“The infamous Capt. Beeman”

The Rev. Jeremy Belknap’s account of how Gen. Thomas Gage’s plan for the march to Concord leaked out to the Patriots, quoted yesterday, mentions four men by name.

Three of those people were well known Patriot leaders: Dr. Joseph Warren, Samuel Adams, and John Hancock.

The fourth was a Loyalist scout for the British troops identified as “the infamous Capt. Beeman.” Is there any more evidence about such a figure, especially evidence not publicized by October 1775? If so, that would suggest that Belknap truly heard some inside information.

And indeed we can identify “Capt. Beeman.” That must be Thomas Beaman (1729–1780), a Loyalist refugee from Petersham, Massachusetts.

Beaman was born in Lancaster. He joined Gov. William Shirley’s 1755 expedition against Acadia as a sergeant under Capt. Abijah Willard, and before the end of that war he was a captain under Col. Willard at the capture of Montréal. From then on people called him “Captain Beaman” even in peacetime.

In the 1760s Beaman was married and settled in Petersham. The first and so far only minister of that town was the Rev. Aaron Whitney (1714–1779). Unlike most of his Congregationalist colleagues in New England, Whitney strongly supported the royal government in the political disputes of the 1760s and 1770s.

So did Beaman. There was an argument and lawsuit over a schoolhouse around 1770 that I’ll save for later. Instead, let’s skip ahead to late 1774 after royal authority outside Boston broke down. According to Petersham town records, Beaman was among fourteen local men who banded together and agreed:

That we will not acknowledge or submit to the pretended Authority of any Congresses, Committees of Correspondence or other unconstitutional Assemblies of Men, but will at the Risque of our Lives, and if need be, oppose the forceable Exercise of all such Authority.

A 2 January Petersham town meeting summoned those men by name to explain themselves or repent. Only two showed up, defiantly maintaining their position. The meeting then determined:

Therefore as it appears that those persons still remain the incorrigable enemies of America and have a disposition to fling their influences into the scale against us in order to enslave their brethren and posterity forever, and after all the friendly expostulations and entreaties which we have been able to make use of, we are with great reluctance constrained to pronounce those, some of which have heretofore been our agreeable neighbors, traitorous paricides to the cause of freedom in general and the United Provinces of North America in particular…

The meeting urged townspeople not to have any commercial dealings with those men, even planning to print up 300 handbills at town expense. The Boston newspapers reported on that resolution.

Customs Commissioner Henry Hulton left this version of what happened next, starting in February 1775:

A number of Inhabitants in the town of Petersham, who had entered into an association for their mutual defence, finding the spirit of persecution very strong against them, assembled together in an house, resolving to defend themselves to the utmost.

The house was soon surrounded by many hundreds of the people, and they were obliged after some days to capitulate and submit. The people, after disarming them, ordered them to remain each at his own house, not to depart from thence, or any two of them to be seen together upon pain of death.

Petersham’s local historian says that siege concluded on 2 March.

Beaman then probably moved his family into Boston, as many other prominent Loyalists did. [ADDENDUM: Further research cited in the comments below shows that Beaman’s wife and children remained in Petersham until early 1779, when the Massachusetts legislature permitted them to travel through Newport to join him in New York City.] But according to the account his heirs later gave the Loyalists Commission, paraphrased in E. Alfred Jones’s The Loyalists of Massachusetts, “he, at the request of General Gage, frequently traveled the country to discover the real designs of the leaders of the rebellion.”

The Beaman family’s claim also stated that “he was a volunteer (as a guide to Lord Percy) with the military detachment to Concord.” Percy got only as far as Lexington, however. According to Belknap’s informant, Beaman was actually a scout for the first British column under Lt. Col. Francis Smith; those soldiers “landed on Phips’s Farm, where they were met by the infamous Capt. Beeman, and conducted to Concord.”

Furthermore, the New-England Chronicle newspaper of 12 Sept 1776 referred to “Capt Beeman, of Petersham (who piloted the ministerial butchers to Lexington).” And Lemuel Shattuck’s 1835 history of Concord, published before many Loyalist sources became available, stated: “It is also intimated that tories were active in guiding the regulars. Captain Beeman of Petersham was one.” Those sources suggest that locals recognized Beaman among the redcoats, as Belknap’s information implies.

Back in Boston, Gen. Gage rewarded Thomas Beaman in May by appointing him wagon-master to the army. Later in 1775 Beaman became a first lieutenant in the Loyal American Association, a militia company led by his old commander Abijah Willard, which never saw combat.

Beaman kept the position of wagon-master under Gen. William Howe. He traveled with the king's army, working in and around British-occupied New York until he died in November 1780. By then the state of Massachusetts had banished him and confiscated his property. Beaman's widow and children settled in Digby, Nova Scotia.

We thus have our first indication that Belknap’s October 1775 account of the march to Concord came from someone who had at least some reliable, little-known information.

Searching for Mr. Molineux’s Cannon

Last month I wrote about William Molineux obtaining eight cannon for the Massachusetts resistance in the last weeks before he died on 22 Oct 1774.

When I did, Joel Bohy of Bruneau & Co. and Antiques Roadshow, a truly dedicated local and living historian, sent me a letter from the Massachusetts state archives showing what happened to those guns.

Dated 3 Feb 1775, this letter was addressed to the Massachusetts Provincial Congress’s committee of supply by four men from four different towns. It began:

We the Subscribers beg leave to Inform the Gentlemen of the Committe of Supply, that there was eight peices of Cannon Sent to Watertown last Fall & Committed to the care of ye Selectmen of Said town and Some time after they were informed they were under the Direction of the late Mr. Molinux,…

How Molineux and his Sons of Liberty got those guns past the army sentries on the Neck we still don’t know, but here’s confirmation they were in the hands of the Patriots by the fall of 1774.

Indeed, people had started talking about cannon in Watertown soon after the “Powder Alarm” on 2 September and the people of Charlestown removing the cannon from their shore battery five days later.

On 13 September, Customs Commissioner Henry Hulton wrote to a friend about the Patriots’ military preparations: “The people for their part are all arming, melting their lead into bullets, and draging Cannon into the Country.” From the timing that appears to refer to the Charlestown guns. In a postwar memoir Hulton wrote about how people had “secretly removed several Cannon from Boston, and dragged them into the Country beyond Watertown.” I suspect that when Hulton looked back he conglomerated several instances of cannon movement in the fall of 1774, but it’s notable that he remembered Watertown as a transport point.

Patriots expected the royal military to respond. On Sunday, 18 September, soldiers of the 38th Regiment of Foot turned out for inspection with knapsacks, suggesting they would be away from their barracks for midday dinner. Those men were actually ordered out to help built fortifications as Gen. Thomas Gage strengthened the town’s defenses. But the Boston merchant John Andrews described the local reaction in a letter:

[That] manoeuvre rais’d a suspicion in some people’s minds (who were more credulous than wise) that they were going to Watertown after the cannon: which, by being often told, came to be believ’d, and the committee here sent to inform their brethren of Charlestown, which broke up their morning service and induc’d them to proceed to Cambridge, and from thence to Watertown, alarming all as they went, to be prepar’d and ready to act upon the defensive, if attack’d.

Andrews’s phrasing suggests he’d been told there actually were cannon in Watertown, but even if he was just repeating “a suspicion in some people’s minds,” that was a good guess. Because by early October 1774, Molineux’s cannon were there, and the townspeople had to decide what to do with them.

TOMORROW: Mounting costs.

“The affair of breaking Mr. Hulton’s Windows at Brookline”

Yesterday we left Henry Hulton under attack in his home in Brookline.

Hulton, one of the five Commissioners of Customs for North America appointed in London, had been woken on the night of 19 June 1770 by a man claiming to have a letter for him. He wrote later that he “slipt on my breeches and waistcoat,” grabbed his sword, and went to a window.

After a brief exchange, Hulton slammed down the window on the man’s hand. Then that man and others stationed all around the house beat in the first-floor windows with clubs.

Hulton wrote:

The family immediately rose in the greatest consternation, and Mrs. H opening the Window shutter in her room had a large stone thrown at her which happily missed her. Imagining the people would break into the house, and seek to murther me I ran to the Servants’ room at the head of the back Stairs with my sword in my hand, leaving two Servant Men at the bottom.

The commissioner’s servants included both white and black people, the latter almost certainly enslaved. And those were his ground-floor defense against the mob. Also in the household were Hulton’s wife Elizabeth; their two children, Thomas and Henry, Jr., both under the age of three; and his sister Ann.

Ann Hulton wrote the next month:

I could imagine nothing less than that the House was beating down, after many violent blows on the Walls and windows, most hideous Shouting, dreadful imprecations, and threats ensued. Struck with terror and astonishment, what to do I knew not, but got on some Clothes, and went to Mrs. H.’s room, where I found the Family collected, a Stone thrown in at her window narrowly missed her head. When the Ruffians were retreating with loud huzzas and one cryd he will fire—no says another, he darn’t fire, we will come again says a third—Mr. and Mrs H. left their House immediately and have not lodged a night since in it.

Her brother recalled the men outside “swearing, ‘dead or alive, we will have him.’” Eventually, though, that crowd left, and Henry and Elizabeth Hulton “retired to a Neighbour’s house till daylight, and passed the following day at Mr. John Apthorp’s at little Cambridge,” now Brighton. (That house may have survived into the early 1900s as one of the houses on the John Duncklee estate.)

Ann wrote:

The next day we were looking up all the Pockit Pistols in the house, some of which were put by, that nobody could find ’em and ignorant of any being charged, Kitty was very near shooting her Mistress, inadvertently lets it off. The bullets missed her within an inch and fixed in a Chest of Drawers.

A fellow Customs Commissioner, William Burch, learned of the attack and moved with his wife to Castle William (shown above). After hearing about that, Henry “came home the following morning, and carried the Children and part of the family from Brooklyn to the Castle,” arriving on 21 June. They squeezed into the quarters reserved for the governor with the other commissioners, lower Customs officers, and their relatives and servants.

Back in Brookline, locals discussed who had carried out the attack. Ann Hulton reported:

And for the honour of the Township we lived in, I must say, the principal People, have of their own accord taken up the affair very warmly, exerting their endeavors to find out the Authors, or perpetrators of the Villainy.

They have produced above twenty witnesses, Men in the Neighborhood who were out a Fishing that night, that prove they met upon the Road from Boston towards my Brother’s House, Parties of Men that appeared disguised, their faces blacked, with white Night caps and white Stockens on, one of ’em with Ruffles on and all, with great clubs in their hands. They did not know any of ’em, but one Fisherman spoke to ’em, to be satisfied whether they were Negroes or no, and found by their Speech they were not, and they answered him very insolently. Another person who mett them declares, that one of ’em asked him the way to Mr. H’s house, and another of ’em said he knew the way very well.

After all, you may judge how much any further discovery is likely to be made, or justice to be obtained in this Country, when I tell you that the persons who were thus active to bring the dark deed to light, were immediately stop’d and silenced, being given to understand (as I’m well informed) that if they made any further stir about the matter, they might expect to be treated in the same manner as Mr H. was. However, so much is proved as to clear Mr H. from the charge of doing himself the mischief, one would think.

On 21 June, acting governor Thomas Hutchinson issued a proclamation describing the assault on the Hultons’ house and offering a £50 reward for identifying the perpetrators. The 25 June Boston Post-Boy and 28 June Boston News-Letter printed that proclamation in full. The 25 June Boston Evening-Post reported on it. The Boston Gazette ran one sentence saying that Hulton’s windows had been “broke by Persons unknown” with no mention of the reward.

On 4 October, the News-Letter said, a sea captain returned from London with word that news of the violence on 19 June—the carting of Patrick McMaster and the mobbing of the Hulton house—“Causes great Uneasiness among our Friends at Home.” With the Boston Massacre trials coming up, the Massachusetts Whigs were under pressure to prove that their society was law-abiding. At the time, the Hultons were still living at the Castle for their own safety.

Attack on the Hulton House

On 19 June 1770, 250 years ago today, political violence broke out again in greater Boston.

With the 14th Regiment off at Castle William, royal officials were already feeling exposed. Acting governor Thomas Hutchinson had moved the Massachusetts General Court to Cambridge, and he and many Customs officers were staying out of town.

Meanwhile, the non-importation movement was facing its own challenge. Since Parliament had repealed most of the Townshend duties (retaining only the most lucrative, on tea), popular support for their boycott was waning. Why couldn’t the American Whigs accept a partial victory?

One reason was that their ideology said any compromise with oppression would lead to political slavery. Another was that no large town wanted to be seen as the first to return to normal trade. The merchants of New York and Philadelphia held large meetings and issued broadsides. Boston’s Whig leaders kept up the pressure on the few local merchants already identified as importing goods.

On 1 June, Dr. Thomas Young led supporters to the shop of the McMaster brothers, merchants from Scotland doing business in Boston and Portsmouth. On the 19th, a crowd returned and seized Patrick McMaster, threatening to tar and feather him. I wrote about that event back here with help from an article by Prof. Colin Nicholson.

Here’s Customs Commissioner Henry Hulton’s later description of what happened to McMaster, as published by Neil Longley York and the Colonial Society of Massachusetts:

On the 19th June one Mr. McMaster, a Scotch Merchant and Importer, was taken out of his room, placed in a Cart and made to expect the same treatment that [Owen] Richards had experienced; but fainting away from an apprehension of what was to befall him, they spared him this ignimony, and contented themselves with leading him through the town in the Cart to Roxbury, where they turned him out, spiting upon him, and otherwise contemptuously and rudely treating him.

This is a rare documented pre-Revolutionary example of New Englanders tarring and feathering someone not employed by the Customs Service. McMaster was probably also genteel while most early victims of those attacks were working-class. But since he was a newcomer to Boston and a Scotsman besides, the crowd could conceive of tarring him—until he fainted.

Hulton himself had rented an estate in rural Brookline (shown above, courtesy of Digital Commonwealth) for his family, including his sister Ann. On 25 July she wrote to a friend about what the Hultons experienced later that same night, possibly from the same crowd:

I have often thought of what you said, that surely we did not live in a lone House. It’s true we have long been in a dangerous situation, from the State of Government. The want of protection, the perversion of the Laws, and the spirit of the People inflamed by designing men.

Yet our house in the Country has been a place of retreat for many from the disturbances of the Town, and though they were become very alarming, yet we did not apprehend an immediate attack on our House, or that a Mob out of Boston should come so far, before we had notice of it, and were fully persuaded there are Persons more obnoxious than my Brother, that he had no personal Enemy, and confident of the good will of our Neighbours (in the Township we live in) towards him, so that we had no suspicion of what happened the night of June the 19th—we have reason to believe it was not the sudden outrage of a frantic Mob, but a plot artfully contrived to decoy My Brother into the hands of assassins. At Midnight when the Family was asleep, had not a merciful Providence prevented their designs, we had been a distressd Family indeed.

Between 12 and 1 o’Clock he was wakened by a knocking at the Door. He got up, enquired the person’s name and business, who said he had a letter to deliver to him, which came Express from New York. My Brother puts on his Cloaths, takes his drawn Sword in one hand, and opened the Parlor window with the other. The Man asked for a Lodging—said he, I’ll not open my door, but give me the letter. The man then put his hand, attempting to push up the window, upon which my Brother hastily clapped it down.

Instantly with a bludgeon several violent blows were struck which broke the Sash, Glass and frame to pieces. The first blow aimed at my Brother’s Head, he Providentialy escaped, by its resting on the middle frame, being double, at same time (though before then, no noise or appearance of more Persons than one) the lower windows, all round the House (excepting two) were broke in like manner. My Brother stood in amazement for a Minute or 2, and having no doubt that a number of Men had broke in on several sides of the House, he retired Upstairs.

You will believe the whole Family was soon alarmed, but the horrible Noises from without, and the terrible shrieks within the House from Mrs. H. and Servants, which struck my Ears on awaking, I can’t describe, and shall never forget.

Ann Hulton’s letter is also available from the Colonial Society and was first published in 1927 in Letters of a Loyalist Lady.

TOMORROW: Aftermath in Brookline.

“He wanted a free conversation with us”

After his fight with James Otis, Jr., became a big deal, Customs Commissioner John Robinson published his version of what had led up to it. That account was dated 7 Sept 1769 and appeared in Green and Russell’s Boston Post-Boy four days later.

According to Robinson, on Friday, 1 September, he arrived at the Board of Customs’s meeting room in Concert Hall about 10:30 A.M. and was told that Otis had come by that morning and asked to speak to him and a fellow Customs Commissioner, Henry Hulton. After Hulton came in, the two men sent “Green the Messenger”—probably Bartholomew Green—to find Otis.

About 11:00, Otis arrived at the door with Samuel Adams. The board’s secretary invited him in, but he declined. The two Commissioners went to the door, and Robinson said:

Your servant, Gentlemen; pray what is your business with us?----

Mr. Otis answered, that he wanted a free conversation with us:

I replied, It is necessary that we should first know upon what business, Will you not walk into a room Gentlemen?

He answered, that his business was of such a nature, that it could not be transacted in our own houses, and he could not mention it until he met us: and he proposed, that each of us should bring with him a friend, and he would bring a friend with him.

I then asked him, whether his business was official?

He answered, he did not understand what I meant by official:

I replied, does it relate to us as Commissioners?

He said, it is related to his character, he wanted a free conversation with us on that subject, and that he was to meet Mr. [William] Burch [another Customs Commissioner] at the coffee-house the next morning at seven o’clock.

I answered, that as I lived in the country, I did not know whether I could attend at that time, and Mr. Hulton [who lived in Brookline] said the same in respect to himself.

Mr. Otis then said any other time will do.

We answered, we would see him at a convenient opportunity, and then parted.

I share that all to show the genteel, even arch, tone of the interaction, and to suggest how frustrating it must have been to figure out what Otis was on about. It’s notable that he didn’t have a particular beef with Robinson—he was making the same approach to three of the five Commissioners. (Of the remaining two, John Temple was a political ally of the Whigs and Charles Paxton a longtime foe, so Otis probably didn’t see approaching them as worthwhile.)

The next morning, Robinson decided he’d go to the coffee house at the same time as Burch, but he arrived late, closer to 7:30, and found Burch coming out. He and Otis ended up alone in a back room sharing a “dish of coffee.” [Because you need some kind of caffeine for a breakfast meeting.]

Finally Otis got to his grievance. In Robinson’s recollection he said:

I am informed that I have been represented to government by your Board, as a rebel and a traitor, and I have two or three questions to put to you, that I think, as a gentleman, I have a right to an answer, or at least to ask. The first is, whether your Board as Commissioners, Gentlemen, or in any other manner, ever represented me in that light, in any of their memorials or letters to the Treasury.

There had been another leak from London, and Otis was taking things personally.

TOMORROW: The Customs Commissioners’ reports.

The Life of Owen Richards, Customs Man

Owen Richards was born in Wales, according to what he testified to the Loyalists Commission in 1784. Two years earlier he had told the royal government he was “now near Sixty Years of Age,” meaning he was born in the mid-1720s.

In 1744, again by his own account, Richards came to Boston. He had been “bred a Seaman” and made his living as a mariner of some sort. On 14 Dec 1745 the Rev. Timothy Cutler of Christ Church, the Anglican congregation the North End, married Richards and Rebecca Sampson.

Owen and Rebecca Richards had three children baptized at Christ Church, as preserved in its records:

• Elizabeth on 26 Apr 1752.
• James on 15 Feb 1756.
• Joseph Prince on 26 Feb 1758.

In addition, there were two older sons in the family: William and John Lloyd.

Owen Richards became a steady part of Boston’s Anglican community. At some point he bought pew #75 in Christ Church. He sponsored four baptisms at King’s Chapel between 1750 and 1769 and stood godfather to three babies at Christ Church in 1766 and 1767. (Notably, the third of those North End babies appears to have been the son of John Manley, America’s first naval hero.)

In 1759, Richards bought a house on North Street, showing that he had earned some money at sea—and in his thirties he was getting ready to settle down. That deed listed his profession as “rigger,” someone expert in rigging the ropes and sails of ships. In February 1761 Richards was one of two executors for the estate of another rigger named William Prince, whom Joseph Prince Richards might have been named after.

In early 1764, the Boston News-Letter ran a series of ads in which Owen Richards promoted his services as an auctioneer. At the “North End New-Auction Room” he offered “Sundry sort of Goods”: new and secondhand clothing, cloth, a mahogany table, tobacco, and so on. He promised people with goods to sell, especially in-demand “Checks and Linens of all Sorts,” that he would get them the best possible prices and prompt payment.

It wasn’t a good time to enter business. There was a postwar recession. By February, Richards had to assure customers, “The Small-Pox is not anywhere nigh to the North End New Auction-Room.” In January 1765 Nathaniel Wheelwright’s bankruptcy shocked the Boston business community.

At some point, Owen Richards gave up his own business and took a steady, if unpopular, government job: he went to work for the royal Customs service. Exactly when he became a Customs man isn’t clear in the sources.

• In 1782 Richards wrote that he had “been in the Service of his Majesty by Sea and Land near Thirty Years, the greatest part of that Time in his Majestys Customs at Boston.” That might have included some naval or privateering service during the 1750s, and he probably counted the Revolutionary War years when he wasn’t really able to do the job.
• Customs Commissioner Henry Hulton wrote that Richards “had been many years Tidesman in this Port” before 1770.
• However, in 1784 the earliest documentation for his Customs work that Richards could supply was an “Appointment & Deputation dated 8th of April 1768.” Now that might have been after a promotion or a new appointment under the Commissioners, who arrived in 1767.

As a Customs officer, Owen Richards became significant in the development of the American Revolution, as I’ll start to discuss tomorrow.

Returning to Richards’s personal story, his wife Rebecca died on 1 Sept 1758, leaving an infant and a two-year-old. Less than three months later, Owen remarried to Elizabeth Tucker at the Brattle Street Meetinghouse.

In February 1771, Richards, now listing himself as a “gentleman,” deeded the house he was still administering for the estate of William Prince to his sons William, John Lloyd, and James, the last then fifteen years old.

(As for daughter Elizabeth, she had married a man named Charles Perrin at King’s Chapel in August 1768, when she was sixteen. Their first child, George, was born the following June but died at four weeks. Their daughter Mary was baptized in 1771.)

On the list of Loyalists departing Boston in 1776, Richards appeared among other Customs employees as a “coxswain.” No family members were listed as leaving with him. However, in 1782 he told the government he had “a helpless Wife & four Children” to look out for.

The Loyalists Commission awarded Richards £120 in compensation for his property lost in Boston, plus a pension of £30 per year. He collected that until 1800, when he presumably died.

TOMORROW: Owen Richards and the Lydia.

The Parody, and the Parody Parodized

“The Liberty Song” by John Dickinson and Arthur Lee (to music by William Boyce) became so popular in Boston after July 1768 that by the end of September two parodies were circulating.

That was already a busy summer. In June the Customs service seized John Hancock’s ship Liberty for alleged smuggling. In response, a waterfront crowd rioted, driving most high Customs officials to take shelter at Castle William.

Then came news that the London government had ordered troops into Boston. That decision had been made before the Liberty riot, but the violence made it a lot harder for locals to argue the Crown was overreacting. Nevertheless, the Boston Whigs invited all the other towns in Massachusetts to send delegates to an extralegal Convention of Towns to discuss how to respond.

Above a report that ninety towns were sending men to the Convention and an advertisement for Paul Revere’s dental services, the 26 September Boston Gazette broke this story:

Last Tuesday the following SONG made its Appearance from a Garret at C–st–e W——m.

Come shake your dull Noddles, ye Pumpkins and bawl,
And own that you’re mad at fair Liberty’s Call,
No scandalous Conduct can add to your Shame.
Condemn’d to Dishonor, Inherit the Fame——

[Chorus:]
In Folly you’re born, and in Folly you’ll live,
To Madness still ready,
And Stupidly steady,
Not as Men, but as Monkies, the Tokens you give.

And so on. This wasn’t labeled as a parody of “The Liberty Song,” but everybody could see that it was. A later verse hit an even more sensitive spot by warning, “Then plunder, my Lads, for when Red-Coats appear, / You’ll melt like the Locust when Winter is near…”

Ordinarily Edes and Gill would be the last printers in Boston to give space to such an attack on the Whigs. But in this case, they were riling up their base. Tying the poem to Castle William pointed to the Crown officials living there.

And word spread. On the Sunday night before that issue of the Gazette came out, an Admiralty Court official appeared at the print shop with a message:

Having been told that you intended to publish a Song in your News Paper, called a Parody on the Song of Liberty, under my name, as the Author of it, I think proper to forewarn you from publishing such a falsity, or any other thing under my name, without my authority; and if you persist in doing it in this, or any other instance, it shall be at your peril.

I am,
Your humble Serv’t.
Hen. Hulton.

Customs Commissioner Henry Hulton did write poetry, but he never took credit for those verses. Of course Edes and Gill declared they had never intended to print Hulton’s name.

A week later, the Boston Gazette had another set of verses to share, in a sort of back-and-forth rap battle between versifiers of opposing politics:

The following was publish’d in a Hand-Bill last Week.

The Parody parodized,
Or the MASSACHUSETTS Song of LIBERTY.

Come swallow your Bumpers, ye Tories! and roar,
That the Sons of fair FREEDOM are hamper’d once more;
But know that no Cut-throats our Spirits can tame,
Nor a Host of Oppressors shall smother the flame.

[Chorus:]
In Freedom we’re born, and like SONS of the brave,
Will never surrender,
But swear to defend her,
And scorn to survive, if unable to save.

And so on. That song went on to express confidence that George III was on the side of his American subjects: “When oppress’d and reproach’d, our KING we implore, / Still firmly perswaded, our RIGHTS he’ll restore…” American Whigs were still a long way from breaking with the king.

In August 1769 Boston’s Sons of Liberty banqueted in Dorchester. John Adams wrote that the entertainment included both “Liberty Songs”—“that by the Farmer [Dickinson], and that by Dr. Church, and the whole Company joined in the Chorus. This is cultivating the Sensations of Freedom.” Dr. Benjamin Church thus gets credit for the “Massachusetts Song of Liberty.”

Henry Hulton and “twenty Devils, Popes, & Pretenders”

I’ve focused on Charles Paxton as the chief target of Boston’s Pope Night processions in 1767, but two other new Commissioners of His Majesty’s Customs arrived in Boston on that same Fifth of November.

One was Henry Hulton, born in 1732 in Hampshire, England. He became one of the British Empire’s civil servants, eventually winning the post in Boston. Which turned out to be a lot more trouble than he anticipated.

Hulton wrote back to his family on his arrival, and his sister Ann Hulton passed on his news in a 17 Dec 1767 letter:

He says they happen’d unluckily to arrive on the most riotous day in the year, the 5th. Novr believes the Mob carried twenty Devils, Popes, & Pretenders, thro the Streets, with Labels on their breasts, Liberty & Property & no Commissioners, he laughed at ’em with the rest.

Later Henry’s wife and children joined him, as did Ann. She observed:

The Mobs here are very different from those in O[ld] England where a few lights put into the Windows will pacify, or the interposition of a Magistrate restrain them, but here they act from principle & under Countenance.

The Hultons moved into a house on Walnut Street in Brookline. According to Ann, a Scottish man named Logan “purchased this House & Land for my Bro[the]r in his own name, at the time nobody wou’d Lett or Sell to a Commissioner.” That estate provided Hulton with a rural retreat from the political turmoil in Boston. But on at least one occasion the mob visited him out there, and he had to flee to Castle William.

Ann Hulton’s reports home were published in 1927 as Letters of a Loyalist Lady. Henry Hulton’s political writings remained unpublished until 2010 when the Colonial Society of Massachusetts issued Henry Hulton and the American Revolution: An Outsider’s Inside View, edited by Neil Longley York. It contains Hulton’s letters; his first-hand history of the coming of the Revolution, owned by Princeton University; and a collection of essays and poems, held at the Clements Library. The complete text is now available online.

“The Devil and the Crown” at Faneuil Hall, Nov. 4

On Saturday, 4 November, Faneuil Hall will host a reenactment of the Boston town meeting I described yesterday, setting up a non-importation boycott against the Townshend duties.

Meanwhile, in the surrounding marketplace volunteers will reenact an outdoor public demonstration against the royal officials who came to Boston to collect those duties. That protest took place on 5 Nov 1767.

Boston 1775 readers will recognize the Fifth of November as when Boston youths enjoyed raucous processions, with giant effigies representing the British Empire’s Catholic enemies and the political scapegoats of the day.

By coincidence, on 5 Nov 1767 three new Customs Commissioners, including Henry Hulton, William Burch, and the already unpopular Charles Paxton, disembarked from London. Lord George Sackville, later Secretary of State Germain, described how that worked out:

They landed on the 5th of November, and the populace were then carrying in procession the Pope, the Devil, and the Pretender, in order to commit them to the flames in honour of Protestantism. Mr. Paxton’s name being Charles, it was fixed in large letters upon the breast of the Devil, and these figures met the Commissioners at the water side and were carry’d before them without any insult through the streets, and whenever they stopped to salute an acquaintance, the figures halted and faced about till the salutation was over, and so accompany’d them to the [Lieutenant] Governor [Thomas] Hutchinson’s door…

The combined reenactment will be called “The Devil and the Crown.” Here’s the full schedule:

11:00 A.M. to 2:00 P.M.
Goods for Your Master, Taxes for Your King
Come try your luck as a young apprentice in this colonial marketplace game. Whether you buy, barter, or smuggle, the goal’s the same: bring all your goods back to your employer and get promoted! This drop in program is best for ages 6-10, Faneuil Hall, Education Space, basement.

1:00 to 4:30 P.M.
Talk of the Town
Meet reenactors portraying Bostonians of different social classes in Samuel Adams Park, directly in front of Faneuil Hall, and learn about why they are protesting the new laws.

2:30 and 4:00 P.M.
Revolutionary Town Meeting: Stand Up! Speak Out!
Join a lively meeting to debate Boston’s response to the hated Townshend Acts. Character cards are available. Free, 30 minutes, Faneuil Hall, Great Hall, second floor.

4:30 P.M.
Procession
Join a rowdy street protest and process around Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market to the Old State House.

5:30 to 6:30 P.M.
Museum Open House
Dive into Boston’s Revolutionary past and explore the galleries inside the Old State House. Admission is free to all.

The program will thus explore the formal politics of a town meeting and the informal politics of the street, the economy of transatlantic trade and the choices of local consumers, particularly women. (Recall how the list of goods that Bostonians were supposed to boycott included a lot of women’s garments and household items.)

This reenactment is being organized through Revolution 250, the coalition of local organizations commemorating the sestercentennials of events in Massachusetts leading up to the break with Britain. In this case, the sponsoring organizations are Boston National Historical Park, Minute Man National Historical Park, The Bostonian Society, and the Massachusetts Historical Society.

I started pushing for this event last year, saying that Revolution 250 shouldn’t miss the anniversary of a big political event involving giant puppets. But Jim Hollister of Minute Man Park really got the wagon rolling, along with such dedicated reenactors as Niels Hobbs, Matthew Mees, Ruth Hodges, and many others. It will be a once-in-a-lifetime anniversary!

An Attack on St. George’s Day?

On 24 Apr 1775, many British army officers planned to celebrate St. George’s Day, honoring the patron saint of England. St. George’s Day is actually 23 April, but that date fell on a Sunday that year—and that day of the week was presumably not proper for the officers’ form of celebration.

In his diary entry for 5 May, Lt. John Barker of the 4th Regiment wrote:

A most shocking piece of Villany was discover’d about the time of our affairs with the Rebels; it was a scheme to cut off all the Officers of the Garrison. Upon the 24th, the day we were to keep St. Georges day, the Rebels were to make a feint Attack in the night upon the Lines: a number of Men were to be posted at the Lodgings of all the Officers, and upon the Alarm Guns firing they were to put the Officers to death as they were coming out of their houses to go to their Barracks.

What a set of Villains must they be to think of such a thing! But there is nothing be it ever so bad that these people will stick at to gain their ends. Upon the G——l finding this out He order’d all the Officers to lay at their Barracks, where those who are not encamped will continue.

Customs Commissioner Henry Hulton recorded other rumors about the St. George‘s Day dinner or a ball that Earl Percy had planned for two days later. Supposedly locals planned to kill the officers when they returned to their rented quarters “in liquor” after one of those events, or perhaps to blow up the gathering.

Hulton also wrote about fears that “upwards of four thousand men” in Boston would rise up against the royal government. There weren’t actually that many men of military age in the town population.

Like Lt. Barker, Commissioner Hulton said Gen. Thomas Gage’s orders for the officers to sleep in the barracks prevented the planned massacre. And the outbreak of war canceled the officers’ entertainment, anyway. Col. Percy was in no mood for a ball.

Now in all the reading I’ve done, I’ve never come across evidence that provincials planned such an attack, or even kept track of when St. George’s Day was.

Henry Hulton in Print at Last

While I was at the Colonial Society of Massachusetts on Friday, I got a glimpse of its latest publication, Henry Hulton and the American Revolution: An Outsider's Inside View, edited by Neil Longley York. The publisher’s copy explains this book’s significance:

Henry Hulton was an Englishman who moved to Boston in 1767 as a member of the new American Board of Customs Commissioners. The board was supposed to curtail smuggling and bring greater efficiency to the administration of empire. It failed, and Hulton fled Massachusetts in 1776, joining an exodus of the politically displaced.

Hulton eventually wrote a never-published history of the American rebellion as he experienced it. Although his complaints about the “demagogues” who dominated Massachusetts politics echo those made by other Loyalists, Hulton adds another dimension to our understanding. As an Englishman, he could be more detached from the problems of empire than Loyalists who had been driven from their native land. . . .

Hulton’s history, his letters, and the letters of his sister, Ann, who lived with him outside Boston—all of which are reproduced here—provide an unusual glimpse into the onset of the Revolution in Massachusetts.

Back in 2006, Boston 1775 discussed why the manuscript of Hulton’s history, in the collection of Princeton University, has the bookplate of a man named Thomas Preston. (Here’s another book with the same bookplate.) Was this the army captain tried for murder after the Boston Massacre? No, it was probably Hulton’s son, who took his mother’s family name to gain an inheritance.

I took notes on that manuscript a few years ago, and on letters from Hulton in libraries around here, and it’s great to see those sources in print. The book isn’t a casual purchase—a small print run and high production values raise the price—but I probably won’t be able to resist saving up for a copy. After all, a used copy of Ann Hulton’s book alone costs significantly more.

“With a Writ of Assistance”

In a footnote for his contribution to The Era of the American Revolution (1939), Oliver M. Dickerson quoted the American Commissioners of Customs appointing an officer for the port of Charleston, South Carolina, in 1772. The original document was filed with the Treasury Office in London.

To All People to Whom These Presents Shall Come

We the Commissioners for managing and causing to be Levied His Majesty’s Customs and other Duties in America Do hereby Depute and Impower George Roupell Esqr. to be Collector of the Customs at Charles Town South Carolina and to do and perform all things to the said Service or Office or Employment belonging. In virtue whereof He hath power to enter into any Ship Bottom, Boat or other Vessel and also in the daytime with a Writ of Assistance granted by his Majesty’s Superior or Supreme Court of Justice and taking with him a Constable, Head-borough or other Public Officer next inhabiting, to enter into any House, Shop, Cellar, Warehouse or other place whatsoever not only within the said Port but within any other Port or place within our Jurisdiction there to make diligent Search and in case of resistance to break open any Door, Trunk, Chest, Case, Pack, Truss or any other Parcel or package whatsoever for any Goods, Wares, or Merchandizes, prohibited to be exported out of or imported into the said Port, or whereof the Customs or other Duties have not been duly paid: And the same to Seize to His Majesty’s use and to put and secure the same in the Warehouse in the Port next to the Place of Seizure.

In all which Premises He is to proceed in such manner as the law directs.

Hereby praying and requiring all and every His Majesty’s Officers and Ministers and all others whom it may concern, to be aiding and assisting to Him in all things as becometh.

Given under our hands and Seal at the Custom House, Boston this seventh day of April in the Twelfth Year of the Reign of our Sovereign Lord King George the Third and in the year of our Lord One Thousand Seven Hundred and Seventy Two.

Signed, Wm. Burch Hen. Hulton Chas. Paxton

The writ of assistance was basically an open-ended search warrant, not tied to specific evidence or specific cases. And because of that generality, the Customs Commissioners actually had a hard time getting them issued by colonial courts outside of Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Dickerson’s article is full of examples of how other colonies’ high courts managed not to issue such writs without coming right out and defying the Crown: they asked for more clarification, lost the paperwork, &c.

Tonight I’ll be discussing the history of this legal controversy as part of a panel at the Old State House in Boston on American search and seizure laws. No need for a special document to get in—this session is free and open to all.

“As mad now as...in the time of the Witches”

When the Revolutionary War began in 1775, a little more than eighty years had passed since Massachusetts was convulsed by the witchcraft hysteria that began in Salem Village in 1692. As the Enlightenment-era Whig politicians of Boston looked back on that history, did they see it as a quaint oddity? Did they realize that one day it would inspire much of Essex County’s tourist economy?

No, the people of eighteenth-century Massachusetts were deeply embarrassed about the whole witchcraft incident. In 1711, the General Court passed a bill exonerating and compensating the accused (those who had survived). Individuals like Judge Samuel Sewall publicly apologized. New Englanders looked back on those historical events with shame and disbelief, the same way we’re embarrassed at evidence of Jim Crow segregation and other bigotries of eighty years ago.

Thus, one way that the friends of the royal government could hit deep against their Whig opponents was to liken them to the witch-hunters of 1692-93, as in the advertisement from the Boston Chronicle that I quoted yesterday.

In a letter dated 8 Jan 1774, Customs commissioner Henry Hulton wrote:

this last summer I was pelted by the Mob in coming from a public Provincial Entertainment where I had dined by the Governours invitation. . . . they are as mad now as they were in the time of the Witches.

On 5 Mar 1773, when John Adams was feeling unappreciated for his work defending the soldiers after the Boston Massacre, he wrote in his diary:

The Part I took in Defence of Captn. [Thomas] Preston and the Soldiers, procured me Anxiety, and Obloquy enough. It was, however, one of the most gallant, generous, manly and disinterested Actions of my whole Life, and one of the best Pieces of Service I ever rendered my Country. Judgment of Death against those Soldiers would have been as foul a Stain upon this Country as the Executions of the Quakers or Witches, anciently. As the Evidence was, the Verdict of the Jury was exactly right.

This however is no Reason why the Town should not call the Action of that Night a Massacre, nor is it any Argument in favour of the Governor or [government] Minister, who caused them to be sent here. But it is the strongest of Proofs of the Danger of standing Armies.

As Adams sorted out right and wrong, one of his pole-stars was how Massachusetts Puritans had hanged witches and Quakers in the late 1600s—that was wrong.

That attitude has persisted in American politics. We use the term “witch-hunt” (revived in 1938 by George Orwell in Homage to Catalonia) to mean a zealous, unjust search for political enemies that would be ridiculous if only people weren’t being hurt. It’s extremely rare to see the opposite—fear of actual witches—arising in a modern political context. This recently circulated video is an exception, and the minister who seeks both funds and protection from “witchcraft” for the political candidate in his church was speaking from a different theological (and legal) tradition.

Children Attached to the British Military

Almost all the anecdotes I know about children in Revolutionary Boston concern locals. I have a few more about the children of British imperial officials. But that leaves out a fairly large group: children associated with the British military forces. When the Revolutionary War began in 1775, there were probably scores and possibly hundreds of minors who were part of the army or navy in Boston or whose fathers were.

One child connected with the Crown military is mentioned in Customs Commmissioner Henry Hulton’s account of the coming of the war, now in the library at Princeton University. This undated anecdote comes from a section of the manuscript in which Hulton listed every act of Patriot violence he had heard of:

A Little boy belonging to the Admirals Ship, was thrown down by a person who swore he would break his leg, and then he took it up and wrenched it till it snaped.

By using the term “Little boy,” Hulton probably signaled that this wasn’t an older teen. (The word “teenager” hadn’t been invented yet, so “boys” could be as old as twenty.) The Commissioner didn’t mention the boy’s father, as he did in his next, similar anecdote, which implies the unfortunate lad probably wasn’t connected to the ship’s officers. Instead, he was probably part of the regular handful of boys in the crew.

There were also children attached to the British army—not as musicians but in soldiers’ families. I mentioned three such minors in my profile of Pvt. Edward Montgomery, one of the grenadiers tried for the Boston Massacre in 1770. He and his wife Isabela had children named Mary, Esther, and William, according to records of an official who warned that they could not call on the town for financial assistance. Neither those records nor anything else I’ve found indicates how old those children were.

Even though I’ve found few other references to such children in Boston, there were probably quite a lot. Don Hagist’s article “The Women of the British Army in America,” published in The Brigade Dispatch and now available on the web, documents how many women and children were living with the British troops in New York during 1779-80.

On 21 Nov 1779, British officers counted seven regiments containing 2,886 men, which had an additional 367 women and 296 children as dependents. On 25 Sept 1780, the command counted seven more regiments containing 3,013 men, and this time there were 542 women and 454 children. In the four regiments counted both times, the number of soldiers dropped slightly, but the number of women and children rose. So the processes of biology were not suspended during wartime.

The British troops in New York were in a different situation from those in Boston in 1768-70 and 1774-76. The New York garrison was also besieged, but it was on a big, well-fortified, well-supplied island with a generally cooperative population. Boston probably wasn’t so family-friendly when it came to soldiers’ families. Nevertheless, Crown policy and personal affection meant that some soldiers did arrive in Boston with their wives, and thus with their children.

TOMORROW: It’s back to “Back to School Week” as we consider where those military children might have gone to school.

The Hulton-Preston Connection

On Wednesday, I quoted a manuscript memoir written by Henry Hulton, one of the Commissioners of Customs stationed in Boston from 1767 to 1776. That document is in the Princeton University library. The University of New Brunswick has a copy on microfilm.

At the start of that document is the bookplate of one "Thomas Preston," along with a heraldic shield and the motto “Lucem Spero Clariorem.” The British army captain who was put on trial after the Boston Massacre was named Thomas Preston. Back in 1969, as he was researching his magisterial book The Boston Massacre, Hiller B. Zobel wrote to the Princeton staff, asking if they had any clues about the previous owners of the Hulton memoir. Could the Commissioner have sent this copy to Capt. Preston himself? Could the Customs staff and the army captain have been in close touch with each other—as Boston's Whigs had hinted all along?

The library staff couldn't shed any light on that question thirty-odd years ago. But now we can, thanks to:

• the internet
• the tireless genealogists of the world

According to this genealogical website, Henry Hulton's wife was born Elizabeth Preston, and she had a younger half-brother named Thomas Preston. Furthermore, this other website states that the Hultons' eldest son, Thomas (born 1767), inherited an estate from a maternal relative in the early 1800s, and legally changed his surname to Preston. (In 1815 the Crown made him a baronet, so he gets into Debrett's Peerage and other reliable printed sources; the internet makes it simpler to find that information, but we don't have to rely on the web alone.)

So the easiest explanation for the Hulton manuscript's provenance was that the Commissioner left it to his son, who later became Sir Thomas Preston (Bart.). And there's another relative of the same name. Either man is therefore a more likely owner than the British army captain.

But could Capt. Thomas Preston have been related to Henry Hulton's wife? That seems unlikely. Elizabeth Preston's family was from Norfolk. The captain was said to come from and retire to Ireland (though John Adams recalled seeing him in London in the 1780s). In his memoirs and letters, Hulton never mentioned a family connection, and neither did the Whigs, who would surely have hollered if they had evidence of such ties. Rather, the same name popping up in two or three different places is evidence that (as in my investigation of Capt. Thomas Morton) eighteenth-century British parents didn't choose from a wide range of names.

Surfing for Sir Thomas Preston brought me to this website about the Jermy family, related to the Norfolk Prestons and Hultons. It offers a delicious mid-1800s murder scandal complete with pictures of Sir Thomas Preston's estate, true-crime books, and Staffordshire pottery souvenirs (click on the photo above).

Attack on Henry Hulton's House

Yesterday's post described the arrival of Customs Commissioner Henry Hulton (1731-1790) in Boston in 1767, and his opinion of the locals in early 1770. His attitudes weren't improved by the attack on his house later that year. The following account comes from a memoir that Hulton wrote after returning to England, which is now in the manuscripts library at Princeton.

That same night of the 19th. June 1770, after my family were all in bed in my house at Brooklyn [i.e., Brookline] (which was a dwelling in the Country, at some distance from any other) I was waked out of my sleep, with a gentle tapping at the Door of the house, on which I got up, & enquired who was there, a voice answered, I have a letter from Mr. H., from the Grenades [i.e., the Grenadines islands], which came by the express from New York this Morning, upon which I desired him to wait a little, & I wou’d come down.

Having slipt on my breeches and waistcoat, I took my Sword in my hand, & being cautious of opening the House door, I went to the parlour Window, & having opened the shutter a man stood there.

I asked him for the letter, & opened the Window a little. He said I have a letter indeed & advanced, puting his Hands out, with an intent to lift up the sash, upon which I clapt it down, & he instantly struck two violent blows at me, with a bludgeon, which broke the upper part of the Window, frame & all, but resting on the middle part did not touch me.

No sooner had he given the first blow, then all the windows round were broke in the same manner, by people placed at each of them. The family immediately rose in the greatest consternation, and Mrs. H opening the Window shutter in her room, had a large stone thrown at her which happily missed her.

Imagining the people wou’d break into the house, & seek to murther me, I ran to the Servants room, at the head of the back Stairs with my sword in my hand, leaving two Servant Men at the bottom. The People without, kept uttering Oaths & execrations for some time, swearing, "dead or alive we will have him," but at length they withdrew, and I soon after retired to a Neighbours house till day light, and passed the following day at Mr. John Apthorps at Little Cambridge [i.e., Allston].

Mrs. H and myself not thinking it safe to return home, we remained at his house for two nights, and hearing that Mr. Burch with his family was gone to the Castle, we came home the following morning, & carried the Children & part of the family from Brooklyn to the Castle [i.e., Castle William, a fort in Boston harbor].

Henry and Elizabeth Hulton had two young sons at the time, Thomas (about to turn three) and Henry, Jr., (thirteen months).

Hulton's sister Ann blamed another Customs Commissioner, Sir John Temple, for instigating the attack, and one of Boston's most eminent clergymen for excusing it:

I believe its very true, that the Sunday after my Bror was attacked in his own house, wth apparent design upon his Life, after we were gone to the Castle—Dr. Ch—cy [Rev. Dr. Charles Chauncy, minister at Boston's First Meeting] preached a Sermon on that occasion & told his people plainly out of the Pulpit, that the Commissr broke his own windows, to cast an odium on the Country & the next day this Rev Dr went all about, impressg this opinion on the People. . . .

...it was actualy believed by two thirds of the People in Boston, Untill those of our Township of their own accord, exerted 'emselves to bring the matter to light, Several Evidences before a Justice of Peace, who swore to meeting the Villains disguised upon the Road & that they enquired the way to Mr H: house, nay the Evidences went so far as naming particular persons upon which they were Stop’d & privately threatned that if they proceeded further in Information they sho’d suffer, so there the enquiry ended.

Personal attacks on high-born royal officials were rare in pre-Revolutionary times—the infamous tar-and-feathers attacks were almost all aimed at lower-level, lower-class Customs employees. But there was a long tradition of mobbing unpopular gentlemen's houses. Was that what this mob originally set out to do? Or did they actually aim to assault Hulton personally?

Henry Hulton Meets the Locals

Henry Hulton was an English bureaucrat who arrived in Boston as one of the new Commissioners of Customs in 1767, responsible for collecting the Townshend duties. He happened to debark on 5 November, known in Boston as "Pope-Night" because of the raucous anti-Catholic processions that consumed the day and night. Lord George Sackville (later Germain, and minister in charge of the colonies during the Revolutionary War) recorded this secondhand description of the Commissioners' reception:

They landed on the 5th of November, and the populace were then carrying in procession the Pope, the Devil, and the Pretender, in order to commit them to the flames in honour of Protestantism. . . . these figures met the Commissioners at the water side and were carry’d before them without any insult through the streets, and whenever they stopped to salute an acquaintance, the figures halted and faced about till the salutation was over, and so accompany’d them to the Governor Hutchinson’s door, where the Devil, &c. took their leave with loud huzzas from the mob...

That quote is from a letter printed in the 49th volume from the UK's Historic Manuscripts Commission. I quoted a bit more in my essay on Pope-Night in the Dublin Seminar's Worlds of Children volume.

According to Hulton's sister Ann, whose reports were published in 1927 as Letters of a Loyalist Lady, "the Mob carried twenty Devils, Popes, & Pretenders, thro the Streets, with Labels on their breasts, Liberty & Property & no Commissioners," but Commissioner Hulton "laughed at 'em with the rest."

Hulton became less pleased with the locals' attitudes as time went on. This is from a letter he wrote in February 1770, now kept at the Houghton Library at Harvard:

The servant will not call the person he lives with, Master; and they have the utmost aversion to wearing anything in the shape of a livery, or performing any office of attendance on your person, or table; We have however a Coachman, who had the fortitude to drive us in spite of the ridicule of his Countrymen, who point & look at him, with contempt, as he passes by.

The people are very inquisitive, and what we should call impertinent; they never give one a direct answer, but commonly return your question, by another; and if you fall in with them on the road, or at a public house, they will directly inquire of you, who and what you are and what is your business.

One day I overtook a country man on the road; and after saying something to him about the weather, he began, Are you from Boston? what is the news? Are you a Merchant? me hap you are going into the Country to get in your debts? Can you lend a body a hundred or two of pounds? no. you can if you would.