Going Back onto Noddle’s Island

The message from Thomas Chase quoted yesterday makes clear that in 1780 Henry Howell Williams still felt he had a claim to “the Soil” of Noddle’s Island.

Williams had leased and farmed the harbor island for years before the Revolutionary War—as his father-in-law had done before him.

But that letter doesn’t indicate Williams was living on that island again. Williams’s appearances in the Boston newspapers during the previous half-decade also suggest he wasn’t.

On 7 Sept 1775, during the siege, Thomas Bumstead put a notice in the New-England Chronicle about “a likely, well built black Mare, and a Colt by her Side,” that were “STRAYED or stolen from Mr. Henry Williams, of Roxbury.” Henry Howell Williams did raise horses on Noddle’s Island, and he may well have gone back to his father’s family in Roxbury during the siege. On the other hand, the lack of a middle name or initial might suggest this was one of his relatives with a similar name, also raising horses.

More telling, on 24 Mar 1777 James Bell advertised in the Boston Gazette for the return of a stout 28-year-old black man named Dick, who had freed himself from slavery. Bell was from Colrain, and he told readers they could deliver Dick “to Mr. Henry Howell Williams in Boston.”

On 7 Sept 1778, Henry Howell Williams himself advertised in the same newspaper for the return of an enslaved 23-year-old woman named Phillis. That notice was datelined in Boston.

Thus, in those two years Williams could be found living in Boston, not in Chelsea, as Noddle’s Island was designated. Meanwhile, the island was occupied by provincial troops and then sick French soldiers.

Then the war ended. On 11 June 1784, the Massachusetts house received “A petition from the Rev. Charles Chauncey [shown above] and others, owners of Noddle’s island, in Boston harbour, stating that said island had been greatly damaged by the troops stationed there, and praying for some compensation.” Chauncy’s third wife had inherited an interest in Noddle’s Island which passed to him on her death in 1783, and then to his heirs.

Williams and his family returned to Noddle’s Island around that time. Back in the early 1770s he had run regular ads complaining about hunters and other trespassers. He did so again in the 15 Aug 1784 Independent Ledger, saying that “Gunners” were endangering his livestock, his mowers, and his family. That notice was signed from “Noddle’s-Island.” Obviously, the farm was back in operation.

As Williams rebuilt his estate, he probably commandeered the barracks originally constructed for Continental troops in Cambridge and then moved to the island by the state in 1776. After all, no one was using that building anymore.

TOMORROW: Renewing the quest for compensation.

“Once cut for the Simples, but never cured”?

I can easily recognize some of the Revolutionary Bostonians being lampooned as “Characters” in a supposed “Tragi-comic Farce” announced in the 8 May 1770 Nova Scotia Chronicle, but not others.

For example:

Samuel Plunder, a Senator, formerly a Receiver of the Tribute of the Parish, Master of the black Art, can cheat without a Mask of Honesty, supported by Contribution, and the Votes of a Mobb.

That’s Samuel Adams, whom political opponents often criticized for his performance as a tax collector in the early 1760s.

And “Charles Spiritual, Guide and Protector of the Junto,” surely meant the Rev. Dr. Charles Chauncy, minister of the First Meeting and a close ally of the Boston Whigs.

But does that make “Samuel Tubb, private Chaplain to Simple John,” the Rev. Dr. Samuel Cooper, minister of the Brattle Street Meeting that included John Hancock, already called “John Dupe”?

That seems almost certain, but right after “Samuel Tubb” comes “John Simple, a mighty Coxcomb, very important and bigg with Nothing, well known for the Drubbings he has received.” So is “Simple John” in one sentence different from “John Simple” in the next? This “John Simple” doesn’t resemble Hancock, but who is he?

Speaking of Hancock, that “John Dupe” is called “remarkably melancholy on his Loss of Lady Beaver.” A couple of months earlier, on 22 February, the printer John Boyle wrote in his journal:

Married, Mr. Henderson Inches, Merchant, to Miss Sally Jackson, Daugh. Of Joseph Jackson, Esq.—Mr. John Hancock hath paid his addresses to Miss Jackson for about ten years past, but has lately sent her a Letter of Dismission.

So was Sarah Jackson (1739–1771), shown above, courtesy of the Huntington) “Lady Beaver”? If so, does that let us interpret this entry among the characters:

Alderman Hemp, Son of the transported Cobler, well known for his great Judgment as a Politician, Chief of the grand Committee, by his wond’rous Capacity has cut off John Dupe’s Pretensions to Miss Beaver.

Henderson Inches (1726–1780) was a selectman (“Alderman”?) and active on merchants’ committees. He was born in Dunkeld, Scotland, and his father, Thomas Inches, brought the family to Boston when Henderson was a child. The town meeting voted to make Thomas Inches a sealer of leather for several years in the 1730s, so was he indeed involved in making shoes? But what might “transported” have meant? And why the name “Hemp,” which first made me think of ropemaker and selectman Benjamin Austin?

And as for profiles like these:

Edward Shallow, Friend and Neighbour to Squire Lemon, once cut for the Simples, but never cured, Carrier of Intelligence, full freight’d with Absurdities.

William the Gunner, or the one ey’d Philosopher, Brother to Shallow, formerly kept a chop House in one of the Danish Islands.

William Homer, Esq; the Jew, famous for his Treatise on Cuckoldom, well known for his Humanity and publick Spirit.

I’m at a loss.

TOMORROW: Did John Mein write this article?

“A Sett of Controversial Discourses agreed upon by the Society”

In October 1722, almost a year after being inoculated against smallpox, Ebenezer Turell found a new use for his notebook.

He wrote out what he called “An account of a Society in Har: Colledge.” This was a more serious endeavor than the Telltale essay exchange the previous year.

Ten young men from the Harvard College class of 1721 plus four from nearby classes pledged to meet regularly for intellectual pursuits. One might share “a Discourse of about Twenty minuits,” or the group could engage in philosophical disputations, readings, and epistles.

They also promised “That if we see or hear of any Extraordinary Book, we will give ye best account we can of it to ye Society.”

As an example of what this society (formally) talked about, Turell’s two lectures were:

1 Upon Light, a Phisico-Theological Discourse
2 Upon Providence.

The group was still meeting in October 1723 when Turell took the lead in a new format, combining the discourse and the disputation into a single discussion:

E T read a Lecture to show that it is a point of Prudence To prove & Try all Doctrines in Religion, wch was to serve as an Introduction to a Sett of Controversial Discourses agreed upon by the Society to be successivly carried, one every week.

The last record is from January 1724 when the group agreed on topics for upcoming lectures and discussions. There’s no record of those meetings, however. It’s possible Turell switched to another notebook since he was coming close to the pages he’d already filled with the Telltale material, and that second document didn’t survive. It’s also possible this extracurricular activity just petered out in the winter of 1724 as members moved on.

In 1909 William C. Lane pointed out to the Colonial Society that nearly all the young men in that society went on to be ministers. Those included the Rev. Dr. Charles Chauncy and the Rev. Ebenezer Pemberton of Boston and the Rev. John Lowell (shown above) of Newburyport, ancestor of the celebrated Lowell family.

Ebenezer Turell himself started to train for the pulpit under the Rev. Benjamin Colman of the Brattle Street Meeting in Boston. He became the minister in Medford in 1724, and Colman’s son-in-law two years later. Jane (Colman) Turell shared Ebenezer’s love of writing, though she had a religiously anxious life until she died in 1735.

Turell remarried twice, each time to women in the upper class. As a minister he was a firm Old Light and later a supporter of the Whigs. The Medford congregation granted him a pension in 1773, the year before he preached his last sermon, and he died in 1778. In all, the current church says, Turell oversaw the construction of two church buildings, admitted 323 communicants, baptized 1,037 people, and married 220 couples.

The Rev. Dr. Charles Chauncy’s “Letter[s] to a Friend”

Yesterday I took note of a pamphlet that the Rev. Dr. Charles Chauncy published in 1774 about the Boston Port Bill couched as a “Letter to a Friend…” and ascribed to “T.W. A Bostonian.”

The form of a friendly letter to a fellow gentleman was a common trope for framing such commentary on current events and issues. Chauncy had published his first such essay nearly twenty years before.

That pamphlet appeared in August 1755 under the title:

A Letter to a Friend; Giving a concise, but just, Account, according to the Advices hitherto received, of the Ohio-Defeat; and Pointing out also the many good Ends, this inglorious Event is naturally adapted to promote: or, Shewing wherein it is fitted to advance the Interest of all the American British Colonies. To which is added, Some general Account of the New-England Forces, with what they have already done, counter-ballancing the above Loss.

That was a political and theological response to Gen. Edward Braddock’s defeat at the start of the French & Indian War. As in his 1774 essay, Chauncy adopted the signature “T.W.”

That publication was such a hit, or rather military affairs moved so quickly, that before the end of the year Chauncy added:

A Second Letter to a Friend; Giving a more particular Narrative of the Defeat of the French Army at Lake-George, By the New-England Troops, than has yet been published: Representing also the vast Importance of this Conquest to the American-British-Colonies. To which is added, Such an Account of what the New-England Governments have done to carry into Effect their Design against Crown-Point, as will shew the Necessity of their being help’d by Great-Britain, in Point of Money.

Even that title page makes clear “T.W.” was commenting on political matters.

In between the imperial crises of 1755 and 1774 Chauncy used the “letter to a friend” trope differently in a couple of his religious pamphlets:

The Opinion of one that has perused the Summer Morning’s Conversation, concerning Original Sin, wrote by the Rev. Mr. Peter Clark, In TWO Things principally: FIRST, That he has offered that, which has rendered it impossible the doctrine of the imputation of Adam’s guilt to his posterity, should be true in the sense it is held by Calvinists. SECONDLY, That tho’ he pretends to be a friend to the Calvinistical doctrine of imputed guilt, yet he has deserted this doctrine and given it up into the hands of its enemies, as it teaches the liableness of all mankind, without exception, to the torments of hell, on account of the first Sin. To which is added, A few remarks on the recommendatory preface by five reverend Clergymen. In a Letter to a Friend.

That one, from 1758, was signed “A.B.”

A Letter to a Friend, Containing Remarks on certain Passages in a Sermon Preached, by the Right Reverend Father in God, John Lord Bishop of Landaff, before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, at their Anniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St. Mary-Le-Bow, February 20. 1767. In which the highest Reproach is undeservedly cast upon the American Colonies.

This one actually had Chauncy’s name on the title page and his own initials at the end.

Finally, toward the end of 1783 Dr. Chauncy published:

Divine Glory Brought to View in the Final Salvation of All Men: A Letter to the Friend to Truth

This pamphlet had no author’s name or initials, but it laid out the liberal theological ideas Chauncy had become known for in Boston. By labeling this “A Letter to the Friend to Truth,” he turned the label from suggesting a friendly private letter between gentlemen into a challenge to the reader. Don’t you want to be a “Friend to Truth”?

Exploring the Sid Lapidus Collection Online

Princeton University announced this month that alumnus Sidney Lapidus had completed the gift of a large collection of pamphlets and other political material from the broadly defined Revolutionary Era.

Lapidus started his collection in 1959 as a recent graduate, well before entering what turned out to be the rewarding field of private equity. He first bought a copy of Thomas Paine’s The Rights of Man from a London bookshop. (Paine’s cottage in New Rochelle, New York, was across the street from Lapidus’s high school.)

The Sid Lapidus ’59 Collection on Liberty and the American Revolution at Princeton now includes “more than 2,700 original books, atlases, pamphlets, newspapers, and magazines relating to human and political rights, liberty, and independence around the time of the American Revolution.”

In addition, Lapidus provided funds to digitize the material and make the collection keyword-searchable for anyone.

I tried out the site by asking to see all the material that used the phrase “Intolerable Acts.” That search produced several hits, but the phrase didn’t appear in the original texts, only in the dealers’ descriptions and other metadata attached to those items. As I wrote years ago, the phrase “Intolerable Acts” didn’t become widely used until the late 1800s.

One writer in Revolutionary America who used the word “intolerable” a lot was the Rev. Thomas Bradbury Chandler, author of A Free Examination of the Critical Commentary on Archbishop Secker’s Letter to Mr. Walpole, published by Hugh Gaine of New York in 1774. Chandler was a Loyalist, and what he found intolerable wasn’t a stricter Parliament but the “Hardship” of an ocean voyage, the “Licentiousness” of a totally free press, and the writer he was responding to.

I also searched for all material published in 1774 and mentioning Boston. That brought up the official texts of Parliament’s new Coercive Acts, the responses from the First Continental Congress, sermons and almanacs with commentary on current events, and so on.

One item that caught my eyes was A Letter to a Friend. Giving a Concise, But Just, Representation of the Hardships and Sufferings the Town of Boston is Exposed to and Must Undergo in Consequence of the Late Act of the British-Parliament; Which, by Shutting Up It’s Port, Has Put a Fatal Bar in the Way of that Commercial Business on which it Depended for It’s Support, published by Joseph Greenleaf.

That pamphlet from the summer of 1774 is signed “T.W. A Bostonian.” However, it was widely known that the author was the Rev. Dr. Charles Chauncy. Usually ministers stayed out of secular political disputes, preferring to work behind the scenes or through sermons, but Chauncy felt no compunction when the economic well-being of his town was in danger.

On page 22 of this pamphlet Chauncy embarked on a long footnote complaining about a Customs service policy that required firewood ships signing into Marblehead to completely unload and reload before going on to Boston. So he really was writing about earthly concerns.

Now the text of this Letter to a Friend is already scanned and transcribed on the web. So the arrival of this digital version from Princeton isn’t a revelation. But anything that makes research easier is welcome.

TOMORROW: Charles Chauncy’s friends.

“All the marks of the Whig propaganda department”?

The newspaper item I quoted yesterday, listing fifteen Whigs as Boston’s chief troublemakers and adding the surnames of three printers in a postscript, tends to be quoted in books and articles focused on those individuals.

That letter or “handbill,” various authors have said, is evidence of the real threats faced by [take your pick] Samuel Adams, Dr. Thomas Young, William Cooper, the Rev. Dr. Samuel Cooper, Benjamin Edes, Isaiah Thomas, and even Dorothy Quincy, John Hancock’s fiancée.

One anomalous but influential author who mentioned the text was Clifford K. Shipton, compiler of Sibley’s Harvard Graduates in the mid-1900s. He didn’t like radicals, which meant he was less than sympathetic to New England’s Patriots.

In his profile of the Rev. Dr. Charles Chauncy (shown above), a staunch opponent of both bishops and New Lights and a strong supporter of the Boston Whigs, Shipton quoted a bit of the document and wrote:

The “handbill” has all the marks of the Whig propaganda department, and Charles Old Brick [i.e., Chauncy] may have put his own name into it.

Shipton offered no evidence that Chauncy ever engaged in this sort of subterfuge and provocation, however. Indeed, that same paragraph quoted the minister in August worrying that some towns would act with too much “precipitancy,” so he wanted the political atmosphere to calm down, not heat up.

I think stronger evidence that this letter was a hoax is that the Boston Whigs made so little of it. As I said yesterday, I found only one mention in the local press, in the Fleet brothers’ Boston Evening-Post after the text had appeared in New York. (Of course, if anyone finds an earlier Boston printing that I missed, then I’d have to rethink this whole line of thought.)

Benjamin Edes and John Gill didn’t complain about the threat in their Boston Gazette, nor did Isaiah Thomas in his Massachusetts Spy—and they were the printers the letter called “trumpeters of sedition” (an old term). Newspapers in Hartford, Salem, New London, and Portsmouth picked up the item, to be sure, but those printers didn’t have first-hand knowledge of what was really going on in Boston.

Perhaps, we might consider, those Boston printers were scared and didn’t want to give the letter more publicity. But there’s also nothing about the threats in the private minutes of the Boston selectmen, even as they complained to Gen. Thomas Gage about other things that month. There’s nothing in John Andrews’s gossipy letters. That pattern leads me to think that the Boston Whigs didn’t believe that this message was a real threat.

Thinking about where the text came from and why, I see four possibilities.

1) A Boston Loyalist really did throw this letter into the army camps to direct military attention to specific Whig leaders and printers. Charles W. Akers takes this position in his biography of Samuel Cooper, The Divine Politician. In that case, we must ask how the text leaked out, and why Boston leaders showed so little reaction to it.

2) A Boston Whig wrote the letter, tossed it into the camps, and made sure it got into the press in order to inflame public opinion. Why, then, did it not appear first in any Boston newspapers? How come so few Whigs trumpeted it? (Akers further argues that no one who was truly allied with Chauncy and Cooper would have had the effrontery to suggest they were involved in worldly politics, even though everyone knew they were.)

3) Someone in Boston created the letter and sent it to New York as authentic. It appeared in James Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer below an extract of a private letter from Boston, and it wasn’t credited to any Boston newspaper like items that followed. If this was the case, was the person who created the fake letter a Whig or a Loyalist?

4) Rivington created the letter himself. He was already speaking up for Crown authority, and Whigs already accused him of creating fake news. Later in the war he certainly did that, either as satire or propaganda. Was this an early example?

The item appeared in the New-York Gazetteer as army regiments were moving from that city to Boston, a process that Gen. Gage sped up after the “Powder Alarm” of 2 September. The letter’s intended audience might therefore have been not “the Officers and Soldiers of his Majesty’s Troops at Boston” but those on their way.

TOMORROW: Naming names.

“On Election Day a Sermon will be preached”

Election Day was a holiday in colonial Massachusetts. Not the day that people voted for their General Court representatives—that happened in town meetings, and each town could choose its own date.

Rather, Election Day was when the new legislature assembled for the first time and elected the new Council, as well as the speaker and clerk of the lower house.

That day usually involved a banquet for the legislators and guests, a procession, and an “Election Sermon” by a prominent clergyman. Did New Englanders know how to party or what?

On 30 May 1770, 250 years ago today, acting governor Thomas Hutchinson convened the General Court across the Charles River in Cambridge. All the official events would be taking place there. What was Boston to do?

The Whigs decided to arrange their own unofficial observations instead. On 29 May, they paraded an ox through town, “to be roasted whole” the next day. That meat was designated “to be given to the Poor and Prisoners.”

The 28 May Boston Gazette announced:

A Number of Gentlemen, Friends to the Rights of America and Mankind, taking into Consideration the unprecedented Removal of the General Election of Counsellors for this Province from its Ancient Seat, and being desirous of celebrating the usual Festivity of said Election, request the Favour of the Company of the Gentlemen of the Clergy of all Denominations who may be in Town, to dine with them at FANEUIL HALL on Wednesday next, the 30th Instant, at Two o’Clock precisely.

According to young printer John Boyle, the ox was taken over to Faneuil Hall after roasting. Probably the gentlemen and clergy dined inside, the populace outside (and, we hope, some meat was sent to the jail).

Before that hour, Edes and Gill also promised, “On Election Day a Sermon will be preached at the Old Brick Meeting House, by the Rev. Dr. [Charles] CHAUNCY.” That was the church right beside the Town House, where the legislature usually met, and Chauncy was its highly respected minister.

Edward M. Griffin’s biography reports that Chauncy created a thirty-five-page sermon titled Trust in God, the Duty of a People in a Day of Trouble, based on a verse from the 22nd Psalm. He directly addressed the governor’s choice to move the legislature to Cambridge, but he wound up on the most anticipated event of the time, the upcoming trials for the Boston Massacre.

Chauncy preached:

If there should have been, in any measure, a failure in this respect, since the King’s troops were stationed in this town, from whatever cause, it is now hoped that “justice and judgment will run down our streets as a stream”: And I the rather mention this, because the opened earth in one of our streets, in the month of march last, received the streaming blood of many slaughtered, and wounded innocents. So shocking a tragady was never before acted in this part of the world; and GOD forbid it should ever be again!

Who the sheders of this blood were may possibly appear, upon the tryal of those who are under confinement, as being supposed to be the guilty persons. We wish them as fair and equal a tryal as they themselves can desire. And should they all, or any of them, be found guilty, though their sin be as “scarlet, and red like crimson”, we heartily wish their repentance, that, of the mercy of GOD in Jesus Christ, they may escape the second death; though our eye is restrained from pitying them so as to wish their deliverance from the first death. For the supreme legislator has said, “whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed”—“life shall go for life”—“No satisfaction shall be taken for the life of a murderer—He shall surely be put to death.

SOME have whispered a suspicion, as though a reprieve from death would be granted, should the guilt of blood be fastned upon some who are supposed to have been actors in this horrid wickedness—But it is an high indignity offered to him, who has the power of giving a reprieve, so much as to suspect he would do it in the case of BLOOD GUILTINESS, clearly proved upon any, in consequence of a fair and impartial tryal.

Surely, he would not counter-act the operation of the law both of GOD and man. Surely, he would not suffer the Town and Land, to lie under the defilement of blood! Surely, he would not make himself a partaker in the guilt of murder, by putting a stop to the shedding of their blood, who have murderously spilt the blood of others! All such suspicions should be suppressed. They are virtually a scandalous reproach reflected on him, of whose integrity, and regard to public justice, we should entertain a more honorable opinion.

Justice of the peace James Murray referred to this sermon as “the pains taken by the Revd. Doctr. Chauncey and others to prejudice the People of Boston against Capt. [Thomas] Preston.” But it was equally a warning to Hutchinson not to pardon that officer.

TOMORROW: Meanwhile, over in Cambridge.

“I have engag’d that it shall not be printed”

In the spring of 1773, the Boston Whigs had an incendiary document that they wanted to share with the public. But the person who supplied that document had asked them not to make copies or circulate it widely.

The document was a collection of letters from Gov. Thomas Hutchinson, Lt. Gov. Andrew Oliver, and other friends of the royal government to the British official Thomas Whately in the late 1760s. The person who had supplied that collection was Benjamin Franklin, the London lobbyist for the Massachusetts house.

On 2 Dec 1772 Franklin had sent the letters to Thomas Cushing, speaker of the house, saying:

On this Occasion I think it fit to acquaint you that there has lately fallen into my Hands Part of a Correspondence, that I have reason to believe laid the Foundation of most if not all our present Grievances. I am not at liberty to tell thro’ what Channel I receiv’d it; and I have engag’d that it shall not be printed, nor any Copies taken of the whole or any part of it; but I am allow’d and desired to let it be seen by some Men of Worth in the Province for their Satisfaction only.

In confidence of your preserving inviolably my Engagement, I send you enclos’d the original Letters, to obviate every Pretence of Unfairness in Copying, Interpolation or Omission. The Hands of the Gentlemen will be well known. . . .

I therefore wish I was at Liberty to make the Letters publick; but as I am not, I can only allow them to be seen by yourself, by the other Gentlemen of the Committee of Correspondence, by Messrs. [James] Bowdoin, and [James] Pitts, of the Council, and Drs. [Charles] Chauncey, [Samuel] Cooper and [John] Winthrop, with a few such other Gentlemen as you may think it fit to show them to. After being some Months in your Possession, you are requested to return them to me.

Chauncy and Cooper were Boston’s most respected Whig ministers. Winthrop was a Harvard professor.

On 24 March, Cushing wrote back:

I have communicated them to some of the Gentlemen you mentioned. They are of opinion, that though it might be inconvenient to publish them, yet it might be expedient to have Copys taken and left on this side the water as there may be a necessity to make some use of them hereafter, however I read to them what you had wrote me upon the occasion, and told them I could by no means Consent Copys of them or any part of them should be taken without your express Leave, that I would write you upon the subject and should strictly Conform to your directions.

Despite Cushing’s assurances, other men besides the six Franklin had specified had already seen the copies of the letters.

TOMORROW: Information wants to be free.

Peter Oliver Explains the “Black Regiment”

Peter Oliver was the last Chief Justice of Massachusetts under royal rule. His brother was Lt. Gov. Andrew Oliver, and their family was connected by marriage to Gov. Thomas Hutchinson.

Massachusetts Whigs saw the Hutchinson-Oliver faction as apologists for the London government, far too quick to excuse encroachments on the colony’s traditional freedoms in exchange for lucrative appointments. Later the Whigs accused those men as having actually encouraged the ministry in its policies through recommendations and lies.

For his part, after the siege of Boston Oliver went into exile in England and spent the war writing an account of the political conflict in Massachusetts that he titled “The Origin and Progress of the American Rebellion.” It was finally published in 1961, and I don’t think it’s been out of print since. It’s a delightfully nasty, sarcastic, gossipy, and ad hominem narration of the years from 1760 to 1775.

Oliver and Hutchinson dated the start of their troubles from James Otis, Jr.’s break with the royal patronage system, and they blamed him for fomenting the unrest against them. Among other things, Oliver accused Otis of politicizing much of the Massachusetts clergy, as he laid out in a section titled “The Black Regiment”:

It may now be amiss, now, to reconnoitre Mr. Otis’s Black Regiment, the dissenting Clergy, who took so active a Part in the Rebellion. The congregational perswasion of Religion might be properly termed the established Religion of the Massachusetts, as well as of some other of the New England Colonies; as the Laws were peculiarly adapted to secure ye Rights of this Sect; although all other Religions were tolerated, except the Romish.

This Sect inherited from the Ancestors an Aversion to Episcopacy; & I much question, had it not been for the Supremacy of the British Government over them, which they dared not openly deny, whether Episcopacy itself would have been tolerated; at least it would have been more discountenanced than it was & here I cannot but remark a great Mistake of the Governors of the Church of England, in proposing to the Colonies to have their consent to a Bishop residing among them for ye purpose of Ordination. It was the direct Step to a Refusal for all such Proposals from the Parent State, whether of a civil or a Religious Nature, were construed into Timidity by the Colonists & were sure of meeting with a Repulse.

The Clergy of this Province were, in general, a Set of very weak Men; & it could not be expected that they should be otherwise as many of them were just relieved, some from the Burthen of the Satchel; & others from hard Labor; & by a Transition from Occupations to mounting a Desk, from whence they could look the principal Part of the Congregations, they, by that acquired a supreme Self Importance; which was too apparent in their Manners. Some of them were Men of Sense, and would have done Honor to a Country which shone in Literature; but there were few of these; & among these, but very few who were not strongly tinctured with Republicanism.

The Town of Boston being a Metropolis, it was also the Metropolis of Sedition; and hence it was that their Clergy being dependent on the People for their daily Bread; by having frequent Intercourse with the People, imbibed their Principles. In this Town was an annual Convention of Clergy of the Province, the Day after the Election of his Majestys Charter Council; and at those Meetings were settled the religious Affairs of the Province; & as the Boston Clergy were esteemed the others an Order of Deities, so they were greatly influenced by them.

There was also another annual Meeting of the Clergy at Cambridge, on the Commencement for graduating the Scholars of Harvard College; at these two Conventions, if much Good was effectuated, so there was much Evil. And some of the Boston Clergy, as they were capable of the Latter, so they missed no Opportunities of accomplishing their Purposes.

Oliver proceeded to name some ministers who he thought had been particularly useful to Otis and his allies: “Dr. Jonathan Mayhew, Dr. Charles Chauncy & Dr. Samuel Cooper.”

The Olivers and Hutchinson weren’t members of those men’s meetings, but they were Congregationalists from families who came to Massachusetts in the early Puritan migration. They ended up finding disproportionate support from Massachusetts Anglicans whose families had arrived after the 1600s. However, the Congregationalist minister Mather Byles, Sr., was another Loyalist. In short, religion was a political dividing-line among the clergy, but not a neat one.

Oliver had some more to say about the “black Regiment,” which I’ll quote and analyze after catching up with events. [Finally, the discussion continues here.]

Edward Payne: genteel shooting victim

On 6 Mar 1770, the day after the Boston Massacre, acting governor Thomas Hutchinson wrote a letter to his superiors in London explaining what they would want to know about the event:

I found two persons killed a third mortally wounded since dead, a fourth dangerously wounded & a fifth, Mr Payne a Merchant of the Town, shot in his arm and the bone splintered as he stood at his door.

Who was “Mr Payne,” and why did he warrant being the only shooting victim the governor named?

Edward Payne (1722-1788) was the only person shot on King Street who came from the genteel class rather than being a craftsman or sailor. That’s why he warranted attention from royal officials. He was also the only man shot on his own property, rather than on the street—though that was apparently a matter of inches.

Benjamin Andrews filed a report for the town on where the soldiers’ musket balls lodged in Payne’s house. He described a “bullet hole in the entry door post..., which grazed the edge of the door before it entered the post where it lodged, two and a half inches deep” and a “hole made by another musket ball through the window shutter of the lower story of the same house, and lodged in the back wall of the shop.” The first ball had gone through Payne’s arm before ending up in that post.

Payne’s testified to the town’s investigating committee about his experience. After describing reports of fights between soldiers and townspeople, he said:

That this deponent then went home, and stood upon the sill of his entry door, which is nearly opposite to the east end of the Customhouse, where he was soon joined by Mr. George Bethune [1720-1785], and Mr. Harrison Gray [Jr.] (c. 1735-1830), that the people round the sentinel were then crying out “Fire, fire, damn you, why don't you fire,” soon after, he perceived a number of soldiers coming down towards the sentinel, with their arms in a horizontal posture, and their bayonets fixed, who turned the people from before the Custom-house, and drew up before the door, the people, who still remained in the street and about the soldiers, continued calling out to them to fire.

In this situation they remained some minutes, when he heard a gun snap, and presently a single gun fired and soon after several others went off, one after another, to the number, of three or four, and then heard the rammers go into the guns as though they were loading; immediately after which, three or four more went off in the same manner; at which time, a ball passed through the deponents right arm, upon which he immediately retired into the house.

The report noted that Payne signed his deposition “with his left hand” because of the injury to his right. Later he testified at the soldiers’ trial, telling much the same story.

William Tudor’s mention of Payne in The Life of James Otis (1823) is probably less accurate, but vivid and amusing:

Among the persons wounded was Edward Payne, Esq. a respectable merchant, who having been attracted by the noise in the street, was standing as a spectator at his own door, at the corner of Congress street when he received two balls through his arm, that afterwards lodged in the door-post.

This gentleman’s mild manner of expressing his vexation, when he found himself wounded, excited a smile among his friends. “I declare,” he said with emphasis, “I think those soldiers ought to be talked to.”

I love the phrase “with emphasis.”

Tudor added, “These balls are now in the possession of his son William Payne, Esquire, and may be considered an interesting relic of the revolution.”

Indeed they are. The two balls now belong to the Massachusetts Historical Society, though this photo of them comes via the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library & Museum website. The labels say the one on the right went through Payne’s arm, the one on the left straight into his house.

After my posting on Monday about soldiers probably double-loading their guns, some Boston 1775 readers commented about the importance of the weight and metal content of the musket balls. I don’t know if anyone’s studied these bullets in that regard. I suspect, given where they ended up, that they came from the same gun.

One more anecdote about Edward Payne and the Massacre comes from Peter Oliver, one of the judges who presided over the trials at the end of the year. As a bitter Loyalist in England in 1783, he wrote this anecdote about the gentleman wounded in the shooting (who must be Payne) and the Rev. Dr. Charles Chauncy:

[The minister] had heard that a Gentleman was wounded, on that unhappy Night when the Soldiers had fired. He waited upon the Gentleman, & asked him, whether he did not design to prosecute Capt. [Thomas] Preston in damages [i.e., file a civil suit against him for assault]?

The Gentleman replied, “No Sir! It will be of no Advantage. Capt. Preston is to be tried for his Life. If he should be convicted he will suffer Death, & then I cannot recover any Damages; & if he is acquitted I shall be in the same Circumstances”: to which this hoary headed Divine…said—“if I was to be one of the Jury upon his Trial, I would bring him in guilty; evidence or no Evidence.”

After the siege of Boston, Payne gave up trading goods and started selling insurance. He died on the anniversary of the Massacre in 1788. Payne’s son William took over the house, office, and business at what became 15 State Street. Edward Payne’s daughter Rebecca married Christopher Gore, one of Hutchinson’s successors as governor of Massachusetts.

Shippie Townsend, Author

In the spring of 1768, a pamphlet was published in Boston with the title A Modest Account concerning the Salutations and Kissings in ancient Times: In a Letter to a Friend, Requesting the same: Wherein Mr. Sandeman’s Attempt, to revive the holy and charitable kiss, and the Love Feasts, is considered. The title page gave the name of the author as “Constant Rockman, M.A.”

In fact, that essay had been written by the Rev. Samuel Mather of the North Bennet Street meeting-house (shown here, courtesy of Reformation Art). On 17 May, he sent the pamphlet to Thomas Hollis, a British philosopher and Harvard benefactor, with a cover letter that said:

I beg leave now to put into your Hands...a Letter obtained from me thro’ Importunity from Dr. [Charles] Chauncey, my Friend and Neighbour, and some others: which I have publish’d under a fictitious Name, lest some Offence might be given by my writing on such a Subject; tho’, I think, there is not any Thing justly exceptionable in it.

Mather had chosen the pseudonym “Rockman” as a contrast to the leader of the sect he was opposing, Scottish preacher Robert Sandeman. As I described yesterday, Sandeman had established a small church in Boston following his father-in-law’s unusual view of Christianity, and then moved on to Danbury, Connecticut.

On 25 July, the Boston Gazette carried the first advertisement for a response:

THIS DAY PUBLISHED,
And to be Sold by NICHOLAS BOWES, opposite the Old
Brick Meeting-House in Cornhill.
[Price 6d.]
An INQUIRY
Whether the Scriptures enjoin the Kiss of Charity, as
the Duty of the Disciples of Christ, in their Church
Fellowship in all Ages.——Or, only allowed it to the
First Disciples, in Consequence of the Customs that
then prevailed.
Occasioned by a LETTER lately Published by CON-
STANT ROCKMAN, M.A.
Intitled “a Modest Account concerning the Salutati-
ons and Kissings in ancient Times,” &c.
Containing some Remarks thereupon.

Bowes added helpfully that customers could also buy the “Rockman” letter at his shop. Which was, incidentally, right across the street from where the Rev. Dr. Chauncy preached. It was a small town. (I haven’t even mentioned that young Henry Knox was working as an apprentice at Bowes’s shop.)

The Inquiry essay was written by Shippie Townsend, a leading member of the Sandemanian meeting. He was a successful blockmaker—the period equivalent, perhaps, of the owner-manager of a tool and die shop. He hadn’t been to Latin School or college, and he was taking on the latest in Boston’s most learned line of ministers, the Mathers. So Townsend started his “letter” this way:

Apprehending something in Mr. Rockman’s Letter, about which we were lately conversing, contrary to what the Apostle glories in, in 2 Corinth. iv. 2. And fearing lest some who are exercised about the will of God in this matter, may receive a wrong bias, from the slight and craftiness wherewith the scripture texts seem to be mentioned.

Having no acquaintance with Hebrew or Greek, and scarce any with the ancient Fathers, and no common place-books, I set down, having only the Bible before me, to see if by a plain literal reading the divine will, may not been seen with controversy.

In other words, Townsend presented his lack of higher learning a virtue. He might not know about ancient languages (or complete sentences), but he could read the plain words of the Bible.

The next year, a committee from the Old South Meeting-House visited Townsend and another lapsed congregant, Col. Richard Gridley, and asked them to return to that fold. Both men convinced their visitors that their new theological views were sincere and firm, as described back here.

In fact, Townsend had discovered that he liked writing about religious questions. Four years later, in 1773, he published another tract titled An Attempt to Illustrate the Great Subject of the Psalms. This time he didn’t need an earlier essay to prompt him; he just had some theological ideas to share. The war interrupted Townsend’s publishing career, but he would resume it in the 1780s.

TOMORROW: Townsend and Gridley end up in the same faith again.

Steal Not This Book for Fear of Shame

Yesterday folks at the Seth Kaller firm in New York sent me a link to their catalog of the early American documents related to Boston now for sale. (Click on “Boston Catalog” at the webpage linked above.) They’ll be at the Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair on 16-18 November.

One item that caught my eye was a copy of Brady and Tate’s New Version of the Psalms of David, printed in Boston in 1765 and signed as shown here: “John Hancock’s / Thou shalt not Steal Saith the Lord.”

Hancock’s inscription reminded me of similar warnings I’d seen in textbooks from the South Latin School, which the merchant had attended starting in 1745. For example, in 1774 Joshua Green signed his copy of the Accidence, the beginners’ textbook, and two years later he added:

Hic liber pertinet [This book belongs to] Josua Green
Steal not this book for fear of shame
For in it is the owner’s name 1776

Other surviving eighteenth-century schoolbooks are also inked with multiple signatures and dire warnings against theft. Charles Chauncy (who had entered the same South Latin School in 1712) was straightforward in a history of Rome: “Steal this book if you dare.” He grew up to be Boston’s senior Congregationalist minister.

Inside a Greek-Latin text that school required of older students, Peter Oliver (entered school 1719) warned in Latin, “Here I place my name, since I don’t want to lose this book; If anyone steals it, he will be hanged by the neck.” Appropriately, he grew up to be the last royal Chief Justice of Massachusetts.

With all those warnings in all those books, you might think that pre-Revolutionary Boston suffered from a wave of textbook and hymnal theft. But no newspaper, court records, or memoir of schoolboy life mentions that problem. And I doubt there were many thieves who could read a warning in Latin anyway.

Rather, I think the schoolboys’ signatures and inscriptions simply showed their pride of ownership. Even upper-class children had few possessions of their own, but the scholars’ Latin textbooks not only belonged to them but signified their place in society.

As for why one of Boston’s richest merchants was still signing a book that way years after he graduated, I couldn’t say. But for $85,000 you can own that book yourself.