirms that the popular knowledge of the history behind commeorating the 5th of November was fuzzy. That holiday was the anniversary of the foiling of the Gunpowder Plot in 1605, not of England’s break with the Roman Catholic church nor (as a broadside in Boston said) the Spanish Armada.