“The 5th. of Novr. being a day of disorder”

On 3 Nov 1773, as I described back in 2019, Boston saw its first tea-inspired violence.

The Sons of Liberty, using a note signed “O.C.,” had summoned half a dozen merchants to meet under Liberty Tree and resign their appointments as agents to sell the East India Company’s tea. Those activists were following the playbook of the first Stamp Act protest from August 1765.

When no merchants showed up, however, William Molineux led a crowd to the warehouse of Richard Clarke (shown here) and demanded a reply. Then they demanded entry, shoving their way inside.

Gov. Thomas Hutchinson, father of two of the tea agents and a more distant relative of others, described how that confrontation ended:

Mr. [Nathaniel] Hatch a gentleman of Dorchester & a Justice of peace commanded the peace & required them to disperse [i.e., Hatch read the Riot Act] but they hooted at him & after a blow from one of them he was glad to retreat. I was all the time in the Council chamber with as many gentlemen of the Council as I could get together but could not make a Quorum.

The mob, after they found the gentlemen determined, began to separate and thereupon a number of gentlemen, who were in the Street, went through those that remained, joined the Gentlemen who were with the consignees in the Warehouse, & guarded them through the mob who were discouraged from offering any further violence.

The next morning I met the Council who advised me, unanimously, to direct the Attorney General [Jonathan Sewall] to prosecute such persons as upon inquiry into this tumult should appear to him to have been Offenders and, as I am informed the Justice has evidence of the person who struck him, I doubt not I can prevail with him to bring forward a separate prosecution of that Offence.

The gentlemen of the town have shewn more resolution upon this occasion than I have known before and, hitherto, nothing has been done which can bring any imputation upon the Town in general. I wish the Select men had discountenanced the proceeding. I am informed a Town meeting is intended to morrow. I wish nothing may be done there which shall oblige me to give your Lordship a less favorable account.

Indeed, the selectmen’s records for 4 November read:

The Selectmen having receiving a Petition from a number of the Inhabitants praying that a Town Meeting may be called immediately for the purpose set forth in their Petition, whereupon,

Voted, that the Town Clerk [William Cooper] issue his Warrant for a Town Meeting Fryday next 10 O’Clock.

“Fryday next” meant the next day. That was also the 5th of November, or Pope Night, when Boston’s youth paraded with effigies of the enemies of the day, collecting money, before having a big rumble and bonfire.

Hutchinson wrote:

The 5th. of Novr. being a day of disorder, every year, in the town of Boston one of my sons thought it advisable to remove with his family to the Lieutenant Governor’s in town, the other came to me in the Country.

In other words, Thomas Hutchinson, Jr., went to his father-in-law Andrew Oliver’s house in Boston, and Elisha Hutchinson left town for his father’s mansion in Milton. Other tea consignees probably took similar protection action.

A town meeting was the most official way for Boston to take political action while the Pope Night processions were the least respectable. How would that Friday play out?

TOMORROW: The 5th of November in 1773.