Alarming News from Across the Atlantic

On 21 June 1770, 250 years ago today, the Boston News-Letter reported startling news from London. So startling that Richard Draper added a two-page “Extraordinary” sheet to his newspaper.

On Monday the 18th, Capt. James Hall had arrived from England with copies of the London Public Advertiser describing how the imperial capital had reacted to receiving news of the Boston Massacre back on 5 March.

The first word had reached London on 22 April. The next day, the Earl of Hillsborough, Secretary of State for North America, summoned Sir Francis Bernard, still officially the royal governor of Massachusetts, for consultation.

That evening the London newspapers published the Boston Gazette’s account of the killing, a statement from the Boston town meeting, and a letter from the Whigs to former governor Thomas Pownall. All of those sources of course blamed the royal authorities.

On 23 April, a Sunday night, there was a “Cabinet Council” about the news. The next day, Lord Hillsborough met with colonial governors and agents in a “grand levée at his house.” Those meetings gave rise to several rumors about what the government might do next: appoint Sir Jeffery Amherst commander-in-chief in North America, send more troops to Boston, repeal the tea tax before resigning? The tea tax was the last of the Townshend duties, and ending it would have been a total victory for the non-importation movement. (None of those things happened.)

Parliament met on 26 April. Member Barlow Trecothick, also a London alderman with close links to the Boston business community, formally asked the ministry to share all communications about Boston. Reportedly Hillsborough and Lord North had promised him a formal vote would not be necessary, but he “did not chuse to trust their assurances.” The ensuing debate included Edmund Burke, Isaac Barré, George Grenville, and others. It ended with agreement that the government would share the information with names redacted.

As part of that discussion, the London newspapers (still dashing out most names because it wasn’t clearly legal yet to report parliamentary debates) quoted Viscount Barrington, Secretary of War, as saying that Boston magistrates didn’t support the troops, and:

That the Government is a Democracy, and all civil Officers chosen by the People,—that the Council is a democratical Part of that Democracy,—that in his Opinion a Royal Council is necessary for a more proper Division of Powers of Government.

Such a Council appointed in London would be part of the Massachusetts Government Act of 1774.

Then on 28 April more documents arrived from Boston. Some were in the same vein as before. A letter from Lt. Col. William Dalrymple reportedly said Bostonians “had absolutely DETERMINED to risk their lives in an Attack upon the Military; in order to revenge the cruel and wanton Massacre of their Countrymen”—which is not what that army colonel would have ever written.

But the bombshell printed in the 28 April Public Advertiser, and reprinted in the 21 June Boston News-Letter after it went back across the Atlantic, was the “Case of Capt. Thomas Preston of the 29th Regiment.” This 2,000-word account of the Massacre started with complaints of Bostonians being mean the soldiers, proceeded through a detailed account of the shooting on King Street that blamed the violent crowd, and concluded with warnings of the slanted local press. (The London newspapers, and thus the News-Letter, omitted Preston’s final paragraphs asking for a pardon.)

The Boston Whigs were upset because back in March Preston had sent the Boston Gazette a short letter thanking the town and praising its justice system. Even as he did so, those politicians realized, the captain must have been preparing this very different message for Customs Commissioner John Robinson to carry to London.

TOMORROW: The anger of the people.

Deciphering the Boston Whigs’ Conspiracy Rumors

What with The Saga of the Brazen Head, the January 1775 brawl between British army officers and watchmen, the federal government shutdown, and ordinary news, I’ve had to neglect what was happening in Boston in 1768 and 1769.

So here’s what the Whigs reported on 27 Dec 1768:

A report is current, that Mr. Alderman T—k, has procured a copy of the will or instruments whereby C—m—r P——, gave to the late C. T——d, the reversion of an estate represented to him as worth £50,000—which he intends to produce in the House of C—m—s next s—s—n, in order to shew what secret influence had been exerted for the procurement of an American B—d of C—s—ms.

It might also be of special service to present that H—e with the picture of a certain lady of pleasure, whose influence was powerful enough to procure £500 a year for a B. that those guardians of the people might see how the monies taken from Americans is charmed away and applied not for the lessening of the national debt but for the support of M——l w—h—s and p—si—s.

Well!

Let’s translate.

• “Mr. Alderman T—k” was Barlow Trecothick, a leader of the London merchants who did business with the North American colonies. He had trained with and married a daughter of the late Boston potentate Charles Apthorp. Massachusetts merchants considered him one of their best friends in Parliament. They didn’t know that on 15 November Trecothick told the House of Commons, “I look upon America as deluded.”
• “C—m—r P——” was Charles Paxton, one of the Commissioners of Customs in Boston (shown here). He was the most unpopular of those five men at this time, having worked at the port’s Customs house for years before getting the big promotion of overseeing the service across North America.
• “the late C. T——d” was Charles Townshend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer in London until his unexpected death in September 1767. He designed the Townshend Acts, which imposed duties on certain goods shipped from Britain to North America in order to pay for colonial administrators’ salaries.
• “in the House of C—m—s next s—s—n”: in the House of Commons next session.
• “American B—d of C—s—ms”: American Board of Customs.

In sum, that first sentence suggested there was evidence that Paxton had bribed Townshend with a big inheritance to enlarge the Customs bureaucracy in the colonies and, presumably, put Paxton on its governing board.

It’s true that Paxton was in London while Townshend wrote the new law. However, the sparse surviving correspondence between the two men shows no friendship or close collaboration. Townshend was already talking about reforming American colonial government before Paxton arrived.

Trecothick never produced the rumored evidence of corruption. Indeed, he may have had no idea about how the Boston Whigs were invoking his name in spreading this conspiracy theory.

In the second sentence above:

• “that H—e”: the House of Commons.
• “a certain lady of pleasure”: no idea.
• “£500 a year for a B.”: a Board? a Baronet? (Gov. Francis Bernard was made a baronet in 1769, and his pension indeed turned out to be £500.)
• “M——l w—h—s and p—si—s”: ministerial whores and pensioners.

Again, the conspiracy theory behind this accusation was never put to the public test of a Parliamentary inquiry or legal trial.

Underneath that accusatory propaganda was a serious political issue. The Townshend duties were enacted by a Parliament where the colonists had no representatives, and they were earmarked in part to insulate royal appointees from colonial pressure through regular salaries. Charles Townshend really did seek to increase London’s power in the colonies, and Charles Paxton really was one of the bureaucrats charged with and benefiting from that effort.

“The right of representation and taxation always went together”

Having spent a week on the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights, I’m going to jump back to 250 years ago and Parliament’s debate over what to do about the Stamp Act.

That law was clearly unenforceable in North America. The Marquess of Rockingham’s government was already working with Barlow Trecothick, spokesman for London’s merchants doing business with North America, to revise it. (The Journal of the American Revolution recently published an article with more about Trecothick’s role.)

But simply repealing the tax might suggest that the ministry thought it was as unconstitutional as Americans had complained. And Parliament could not countenance some of the colonists’ irregular methods of protest. Like the riots. And the unauthorized assemblies.

On 27 Jan 1766, according to Horace Walpole’s Memoirs of the Reign of King George the Third, an M.P. submitted the Stamp Act Congress’s petition against the law to the House of Commons. The Chancellor of the Exchequer asked for the petition to be withdrawn as coming from a body with no standing.

Mr. [William] Pitt warmly undertook the protection of the petition, which he affirmed was innocent, dutiful, and respectful. . . . He painted the Americans as people who, in an ill-fated hour, had left this country to fly from the Star Chamber and High Commission Courts. The desert smiled upon them in comparison of this country. It was the evil genius of this country that had riveted amongst them this union, now called dangerous and federal. . . . This country upon occasion has its meetings, and nobody objects to them; but the names of six or eight Americans are to be big with danger.

He could not guess by the turn of the debate, whether the Administration intended lenity or not. To him lenity was recommended by every argument. He would emphatically hear the Colonies upon this their petition. The right of representation and taxation always went together, and should never be separated. Except for the principles of Government, records were out of the question. “You have broken,” continued he, “the original compact if you have not a right of taxation.” The repeal of the Stamp Act was an inferior consideration to receiving this petition.

Sir Fletcher Norton [shown above] rose with great heat, and said, He could hardly keep his temper at some words that had fallen from the right honourable gentleman. He had said, that the original compact had been broken between us and America, if the House had not the right of taxation. Pitt rose to explain—Norton continued: “The gentleman now says, I mistook his words; I do not now understand them.”

Pitt interrupted him angrily, and said, “I did say the Colony compact would be broken—and what then?”

Norton replied, “The gentleman speaks out now, and I understand him; and if the House go along with me, the gentleman will go to another place.”

Walpole’s footnote explained that Norton meant, “To the bar of the House, whither members are ordered when they violate the rules or privileges of Parliament.” However, Maj. Thomas James, observing his first parliamentary session, thought he meant that Pitt “ought to have been sent to the Tower.”

Pitt at this looked with the utmost contempt, tossed up his chin, and cried, “Oh! oh!—oh! oh!”

“I will bear that from no man,” said Norton; “changing their place did not make Englishmen change their allegiance. I say the gentleman sounds the trumpet to rebellion; or would he have strangers in the gallery go away with these his opinions? He has chilled my blood at the idea.”

“The gentleman,” rejoined Pitt, “says I have chilled his blood: I shall be glad to meet him in any place with the same opinions, when his blood is warmer.”

In the end, Pitt’s approach gained only a handful of supporters, including Col. Isaac Barré and a new M.P. named Edmund Burke. The House set aside the Americans’ petition and moved on to other matters.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, the government continued to look for a way out of the Stamp Act.

The Marquess of Rockingham’s Stamp Act Revisions

I’m going to break from the campus debate over revising now-problematic symbols to catch up with developments in 1765 concerning the Stamp Act.

When we last left the Marquess of Rockingham, the sudden death of the king’s uncle, the Duke of Cumberland, had left him as the leader of the British government.

Rockingham’s allies in Parliament had opposed the Stamp Act, so he had no stake in maintaining the previous administration’s law. On the other hand, he didn’t want to undermine his own authority or the authority of the Crown by appearing to back down to mob violence or selfish colonists who didn’t want to do their part in maintaining the British Empire.

On 7 November, the London alderman Barlow Trecothick wrote to Rockingham about the problems with the American Stamp Act. Trecothick was linked by business and marriage to the Apthorp family of Boston and New York, and had become the voice of the Caribbean trade in London—a very big part of the imperial economy. With Trecothick’s input, Rockingham started to shape what he hoped would be a compromise that everyone could accept.

By late November, according to John L. Bullion’s 1992 study of how the British ministry reacted to the anti-Stamp protests, the marquess wrote out a memorandum proposing three revisions to the Stamp Act that answered American objections while preserving the tax itself:

• Disputes arising from the law would be handled in local colonial courts, not the Vice Admiralty court in Halifax, and thus be subject to trial by jury.
• People could pay the tax in legal notes of their colonies, not just in scarce gold and silver coins.
• Merchants would not have to use stamped paper for trade within the British Empire—a point Trecothick had pushed particularly.

Those changes responded to three of the four common complaints about the law. But they wouldn’t have addressed the issue that would in a couple of years come to be known as “taxation without representation”—whether the Parliament in London could levy taxes on British colonies.

Rockingham and Trecothick appear to have developed a plan in which the alderman and the London business community would propose those ideas, and the first minister would consider them seriously and decide that for the cause of imperial trade the government could adopt them. In the first week of December, Trecothick got the ball rolling by presiding over a meeting of top merchants doing business with the West Indies.

But Rockingham’s proposals never went before Parliament. A few days after Trecothick’s meeting, London learned that the situation in America was even worse than people had feared.

TOMORROW: Hearings in the House.

“About Five Hundred Men, all on Horseback, and having white Staves”

When Boston 1775 last left Connecticut stamp agent Jared Ingersoll, he’d been hanged and burned in effigy in half a dozen towns, a crowd had surrounded his New Haven home, and he’d promised not to carry out the Stamp Act if it proved unpopular. Which, frankly, it already appeared to be.

On 10 September, Ingersoll wrote a long letter to the Connecticut Gazette pointing out that he owed his post to the recommendation of London alderman Barlow Trecothick, known as a friend to American interests. Both he and Trecothick had argued against the Stamp Act. So surely they couldn’t have conspired to pass that law just to enrich themselves, right?

Again, when the measure of making ye Appointments in America was thus general [i.e., non-partisan], & come into as generally, will any body think that any one of the persons concerned Imagined he betrayed his Country by falling in with the measure? Perhaps at this time, when popular rage runs so very high, some may think the friends of America mistook their own & their Countrys true Interest, when they listened to these overtures, but who can think their intentions were ill?

And wasn’t it better for American colonists if other Americans collected the tax, rather than some appointee from Britain?

That didn’t convince Ingersoll’s opponents. An item in the 16 Sept 1765 Boston Gazette referred to him as “Gared Negrosoul,” rhetoric sinking low enough to cause collateral damage.

Ingersoll hoped that the Connecticut legislature could give him some cover before symbolic violence gave way to real damage. In yet another long letter, written 23 September, he reported:

Having received repeated and undoubted Intelligence of a Design formed by a great Number of People in the eastern Parts of the Colony to come and obtain from me a Resignation of the above mentioned Office, I delivered to the Governor [Thomas Fitch], on the 17th, at New-Haven, in his way to meet the General Assembly at Hartford on the 19th, a written Information, acquainting him with my said Intelligence, and desiring of him such Aid and Assistance as the emergency of the Affair should require. On the 18th I rode with his Honour and some other Gentlemen, Members of the Assembly, in hopes of being able to learn more particularly the Time and Manner of the intended Attack.

About eighteen Miles from hence, on the Hartford Road, we met two Men on Horseback with pretty long and large new made white Staves in their Hands, whom I suspected to be part of the main Body. I accordingly stopt short from the Company, and askt them if they were not in pursuit of me, acquainting them who I was, and that I should not attempt to avoid meeting the People. After a little Hesitancy they frankly owned that they were of that Party, and said there were a great Number of People coming in three Divisions, one from Windham through Hartford, one from Norwich through Haddam, and one from New-London, by the way of Branford, and that their Rendezvous was to be at Branford on the Evening of the 19th, from thence to come and pay me a Visit on the 20th. These Men said they were sent forward in order to reconnoitre and to see who would join them.

I desired them to turn and go with me as far as Mr. [Yale] Bishop’s the Tavern at the Stone House, so called [in Meriden]. One of them did. Here I acquainted the Governor and the other Gentlemen with the Matter; and desired their Advice. The Governor said many Things to this Man, pointing out to him the Danger of such a Step, and charging him to go and tell the People to return Back; but he let the Governor know, that they lookt upon this as the Cause of the People, & that they did not intend to take Directions about it from any Body.

Ingersoll wrote that he feared those men would go to New Haven, the local militia would turn out as “an Opposition to their Designs,” and “some Lives might be lost.” Given that the people of New Haven had already turned out against him, that looks like wishful thinking. In any event, he decided to meet the crowd at Hartford. But he also sent a letter to his family in New Haven “that they and my House might be put in a proper state of Defence and Security.”

On Thursday, 19 September, Ingersoll proceeded toward Hartford with his host and legislator Elihu Hall of Wallingford.

we went on together until we come within two or three Miles of Weathersfield, when we met an advanced Party of about four or five Persons. I told them who I was, upon which they turned, and I fell into Conversation with them, upon the general Subject of my Office, &c.

About half a Mile further we met another Party of about Thirty whom I accosted, and who turned and went on in the same Manner.

We rode a little further and met the main Body, who, I judge, were about Five Hundred Men, all on Horseback, and having white Staves, as before described. They were preceded by three Trumpets; next followed two Persons dressed in red, with laced Hats; then the rest, two abreast. Some others, I think, were in red, being, I suppose, Militia Officers.

They opened and received me; then all went forward until we came into the main Street in the Town of Weathersfield, when one riding up to the Person with whom I was joined, and who I took to be the principal Leader or Commandant, said to him, We can’t all hear and see so well in a House, we had as good have the Business done here; upon this they formed into a Circle, having me in the Middle, with some two or three more, who seemed to be the principal Managers, Major Hall and Mr. Bishop also keeping near me.

I began to speak to the Audience, but stopt and said I did not know why I should say any Thing for that I was not certain I knew what they wanted of me…

Which by this point seems remarkably obtuse.

TOMORROW: A parley in Wethersfield.

A Preemptive Resignation from New York’s Stamp Agent

After Parliament enacted the Stamp Act in early 1765, Treasury Department officials asked London alderman Barlow Trecothick for recommendations about which American gentleman to appoint as stamp agent for each colony.

Trecothick had started out working for the rich Boston merchant Charles Apthorp, married an Apthorp daughter, and then settled in London as a merchant doing business with North America and the Caribbean. He had argued against the Stamp Act, so officials hoped that other opponents of the law would accept his choices as fair.

The stamp agents would have to be reliable for the imperial government, of course. Trecothick figured it would help if they were established in American business or legal circles. And since selling the stamped paper and stamps would bring in a steady income, he wanted to reward his own connections—that’s just how the Empire worked.

For New York he chose the merchant James McEvers (1705-1768, shown here). McEvers was another brother-in-law of Charles Ward Apthorp, whose move from Boston to New York in the early 1760s turned out to be a major blow to Boston’s economy.

Everything seemed to be going along fine until the newspapers brought word of the demonstration and riot in Boston on 14 August. Twelve days later, McEvers wrote to Jared Ingersoll in Connecticut about his correspondence with the Treasury Department’s “Secretary to the Stamp-duties”:

I rec’d a Letter from John Brettel Esq. Forwarded by you, Inclosing a Bond to Execute for the Due Performance of the Office of Stamp Master for this Province, which I Readely Did (and Return’d it per the Last Paquet that Sail’d from hence) as there was then Little or no Clamour here about it, and I Immagin’d I Should be Able to Transact it; but since Mr. [Andrew] Olivers Treatment att Boston has Been Known here and the Publication of a Letter from New Haven, the Discontent of the People here on Account of the Stamp Act Publickly Appears, I have Been Threaten’d with Mr. Olivers Fate if not Worse, to Prevent which I have Been under a Necessity of Acknowledgeing I have Wrote for a Resignation which I have Accordingly Done, and have Been Inform’d you have Done the Same, of Which I Beg you’l Advise me, and if you have not should be Glad to Know how you Purpose to Act, as it may be some Government to me in Case I Cant Procure a Release.

On the same day McEvers also wrote to Trecothick, explaining that he wanted to be relieved of the office.

The New York merchant worried that backing out would cost him respect in London, but local Whigs insisted that he would benefit in America. A letter from New York published in the 6 Sept 1765 Pennsylvania Gazette said:

We congratulate our Countrymen upon the late Resignations of the Stamp Officers - ------ and especially the Friends and Well wishers of the Gentleman appointed to that Office in this City. The Number of his Friends and Well wishers, which was considerable before, is greatly increased by this Resignation; which has entirely cleared his Character from the Imputation of joining in the Design to enslave his Country; for we are well assured, as his Appointment was without his Solicitation or Knowledge, so his Resignation was voluntary, and not the Effect of any Menace or Disturbance, nothing of which has yet appeared in this Place.

Thus, the 14 August demonstration and riot in Boston not only caused Massachusetts’s stamp agent to resign, but also inspired the New York stamp master to do the same.