On the Trail of Capt. William Browne

In the HUB History podcast episode “Drinker, Draftsman, Soldier, Spy,” Jake Sconyers quotes my remark on how difficult it is to track Capt. William Browne of the 52nd Regiment before 1775 because there were so many men named William Brown(e).

He also quoted a portion of Ens. Henry DeBerniere’s report on his spy missions with Capt. Browne that I’d read many times but hadn’t tumbled to how it’s helpful with that precise challenge.

One of my favorite moments in that narrative is when Browne, DeBerniere, and their manservant have reached Jonathan Brewer’s tavern in Waltham.

a little out of this town [Watertown] we went into a tavern, a Mr. Brewer’s, a whig, we called for dinner, which was brought in by a black woman, at first she was very civil, but afterwards began to eye us very attentively; she then went out and a little after returned, when we observed to her that it was a very fine country, upon which she answered so it is, and we have got brave fellows to defend it, and if you go up any higher you find it so,—

This disconcerted us a good deal, and we imagined she knew us from our papers which we took out before her, as the General had told us to pass for surveyors; however, we resolved not to sleep there that night, as we had intended, accordingly we paid our bill which amounted to two pounds odd shillings, but in [sic] was old tenor.

After we had left the house we enquired of John, our servant, what she had said, he told us that she knew Capt. Brown very well, that she had seen him five years before at Boston, and knew him to be an officer, and that she was sure I was one also, and told John that he was a regular—he denied it; but she said she knew our errant was to take a plan of the country; that she had seen the river and road through Charlestown on the paper; she also advised him to tell us not to go any higher, for if we did we should meet with very bad usage

That waitress didn’t just recognize Brown—she recognized him from “five years before at Boston.” That was in 1770, and there were only two British army regiments in Boston then: the 29th and the 14th. That narrows the field considerably.

Sure enough, the officers of the 14th included Lt. William Browne. On 12 July 1771, the War Office announced that “Lieut. William Brown, of the 14th regiment of Foot,” had purchased the rank of captain in the 52nd in the place of Archibald Williams. In the 14th, Ens. William Napier moved up to lieutenant’s rank.

One implication of that fact is that Gen. Thomas Gage might have chosen Capt. Browne to scout the countryside in 1775 because that officer was more familiar with Massachusetts than most of his colleagues, having spent about two years in Boston and on Castle Island back in 1768–1770.

Of course, that had the drawback of more people in Massachusetts being familiar with Browne, as the woman in Waltham showed.

For earlier information on Lt. Browne I hunted down the Army List for 1767. And I found this list of lieutenants in the 14th Regiment of Foot:

Goddammit!

Two men named William Browne became lieutenants in the 14th Regiment four days apart in June 1766. One of them had joined the army in 1762, the other at some unknown time. They were both still lieutenants in the 14th at the start of 1771. 

And during the same period when one or both of these lieutenants were serving in Boston:

• William Browne of Salem was moving up in the imperial bureaucracy.
• William Burnet Brown of Salem supported John Robinson in his fight with James Otis, Jr.
• William Brown the weaver sued the army for trying to kick his family out of the Manufactory building.

And there were probably others.

TOMORROW: Capt. Browne’s own voice.

Studying Henry Knox with Fort Ti

The Sestercentennial of Col. Henry Knox’s mission to Lake Champlain in the winter of 1775–76 is coming up, and Fort Ticonderoga is on it.

That site naturally feels some ownership of that saga since some of the artillery pieces Knox hauled to the siege of Boston came from there. Some, however, came from other fortifications along the lakes, such as Crown Point. Fort Ti is the best restored and most active of those historic locales, so it gets almost all the attention.

For more on that ordnance, I recommend this video with Fort Ti curator Matthew Keagle. He describes how Continental authorities moved artillery around in the summer and fall of 1775, preparing for Gen. Richard Montgomery’s push into Canada and also laying the ground for an idea that Benedict Arnold had floated back in the spring—trucking some of those guns toward Boston.

In addition, Fort Ticonderoga is offering a free virtual teacher institute on the topic “Noble Train!: Henry Knox and the Siege of Boston” on Saturday, 15 November, from 10 A.M. to 2 P.M.

The presentations will include:

• “Henry Knox: Beyond the Noble Train of Artillery” by Fort Ticonderoga’s Director of Academic Programs, Rich Strum
• “The Revolutionary Lives and Letters of Lucy and Henry Knox” by Dr. Phillip Hamilton from Christopher Newport University
• “The Ticonderoga Soldiers Project” by Kate Tardiff, Archivist at Fort Ticonderoga
• “The Siege of Boston and Evacuation Day” by Dr. Robert Allison from Suffolk University
• “Real Time Revolution®: Bringing Henry Knox into the Classroom” by Tim Potts from S.U.N.Y. New Paltz and Rich Strum

Participants must register in advance, though the session is free for educators. 

Two Talks on Thursday, 16 Oct.

It used to be that when two historical organizations scheduled talks on the same night you had to choose between them.

Now, thanks to live-streaming, it’s may be possible to catch both events and not even leave the house to watch them.

Here are two interesting talks scheduled for this upcoming Thursday.

Thursday, 16 October, 6 P.M.
“Within the compass of good citizens”: Paul Revere’s Masonic Journey
Steven C. Bullock
Scottish Rite Masonic Museum, Lexington

From the son of an immigrant to speaking beside the governor on Beacon Hill, Paul Revere traveled far in his extraordinary life. His membership in the Freemasons played an important role in that journey. This talk will consider how the fraternal order fit into Revere’s life—and into the development of Boston and the new nation of which they were a part.

Bullock is a Professor of History at Worcester Polytechnic Institute and author of Revolutionary Brotherhood: Freemasonry and the Transformation of the American Social Order, 1730–1840. This lecture is produced in partnership with the Paul Revere House. It will take place in person at the museum and be livestreamed on YouTube by LexMedia.

Thursday, 16 October, 7 P.M.
I Am So Tired of Waiting, Aren’t You?: Revisiting Black Majority
Peter H. Wood
American Antiquarian Society, Worcester

Black Majority: Race, Rice, and Rebellion in South Carolina, 1670-1740, first published in 1974, marked a breakthrough in understanding of early American history. This landmark book chronicles the crucial formative years of North America’s wealthiest and most tormented British colony. It explores how West African familiarity with rice determined the Lowcountry economy and how a skilled but enslaved labor force formed its own distinctive language and culture.

In this annual Robert C. Baron Lecture, an A.A.S. member who has written a seminal work of history reflects on its impact since publication. The series was endowed to honor Robert C. Baron, founder of Fulcrum Publishing and chairman of the A.A.S. council for a decade. Wood will speak in person at the A.A.S., and people can register to watch online.

Call for Proposals on “The Work of Revolution”

The National Council on Public History and the American Association for State and Local History will hold a joint conference in Providence, Rhode Island, on 16–19 Sept 2026.

The theme will be “The Work of Revolution,” and here is the call for papers:

Revolution is at the center of every remarkable societal change. Through formal politics, grassroots organizing, boycott, protest, litigation, war, and a wide range of other mass and individual actions, behind every revolutionary moment are the people working to bring revolutionary ideas into reality.

In the face of rapid cultural, social, political, and technological change, history’s importance as a guide for our future has become clearer than ever. Documenting during crises, archiving our collective past, supporting researchers and revolutionaries alike, public historians are part of the landscape of revolution. We bring history to the public because it matters.

The ongoing work of revolution is front and center in Rhode Island’s story, past and present. Rhode Islanders have always prided themselves on their independent spirit. To wit, 125 years after the Declaration of Independence, state leaders placed a statue called The Independent Man atop the grandest state house in the nation. Scholars, public historians, educators, and avocational historians interpret Rhode Island’s revolutionary roots and legacies as embedded in self-determination and self-rule, traits with often contradictory legacies and implications. On these lands of early contact and conflict, interpretive sites and educational institutions share the stories of vibrant Indigenous communities, African heritage legacies, as well as histories of immigration, industrialization, political tumult, and religious freedom.

As we close out the US Semiquincentennial year in this historically significant city, we are called to a moment of reflection on the work of revolutions past and the work that lies ahead. AASLH and NCPH members come together at this moment to take stock of our field and ask each other important questions. How do the events of the past 50 years shape how we do the work of public history in the next 50 years? How do we effectively respond to the challenges of our world while strengthening the field? What work will drive our revolutions? What revolutionary work needs to be done to forge the future of the field? And how do we as history practitioners continue to create fulfilling careers in the ever-evolving landscape of our field?

The conference organizers welcome proposals for sessions, workshops, and working groups. The deadline is 1 December of this year, and proposals should be submitted through this webpage.

“Remember the Ladies” Conference in London, May 2026

The Benjamin Franklin House in London has issued a call for papers for a conference on “Remember the ladies”: Women and Revolution, to be held there…well, sometime in May 2026.

The invitation says:

In March of 1776, Abigail Adams wrote to her husband, advising him to “Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors.” An eighteenth-century woman, – albeit a woman of relative means – Abigail witnessed first-hand acts of resistance great and small performed by the women of her generation. She stressed that women, like the men who sacrificed alongside them during the American Revolution, were not only deserving of fair laws that promoted equality, but also that her sex was more than capable of fomenting revolution in the face of marginalisation.

Yet, while women have historically played vital roles in revolutionary processes, their social, political, cultural, and intellectual contributions remain overlooked and undervalued.

We mythologise the infamous ride of Paul Revere, but little is known about the story of Sybil Ludington. When Jean-Paul Marat was assassinated for his fierce written tracts, he was viewed as a martyr; yet, Olympe de Gouges was sentenced to death for demanding equal rights for women and people of colour. The historical record is ripe with accounts of how Toussaint Louverture inspired the people of Saint-Domingue and transformed a burgeoning rebellion into a full-fledged revolution, but we less frequently hear about Cécile Fatiman and the immense courage she instilled in the enslaved people of Haiti as both a revolutionary and a priestess.

This conference aims to highlight the legacies of women whose lives were uniquely shaped by resistance, not just during the age of revolution, but also in more modern social movements.

Dr Megan King (Public Engagement Manager, Benjamin Franklin House), who specialises in eighteenth-century radicalisation and mobilisation, will spearhead a program of keynote speakers, paper presentations, and 10-minute ‘lightning talks’ to unpack works in progress. We welcome submissions from a range of research interests and disciplinary perspectives, and we particularly invite submissions from PGR students, ECRs, and those employed in the heritage sector.

Jargon translations: “PGR” means post-graduate students, or what we call grad students; “ECRs” are early career researchers; and “the heritage sector” means museums, historic sites, archives, conservation, and public history.

Dr. King invites scholars to email abstracts of no more than 500 words to supervisor@benjaminfranklinhouse.org by 10 Nov 2025.

Teachers’ Tour of the Siege of Boston, 4 Nov.

The Massachusetts Council for the Social Studies is offering a Sestercentennial tour of sites in the siege of Boston for teachers. I’ll be one of the folks riding along to talk about that history.

This tour will happen on Tuesday, 4 November, from 7:30 A.M. (when the bus is scheduled to pick up the first batch of participants) to about 4:30 P.M. That’s Election Day, when many schools close for staff training because the buildings are being used for voting.

Through site tours and rides, we aim to provide an overview of the siege from April 1775 to March 1776 that includes the perspectives of rank and file soldiers, free and enslaved Africans, Loyalists, and women.

After gathering at Castle Island, we plan to visit:

• The Bunker Hill battlefield in Charlestown
• Gen. Washington’s headquarters in Cambridge
• The Shirley-Eustis House in Roxbury
• Dorchester Heights in Dorchester

Three of those sites are part of the National Park Service, so access will be limited if the federal government is still shut down at that time. The grounds will probably be open but the buildings closed. We’re developing contingency plans to cover those sites or perhaps substitute others.

Registration cost is $30 for an individual, $100 for a team of four educators. Lunch will be provided. See this page for more information. Use this form to register.

“Breaking the Polarization Trap” in Concord, 11 Oct.

On Saturday, 11 October, the Wright Tavern in Concord will commemorate the Massachusetts Provincial Congress meeting nearby in 1774 by hosting a discussion program titled “Breaking the the Polarization Trap.”

This program will feature presentations by Dr. Danielle Allen, James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard University and Director of the Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation, and Dr. Robert A. Gross, Draper Professor of American History Emeritus at the University of Connecticut and author of foundational modern histories of Concord.

Just as the Wright Tavern was the site of committee meetings during the provincial congress, people at the gathering will be invited to break into small groups to discuss questions posed by the presenters. Then there will be dialogue with the presenters and all attendees. The plan is for two cycles of presentation, discussion, and open dialogue from 1 to 4:30 P.M.

The event description says:

The program will explore how loyalists and patriots co-existed through the turbulence of the American Revolution and will provide contrasts and context to today’s political turbulence. We will explore unique solutions to the root causes of polarization. Let’s learn from history and experiences to find solutions for today.

I have to say that a civil war which upended society and sent tens of thousands of people into exile might not be the best model of co-existence, but perhaps we can do better. American society did calm down afterward, welcoming back some Loyalists. Citizens developed a system for arguing out ideas that, while still not perfect, has generally evolved for the better until now.

Tickets to this event are $30, and the hall’s capacity limits the attendance to forty-five people. Light refreshments will be served. Purchase tickets through this page.

“Patriot, Hero, Distracted Person” Online

At the end of the summer Revolutionary Spaces and the National Museum of Mental Health Project debuted an online exhibit titled “Patriot, Hero, Distracted Person: James Otis, Jr. and Mental Health in the Eighteenth Century.” It’s well worth a visit.

For decades the standard American story of James Otis was shaped by the Massachusetts Whigs, particularly his sister Mercy Warren and his admirer John Adams.

That narrative had Otis staunchly leading the political resistance to the British ministry’s corrupt laws until Customs Commissioner John Robinson assaulted him in the British Coffee-House. That severe head injury tipped Otis into bouts of insanity.

In the twentieth century historians noted that Otis’s family had noticed him behaving erratically earlier in life. Adams’s diary and newspapers show that Otis was especially verbose and bellicose in the days leading up to his confrontation with Robinson. The fight in the British Coffee-House might thus have been the result of mental difficulties, not just the cause.

This web exhibit shares all that evidence as well a note from a psychiatrist saying that Otis’s head injury could have brought on or severely exacerbated his manic episodes. It also explores his treatment and family life in more detail than I’ve seen elsewhere.

Without completely neglecting politics, the exhibit thus reframes Otis’s life “from an epic tragedy to a much more familiar story of loss and sacrifice.” It puts particular emphasis on his later years when he was unable to work and often separated from his wife and children. The final page shares artistic responses to his story.

Kate LaPine, Lucy Pollock, Paul Piwko, and their colleagues at Revolutionary Boston and the National Museum of Mental Health Project have produced a website evoking sympathy for Otis as an individual facing human difficulties, not a distant historical figure. It provides a different dimension to our grand Sestercentennial narrative.

Covart on “First Drafts of the U.S.,” 8 Oct.

On Wednesday, 8 October, Old North Illuminated will present an online talk by Liz Covart, creator and host of the Ben Franklin’s World podcast, about “The First Drafts of the United States: Early Experiments in American Union.”

The event description says:

Long before the Articles of Confederation, colonial Americans spent over a century struggling to unite—and mostly failing spectacularly.

Discover the forgotten stories of America’s “rough drafts”: the New England Confederacy’s bold 1643 experiment, the authoritarian disaster of the Dominion of New England, William Penn’s visionary continental congress proposal, and Benjamin Franklin’s ahead-of-its-time Albany Plan. Each attempt crashed against the rocks of regional jealousies, cultural clashes, and economic chaos.

These weren’t just boring political experiments; they were high-stakes gambles involving real people grappling with questions that still echo today: How do you balance local autonomy with collective strength? Can diverse communities truly unite?

For over a decade Covart has helmed the award-winning Ben Franklin’s World podcast, now up to more than 400 episodes and 13 million downloads. She was Founding Director of Colonial Williamsburg Innovation Studios and Digital Projects Editor at the Omohundro Institute, and she co-founded Clio Digital Media and the History Explorers Club to connect history lovers outside the academy with cutting-edge scholarship. Covart earned her Ph.D. in history studying Albany, a crossroads of early American cultures.

This event will take place from 7 to 8:30 P.M. To sign up for the Zoom link, in exchange for a donation of your choice, go to this registration page.

“Reducing the Number of Bells daily rung”?

I started this run of postings about bell-ringing in mid-eighteenth-century Boston quoting the town’s sextons on when they rang the bells in 1744.

That almost certainly wasn’t the same schedule they were following decades later during the Revolutionary period, however.

Only seven years later, on 14 May 1751, the town meeting discussed cutting back on the bell-ringing to save public money:

There are one or two Lesser Articles in the Selectmens Accompts in which the Committee apprehend there be some Saving, as in Reducing the Number of Bells daily rung, and at different hours of the day, the Committee being of Opinion that two Bells rung in different parts of the Town viz at 5 in the morning, one at noon, & nine in the Evening, together with the Bell at the Opening of the Market would be sufficient.

Then the Second Paragraph in said Report, was Debated, and Voted that the same be accepted, and that no Bells be rung for the future but the Bell at the old North Church, the Bell at Dr. [Joseph] Sewall’s Church [i.e., Old South Meeting-House] Vizt, at the hours of five, one and nine o’Clock, and the old Brick Church at the hour of Eleven.

That new system didn’t work for everyone, however. The following March the town meeting faced “The Petition of sundry Inhabitants that the Bell at the Revd. Messrs. [William] Welsteed and [Ellis] Gray’s [New Brick] Meeting house may be rung at eleven o’Clock in the forenoon.” After some consideration, the people voted to try that, at least for a while.

Of course, that opened the door for more requests. In August, “inhabitants at the Southerly end of the Town” petitioned “the Bell at Mr. [Mather] Byles’s Meeting house may be rung as heretofore.” The town empowered the selectmen to determine when that bell would be rung.

It’s possible that sextons asked members of their congregations to push for them to get some of that bell-ringing money. In 1755 Boston’s bell-ringers won a raise to “forty shillings p Annum…for each time said Bells shall be rung” over the course of a day.

As of March 1762 the town decided on this wake-up call:

The Town voted that the following Bells should be rung at Five o’Clock every Morning, excepting Lord’s Day Morning, viz. At the South End, the Rev. Mr. Byles’s:—Middle of the Town, the Old Brick so called:——At the North End, the Old North so called.

Gawen Brown installed a clock in the Old South Meeting-House steeple in 1770. It’s conceivable that over these same decades more Bostonians came to own watches and clocks. The church bells might not have been as necessary to signal the passage of time as before.

The siege of Boston disrupted civic and religious life for years after the British military sailed away. The Old North Meeting-House and the steeple of the West Meeting-House were gone, pulled down for firewood. British dragoons had turned the Old South Meeting-House into a riding stable. The evacuation took away the Anglican ministers and many of their congregants. Boston’s overall population remained much lower than before the war for a long time.

I suspect those changes were behind the town meeting vote on 5 June 1776 for a new, pared-back schedule: “ringing Dr. Sewalls Bell [at Old South] One O’Clock & Nine O’Clock, and Dr. [Charles] Chaunceys Bell [at the Old Brick] at 11.O.Clock.”

Gradually over the course of the war more bells were put onto the schedule. Though in October 1782 the selectmen told the sexton at Old South to hold off “untill Monday next, as a Daughter of Mrs. Coffin who lives near said Meeting House is very ill & is much disturbed by the ringing.” The bells in the churches and Faneuil Hall remained part of the city’s fire alarm system deep into the nineteenth century.

“To Ring the Bells for two hours Each Time”

Yesterday I described the arrival in 1745 of a set of eight bells from Gloucester, England, for the steeple of Christ Church, now also called Old North Church.

Those bells were tuned to different notes and made for change ringing, the first such set to arrive in British North America. Few Bostonians had heard that style of bell-ringing. Even fewer knew how to do it.

The church’s website states:

Reverend Timothy Cutler had a difficult time finding any experienced bellringers. They sat idle and unused for five years—that is, until 1750, when a group of teenage boys living in the North End was contracted to ring for two hours per week for one year. Each of them was paid 2 pennies a week for their work.

Those boys formed a collective, and its charter agreement survives in the church archive:

We the Subscribers Do agree To the Following Articles Viz

That if we Can have Liberty From the wardens of Doctor Cuttlers church we will attend there once a week on Evenings To Ring the Bells for two hours Each Time from the date here of For one year

That will Choose a Moderator Every three Months whose Business shall be to give out the Changes and other Business as Shall be Agreed by a Majority of Voices then Present

That None shall Be admitted a Member of this Society without a Unanimous Vote of the Members then Present and that No member Shall begg Money of any Person In the Tower on Penalty of Being Excluded the Society

and that will Attend To Ring at any Time when the Warden of the Church Aforesaid shall desire it on Penalty of Paying three Shillings for the good of the Society (Provided we Can have the whole Care of the Bells)

That the Members of this Society Shall nott Exceed Eight Persons

and all Differences To be decided By a Majority of Voices

John Dyer
Paul Revere
Josiah Flagg
Barthw. Ballard
Jonathan Law [Low?]
Jona. Brown, junr.
Joseph Snelling

For some of these names there are multiple candidates in the Boston vital records, and I have no candidate at all for Law/Low. But it looks like all of these signers were in their late teens in 1750 except Dyer, born in 1730. Revere, born at the start of 1735, and Flagg, born two years later, were the youngest. (Nonetheless, Revere signed with a fancy paraph.)

Here’s a question I haven’t seen discussed before. Seven boys signed that agreement to ring the bells—but there were eight bells. They seem to have recognized that in limiting their society to “Eight Persons.” Shouldn’t they have brought in someone else? Or did the sexton of Christ Church join them in pulling a bell rope since sextons usually rang the bells in Boston?

The church’s statement that each boy was named 2d. a week suggests that payments might show up in the account books. It would be interesting to see how long the payments and thus the bell-ringing society might have lasted.

TOMORROW: The fading of Boston’s bells.

“A fine set of 8 Bells were brought hither”

On 25 July 1745 the Boston News-Letter reported the arrival of a new type of sound in Boston—or at least the potential for one.

The newspaper said:

Last Week a fine set of 8 Bells were brought hither in a Vessel from Bristol, designed for Dr. [Timothy] CUTLER’s Church at the North Part of this Town: We hear the largest of them is near 1500 Weight, and the whole Set about 7000.

That was Christ Church, now also known as the Old North Church. Its steeple was also the tallest in town. As an Anglican place of worship, it could be fancier than the several Congregationalist meetinghouses with their single bells.

The church’s website states:

Old North has a total of 8 bells, each cast to ring at a different pitch. The treble bell, or #1, is the smallest bell and weighs in at about 620 lbs. The largest is the tenor, or #8, which weighs about 1,500 lbs. Each bell is hung inside a wooden wheel and frame, with ropes attached that extends to the bell-ringing chamber two floors down.

Each bell has a unique message cast in its metal:

• 1: “Abel Rudhall of Gloucester, cast us all, Anno 1744.”
• 2: “Since generosity has opened our mouths, our tongues shall ring aloud its praise. 1744.”
• 3: “The subscription for these bells was begun by Iohn Hammock and Robert Temple, Church Wardens, Anno 1743; completed by Robert Ienkins and Iohn Gould, church Wardens, Anno 1744.”
• 4: “William Shirley, Esq., Governor of the Massachusetts Bay, in New England. Anno 1744.”
• 5: “God preserve the Church of England. 1744.”
• 6: “We are the first ring of bells cast for the British Empire in North America. A.R. 1744.”
• 7: “This Church was founded in the year 1723. Timothy Cutler, DD, the first Rector, A.R. 1744”
• 8: “This peal of eight bells is the gift of a number of generous persons to Christ Church, in Boston, N.E. Anno 1744.”

“A.R.” usually meant “in the year of his reign,” referring to the current king, but here it appears to be used as a synonym for “A.D.”

Abel Rudhall (1714–1760) was the head of a family firm that cast bells in Gloucester from 1684 to 1835. According to Wikipedia, his grandfather had invented a way of “tuning bells by turning on a lathe rather than the traditional chipping method with a chisel.”

Those bells were designed to be rung together, but that required a group of bell-ringers.

TOMORROW: You rang?

Bell-Ringing on Special Occasions

Yesterday I looked at the daily schedule for ringing the bells of Boston’s meeting-houses in the 1740s.

I presume those bells also rang for their primary purpose, summoning congregants for services on Sunday.

Beyond that weekly routine, church sextons rang (or arranged for someone else to ring) the bells on various special occasions.

Bells were supposed to signal town meetings, for example. In September 1747 many North Enders complained that no bell had sounded in their neighborhood that morning, so the citizens agreed to postpone that day’s meeting until 3 P.M. The selectmen gave orders “that the Bells be rung throughout the Town.”

The selectmen also ordered sextons to ring their bells for celebrations: on imperial holidays, in response to news of military victories against the French, and when a high-ranking dignitary came to town.

Church bells rang in mourning, as when Boston received word that George II had died. And each meetinghouse’s bell was rung for a funeral, though on 12 May 1747 the town government moved to regulate that practice:

That for the Burial of any Person within the Town of Boston there shall not be more than the Bells of two Churches toll’d and that but twice at each Church on Penalty of Twenty shillings for each Bell more that shall be Toled at one and the same Funeral to be paid by him that shall order Procure or Tole the same.——

The second or Passing Bell not to exceed one hour and half after the first on Penalty aforesaid.——

That any Person demanding or Receiving any more than the Selectmen shall allow for twice Tolling said Bell at one Funeral shall forfeit the Sum of Twenty shillings.

Boston’s Whigs made a sonorous point on the second anniversary of the Boston Massacre, as the Boston Gazette reported: “the Bells muffled toll’d ’till Ten.”

Of course, church bells had also played a role in that 1770 event. After Pvt. Hugh White clubbed barber’s apprentice Edward Garrick, some of the boy’s friends got into the Old Brick Meeting-House to ring its bell. An unscheduled ringing was a fire alarm, but could also be useful in bringing out a crowd for a riot.

You can find more sources on public bells in eighteenth-century Boston in this article from the Colonial Society of Massachusetts.

TOMORROW: A new sound in Boston.

Bell-Ringing in 1740s Boston

In my research into Thomas Williston, sexton of the Old Brick Meeting-House from the 1740s to the early 1770s, I came across a petition in the town meeting records that gives a taste of daily life in Boston.

On 14 Mar 1744 Williston and four fellow “Sextons & Bellringers” laid out how they rang their churches’ bells each day.

They weren’t ringing every hour—after all, it would be tough to get any big project done if you had to break off each hour to go to the belfry. Instead, they rang at certain hours only.

The town paid Williston to wind the Old Brick clock since telling the time was more of a secular function than a religious one. By the same rule, the town paid the sextons to ring them bells. But those men were paid at different rates.

Specifically:

• Isaac Peirce, Old North Meeting-House – 1 P.M., 9 P.M., 5 A.M. – £4.10s for each quarter of the year.
• Nathaniel Band, New South Meeting-House – 9 P.M., 5 A.M. – 50s. (£2.10s).
• Joseph Simpson, Hollis Street Meeting-House – 9 P.M., 5 A.M., 1 P.M. – £3.15s.
• John Roulstone, Old South Meeting-House – 1 P.M. – 30s. (£1.10s).
• Thomas Williston, Old Brick Meeting-House – 5 A.M., 11 A.M., 9 P.M. – £4.10s.

If I were Simpson, I’d ask why I’m being paid less than Peirce and Williston for ringing the same number of times a day. Not being Simpson, I can imagine some reasons for that difference: an easier bell, less seniority, the church being in a less densely populated part of town and thus serving fewer people. But I’d still ask.

Instead of quibbling among themselves, those five men presented a united front and all together asked the town for more money:

the Petitioners would Represent to the Town that the aforesaid Allowance for the Service aforesaid is so very small, being but about Three pence Old Tenor for each Ringing, that the Petitioners Apprehend they are not by any means Recompenced for their Time & Service and as the Petitioners Allowance is no greater now than has been for about Thirty Years past and Provisions & all Necessarys of Life more than twice as Dear as they were Thirty Years since, they Apprehended the Town would think it reasonable to Increase their Allowance

The meeting empowered the selectmen “to Consider…the Ringing of the Bells, and of the Allowance to be made to the Sextons.” That year’s selectmen included Thomas Hutchinson, Thomas Hancock, and Samuel Adams’s namesake father.

In May 1744 some citizens asked for “the Bell at the New Brick Church at the North End” to be rung at 11 A.M. as well, with its sexton paid. The selectmen took up that question, too. But I can’t find any record of their answer. In May 1745 the town “Voted, that the Bell ringers within the Town be paid for the same as formerly,” so it doesn’t look good for the sextons.

March 1745 had brought the news that “the Old Brick Church Bell…is now broke.” Joseph Marion proposed that the Old South Meeting-House bell be rung more often to fill in the broken bell’s times. The meeting “after some debate” approved that plan. But two days later the town reconsidered and decided the bell at Faneuil Hall, normally rung to signal the start and end of business hours, should be used instead. In May Middlecott Cooke proposed that Boston contribute to the cost of fixing or replacing the Old Brick bell “which was lately broke as he apprehends in the Service of the Town.”

In 1746 Samuel Hunstable asked to be paid for ringing “the Bell of the Meeting house at the westerly part of the Town.” The town meeting put him on the same basis as the other bellringers, but also specified that he increase the number of times a day he rang that bell: 5 and 11 A.M., 1 and 9 P.M.

Finally, in July 1747 the town approved a new payment schedule:

• Ten Pounds old tenor p. Annum, for once a Day.
• Twenty Pounds—p. Ditto for twice a Day and
• Thirty Pounds—p. Ditto for three times a Day.

That was a considerable raise for the sextons, and evidently put them all on the same rate.

TOMORROW: Bell-ringing on occasion.

America 250 Warding off Trumpist Takeover

Nearly a fortnight ago I shared Bert Dunkerly’s Emerging Revolutionary War post about Sestercentennial logos, observing at the end that “the America 250 Facebook feed is being politically partisan and literally divisive.”

A few days later, the nonpartisan U.S. Semiquincentennial Commission in charge of America 250 fired its executive director, as reported in the Wall Street Journal, at Newsweek, and on C.N.N.

The commission stated that this administrator “initiated a security breach of a Commission social media account, attempted to procure the resignations of multiple commissioners by misrepresenting himself as acting on behalf of Congressional leadership, and engaged in multiple other serious and repeated breaches of authority and trust.” It accused him of having “engaged in unauthorized actions related to Commission approved programming, finances, and communications.”

In particular, weeks ago the commission “removed its website and social media platforms” from this administrator’s control. He then accessed those accounts to send out the Facebook post that I called politically partisan and others like it.

That now-former executive director is twenty-five years old. He was previously an assistant to Melania Trump as First Lady and a producer at Fox News. The Trump White House installed him at America 250 and assigned him to organize the U.S. Army parade in Washington, D.C., on Donald Trump’s birthday. The commission never officially voted to approve that parade, which received criticism for many reasons.

Meanwhile, the White House is proceeding with plans to celebrate the 250th anniversary of American independence in 2026 with various other forms of trumpery: gladiatorial games on the White House lawn, videos of historical figures created by theocratic propagandists, and pitting state fairs against each other to be designated by Trump as “most patriotic.”

A Last Word on Boston’s Sedan Chairs

Originally I flagged Alun Withey’s blog post about sedan chairs in Britain just because I thought it had interesting details about daily life in the eighteenth century.

But then I got interested in the question of whether those details also applied in Boston.

Looking for sedan chairs locally led me into the smallpox epidemic of 1764, and thus to the name “Williston” appearing over and over in the selectmen’s records. So I had to figure out who Thomas Williston was.

So, having spent nearly a week on what I’d thought was a one-day topic, I’m coming back around to complete this sedan chair trip with some familiar names.

In 1769 the smallpox virus flared up again in Boston, though not nearly as badly as five years before. On 21 June the selectmen’s minutes reported:

Mr. Thomas Cunningham living near Dr. [Jonathan] Mountforts gives information to the Selectmen, that one Joseph Hading who came to his House on Satturday last, from a Vessel which then arrived here from Philadelphia is suspected of having the Small Pox broke out upon him.

Dr. [Joseph] Warren was in consequence of the above information sent to the said Cunninghams house to examine into the same, who having done it, makes Report that the Person has got the Small Pox.

Whereupon the Sedan was sent to carry him to the Hospital at New Boston.

“Mountforts Corner” was the site of a well-known apothecary shop in the North End. The Jonathan Mountfort running it in 1769 was a son of the man with the same name who’d set it up. When he died in 1781, the business passed to his own son, also named Jonathan (born in 1746 and painted as a kid by the young John Singleton Copley, as shown above courtesy of the Detroit Institute of Arts). That third Jonathan Mountfort died only four years later, but the name survived for at least another decade.

In late July 1769 the selectmen sent the town sedan chair to carry more smallpox victims to the province hospital: “Mr. Jabez Searl,” “a Child a Daughter of Abijah Lewis,” and “Capt. Timothy Parker…between the Hours of Two & Three OClock in the morning.” (Others, such as “a Negro Woman Servant to Mr. William Wingfield,” were simply ordered to be removed to the hospital, and it’s not clear how that happened.)

These people were surprised to be catching smallpox. They must not have volunteered to be inoculated with what doctors believed was a mild strain. Health statistics stretching back decades showed that contracting the disease “in the natural way” was more deadly than being inoculated. And indeed, by 9 August, Searl and Parker had both died.

A few months later, the army drummer Thomas Walker was carried to the hospital in what he called “the Machine for the Conveniency of Removing the Sick.” He didn’t have the smallpox; instead, he’d been injured in the fight between soldiers and ropemakers on 2 Mar 1770. I wonder if that “Machine” was the town sedan chair or if the army had its own equipment.

My next milestone in the story of sedan chairs in Boston comes in 1799. In that year the town established its first board of health. Paul Revere was board president, the silversmith’s highest civic office. On 8 Apr 1800, the selectmen’s records say: “On application from the Board of Health, order’d that the Sedan Chairs belonging to the Town be delivered to them for their use”.

Thus, in eighteenth-century Boston, sedan chairs were ambulances. We can find a few individual sedan owners in the records, but they appear to have been in poor health. The appearance of a sedan chair on your street signified not luxury but illness.

Thomas Williston, Doorkeeper

Yesterday I introduced Thomas Williston, sexton of Boston’s Old Brick (First) Meeting-House starting in the 1740s.

Williston also took on jobs for the town of Boston. Some of those were tied to his work as a church sexton, such as winding his meetinghouse’s clock and burying the dead. Others were civic tasks, as in managing the weekly traffic of farm wagons at the marketplace.

In June 1754 the town government offered another job: “Mr. Thomas Williston is appointed to attend the Select men in the room of Mr. John Savel who by reason of Age and Infirmities cannot attend the business.” Williston was also given “the care and Oversight of all the Watches in the Town.” And he was still the sexton at the Old Brick.

Thomas Williston’s official title was doorkeeper at Faneuil Hall. As such, he continued to patrol the marketplace, arranged to illuminate the building after the capture of Montreal in 1760, and the next year took down “the Potts & other Iron Ware” from the walls and hung “the Town Ladders” there instead.

But being doorkeeper also involved a lot of running around Boston. In 1758 the selectmen empowered Williston to enforce the town’s newly revised by-laws, including speed limits on vehicles. They sent him out on the water to warn ship captains against unloading “French neutrals” or possible smallpox patients. Along with Deacon William Larrabee, Williston was assigned to warn newcomers out of town—though he did that for only a few months, Robert Love’s Warnings reports. At different times Williston summoned new officeholders, tax collectors, and heads of fire companies to meet with the selectmen at Faneuil Hall.

For the annual inspection of the schools, Williston contacted the many respected gentlemen chosen for that committee. He also visited the two grammar-school masters to obtain the names of the graduating scholars so the selectmen could invite their parents to a dinner at Faneuil Hall. (Students leaving the three writing schools didn’t get a party.)

Some of Williston’s assignments overlapped with his roles as gravedigger, bellringer, and watchman. For example, in March 1761 he informed tomb owners they were responsible for paying to repair a wall of the burying ground. But he could also be told to deliver the seals to the newly elected sealers of leather, inspect leaning chimneys, and warn property owners about dangerous drains.

Williston’s busiest months on record were during the smallpox epidemic of 1764. He appears over and over in the selectmen’s minutes: tracking down reported patients, moving some to the hospital at New Boston in the town sedan chair, installing flags and guards (including his brother Ichabod) outside quarantined homes, hiring and dismissing nurses, smoking homes and clothing, and burying the dead under special arrangements to contain the disease. Thomas, his brother John, his other brother Ichabod, and Ichabod’s wife Elizabeth all got extra pay during those months.

After army regiments arrived in Boston in October 1768, Thomas Williston had the task of telling British officers that the selectmen wanted to speak to them—a potentially volatile clash of authorities. In November he summoned two officers accused of having “insulted & interrupted” the Dock Watch; those officers apologized for being drunk. In July 1770 “Mr. Williston, Door-keeper to the Select-men,” carried a letter from a town committee to Capt. Thomas Preston in the town jail. In September, some sick soldiers came back from Castle Island to enter “the Hospital in the Common”; the selectmen had Williston summon regimental surgeon Charles Hall for consultation.

In sum, Thomas Williston was well known in Boston, the liaison between the town’s highest elected officials and citizens of all sorts. He was based at Faneuil Hall and the Old Brick Meeting-House, but he could show up anywhere in the course of his duties.

On 18 Feb 1773, Isaiah Thomas’s Massachusetts Spy reported the death of Thomas Williston, “sexton of the Old-Brick, and doorkeeper of Faneuil hall.” He was buried in the Granary Burying Ground with his wife Sarah, who had died on Christmas Day in 1771.

Four days later the selectmen met in Faneuil Hall. Those men, “taking into consideration who was a proper Person to fill up the place of Mr. Thomas Williston, who for a number of years had attended them on the Towns Business; Agreed to give the Offer of the office to Mr. William Barrett Sexton of Dr. [Samuel] Coopers Church” on Brattle Street.

Williston’s successor as sexton of the First Meeting-house and, as of 31 March, as a town-approved gravedigger was Josiah Carter. As I discussed here, he had also been a town watchman. However, Carter lasted in that sexton’s job less than two years after Williston’s demise.

Thomas Williston, Sexton

Thomas Williston (1710–1773) was one of colonial Boston’s busiest public servants in the mid-eighteenth century.

Under the prevailing ethos, that wasn’t the status a working- or middling-class man was supposed to aspire to. Society admired “independence,” which meant running one’s own farm or business well enough to support a family, employ others, and own real property. It didn’t view doing tasks for a salary as ideal. But that’s how Thomas Williston worked for most of his adult life.

On 21 Aug 1715, five-year-old Thomas’s parents brought him to Boston’s First Meeting-House to be baptized along with four siblings. It looks like their mother had just been admitted to the meeting to allow that rite. That belated baptism began a lifelong link between Thomas Williston and that church, called the Old Brick.

On 3 July 1733 the minister of the Old Brick married Thomas Williston and Sarah Wormell. Thomas became a full member of that meeting in November 1734, just in time for the baptism of the couple’s first child, born in January 1735. Sarah joined two years later.

Thomas and Sarah had eight more children baptized at the Old Brick between 1738 and 1752, coming in regularly every two or three years. In the “too much information” category, the last five of their children (four births, two being twins) all had birthdays between 20 and 30 August, so we know Sarah Williston had a regular conception window.

I haven’t found sure evidence of what profession Thomas Williston was trained in. (In Robert Love’s Warnings, Cornelia Hughes Dayton identified him as a cordwainer, or shoemaker. However, in the 1748 deposition of “Thomas Williston, cordwainer,” published by the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, the deponent identified himself as fifty years old rather than thirty-eight. So is this the same man?)

In 1741 Thomas Williston became the sexton of the First Meeting-house. He maintained the building, ordered supplies, and carried out errands at the direction of the minister and church leaders. In 1749 the congregation had a big business meeting that ran long. Among its decisions were “that ten Pounds old Tenor be an Addition to Mr Thomas Williston’s Salary as Sexton” and that “Mr Williston should have a list of the large committee and warn said Committee to meet at the adjournment of this Meeting.”

Sextons didn’t get paid much. Indeed, they were proverbially poor. So it’s no surprise that Williston looked for other sources of income. On 9 Mar 1742 the Boston town meeting considered his petition:

Setting forth, That he had been Sexton of said Meeting house the Year past and had Constantly Attended his Duty and it has been an Ancient Custom that the said Sexton should have the Benefit of Publishing the Banns of Matrimony when Capable and most of the Congregation are desirous that he should have the Benefit of Publishing if he had the Order of the Town Meeting for the same

That petition is in fact the earliest evidence I’ve found of Williston’s employment. The meeting had “Considerable Debate” on his request to collect those marriage fees and then voted that “the said Petition should be Dismissed.”

Williston continued to look for public employment. In 1743 the selectmen appointed him to stop “Carts Trucks &c.” from outside Boston from disrupting the market at Faneuil Hall and to keep tents off the Common during militia training day. He worked as a gravedigger—a common task for sextons—and a town watchman.

In 1744 Boston paid Williston £5 Old Tenor for “Winding up the Clock of the Old Brick Church the year past”—though that clock was on the meetinghouse roof, it was a public resource. In 1749 the town tasked him with tracking down the relatives of corpses that had been unearthed during the expansion of King’s Chapel.

The steady job of a sexton looked good enough that Thomas’s younger brother John became “Sexton and Bellringer” at the Old North Meeting-house in March 1747, and their younger brother Ichabod sexton at King’s Chapel from 1754 to 1761. Ichabod also joined the town watch until June 1768 when he was replaced for neglecting that duty.

TOMORROW: On the town payroll.

Boston’s “Sedan for Removing the Sick”

Lining up the sparse mentions of sedan chairs in colonial Boston reveals a clear pattern: they were used to transport sick people.

In 1674 the Rev. John Oxenbridge of the First Meetinghouse suffered a stroke while preaching the Thursday Lecture and “was carried home in a Cedan.”

Thirteen years later, Judge Samuel Sewall wrote in his diary: “Capt. Gerrish is carried in a Sedan to the Wharf and so takes Boat for Salem, to see if there he may find amendment of his Distemper.”

In May 1715, the newly reappointed governor Joseph Dudley was bed-ridden with gout. At the end of the month, Sewall wrote, he came to Boston and “was carried from Mr. Dudley’s to the Town-House in Cous. [William? Jeremiah?] Dummer’s Sedan: but twas too tall for the Stairs, so was fain to be taken out near the top of them.”

Yesterday I listed five times sedan chairs were advertised for sale in eighteenth-century Boston newspapers. I don’t think it was coincidence that four of those ads were estate sales, and the fifth seller died within two years. Those men might have acquired sedans as they or their wives became too ill to walk around.

Boston also had a public sedan chair, operated by the town itself. In March 1739, the Boston selectmen took note of “A Sedan, or Chair belonging to the Hon. Edward Hutchinson Esqr. which the Town has had the loan of for a considerable time.” One of those local elected officials was Thomas Hutchinson, and the sedan owner was his uncle. The selectmen decided that the chair “be effectually Repaired, and made fit for Use, in the best and frugal manner.”

That sedan chair became part of Boston’s public-health infrastructure. On 4 Jan 1757 the selectmen voted “that the Sedan for Removing the Sick be broke to Peices” and “Mr. [Isaac] Cazneau make a good Serviceable Sedan at the Charge of the Town.” Cazneau was a saddler.

In 1760 the Massachusetts General Court bought land in the sparsely populated western point of the Boston peninsula called “New Boston” for a new hospital. Four years later, the town suffered a serious smallpox epidemic. That appears in the selectmen’s records with an uptick in orders for the sedan chair to carry people to that hospital.

• 16 Jan 1764: “Information was given the Select men by Dr. [Phillip] Cast, that One Hallet who came from Newfoundland a Month past, and Boards at Mrs. Nicholsons in Fitches Alley, has the Symptoms of the Small Pox upon him whereupon the Select men endeavour’d to perswade him to consent to his being removed, and having obtain’d such consent, he was accordingly removed in the Sedan to the Province Hospital at New Boston.”
• 20 Jan 1764: “The Select men having prevailed with Mr. Adams to consent that his Child should be removed from his House to the Hospital at New Boston, they at about 12. OClock that Night took Mr. Williston and a number of hands with the Sedan to said House, when they received the Wet Nurse and Child and carried them to said Hospital”.

Similar entries appeared through August of that year.

TOMORROW: “Mr. Williston.”

(The picture above shows a sedan chair used to carry medical patients in La Paz, Bolivia, now in the Wellcome Collection in London.)

Sedan Chairs in Boston

Years back, I had reason to look into whether colonial Boston had sedan chairs.

That question was complicated by how colonists used the term chair to refer to small two-wheeled carriages. Writing in London, Dr. Samuel Johnson included among his definitions of the word chair “A vehicle born by men; a sedan.” But the American antiquarian Alice Morse Earle cautioned in Stage-Coach and Tavern Days, “The chair so often named in letters, wills, etc., was not a sedan-chair, but was much like a chaise without a top.“

Bostonians knew what sedans were. Back in 1646 a privateer captain named Thomas Cromwell had presented Gov. John Winthrop with a luxurious chair he had captured from a Spanish ship. The governor described it as “a very fair new sedan (worth forty or fifty pounds where it was made, but of no use to us).” Then the colony needed to appease Charles de Menou d’Aulnay, the French governor at Louisbourg, so Winthrop sent off the sedan chair. It was the right gift for a European aristocrat, but “no use” in Boston.

Fashions changed, but Boston remained a compact town with high labor costs, a relatively egalitarian society, and a legacy of Puritan distaste for too much luxury. Sedan chairs never caught on.

I searched my eighteenth-century Boston newspaper databases for the word sedan. Most hits referred to the French city, some to gossipy reports on the London elite, and lots to other words entirely (still a few bugs in the system). From 1700 to 1785, there were only five mentions of sedan chairs.

• July 1729 auction at the house of Col. Edward Chearnley—“One Sedan.” Chearnley was selling off a large number of luxury goods, including books and musical instruments. He died two years later on Barbados.
• June 1745 auction at the house of James Hubbard, which another newspaper said was from “the Estate of Francis Righton”—“a Sedan.”
• December 1753 and March 1754 sale of goods from “the late Ebenezer Holmes of Boston, Merchant, deceased”—“a very handsom Sedan.”
• May 1763 sale from “the late Major-General [Edward] Whitmore”—“a Sedan Chair lin’d with Velvet.” Whitmore was an army officer from Britain who had drowned at Portsmouth two years earlier.
• February 1769 sale from “the late Mr. John Smith”—“A handsome Sedan Chair to be sold very cheap.”

No chairmen advertised their services, the way stagecoach owners did. No local coachmaker or importer advertised sedan chairs for sale. One of the notices for the Francis Righton estate sale didn’t even bother to mention the sedan among the goods offered. In sum, all signs indicate there wasn’t much public demand for those contraptions.

Nevertheless, the town of Boston owned some sedan chairs.

TOMORROW: The knock at the door.

Sedan Chairs in Britain

Last month Dr. Alun Withey wrote about the business of sedan chairs—small enclosed seats carried through city streets by two or four serving men.

Writing from a London perspective, Withey says:

The use of sedan chairs was heavily regulated throughout the eighteenth century, with strict rules about pricing and location. Under Acts of Parliament, including one in 1800 under George III, operators of sedan chairs – called ‘Chairmen’ – in large towns such as London, Edinburgh and Dublin needed to have a licence from town authorities.

Pricing, of course, varied according to the distance and duration of the journey. The physical effort involved in carrying a (potentially corpulent elite!) person, in a large box, several feet off the ground must have been huge. Inclines and hills, uneven pavements or muddy roads, moving laterally or stopping to avoid obstacles – not to mention the distance – all added to the strain.

The customer expected speed, no matter what the weather or conditions. This was a full-body workout. Try walking up and down the length of your gym carrying a 30kg dumbbell in each hand for 30 mins, wearing heavy clothes and a hat and that might begin to give an idea of the experience.

They certainly suited the urban environment. In crowded city streets they could move around more easily than coaches, possibly even reaching their destinations more quickly. Like modern taxi cabs they were generally single use, from one destination to another, rather than return journeys. But town regulations suggest that they could also be booked by the day to include multiple journeys.

The Glasgow Almanack of 1795 listed prices for common trips across the city. A basic price of sixpence was applied before you even went anywhere. Every mile from the ‘Cross of Glasgow’, for example was charged at two shillings. Prices for specific locations varied from sixpence to two shillings, based on the distance but also perhaps the nature of the roads and hills. A ‘chairman’ was able to charge sixpence for every hour they had to wait for a customer once engaged, and extra fees applied to trips made between 3pm and 11pm.

In sharp contrast to those large cities on the British Isles, Boston didn’t try to regulate sedan chairs and chairmen. My search through the official records of the town and the colony turned up no attempt to control their operation and pricing. There was never a need.

TOMORROW: Addressing the chair.

A New Ministry Off to the Races

At the History of Parliament blog, the Georgian Lords welcomed Ioannes Chountis de Fabbri of the University of Aberdeen to discuss the equestrian genesis of the Marquess of Rockingham’s ministry:

By the spring of 1765, George III was determined to be rid of his overbearing minister, George Grenville, who had been in office since April 1763. The task of taking the pulse of the political nation, fell to the king’s uncle, William Augustus, duke of Cumberland. . . .

Cumberland had toured the great country houses in the summer of 1764, including Chatsworth, Wentworth Woodhouse and Woburn, discovering that the Whigs remained unenthusiastic about a return to power without [William] Pitt. The stalemate seemed unbreakable. Yet the solution would not be found in the names listed in the London Gazette, but in the pages of the Newmarket Calendar.

By the 1750s and 1760s horse racing had become a central ritual of aristocratic and political life. Already favoured by Charles II in the seventeenth century, by the 1740s Newmarket was the undisputed capital of the turf. The Racing Calendar, first published in 1727 by John Cheny, recorded results and pedigrees, turning the turf into a semi-official world of statistics and reputations. Ascot, founded in 1711 by Queen Anne, had by the 1760s become a highlight of the London season, attracting large crowds and royal patronage. (Morton, 56–61) Both courses were more than sporting venues: they were theatres of status, where political alliances were cultivated over wagers, where a minister could be sounded out between heats, and where a successful stable enhanced a nobleman’s standing. As one contemporary put it, ‘the turf is the true parliament of our nobility’. . . .

By 1765, Rockingham was already a figure of considerable weight within the Whig aristocracy, though not yet tested as a statesman. Born into immense wealth and heir to Wentworth Woodhouse in Yorkshire, he inherited his title in December 1750. In politics he aligned with the ‘Old Corps’ Whigs grouped around Newcastle, and from 1752 served as a gentleman of the Bedchamber to George II and George III, before resigning in 1762 in protest over Newcastle’s dismissal. . . . Like Cumberland, Rockingham was a passionate breeder and owner of racehorses, and he became known as ‘the Racing Marquess’. (Albemarle, i. 165)

Cumberland was equally at home on the turf, and in June 1765 he held court at Ascot, where the outlines of a new administration were hammered out. As well as Rockingham, the new ministry was to include Augustus Henry Fitzroy, 3rd duke of Grafton, a great-grandson of Charles II. Not yet 30, Grafton brought youth and royal blood; Rockingham brought wealth, influence, and respectability. Their conversations at Ascot and Newmarket were, as Albemarle noted, ‘held not in the closet, but at the races’. (i. 199) . . . Pamphleteers and satirists delighted in the horse racing connexion: ‘From Jockeys to Ministers’, they jibed…

The new ministry took office on 13 July 1765. The Duke of Cumberland hosted its meetings at his London home and country estate. But at the end of October he died, only forty-four years old. Rockingham, Grafton, Newcastle, and their colleagues rode on, but their coalition held together for only slightly more than one year.

During that time, Rockingham repealed the Stamp Act for North America. For the protesting colonists, that restored their loyalty to the British constitution. It did not, however, solve what London saw as the government’s revenue problem.

(The equestrian portrait of the Duke of Cumberland above was made in China, probably in the 1750s, for the British market. It is now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.)

The First American Bill of Rights

On 27 Oct 1774 the Philadelphia printers William and Thomas Bradford issued a book on behalf of the Continental Congress, which had broken up the previous day.

It was titled:

Extracts from the Votes and Proceedings of the American Continental Congress, held at Philadelphia, on the Fifth of September, 1774. Containing, the Bill of Rights, a List of Grievances, Occasional Resolves, the Association, an Address to the People of Great-Britain, and a Memorial to the Inhabitants of the British American colonies.

The September date was when that congress convened.

The “Bill of Rights” in that booklet has become known as just one part of the Declaration and Resolves of the First Continental Congress. Americans of 1774 used the “Bill of Rights” term, however. On 2 December the Massachusetts Provincial Congress voted that “the American bill of rights therein contained, appears to be formed with the greatest ability and judgment.”

Here then is the first Bill of Rights adopted by representatives of almost all the colonies that would become independent:

That the inhabitants of the English Colonies in North America, by the immutable laws of nature, the principles of the English Constitution, and the several Charters or Compacts, have the following Rights:

Resolved, N. C. D. [Nemine Contradicente, or with no dissenting votes] 1. That they are entitled to life, liberty, and property, and they have never ceded to any sovereign power whatever a right to dispose of either without their consent.

Resolved, N. C. D. 2. That our ancestors, who first settled these Colonies, were at the time of their emigration from the mother country, entitled to all the rights, liberties, and immunities of free and natural born subjects, within the Realm of England.

Resolved, N. C. D. 3. That by such emigration they by no means forfeited, surrendered, or lost any of those rights, but that they were, and their descendants now are, entitled to the exercise and enjoyment of all such of them, as their local and other circumstances enable them to exercise and enjoy.

Resolved, 4. That the foundation of English Liberty, and of all free Government, is a right in the people to participate in their Legislative Council: and as the English Colonists are not represented, and from their local and other circumstances cannot be properly represented in the British Parliament, they are entitled to a free and exclusive power of legislation in their several Provincial Legislatures, where their right of Representation can alone be preserved, in all cases of taxation and internal polity, subject only to the negative of their Sovereign, in such manner as has been heretofore used and accustomed: But from the necessity of the case, and a regard to the mutual interest of both Countries, we cheerfully consent to the operation of such Acts of the British Parliament, as are, bona fide, restrained to the regulation of our external commerce, for the purpose of securing the commercial advantages of the whole Empire to the mother country, and the commercial benefits of its respective members, excluding every idea of Taxation, internal or external, for raising a revenue on the subjects in America, without their consent.

Resolved, N. C. D. 5. That the respective Colonies are entitled to the common law of England, and more especially to the great and inestimable privilege of being tried by their peers of the vicinage, according to the course of that law.

Resolved, 6. That they are entitled to the benefit of such of the English statutes as existed at the time of their Colonization; and which they have, by experience, respectively found to be applicable to their several local and other circumstances.

Resolved, N. C. D. 7. That these, his Majesty’s Colonies, are likewise entitled to all the immunities and privileges granted and confirmed to them by Royal Charters, or secured by their several codes of Provincial Laws.

Resolved, N. C. D. 8. That they have a right peaceably to assemble, consider of their grievances, and Petition the King; and that all prosecutions, prohibitory Proclamations, and commitments for the same, are illegal.

Resolved, N. C. D. 9. That the keeping a Standing Army in these Colonies, in times of peace, without the consent of the Legislature of that Colony, in which such Army is kept, is against law.

Resolved, N. C. D. 10. It is indispensably necessary to good Government, and rendered essential by the English Constitution, that the constituent branches of the Legislature be independent of each other; that, therefore, the exercise of Legislative power in several Colonies, by a Council appointed, during pleasure, by the Crown, is unconstitutional, dangerous, and destructive to the freedom of American Legislation.

All and each of which the aforesaid Deputies, in behalf of themselves and their constituents, do claim, demand, and insist on, as their indubitable rights and liberties; which cannot be legally taken from them, altered or abridged by any power whatever, without their own consent, by their Representatives in their several Provincial Legislatures.

Joseph Galloway later told Parliament that because voting was done by colony, those unanimous “N.C.D.” votes didn’t mean every delegate at the Congress agreed—only that the majority of every delegation agreed.

The Extracts book was widely reprinted in North America and Britain. But when the Second Continental Congress voted for independence, these resolves based on a colonial relationship to Great Britain were no longer operative and the states started from scratch.

Nonetheless, they are an interesting snapshot of what American Patriots of late 1774 saw as fundamental rights: elected legislatures controlling taxation, rule of law, trial by jury, right of assembly, and no standing armies sent into their communities without their consent.