“The Displeasure of our Honoured Masters”

Sir Francis Dashwood, baronet, served as chancellor of the exchequer in the government of the Earl of Bute. That went poorly for both of them, and Dashwood’s tenure lasted less than a year.

After leaving government, Dashwood made his case for inheriting the Despencer barony, the oldest in Britain not held by a peer with a higher title. That peerage gave him a guaranteed seat in the House of Lords.

Toward the end of 1766 the new Baron le Despencer was appointed one of the two postmasters general of the British Empire. This was a sinecure granted to various aristocrats, who in British society of the time usually failed upward.

In that year the other postmaster general was the Earl of Hillsborough, who was soon made Secretary of State for the colonies. The next appointee was the fourth Earl of Sandwich, who had previously been First Lord of the Admiralty and Secretary of State for the Northern Department (i.e., northern Europe) and would hold both those posts again.

Despencer, in contrast, kept the job of postmaster general until his death in 1781. He may not have totally ignored the job, though the real work was done by department secretaries Henry Potts (d. 1768) and Anthony Todd (1717–1798, shown above). That situation made Despencer a boss of the two deputy postmasters general for the colonies: John Foxcroft of New York and Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania.

Franklin had held that appointment since 1753. He had been quite successful, even making the American postal service profitable for the first time. By the mid-1760s Franklin was living full-time in London, focusing on representing Pennsylvania and other colonies to Parliament, but he continued to manage the postal system with Foxcroft. It brought him a valuable income.

Within the British government’s system of patronage appointments, that meant Franklin had a strong incentive to keep the Baron le Despencer happy. Sucking up to your bosses never hurt. Neither did sucking up to lords. And when those lords were your bosses, you went all out.

As a taste of how this worked, in February 1769 Foxcroft wrote to Franklin from Virginia, reporting that he and Gen. Thomas Gage had disagreed about when a packet ship should sail. Even though the regulations gave Foxcroft the authority to make that decision, Hillsborough took Gage’s side. “I have fallen under the Displeasure of our Honoured Masters,” Foxcroft lamented. “I hope my Dear Friend that you will be able to prevent any disagreable consequences taking place from this unfortunate mistake.”

We don’t know what happened next, but Foxcroft kept his appointment—probably because Hillsborough had moved on to the Colonial Office. Sandwich was a navy man, after all, and might not have gone out of his way for army concerns. When the system ran on personal favors and connections, a change of person could mean a lot.

As part of keeping the bosses in good humor, Franklin appears to have helped with Despencer’s agricultural experiments. He got favors in return, such as an invitation to dine on a buck from one of the postmasters’ estates. But those interactions were arranged through the secretaries, not directly.

TOMORROW: Forging a more personal connection.

“The most clement measures shall be adopted towards the Americans”

By the fall of 1772, Rhode Island’s investigations of the attack on H.M.S. Gaspee had run aground as surely as the schooner itself had back on 9 June.

As was standard, Gov. Joseph Wanton had quickly issued a proclamation offering a reward for information—£100, in fact. By July, Adm. John Montagu (shown here) had collected testimony from Aaron Briggs or Biggs, who implicated some prominent merchants.

But Gov. Wanton soon had contradictory testimony from four other people.

James Helme, senior justice in Kings County, told his colleagues that at the October court session he

fully intended to give the affair of burning the said schooner and wounding the lieutenant, in charge to the jury; but having been nearly two months on the circuit, it entirely went out of my mind, when the grand jury was empannelled; and there being no business laid before said jury, they were soon dismissed.

Oops.

However, more was happening in London. In August, the secretary of state for the colonies, Lord Hillsborough, sent to Rhode Island the text of Parliament’s new Dockyards Law. Enacted that spring, it established that destroying a ship in a Royal Navy shipyard was tantamount to treason and subject to capital punishment.

Eventually Crown lawyers agreed that the Dockyards Law didn’t apply since the Gaspee hadn’t been in a naval shipyard when the raiders set fire to it. But Hillsborough’s message told Gov. Wanton how harshly the London government wanted to punish the men who attacked the schooner. (The only person ever executed under the Dockyards Law was James Aitken, alias “John the Painter,” who set fires at the Portsmouth Shipyard in 1777 in sympathy with the American cause.)

For unrelated reasons, in August the Earl of Dartmouth replaced Hillsborough as secretary of state. On 4 September the new minister sent a letter to Gov. Wanton detailing the plan for a royal commission to investigate the Gaspee incident and surrounding conflicts.

Rhode Island’s first report of this commission contained some positive details. The 30 November Newport Mercury shared the news under a 25 September London dateline, emphasizing signs of leniency:

His Majesty… [is] offering his pardon to any of the said offenders (excepting the person who wounded Lieutenant [William] Duddington, & excepting two others who assumed to be sheriffs of the colony, and the Captain or leader of the insurgents) who shall discover any of their accomplices, and also offering rewards for such discovery.

A correspondent informs us, that Lord Dartmouth has signified his determined resolution that the most clement measures shall be adopted towards the Americans.

Furthermore, Gov. Wanton was designated to chair the inquiry commission.

But soon, Rhode Islanders were hearing more ominous details.

TOMORROW: A leak from the legislature.

Arthur Lee “in the light of a rival”

Yesterday I quoted two letters from Samuel Adams in 1771, the first recommending William Story to a lobbyist in London and the second warning the same man that Story might be conspiring with Gov. Thomas Hutchinson.

One might think that on receiving those two letters, Arthur Lee (shown here) would have passed on that warning to his fellow agent for Massachusetts interests, Benjamin Franklin. But that’s not how Lee operated.

Back in April 1770, the London merchant Dennis DeBerdt had died, opening up the job of representing the lower house of the Massachusetts General Court to British officials and lawmakers.

(Lord Hillsborough, the Secretary of State, soon took the position that there was no such job, that the legal agent for Massachusetts in London had to be approved by the Council and governor as well. Nevertheless, the house persisted in employing its own lobbyist.)

House speaker Thomas Cushing and most of the other, more moderate Whigs wanted to make Benjamin Franklin the body’s agent. He had represented colonial governments in London for many years, amassing a long list of clients. He thus already knew everyone in London and was the most famous, respected native of Massachusetts in the British Empire. Franklin was trying to present himself as the voice of all the American colonists, and having an official mandate from one of the larger and more oppositional provinces would strengthen that claim.

However, Franklin wasn’t always in tune with the Whigs back in America. He had misjudged how angry the Stamp Act would make people. He had told Parliament that colonists objected only to “internal taxes” and not tariffs, which shaped the design of the Townshend Acts. Franklin was also growing old—in his mid-sixties—and his attention was divided among many colonies.

For those reasons, Samuel Adams, James Otis, Jr., and some other radicals in the house preferred Arthur Lee—younger, more aggressive, firmly opposed to tariffs, and more recently in America. The result in November 1770 was a compromise, with Franklin the official representative but Lee, as the house told Franklin, ”their Agent in case of your Death or Absence from Great Britain.”

Did that make Franklin and Lee colleagues? Not to the younger man. In his letter to Adams on 10 June 1771, Lee accused Franklin of betrayal and explicitly described their relationship as a rivalry:

I have read lately in your papers an assurance from Dr. Franklin that all designs against the charter of the colony are laid aside. This is just what I expected from him; and if it be true, the Dr. is not the dupe but the instrument of Lord Hillsborough’s treachery. . . .

I feel it not a little disagreeable to speak my sentiments of Dr. Franklin, as your generous confidence has placed me in the light of a rival to him. But I am so far from being influenced by selfish motives, that were the service of the colony ten times greater, I would perform it for nothing rather than you and America, at a time like this, should be betrayed by a man, who, it is hardly in the nature of things to suppose, can be faithful to his trust.

Thus, when Lee received Adams’s letter expressing doubt about William Story, he apparently said nothing about it to Franklin. He just let the older man shepherd Story around to royal officials and waited for another opportunity to undermine him.

COMING UP: William Story in London and later.

Samuel Adams’s Two Character References for William Story

When William Story was preparing to sail to London in late 1771, Thomas Cushing wasn’t the only Massachusetts Whig he asked for a letter of reference.

Story also asked Samuel Adams, clerk of the Massachusetts house, to write on his behalf. On 27 September, Adams obliged with a postscript on his regular letter to Arthur Lee, the house’s alternate agent in Britain:

P.S.—The Bearer hereof is William Story Esqr. formerly of this town, but now of Ipswich a Town about 30 Miles East. He was Deputy Register in the Court of Vice Admiralty before & at the time of the Stamp Act & would then have given up the Place as he declared but his Friends advisd him against it—he sufferd the Resentment of the people on the 26 of August 1765, together with Lt. Govr. [Thomas] Hutchinson & others for which he was recompencd by the Genl. Assembly, as he declares in part only.

He tells me that his Design in going home is to settle an Affair of his own relating to the Admiralty Court, in which the Commissioners of the Customs as he says declare it is out of their power to do him Justice. One would think it was never in their Power or Inclination to do any many Justice. Mr. Story has always professd himself a Friend to Liberty for many years past.

I tell him that I make no doubt but you will befriend him as far as shall be in your power in obtaining Justice, in which you will very much oblige,
Samuel Adams

Five days later, however, Adams had second thoughts. That was the same day that Cushing wrote his letter about Story to Benjamin Franklin, quoted yesterday. But Adams had heard something which made him no longer trust Story.

In a second letter to Lee, dated 2 October, Adams said:

I have already written to you by this conveyance, and there mentioned to you Mr. Story, a gentleman to whose care I committed that letter. I have since heard that he has a letter to Lord Hillsborough [the Secretary of State for the colonies] from Gov. Hutchinson, which may possibly recommend him for some place by way of compensation for his joint sufferings with the governor. I do not think it possible for any man to receive his lordship’s favour, without purchasing it by having done or promising to do some kind of jobs.

If Mr. Story should form connexions with administration upon any principles inconsistent with those of a friend to liberty, he will then appear to be a different character from that which I recommended to your friendship. I mention this for your caution, and in confidence.

By this point, Adams viewed any cooperation with Gov. Hutchinson as a sign that a man couldn’t be trusted.

Story probably felt himself well positioned for his meetings in London. He had Gov. Hutchinson’s letter to the Earl of Hillsborough as well as another to Sir Francis Bernard, former governor. But he also had Cushing’s and Adams’s letters to Franklin and Lee on the Whig side. He didn’t realize that his ship carried another letter from Adams canceling out the first.

COMING UP: How’d that work out for him?

Alarming News from Across the Atlantic

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TOMORROW: The anger of the people.

“I was not called home in the Way of Disgrace”

Two weeks after Gov. Sir Francis Bernard left Boston, the town’s Sons of Liberty hosted a big festive banquet. The date was 14 Aug 1769, fourth anniversary of the first public protest against the Stamp Act, when crowds hanged Andrew Oliver in effigy from what was yet to be dubbed Liberty Tree.

The Boston Whigs viewed Bernard’s departure as a triumph for their side, just as they viewed the repeal of the Stamp Act in March 1766. That feeling of victory undoubtedly reinforced the idea that they had hit on a winning political strategy. Indeed, as I noted yesterday, as soon as Bernard sailed away, the Whigs stopped sending their “Journal of the Times” dispatches to other colonies—that propaganda was no longer necessary.

To be sure, there were still two regiments patrolling Boston. But hadn’t Bernard’s letters shown that he’d misled the Crown into sending them there? Wouldn’t a more reasonable governor have those soldiers removed?

True, the Customs service was still collecting the Townshend duties. But the Whigs could now devote more energy to strengthening the non-importation boycott against those taxes, the same tactic that they had used in 1765—successfully, they thought.

If, however, the Whigs believed that their actions had caused the British ministry to withdraw Bernard as harmful to imperial relations, they were badly mistaken. The Earl of Hillsborough, Secretary of State, was quite clear that he and his colleagues supported Bernard’s work. On 24 March, the secretary wrote to the governor:

His Majesty having thought fit, upon a consideration of the present state of affairs in the Province of Massachuset’s Bay, that you should return to this Kingdom, in order to make a full Report thereof to His Majesty, I herewith inclose to you the King’s Royal Licence for that purpose; and have the satisfaction at the same time to acquaint you, that His Majesty has been pleased to direct a Patent to be passed for conferring upon you the Dignity of a Baronet, as a Testimony of His Majesty’s Royal Favour and gracious Approbation of your Services.

In a private letter two days before, Hillsborough spelled out the political point of the baronetcy:

the honourable Mark of Favour which the King has been pleased to conferr upon you, by which His Majesty means to demonstrate to you, & to His Subjects of Massachusett’s Bay his gracious Approbation of your Services in your Government of that Province

Bernard picked up the message, writing to a friend that the honor “was, I suppose, thus timed to show the People that I was not called home in the Way of Disgrace.”

This case of mismatched perceptions was similar to how colonial Americans viewed the fall of George Grenville’s ministry in 1765. That change in prime minister opened the door to Parliament repealing the failed Stamp Act, but it had nothing to do with American protests. The change was all about the intricacies of court politics. The appearance of success may have left American activists too confident in their ability to push Parliament into rethinking laws they didn’t like.

Of course, the American Whigs weren’t the only party deluding themselves. For years Bernard had been telling his superiors that the problem in Massachusetts was a small “faction” of recalcitrant radicals misleading the moderates and the people. If only the provincial government could strip power away from that thin top layer of malcontents, then the vast majority would be happy and the protests would stop.

The London government thought enough of Bernard’s analysis to ask him to advise the king and his privy council. For the next several years, interrupted by a stroke, the baronet repeated his ideas to the ministers. Specifically, he advocated for a Council appointed from London rather than elected—an idea finally implemented in the Massachusetts Government Act of 1774.

And we all know how well that turned out.

What the Circular Letter of 1768 Signified

You may have noticed how in all these postings about the Massachusetts House’s Circular Letter of 1768, quoting politicians on the circular letter and on the debate over the circular letter, I’ve never actually quoted the circular letter.

That’s because the letter itself doesn’t strike me as particularly interesting or inciting. It went through the familiar argument that Parliament had no right to tax colonists because colonists couldn’t vote for Parliament. In February that position got the pithy formulation “No Taxation without Representation.”

The letter also complained about the new salaries that royal appointees were due to receive from the Townshend duties, asking whether “their having Salaries appointed for them by the Crown independent of the people hath not a Tendency to subvert the principles of equity.”

One fresh idea that the letter addressed was the notion of American colonists being represented in Parliament. Gov. Francis Bernard had floated that possibility privately in 1764, and later in 1768 a former governor, Thomas Pownall, would propose it in print. But the House ruled out the idea:

…considering the utter impracticability of their being fully & equally represented in Parliament, and the great Expence that must unavoidably attend even a partial Representation there; this House think that a Taxation of their Constituents even without their consent, grievous as it is would be preferable to any Representation that could be admitted for them there.

The letter also made several nods to the Crown’s primacy, including calling the colonial assemblies “a Subordinate Legislative” and concluding by “expressing their firm Confidence in the King, our common Head and Father, that the united & dutiful supplications of his distressed American Subjects will meet with his Royal and favorable acceptance.”

It’s possible that the first draft reported out of committee and voted down on 21 Jan 1768 was more confrontational in its language or proposals than the final text. Gov. Bernard reported that opponents of that draft argued that it “would be considered at home [i.e., in Britain] as appointing another congress” like the Stamp Act Congress of 1765. Which hadn’t actually accomplished much, but was seen as radical.

The only action the circular letter ended up proposing was that each colony’s legislature petition the Crown using the same arguments. As a result, the responses from other colonies to the Massachusetts House were positive but bland and pointed to no further action.

What turned the circular letter into the Circular Letter was the Earl of Hillsborough’s response to it in April. As a new Secretary of State, he wanted to strengthen the authority of the imperial government over the North American colonies. He interpreted Bernard’s reports on the Massachusetts legislature as even worse than they were. He didn’t think he could just ignore this document.

Once Hillsborough demanded that the Massachusetts House rescind the letter, however, he moved the argument beyond what would be a fair system of taxation in a worldwide empire. He turned the conflict into one over whether the Crown could compel some of its North American subjects into abjuring their established speech and principles.

TOMORROW: Time to vote.

“I hereby send you a Copy of the other Part of the Letter”

On 23 June 1768, a committee from the Massachusetts General Court asked Gov. Francis Bernard for documents related to the House’s circular letter of 11 February.

House members wanted the whole text of a couple of specific letters from London they had heard about—plus, as the governor wrote to his boss, Secretary of State Hillsborough, “Copies of my Letters to your Lordship upon the Subject.” Bernard recognized that as a fishing expedition.

The next morning—250 years ago today—the governor sent the House a copy of the last two paragraphs of Hillsborough’s 22 April letter, which ordered him to end the legislative session if the House refused to rescind its circular letter.

In his cover message Bernard stated:

I should have communicated the whole of the Earl of Hillsborough’s Letter relating to the Business which I laid before you the 21st instant [i.e., of this month], if I had not been desirous that your Compliance with his Majesty’s Requisition might have its fullest Merit, by its appearing to be entirely dictated by a Sense of your Duty.

But since you desire to know what my further Orders are, I hereby send you a Copy of the other Part of the Letter relative to this Business, which contains all my Instructions thereupon. And as I know you will not expect that I should disobey the King’s positive Commands, I must desire that if you shall resolve to oblige me to execute them, you will previously to your giving your final Answer, prevent the inconveniences which must fall upon the People for want of the annual Tax-Bill, which I understand is not as yet sent up to the Board [i.e., the Council].

For if I am obliged to dissolve the General Court, I shall not think myself at liberty to call another, till I receive his Majesty’s Commands for that purpose, which will be too late to prevent the Treasurer [Harrison Gray] issuing his Warrants for the whole Tax granted by the Act of last year.

As to the Letter of the Earl of Hillsborough which I communicated to the Council, I must beg Leave to be the proper Judge of the time and occasion of communicating any papers I receive to the Council or the House. If I had then thought it expedient to lay it before the House, I should have then done so; when I shall think it so, I shall do it.

As to your Request of Copies of my Letters to the Secretary of State, you may assure yourselves that I shall never make public my Letters to his Majesty’s Ministers, but upon my own Motion, and for my own Reasons.

In sum, I didn’t show you the Crown’s orders right away because I know you dislike being made to do things. Also, you can’t make me do things.

As for the “Tax-Bill,” British legislatures had leverage over the executive because they constitutionally controlled taxation and thus the funding for governmental functions. But in this case, the governor pointed out, legislators had hopes of lowering their constituents’ taxes, and to do that they had to remain in session—which meant cooperating with him, since he had the power to dissolve the General Court.

With that message, Gov. Bernard had divulged all parts of Hillsborough’s 22 April letter except the first line:

I have received, and laid before the King, Your Letters to the Earl of Shelburne N[umber]s. 4. 5. & 6. with the Inclosures.

(The Secretary of State’s office and royal governors numbered their letters so that the other side would know if one had been lost or delayed in crossing the ocean.)

That seems like an innocuous sentence, but Bernard had a strong reason to keep it hidden. With those words the Earl of Hillsborough made clear that the negative view he had of Massachusetts and its legislature was based on the information his predecessor had received from the governor. Bernard had been assuring the province’s politicians that he presented them to his superiors in the best possible light. Most local Whigs didn’t believe him, but without access to his correspondence they couldn’t prove that suspicion. That’s why they had kept asking for his letters.

TOMORROW: What changed the House’s mind about the circular letter—a hypothesis.

“A Speech near two hours long of the most violent & virulent Nature”

By mid-June 1768, the Massachusetts House had received several favorable responses to the circular letter that the previous elected assembly had sent out in February.

Speaker of the house Thomas Cushing’s counterparts had replied from New Hampshire (25 February), Virginia (9 May), New Jersey (9 May), South Carolina (10 June), and Connecticut (11 June), with Georgia (16 June) and Rhode Island (5 August) still to come.

Of course, that list didn’t include the big colonies of New York and Pennsylvania, containing the two biggest ports in North America. They would be necessary for any united political movement against the Townshend Act.

On 21 June, Gov. Francis Bernard sent the House another response to the circular letter: a message from the Earl of Hillsborough, the new Secretary of State for the colonies in London, demanding that the body retract the document.

Bernard knew Massachusetts’s legislators wouldn’t like that. On 18 June he had written to another London official about how getting H.M.S. Romney to stop impressing sailors in Boston harbor had put him in a good political position, but he expected that to change drastically:

A Civil Treatment of a petition of the Town to me, a plain friendly answer thereto & some real Service by interposing with the man of war, have given me a little popularity. But it wont last a week: as soon as I have executed the orders I have just recieved from the Secretary of State, in the general Assembly, there will be an end of my popularity. And I dont know whether I shant be obliged to act like the Capt of a fireship, provide for my retreat before I light the fusee.

In passing on Hillsborough’s message, Bernard told the Massachusetts assembly, “I am merely ministerial in this Business, having received his Majesty’s Instructions for all I have to do in it.” In other words, don’t blame the messenger.

There were ninety-eight legislators present, clerk Samuel Adams recorded. They decided to discuss the letter the next day at 10:00 A.M. At that time, seven more members joined the body.

Here’s what Bernard understood happened 250 years ago today:

[James] Otis made a Speech near two hours long of the most violent & virulent Nature. He abused all Persons in Authority both here and at home. He indeed excepted the Kings Person, but traduced his Government with all the Bitterness of Words.

He said “that the King appointed none but Boys for his Ministers; that they had no Education but travelling thro’ France, from whence they returned full of the slavish Principles of that Country; that they knew Nothing of Business when they came into their Offices, and did not stay long enough to acquire that little Knowledge which is gained from Experience; that all Business was really done by the Clerks, & even they were too frequently changed to understand what they were about; that the People in England did not know what the Rights of Englishmen capable of composing so elegant so pure and so nervous a Writing as the Petition to the King which passed the last Session.” &c.

I give your Lordship a Specimen of this Rhapsody: and it was remarked that in this general Censure of the Kings Government No Exception was made of the Minister who favoured America by the Repeal of the Stamp-Act & by other Indulgences; by the Abuse whereof this very Faction has rose to this Head [i.e., William Pitt]: All were involved in one common Obloquy. I quote these Sayings from the Mouths of those who heard them delivered in the House which was laid quite open, both Doors and Gallery, upon this Occasion. But neither they nor I can pretend to Exactness of Words; but the Substance I dare say does not vary Materially. In another Part of the Speech, he passed an Encomium upon Oliver Cromwell and extolled the Times preceeding his Advancement and particularily the Murther of the King.

The Result was the appointing a Committee to take the Message &c into Consideration, which Committee consisted entirely of the most violent of the Heads of the Faction viz the Representatives of the Town of Boston & 3 of those whom I had refused to admit into the Council upon Account of their having been distinguished by their fomenting the Troubles of Government, with two others. Thus the House seemed to prejudge this Business in the Appointment of a Committee: and indeed the Appointment of a Committee at all shewed a Disposition to argue rather than submit.

Yes, things weren’t looking good for a quiet, obedient retraction of the circular letter as the Earl of Hillsborough had demanded.

TOMORROW: A request for documents.

“A Measure of so inflammatory a Nature”

In February 1768, the Massachusetts House sent its soon-to-be-famous Circular Latter to other colonial legislatures.

That same month, Wills Hill, the Earl of Hillsborough (shown here), took over as Secretary of State for North America. Like his predecessor, the Earl of Shelburne, Hillsborough came from the Whig faction in Parliament, but he favored stricter measures to maintain the British Empire’s central authority. He sent off a response to the Massachusetts letter in April.

By the time that letter reached North America, there had been several more conflicts between Gov. Francis Bernard and the Boston Whigs.

First, as soon as Bernard asked the House for a copy of its circular letter, James Otis, Jr., asked for copies of Bernard’s correspondence with the ministry. He was fishing for evidence that Bernard had criticized the province while assuring locals he was looking out for their interests. Bernard insisted, “There certainly never was such a request made by an Assembly to a royal Governor since America was colonised.” [We still debate the bounds of “executive privilege.”]

Then there was a blow-up over a Boston Gazette essay criticizing Bernard (not quite by name), written pseudonymously by Dr. Joseph Warren, as mentioned back here. The Council, full legislature, and finally a Suffolk County grand jury all gave Gov. Bernard the runaround on a libel case.

In May, the province’s voters elected a new Massachusetts General Court, as I described last month. That led the governor into a confrontation with John Hancock and the Cadets. Then came the choice of Councilors. Of the seven men newly voted onto the Council, four had been members of the committee that drafted one or both forms of the circular letter. No wonder Gov. Francis Bernard vetoed all but one.

June brought impressment by the Royal Navy, the Customs house seizure of Hancock’s sloop Liberty riot, the ensuing riot, and most Customs Commissioners and top employees fleeing to Castle William for their safety. Even as he tried to calm that situation on 15 June, Gov. Bernard received the Earl of Hillsborough’s letter.

It said:

I have received, and laid before the King, Your Letters to the Earl of Shelburne N[umber]s. 4. 5. & 6. with the Inclosures.

It gives great Concern to His Majesty to find that the same Moderation, which appeared by Your Letter (No: 3) to have been adopted at the Beginning of the Session in a full Assembly, had not continued, and that, instead of that Spirit of Prudence and Respect to the Constitution, which seemed at that Time to influence the Conduct of a large Majority of the Members, a thin House at the End of the Session should have presumed to revert to, and resolve upon, a Measure of so inflammatory a Nature, as that of writing to the Other Colonies on the Subject of their intended Representations against some late Acts of Parliament.

His Majesty considers this Step as evidently tending to create unwarrantable Combinations to excite an unjustifiable Opposition to the constitutional Authority of Parliament, and to revive those unhappy Divisions and Distractions which have operated so prejudicially to the true Interests of Great Britain and the Colonies.

After what passed in the former Part of the Session, and after the declared Sense of so large a Majority, when the House was full, His Majesty cannot but consider this as a very unfair Proceeding, and the Resolutions taken thereupon to be contrary to the real Sense of the Assembly, and procured by Surprize, and therefore it is the King’s Pleasure, that so soon as the general Court is again assembled at the Time prescribed by the Charter, You should require of the House of Representatives, in his Majsty’s Name, to rescind the Resolution which gave Birth to the Circular Letter from the Speaker, and to declare their Disapprobation of, & Dissent to that rash and hasty Proceeding.

The Secretary of State had come away from Bernard’s letters with the impression that a minority faction of the House had manipulated attendance and surprised fellow legislators to sneak the circular letter through. Bernard hadn’t really written that. From the radicals’ perspective, they had debated the letter at length, followed the chamber’s rules, and won a clear majority vote.

Having demanded that the assembly retract the letter, Hillsborough then told Bernard what to do if it didn’t obey.

His Majesty has the fullest Reliance upon the Affection of His good Subjects in the Massachusett’s Bay, and has observed with Satisfaction that Spirit of Decency and Love of Order which has discovered itself in the Conduct of the most considerable of It’s Inhabitants, and therefore His Majesty has the better Ground to hope that the Attempts made by a desperate Faction to disturb the public Tranquillity will be discountenanced, and that the Execution of the Measure recommended to You will not meet with any Difficulty.

If it should, and if notwithstanding the apprehensions which may justly be entertained of the ill Consequence of a Continuance of this factious Spirit, which seems to have influenced the Resolutions of the Assembly at the Conclusion of the last Session, the new Assembly should refuse to comply with His Majesty’s reasonable Expectation; It is the King’s Pleasure that you should immediately dissolve them, & transmit to me, to be laid before His Majsty, an Account of their Proceedings thereupon, to the End that His Majesty may, if he thinks fit, lay the whole Matter before His Parliament, that such Provisions as shall be found necessary may be made to prevent for the future a Conduct of so extraordinary & unconstitutional a Nature.

Gov. Bernard knew the situation in Boston much better than his new boss. On 21 June 1768, 250 years ago today, he communicated the Crown’s displeasure to the House. But he did so carefully, knowing how its members tended to react, as he told Hillsborough:

On that Day in the forenoon I sent a Message to the House (a Copy of which I inclose) together with a Copy of the 2nd 3d & 4th Paragraphs of your Lordships Letter. I did not send a Copy of the 5th & 6th Paragraphs; because I knew that the Faction would make Use of them to insinuate that the House was treated with Threats in the first Instance, before their Minds were known, and were not allowed Freedom of Debate concerning what was required of them. If I had sent no Extracts at all but incorporated the Substance of your Lordships Letter into my Message, they then would have called for the Letter itself and not proceeded ’till I had given a Copy of it. As it was, I steered this Business in the right Way.

TOMORROW: How that went over.

“Preserving a perfect Conciliation”

Late on 14 June 1768, a large committee from Boston town meeting headed by James Otis, Jr., visited Gov. Francis Bernard at his country house in Jamaica Plain. The governor reported receiving “a Train of 11 Chaises.”

The committee presented the governor with a petition that protested against:

• taxation without representation, and thus the Townshend Act.
• a petition to King George III being turned away (because it wasn’t sent to London through the official channel).
• the Royal Navy’s impressment of sailors in Boston harbor.

That document concluded with a wonderful bit of trolling, saying that “the Board of Customs have thought fit, of their own motion to relinquish the exercise of their Commission here.” In other words, the Customs Commissioners had left their posts in Boston—no acknowledgment that they had done so out of fear of mob violence. Therefore, the committee continued, there was no need for H.M.S. Romney to stay around in Boston harbor since there were no longer any Customs Commissioners to protect.

Gov. Bernard shared wine with the gentlemen and promised them an answer the next day. His 15 June response was a collection of promises to do all he could, while noting that he could very little. “I shall not knowingly infringe any of your Rights and Privileges, but shall religeously maintain all those which are committed to me as a servant of the King,” he wrote. He couldn’t ignore Parliament’s laws, change a decision of the Privy Council, or give orders to the Royal Navy. But aside from all that, “I shall think myself most highly honoured, if I can be in the lowest degree an Instrument in preserving a perfect Conciliation between” Boston and the royal government in London.

The town meeting thus didn’t achieve any of its goals. John Hancock’s sloop Liberty remained in royal custody. The Customs service continued to collect tariffs, even if top officials were working out of Castle William. The Romney had already stopped drafting sailors because of the Liberty riot, and the governor had already promised the selectmen he’d speak informally to the warship’s captain. Nonetheless, the town’s formal and visible protest showed the people that the local political and mercantile establishment was pushing back, and that forestalled further violence.

That exchange wasn’t all Bernard had to deal with, though. On the same day that the governor sent off his response to the Boston petition, he received instructions from the Earl of Hillsborough, the new Secretary of State for North America. That letter stated:

it is the King’s Pleasure, that so soon as the general Court is again assembled at the Time prescribed by the Charter, You should require of the House of Representatives, in his Majsty’s Name, to rescind the Resolution which gave Birth to the Circular Letter from the Speaker, and to declare their Disapprobation of, & Dissent to that rash and hasty Proceeding. . . .

If…the new Assembly should refuse to comply with His Majesty’s reasonable Expectation; It is the King’s Pleasure that you should immediately dissolve them

Rescinding the “Circular Letter”—yet another political confrontation of June 1768!

COMING UP: The “Circular Letter” comes home.

“Destroying all party distinctions”

As stated in a passage I quoted a couple of days ago, soon after Charles Townshend died, his post as Chancellor of the Exchequer was offered to Lord North, who accepted it on 11 September. That quick succession made the British government of the time seem more stable than it was.

The leading minister in London was William Pitt, Earl of Chatham. Normally the prime minister was also First Lord of the Treasury, but Pitt had instead taken a peerage and the post of Lord Privy Seal. His ally, the Duke of Grafton (shown here), took the Treasury title.

Chatham promised King George III in 1766 that this government would be based on “measures not men,…destroying all party distinctions.” He would recruit other ministers based on their talents, not their alliances, and thus unite many factions.

That hadn’t worked out. By accepting that earldom Pitt, formerly “the Great Commoner,” had lost a lot of his popularity in London. Then he fell ill with gout and depression. Chatham turned over almost all legislation to the ministers he’d appointed, declining even to meet with them. The result was squabbling and lack of coordination among men with competing ambitions and loyalties.

That situation affected the American colonies. The minister with the most responsibility for administering those colonies was the Secretary of State for the Southern Department, the Earl of Shelburne. He, like Chatham, supported preserving American autonomy. But he couldn’t institute any of his policy choices.

Meanwhile, Townshend gained more power over fiscal policy than preceding Chancellors of the Exchequer, becoming a full member of the cabinet. After losing a fight in Parliament over a higher land tax (never popular with Britain’s big landowners), he turned to a new source of revenue: the American colonies. Townshend focused on import tariffs, thinking those were the sort of “external taxes” that the colonists would accept.

Townshend suddenly died when the Duke of Grafton was struggling to hold together the government for Chatham without Chatham’s help. Soon the First Lord brought in one faction of the Whig opposition, that grouped under the Duke of Bedford, shuffling appointments to make room. In February 1768, the ministry created a new post—Secretary of State for the Colonies—for the Earl of Hillsborough, who favored more control from London.

Britons in America followed all that news, of course, but it was even more confusing at a distance. They still clung to hope that Chatham was in charge, watching out for them.