“Five field Officers, to enquire into the circumstance of the Riot”

The morning after the fight between British army officers and town watchmen that I reported yesterday, the higher authorities swung into action.

That morning six selectmen met at Faneuil Hall: John Scollay, John Hancock, Thomas Marshall, Samuel Austin, Oliver Wendell, and John Pitts. The record of that session says: “Mr. [Benjamin] Burdick & other Constables of the Watch, appeared and complained to the Selectmen of great abuses received from a number of officers of the Army, the last Night.”

The selectmen must have asked the watchmen to produce sworn testimony because that afternoon “Mr. Isaac Pierce, Mr. Joseph Henderson & Mr. Robert Peck & Mr. Constable Burdick gave in their Depositions.”

Gov. Thomas Gage, who was also the general in charge of the soldiers, took steps the same day—a politic move to calm the town. Lt. John Barker wrote in his diary, “A court of Enquiry is order’d to set next Monday, consisting of five field Officers, to enquire into the circumstance of the Riot.”

The prospect of punishment might, however, have made some officers more resentful. The merchant John Andrews wrote on 22 January:

The Officers’ animosity to the watch still rankling in their breast, induc'd two of them to go last night to the watch house again at about 10 o’clock and threaten the watch that they would bring a file of men and blow all their brains out.

The watch thereupon left their cell and shut it up, and went and enter’d a complaint to the Selectmen—some of whom waited on the Governor at about 12 o’clock, who was very much vex’d at the Officers’ conduct, and told the Gentlemen that he had got the names of three that were concern'd in Fryday night’s frolick, and was determin’d to treat them with the utmost severity—and likewise order’d a guard to patrole through every street in town and bring every officer to him that they should find strolling or walking.

Fortunately, the 22nd was a Sunday, so nobody really expected to be out having fun in Boston, anyway.

On Monday, 23 January, the court of enquiry met. It was headed by Lt. Col. George Maddison of the 4th regiment, with two other lieutenant colonels and two majors on the bench. They took testimony every day from Monday to Saturday, according to records in Gen. Gage’s files.

Barker wrote, “it is supposed it will be a tedious affair, and will not be finished for some time.” Andrews also reported:

Yesterday the Officers were all examin’d at the New Court house, respecting fryday night’s affair, being carried there under arrest, nine in number (after which the General is to deal with them): being a great number of evidences they were oblig’d to adjourn till [to] day.

The list of witnesses included:

• five army captains, including Hugh Maginis of the 38th, who had fought with the watch back in November.
• twelve lieutenants from the army and Marines, including Gage’s aide de camp Harry Rooke; Lt. House of the 38th, who had sustained a cut on his forehead; William Pitcairn of the Marines, son of the major commanding that unit; and William Sutherland of the 38th, who would later leave a detailed report on the Battle of Lexington and Concord.
• seven ensigns, including Ens. King of the 5th, whose sword had been taken.
• a sergeant and at least five privates.
• “Mr. Winslow,” who had been escorting Lt. Gov. Thomas Oliver’s wife Elizabeth home from “Mr. Vassall’s,” probably her brother, John Vassall.
• watchman William McFadden.
• “Thomas Ball Esqr. late Capt. in the Royal Irish Regt. of Foot,” who testified that townspeople were yelling at the soldiers to fire.

At the start of the inquiry John Andrews had high expectations: ”the Captain of the Guard [John Gore] at least will be broke, for being drunk when on duty.”

Meanwhile, some of the town’s justices of the peace held their own hearings.

TOMORROW: The magistrates’ findings.

“Went so far as to wound some officers with their Watch Crooks”

Yesterday I quoted the Boston Whigs’ side of some early confrontations between British army officers and the town watch.

There were, of course, two sides to such stories. I haven’t found officers’ accounts of such conflicts from the 1768-70 occupation, but there are reports from 1774-75.

On 15 Nov 1774, Capt. Hugh Maginis of the 38th Regiment told Gen. Thomas Gage that three nights before he and another captain had been attacked near Liberty Tree by a local named Bennet and his “whole Guard” armed with “long Poles with Spikes & Bills at the Ends of them.”

Looking back from 1782, Ens. Jeremy Lister of the 10th noted this same incident in his account of the outbreak of war. Bostonians, he wrote, “even went so far as to wound some officers with their Watch Crooks Captn. McGinny of the 28th. [sic] Regt. was one of those unfortunate gentlemen amongst many more.”

The way those officers described the altercation shows how they rejected the authority of the watchmen. Magenis mentioned “long Poles with Spikes & Bills at the Ends of them,” which were the billhooks or pikes that watchmen carried all over the British Empire. Lister even called those weapons “Watch Crooks.” But neither officer deigned to admit that those men might have had legal power to stop people.

The leader of that crowd probably even identified himself to Magenis since the captain knew his surname. Checking the Boston town records shows that man must have been John Bennet, appointed “Constable of the Watch at the South and near the sign of the Lamb” in December 1772.

Notably, back on 28 Sept 1774 Bennet had reported “a very Warm dispute between an Officer of the Fourth Regiment about the Right of Challening of One of their Cloth”—i.e., someone wearing a scarlet army uniform. That confrontation ”was Decided by an Officer of the 38 who Comanded the Grand Rounds at that Time”—the same regiment Magenis came from. Since Bennet didn’t complain about that second officer’s decision, he must have been satisfied with the outcome. Not every confrontation had to end in violence.

A Second Look at the Corporal Who Stole a Horse

Last week (and last month) I shared an item from Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer about the Massachusetts Provincial Congress preparing for war. Isaiah Thomas of the Massachusetts Spy declared that story “A d——d lie.”

In the same column Loyalist printer James Rivington shared another story about a British “corporal of the 38th regiment” pretending to desert and making off with a Patriot’s horse, saddle, and clothing. To me that sounded like the plot that the unreliable Samuel Dyer had described to a British admiral back in July 1774; wouldn’t it be awfully risky to put a deserter on horseback and ride him past his own barracks? Yet Isaiah Thomas didn’t have anything to say about that tale.

It turns out Don Hagist, author of The Revolution’s Last Men and British Soldiers, American War, did have something to say. So here’s his note as a “guest blogger” posting:

I encountered the story of the corporal of the 38th Regiment who stole a horse in an issue of the Hibernian Chronicle dated 23 January 1775, which gave the name of the letter writer, of the corporal, and of a private soldier…

Copy of a letter from Captain Maginis of the 38th regiment in Boston to his brother in Drogheda, dated Dec. 14, 1774.

“…We often see here in the English papers accounts from America, not one of which contain a word of truth; they mention a great deal about the desertion from our troops, some are gone off, but not the tenth part of what they say, for our whole army, consisting of 105 companies, have not lost 120 men, although the people make use of every stratagem to make them desert, and supply them with horses and carriages to go off.

But I believe that will be a good deal stopped by the good behaviour of a young lad, a corporal in my company; he with another of the company went to a public-house, where they met some countrymen, who advised them to desert, and that they would supply them with disguises, that they might escape the easier, whereupon the corporal put on a disguise, stuffed his regimentals into one of the men’s saddle bags, and after settling their expedition, the countryman offered to take the corporal behind him, but he told him he could not ride without stirrups, so he got on the saddle, and took the countryman behind him, and set a galloping towards the nearest barrack, which, when the other observed, he leaped from behind him, and made his escape, swearing he would not wait to be shot, the corporal drove on to his own barrack with the whole prize, and no one dare to own the horse or cloaths; the corporal is thanked by the whole army, and the horse given up to him; there was no horse for the other, or he would have done the same.

The corporal is one Baker, a Yorkshire-man; and the soldier’s name is Drenning a Heart of Steel from the county of Antrim.”

In his blog post on this letter, Don asked, “Is this letter a piece of propaganda fabricated by the publisher or a legitimate record of an event in Boston?” Follow that link to his website to see what Don found in the 38th Regiment’s muster rolls.

Thanks again, Don!