“On our arrival at Boston we were surprised to find the town blockaded”

Here’s an account of the siege of Boston first published in 1909 by the Women’s Canadian Historical Society of Toronto.

It’s said to be “From the Diary of Robert Woolf,” later a high official in the East India Company, and bears the date of October 1778 at the end. However, internal clues show Woolf wrote down this reminiscence later in life, so that date refers only to the last event he described.

Woolf began:

In April, 1775, although only nineteen years of age, I was intrusted by a London merchant (Sir George Wombwell), in whose counting-house I had been placed, with a sum of £4,000 (four thousand pounds), to proceed to Boston, Mass., U.S., to pay some part of the King’s troops there. I accordingly embarked at Portsmouth on the frigate Cerberus, and found Generals [William] Howe and [Henry] Clinton, with their aides-de-camp, were also passengers.

Gen. John Burgoyne was on the same ship but didn’t rate a mention.

The Parliamentary Register for 1776 states that £400 sterling was entrusted to Woolf to pass on to Capt. John Chads of H.M.S. Cerberus “for his extraordinary expences occured in the passage” with those three generals. Here’s the receipt for that sum, signed by Chads, Wombwell, and Woolf, from Gen. Thomas Gage’s papers.

I can’t find any mention of the amount of £4,000 or any other reference to Wombwell supplying money for the British army in America. (Later he victualed the garrison at Gibraltar.) So Woolf might have misunderstood, misremembered, or exaggerated his mission. Even so, sending a teenager across the Atlantic to reimburse one ship captain seems like a big investment. Was this trip supposed to insert Woolf and his employer into the business of supplying the British military?

Some of that £400 probably went to nice food and liquor on the ship—not that young Woolf got to enjoy it.

The captain of the frigate apologised for thus not being able to accommodate me at his own table, and placed me with the lieutenants, one of whom was afterwards the late Admiral [James] Burney [shown above about fifteen years later], who also accompanied Captain [James] Cook on his voyage round the world; and I carry the remembrance of that gentleman’s musical skill on the violin, frequently dissipating, as it did, the melancholy occasioned by the monotony of the voyage.

Nothing remarkable occurred worthy of observation beyond the swiftness of our frigate’s sailing, compared with that of other vessels with which we fell in, and the extremely thick fog on the banks of Newfoundland, with the astonishing abundance of fine codfish caught there by the sailors.

On our arrival at Boston we were surprised to find the town blockaded and surrounded by the rebels (as they were then called), cutting off all communication with the country, and the town nearly deserted by its inhabitants; those who remained with the King’s troops thus deprived of all supplies, with reason to dread an approaching famine, which would in all probability have occurred had not the approach by sea been kept open.

A first and severe action had taken place a few weeks before in the neighbourhood, when several lives were lost on both sides. This unexpected state of affairs threw me into much perplexity, from which I was partly relieved by Captain [Christopher] Horsfall, of the Welsh Fusiliers, to whom I had letters. He kindly took me to his quarters and gave me both board and lodging. I also received very friendly attention from Major [John] Pitcairn, commanding the second battalion of marines on shore.

Young Woolf has arrived in a besieged town, but he’s recovered from his surprise and found protectors. What was left to worry about? 

TOMORROW: A more severe action.

“You then possessed the capital of North America, Boston”

After King George III had opened Parliament on 31 Oct 1776 with the speech quoted yesterday, the House of Commons debated how to respond.

Richard Aldworth-Griffin proposed to thank the monarch with an address echoing all the points he and the government ministers had delivered. George Finch-Hatton seconded that motion.

Then the opposition seized the opportunity to express their views on the American War and how the ministry was carrying it out. At the time, most parliamentary opponents were clustered around the Marquess of Rockingham, who had been prime minister briefly in the 1760s.

The first to speak was Lord John Cavendish, who proffered the opposition’s draft address. His whole speech was longer than the king’s and made several points like this:

Every act which has been proposed as a means of procuring peace and submission, has become a new cause of war and revolt; and we now find ourselves almost inextricably involved in a bloody and expensive civil war; which, besides exhausting at present the strength of all his Majesty’s dominions, exposing our allies to the designs of their and our enemies, and leaving this kingdom in a most perilous situation, threatens, in its issue, the most deplorable calamities to the whole British race.

The Marquess of Granby seconded that. (According to Horace Walpole, Granby was supposed to have offered the motion, “but his youthful diffidence got the better.”) Though both Lord John and Granby had aristocratic titles, they weren’t members of the House of Lords. The first was the younger brother of a duke, the latter the son of a duke. They were thus both eligible to serve in the House of Commons.

George Johnstone, former governor of West Florida (shown above), then got blunt and personal:

The minister’s speech he declared to be an entire compound of hypocrisy. It made his Majesty talk of peace, at the very moment when not only all Europe, but this kingdom, gave the most evident appearances of preparation for war. In short, it was like a deceptious mirror reflecting a false image of truth. That part of it which talked of giving the Americans law and liberty, he conceived to be a mere turn of wit and humour, which would not bear a serious interpretation. It was an insidious hypocritical speech that held out law and liberty at the point of the sword.

George Wombwell, a government supporter and director of the East India Company, replied to one of Johnstone’s points, about sailors being impressed for the Royal Navy, by insisting that “no press was better conducted than the present.” The printed report on the debate stated: “He censured the Americans as a bragging, cowardly banditti, &c.”

The Parliamentary Register for this year was published by printer John Almon, and he leaned decidedly toward the Whigs. One result of that, I suspect, was that opposition speeches were recorded more fully than speeches in favor of the government. Wombwell’s remarks were summarized in four lines and “&c.” while Johnstone’s filled a page and a half.

The next speaker was John Wilkes, and he got six pages. Among his remarks to the government:

Nothing decisive can follow from the late successful affair on Long Island, no more than from the defeat at Sullivan’s Island. New York will probably fall into your hands, but your situation will in that case be scarcely mended since the last year, for you then possessed the capital of North America, Boston. Is that great and important town advantageously exchanged for New York? I forgot that we still possess the fishing hamlet of Halifax.

The Hon. Temple Luttrell, son of an earl, offered a speech full of historical allusions both ancient and modern. He insisted:

It is a very unfair argument to alledge that the Americans fight for independency---You must be sensible, Sir, that the only way to straighten a bow is to wrest it with vigour to an opposite curve: the acts of this legislature affecting the colonists were so warped from rectitude, that their only chance to recover a right line of justice was by proceeding to contrary extremities, to announce disunion and absolute freedom. . . .

If you empower the commissioners in America [Adm. Richard Howe and Gen. Sir William Howe] to propose peace on equitable conditions, offer to restore their charters, and relinquish the unsustainable claim of taxation with a good grace---even now while your armies figure in the field, under hitherto triumphant generals---and I make no doubt, but by so laudable a step, you will obtain from your colonies, through the Howe’s, as fair and magnanimous an answer, as that which was sent from the Falerii to the Roman senate, by the great Camillus---“The Romans in having preferred justice to conquest, have taught us to be satisfied with submission instead of liberty.”

The supporters of the American cause were thus not much better informed about the state of the new U.S. of A. than the government ministers. They believed the Declaration of Independence was just a bargaining position and might yet be withdrawn.

TOMORROW: The debate rolls on.