Sorting Out the Solemn League and Covenants

In his 1915 study of the Solemn League and Covenant for the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Albert Matthews concluded that the text of that boycott agreement he called Form A was the original text from the Boston committee of correspondence, and Form B the variation from Worcester.

Matthews based that conclusion on several points:

(1) As the form sent out from Boston was frequently, if not generally, regarded as too drastic, it is reasonable to infer that the more drastic of the two forms was the one sent out from Boston, and of the two forms A and B, A is the more drastic.

(2) Every town in Massachusetts received a copy of the Boston form. Westford is in Middlesex County and so presumably would have received only the Boston form. The document [from Westford] exhibited to-day is form A.

(3) Every town in Worcester County received a copy of the Boston form and also a copy of the Worcester form. At the bottom of the broadside (form B) owned by the American Antiquarian Society is written, in the hand of Isaiah Thomas, the words “This came from Sutton.” Since Sutton is in Worcester County, the Sutton document might conceivably be either the Boston form or the Worcester form; but as a matter of fact the Sutton document is form B, and so presumably is the Worcester form.

(4) Five newspapers were published in Boston in 1774, but only two of these printed the Solemn League and Covenant,…and this is form A. It is reasonable to assume that the only form printed in the Boston papers was the form sent out by the Boston Committee of Correspondence.

When I started this series of postings, I thought that was convincing. But as I looked at Matthews’s sources and others, I found myself coming to the opposite conclusion.

Here are some points Matthews missed. First, he assumed that people objected to the Boston committee’s draft as “too drastic,” and indeed the merchants of the town did make that complaint. But in a footnote Matthews acknowledged that organizers in Worcester had circulated “even more drastic” language, so we have to consider the possibility that those men thought the Boston draft wasn’t drastic enough.

Matthews assumed that the Worcester committee sent its draft only to other towns in Worcester County. But he quoted evidence that Braintree considered text “much like the Worcester covenant” on 27 June and Falmouth (now Portland, Maine) had received “the non-importation Agreement form’d at Worcester” by 30 June.

The Boston News-Letter did indeed print Form A, but it prefaced it this way: “The foregoing is a Copy of a Covenant, which I am told great Pains are now taking to promote in the Country.” The newspaper didn’t specify the agreement that followed was the Boston committee’s proposal. Rather, the phrase “in the Country” hinted at a rural origin.

The 22 June Pennsylvania Journal printed Form B below “a Circular Letter, written by the Committee of the Town of BOSTON,” suggesting that printer William Bradford had received them together. The Boston text sent on 8 June most likely reached Bradford days before the Worcester text sent on 13 June. Even if he had both in hand, Bradford clearly cited documents from Boston.

We know that the Boston committee spread its text outside of Massachusetts. Silas Deane wrote a letter responding to a copy in Wethersfield, Connecticut, on 13 June, before he could have received the Worcester committee’s version. That appears to have been Form B. [Deane’s letter casts doubt on that book’s assertion that Wethersfield actually adopted the Solemn League on 15 June; I’ve found no official town action.] Form B was also the basis of the Portsmouth, New Hampshire, variation (Form C).

In contrast, we don’t know that the Worcester committee sent its text outside Massachusetts. Its letter referred to recipients as “fellow-countrymen,” which in this period usually meant people from the same colony.

Finally, here are two facts that Matthews acknowledged but set aside. A copy of Form A at the Massachusetts Historical Society is labeled “Worcester Covenant.” The printer’s type and watermark of that copy match the printed letter issued by Worcester’s committee on 13 June—though Matthews explained that away by saying all these documents must have been printed in Boston since Isaiah Thomas hadn’t yet set up the first press in Worcester.

Looking at all that evidence, I reconstruct the sequence of events this way:

• late May and early June: The Boston committee of correspondence and Worcester County radicals both drafted calls for a stronger boycott on British goods until the Boston Port Bill was repealed.
• 8 June: The Boston committee sent out its printed circular letter and suggested Solemn League and Covenant (Form B) to all towns in Massachusetts and to allies in other colonies.
• by 10 June: After feedback from Worcester, if not other places, the Boston committee sent a second printed circular letter approving other language as long as it led to the same broad boycott.
• 13 June: The Worcester committee of correspondence wrote a new Solemn League and Covenant (Form A) based mostly on the Boston text but incorporating some of its earlier draft and sent that out with a printed circular letter to all towns in Massachusetts.
• 20 June: Worcester formally adopted its form of the Solemn League and Covenant.
• 22 June: The Pennsylvania Journal printed the Boston committee’s draft.
• 23 June: The Boston News-Letter printed the Worcester committee’s draft, saying it was being promoted “in the Country.”
• 27 June: Braintree adopted the Solemn League and Covenant in a form “much like the Worcester covenant,” according to the 30 June Massachusetts Spy.
• before 28 June: The Portsmouth, New Hampshire, committee of correspondence sent out its variation on the Boston draft (Form C).
• 30 June: Falmouth considered “the non-importation Agreement form’d at Worcester” and decided to ask other towns what they were doing.
• 4 July: Westford adopted the Solemn League and Covenant with the Worcester text and started gathering signatures.
• 14 July: Attleboro adopted the Solemn League and Covenant with the Worcester text and started gathering signatures.

In sum, Worcester’s version of the Solemn League and Covenant became the standard text within Massachusetts while Boston’s version spread outside the colony. This was an early example of Worcester’s radicals (who were, of course, not living under military occupation) being more confrontational than the usual troublemakers in Boston.

TOMORROW: One town’s debate.

Edward Oxnard’s Theatrical Reviews

Edward Oxnard (1747-1803) was a Harvard graduate who became a merchant in Falmouth (now Portland), Maine. He was an Anglican, and his brother Thomas worked for the Customs service, so it was natural for him to become a Loyalist when the war broke out. He sailed for London in the summer of 1775.

In the capital of the British Empire, Oxnard experienced something he couldn’t have seen in post-Puritan New England: theater. But lack of broad experience with plays didn’t stop him from expressing strong opinions. Here are some extracts from Oxnard’s journal about what he saw, starting on 20 Sept 1775:

In the evening went to the Haymarket to see [Samuel] Foote. The play was called the Commissary; the entertainment, cross questions.

Their majesties were there. The King entered first, and the plaudit was universal: the Queen entered some time after. His majesty is a very good figure of a man. He seemed to be much dejected. Her majesty appears to be a small woman; her countenance carries such a sweetness, as attracts the esteem of all. She was dressed in white, with a diamond stomacher; a black cap with lustres of diamonds. A maid of honor stood behind her chair the whole time, as well as a Lord behind his majesty’s. I observed the King & Queen conversed as familiarly together, as we in general do in public company. Two beefeaters stood on each side of their majesties the whole of the play.

I take Foote to have been a good actor, but to have lost much of his humor and drollery by age. I dislike much his entertainments, as they are pointed at particular persons, remarkable for some peculiarity.

After a brief career in the law, Samuel Foote (1720-1777) had made himself into London’s most popular comedian. He was known, as Oxnard noted, for mimicking famous people. After a career of financial ups and downs, he had gained control of the Haymarket Theater, probably as compensation for the leg he’d lost in a carriage accident with the Prince Edward, the Duke of York.

The engraving above shows Foote in his Commissary role as the newly wealthy Zachary Fungus. He wrote that play for himself in 1765. At the time Oxnard visited the Haymarket, Foote was working on a play based on bigamy allegations against the Duchess of Kingston. She and her friends attacked the playwright, insinuating that he was gay. In 1776 the duchess was indeed convicted of bigamy. Foote was acquitted of sodomy, on the other hand, but he died the next year.

Back to Oxnard on 11 October:

In the evening Mr. [Samuel] Quincey, Col. [Benjamin] Pickman, Mr. [William] Cabut & myself went to Covent Garden, but could not get in, the house being so exceedingly full, owing to their majesties being there.

From thence went to Drury Lane, the play, “Win a wife & rule her.” The pantomime, “Harlequin’s Jacket,” the scenery was beyond anything I have ever imagined & was shifted with the greatest dexterity. The house has been lately fitted up in a most elegant manner.

The main play that day was actually titled Rule a Wife and Have a Wife, by Beaumont and Fletcher, somewhat adapted by David Garrick. It was standard for a full-length comedy to be performed alongside a shorter “entertainment” or “pantomime,” as Oxnard saw.

And 20 October:

In company with Mr. [John or Edward] Berry went to Covent Garden Theatre to see the Tragedy of Cato played. The celebrated Mr. Sheridan performed the part of Cato to admiration. He justly merits the applause which his treatise on Elocution gives him, as an author. The Commonality take on themselves to determine the merits of a performance, and if it does not suit their taste, they express it by hissing; should that prove ineffectual, they pelt the actors with apples till they drive them from the stage or make some apology.

Cato was an immensely popular tragedy by Joseph Addison. The star that night, Thomas Sheridan, was an Irish actor, teacher, and author of the A Course of Lectures on Elocution (1762). He was also the father of playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan. Presumably the star had not been driven from the stage with apples.

Talking about Stolen Cannon in Falmouth, 25 Apr.

On Tuesday, 25 April, I’ll speak to the Falmouth Historical Society about The Road to Concord: How Four Stolen Cannon Ignited the Revolutionary War.

My book explores how Massachusetts Patriots were furiously collecting cannon months before the war broke out in April of 1775, but of course keeping that effort as quiet as possible.

Today I’ll share a glimpse of one such cannon from the diary of Israel Litchfield, a sergeant in Scituate’s minute company. The town militiamen were drilling on 19 April when they heard a rumor of fighting between locals and redcoats in Concord. “Some Discredited it and Some Believed it,” Litchfield wrote, but gradually the new situation became clear.

The next day, the Scituate militia companies mustered. They took a few local Loyalists prisoner. But they didn’t march toward Boston because, as I discussed last year, there was a contingent of British soldiers a lot closer, in the neighboring town of Marshfield. Furthermore, seaside communities worried about the Royal Navy—shouldn’t the militia companies stay close to home to guard against a possible attack from the sea?

On 21 April, Litchfield and his company were ordered to bring in the big guns—well, one big gun—evidently to push the redcoats out of Marshfield. The sergeant wrote:

Colonel [John] Bailey I Say ordered our Companey the Rangers and Capt. Galen Clapps Company to march up to [Atherton] Wales’s [tavern in Hanover] to gaurd a Cannon down to marshfield. We were very Loath to go because there was Several tenders playing off and on upon our Coasts. However we were obliged to go

So we marched up to upriver meeting house and Joind Capt. Galen Claps Company. We marched up to wales’s and took the Cannon under our protection. We march’d from Wales’s to Dr. [Jeremiah] Halls in pembroke. There we heard a rumur that there was 500 Regulars Landing in Scituate.

We Sent posts to the Col. for Leave to march Back to Scituate, which after we had marcd. aboute a mile beyond Dr. Halls the major Came to us and ordered us to march back to Scituate. The Sun was aboute an hour high.

We marchd down to upriver meeting house where we heard that there was nothing in the rumur of mens Landing in Scituate but that the Regulars were embarkd on board a tender and gone off.

So everything ended almost peacefully in that part of the province. Sgt. Litchfield didn’t record what happened to the cannon his company had left behind on the road. Was it taken up to the siege lines around Boston or kept nearby to guard a local harbor?

I’ll have more answers about other cannon at Falmouth on Tuesday. My talk will begin at 7:00 P.M. at the historical society’s Cultural Center, 55 Palmer Avenue. I believe the admission cost is $5 for members and $8 for others. I’ll stay after the talk to answer questions, sign books, and chat about the Revolution.

[The photograph above shows Atherton Wales’s tavern in Hanover as the building appeared in the 1900s.]

Upcoming Lectures in Falmouth, Mass.

The Falmouth Historical Society is hosting a couple of off-season lectures about Revolutionary history in the coming weeks.

Wednesday, 22 February
William Fowler on An American Crisis: George Washington and the Dangerous Two Years after Yorktown, 1781-1783

Most people believe the American Revolution ended in October, 1781, after the battle of Yorktown; in fact the war continued for two more traumatic years. During that time, the Revolution came closer to being lost than at any time in the previous half dozen. Fowler, former director of the Massachusetts Historical Society and emeritus professor of history at Northeastern University, examines how Washington held the Revolution together at a time when all of his victories might have been for naught.

This lecture and signing will start at 6:30 P.M. at the Cape Cod Conservatory, 60 Highfield Drive, Falmouth.

Friday, 30 March
Harlow Giles Unger on American Tempest: How the Boston Tea Party Sparked a Revolution

On Thursday, December 16, 1773, an estimated seven dozen men, many dressed as Indians, dumped roughly £10,000 worth of tea in Boston Harbor. Whatever their motives at the time, they unleashed a social, political, and economic firestorm that would culminate in the Declaration of Independence two-and-a-half years later.

This event will start at 6:30 P.M. at the First Congregational Church of Falmouth, 68 Main Street.

The cost for each program is $4 for members of the society, $5 for non-members. Tickets can be purchased at the venue or at the society, 65 Palmer Avenue.

Sea Captains Export Pope Night to Virginia

The diary of Nicholas Cresswell, published in a new edition this year, describes the spread of New England’s Pope Night tradition to the Potomac. This is Cresswell’s entry for 6 Nov 1775:

News that the Kings Ships had burned Falmouth in New Hampshire [actually modern Portland, Maine].

Some New England Masters [i.e., captains] of Vessels that lye here being the Anniversary of the Gunpowder plot, Had the Pope, Lord North, [Francis] Barnard, [Thomas] Hutchinson and the Devil, burned in Effigy, after Carting them through the town with Drums & Fifes.

Even six months after the war had begun, Patriots still saw their enemy as the politicians around George III rather than the king himself. Cresswell, a recent emigrant from England and a Loyalist, must nonetheless have found this celebration disquieting.

Ironically, while these New Englanders were bringing their Pope Night tradition to Virginia, a Virginian was doing his best to tamp down the same celebration in the Continental Army camps around Boston—for political reasons.