“An inquiry into the state of the finances of the town”

Even as he served as royal governor of Massachusetts, Thomas Hutchinson was writing the third volume of his history of the colony.

Before he died in 1780, Hutchinson cut down that manuscript. Interestingly, he removed some passages defending his own conduct, though of course what survived presented his view of events.

Hutchinson’s grandson published the edited text in 1828. In 1936 the Harvard College administrator Lawrence Shaw Mayo (shown here) republished all three volumes in a scholarly edition.

In 1947, Mayo married Catherine Barton, a “friend and companion of long standing who shared his scholarly interests,” according to Clifford K. Shipton. Six weeks later, Mayo took his own life, to his friends’ shock.

Meanwhile, Shipton was tracking down a collector who had bought Hutchinson’s earlier manuscript. He asked Catherine Barton Mayo to study it, and she published the excised passages in the American Antiquarian Society Proceedings in 1949.

One of those passages stated about the spring of 1772:

The breach between [Samuel] Adams & [John] Hancock was apparently about this time greater than ever. The latter in a town meeting, a few weeks before, had intimated his design to move for an inquiry into the state of the finances of the town, in which the former had occasioned a great deficiency, and also into the state of monies raised by lottery for the benefit of the town of which lottery Mr. [Thomas] Cushing, the speaker of the House and a kinsman and fast friend of Mr. Adams, was one of the Trustees, and reported to be deficient.

As a town selectman, Hancock had a solid reason to push for an audit of Boston’s finances. The governor hinted that this concern was actually a clever way to distance himself from Adams and Cushing.

I’m not convinced Hutchinson’s presentation of events was accurate. To start with, although Adams and Cushing were personally close, Cushing’s politics were closer to Hancock’s, especially as the 1770s went on. On the question of how much to protest the Massachusetts General Court being convened outside of Boston, the issue that reportedly first divided Adams and Hancock in the spring of 1772, Cushing was on Hancock’s side.

Then there’s a matter of timing. Boston’s town records show that the meeting created its committee to look into financial matters on 27 May 1771. (Those records don’t say who proposed that measure.) The committee chairman was the merchant William Whitwell, and the other members were Thomas Dawes, Melatiah Bourn, Alexander Hill, and Ezekiel Price, political and business insiders.

That committee offered an interim report in June but didn’t deliver its full findings until 9 Mar 1772. Even that was, as Hutchinson’s own account says, “a few weeks before” the disagreement in the General Court led to Hancock’s first noted resentment of Adams.

Now according to Hutchinson’s unnamed sources, all the way back in June 1771 Hancock “wished to be seperated from Mr Adams.” And in December Adams sensed it necessary to assure Hancock that he hadn’t said certain things about him in a conversation about James Otis. So it’s possible that Hancock was chafing under Adams’s influence, set up the financial inquiry in May 1771, and finally openly objected to something Adams said the following April.

If so, Hancock was playing a really long game.

TOMORROW: Following the money, counting the votes.

“It was one cause of the alienation between them”

Gov. Thomas Hutchinson wasn’t the only chronicler to say Samuel Adams and John Hancock fell out over the question of how adamantly to protest against Hutchinson convening the Massachusetts General Court in Cambridge.

In 1809, the Rev. John Eliot (1754–1813, shown here) published A Biographical Dictionary, Containing a Brief Account of the First Settlers, and Other Eminent Characters among the Magistrates, Ministers, Literary and Worthy Men, in New-England.

Eliot was a son and successor of the Rev. Andrew Eliot (1718–1778), minister at the New North Meeting-House during the Revolution. He had thus met all the leading politicians of pre-Revolutionary Boston before coming of age and had heard plenty of gossip about them.

In his book’s short biography of Samuel Adams, Eliot wrote:

During these [legislative] sessions at Cambridge, a difference of opinion arose, upon some secondary matters, between Adams and Hancock, which cooled their friendship, and was succeeded by an antipathy, that had an effect upon the minds of the people, many of whom took a warm interest in this personal animosity, though they agreed in political sentiments; and acted together in the great affairs which arrested the attention of all the whigs.

Eliot went into more detail in his profile of Hancock:

There was a collision of sentiment among the leading whigs about the removal of the court to Boston. Hutchinson offered this upon certain conditions, which the majority of members saw fit to comply with.

Adams was against the measure, and expressed his sentiments in opposition to his friend and colleague. Mr. Hancock was a man impatient of contradiction, and, upon some occasions, indulged a petulant humour. He could not bear the opposition of Mr. Adams on this question. It was one cause of the alienation between them.

That gentleman [Adams] was cool and determined, hard and unyielding, as well as bold in his argument. He sometimes was sarcastick in his replies; but upon the subject which then divided the house, he observed the utmost delicacy, and seemed to dread the consequence of this political difference.

These gentlemen had different views, though equally zealous in their opposition to the mother country. Or else one looked further than the other. . . . The division of these two leading characters made parties among the whigs, especially in the town of Boston.

The relationship of Hancock and Adams was still sensitive years after both men had died, Eliot told the Rev. William Bentley in 1810, in a letter published in the New England Historic and Genealogical Register.

Eliot listed his entries about Adams, Hancock, and Hutchinson among his “best drawn.” However, “Several Gentlemen in Boston, estimable for Talents & worth, tho’ federalists (which may lower them with you), say they would not have subscribed for the book had they seen what I have said of S.A. & John Hancock.”

Eliot was looking back through years in which Hancock and Adams were much further apart than they were in 1772, so that could have magnified the importance of this moment. Nonetheless, he offers more testimony that Hancock’s response to Adams’s disagreement was the first crack in their partnership.

COMING UP: Town finances.

“The Right of the Governor to carry them to Houssatonick”

John Hancock and Samuel Adams split in early 1772 over a few small issues—at least according to Gov. Thomas Hutchinson.

The first involved where the Massachusetts General Court was meeting.

Under orders from London, Hutchinson had summoned the legislature to meet in Cambridge instead of in Boston. His predecessor, Gov. Francis Bernard, had done the same. The General Court had also gone to Cambridge during a smallpox outbreak.

In the eighteenth-century British Empire it was widely accepted that colonial legislatures would be elected once a year, but then the royal governors could convene those legislatures where and when they chose. This power derived from their being representatives of the monarch in Britain.

According to Hutchinson in June 1771:

Mr [James] Otis in a Speech the first day after the Election gave his opinion to the house that we had a very good Governour and he was sure the People in all parts of the Province thought so, he condemned the proceedings of the House the last year & acknowledged the Right of the Governor to carry them to Houssatonick, the Western extreme part of the Province, was sensible that it would be inconvenient and that he would not do it and hoped he would carry them back to Boston. This gave a shock to the party and the House voted to go on with their business as usual without a division or opposition.

This speech immediately made Otis’s colleagues and constituents worry about which side he was on.

Soon Adams as assembly clerk rallied the legislators to complain bitterly about being summoned to an inconvenient meeting place and refuse to do any business until they were back in Boston. Hutchinson tried to bring up issues that the representatives, especially those from western towns, couldn’t resist acting on.

As the spring of 1772 came around, Hutchinson let it be known that as long as the house petitioned him to convene the General Court in Boston for practical reasons, with no challenge to his chartered power to summon them elsewhere, he would accede to that preference. (After all, as house speaker decades earlier, he had maneuvered to keep the legislative seat in Boston.) 

Adams wanted to stick to the principled, no-compromise confrontation. Hancock, along with speaker Thomas Cushing, was willing to couch their complaint on practical grounds. Ultimately, so did the majority of legislators.

The difference between Adams’s and Hancock’s positions was not that big, and Hancock may have had a better sense of what his fellow lawmakers and voters were up for. Still, this disagreement over wording or tactics was enough to give Hutchinson hope that two of his biggest opponents were splitting.

One of the grievances in the Declaration of Independence would be:

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

That referred to this dispute over where the General Court should gather, which became an even bigger deal in 1774 when Gen. Thomas Gage summoned the legislature to Salem.

The Revolutionary War ended up changing the norm about where and when American legislatures met. The U.S. Constitution gave Congress authority over “the Seat of the Government of the United States” and provided for regular meetings there. Only “on extraordinary Occasions” can the President convene Congress, and only “in Case of Disagreement between” the two houses can the President adjourn them.

TOMORROW: Another chronicler.

Mapping Samuel Adams’s Declining Opinion of John Hancock

Among the intriguing questions posed to the A.I. program on the John Hancock Papers website is: “What did Hancock think about Sam ADams”?

The relationship of John Hancock and Samuel Adams fascinated people during their careers, and it continues to be interesting.

I even consulted on a picture book about the two men: Most Wanted, written by Sarah Jane Marsh and illustrated by Edwin Fotheringham.

When I thought about how I’d answer the question, my mind went to several historical moments:

• The Rev. William Gordon’s anecdote about how Adams “artfully nominated” Hancock for the Massachusetts General Court ahead of John Rowe.
• Adams’s 11 May 1770 letter to Hancock when the merchant wanted to resign from that legislature after not receiving a unanimous vote in the town meeting, assuring him he was “a most valueable Member.”
• Gov. Thomas Hutchinson’s (probably unrealistic) hope in the early 1770s to woo Hancock away from Adams with a seat on the Council, a militia command, and other rewards.
• The Boston Whigs’ choice of Hancock to deliver the Massacre memorial oration in 1774, cementing his place in the radical camp.
• Hancock and Adams’s activity on 18–19 Apr 1775, including Gordon’s “glorious morning” anecdote.
• The disagreement between Hancock and Adams over whether they should let the crowd pull their carriage as they entered New York City—at least as reported later by the Adams family.
• Adams’s opposition to a ball in honor of Martha Washington which John and Dorothy Hancock planned to attend.
• The growing divide between Hancock and Adams during the Second Continental Congress, as recalled by John Adams in his autobiography’s comment about March 1776: “Mr. Samuel Adams had become very bitter against Mr. Hancock and spoke of him with great Asperity, in private Circles, and this Alienation between them continued…”
• The dispute within the Congress over whether it should thank Hancock when he resigned as chair in October 1777.
• Samuel Adams’s catty comments about politicians susceptible to flattery in letters to James Warren that same month.

All those data points, however, come from Samuel Adams or others. The question posed is what Hancock thought of Adams.

TOMORROW: Ups and downs.

“To be a liege subject of the State of Massachusetts Bay”

In May 1778, the Massachusetts General Court began a new legislative year.

On 17 September, Council member John Pitts brought the lower house “a Petition of Hopestill Capen, a Prisoner in Boston Goal, praying that he may not any longer be confined.”

This was a breakthrough. For the first time, Capen was addressing the General Court as a legitimate government. Previously he had insisted that doing so would violate his religious scruples.

Once again, the legislators formed a joint committee to consider Capen’s petition, along with a similar plea for release from the shorthand expert John Hodgson.

On 19 September, the Council approved a resolution “liberting them on certain Conditions.” This time, the House fully concurred. The official resolve stated:

that the prayer of Hopestill Capen’s petition be so far granted, that he be liberated from his confinement upon his giving bond to the Treasurer of this State for the sum of Two thousand pounds, with sufficient sureties that he will subscribe and closely adhere to the following declaration by him proposed in his petition, vizt. “I, the subscriber, acknowledge myself to be a liege subject of the State of Massachusetts Bay, and hold myself obliged to assist in supporting peace and good order in this State and when called on by lawfull authority I am ready so to do.”

Back in February 1778, the legislature had stipulated this oath of allegiance:

I, A.B., do swear (or affirm as the case may be) that I will bear faith and allegance to the state of Massachusetts Bay, and will faithfully support and maintain and defend the same against George the Third, king of Great Britain, his abettors and all other enemies and opposers whatsoever, and will discover all plots and conspiraces that shall come to knowledge, against said state or any other of the United States of America. So help me God.

Hodgson was ready to take that oath, but Capen still shied from explicitly renouncing his loyalty to George III. After all, what if the tide of war turned, and the Crown prevailed? According to his faith, he would have to be a Loyalist again. But for now, Capen would acknowledge the state of Massachusetts as his sovereign. (It’s notable he used the term “subject,” not “citizen.”)

In the fall of 1778, after twenty-five months of confinement, Hopestill Capen got out of jail.

TOMORROW: The last years.

Hopestill Capen Still in the Boston Jail

We left the Boston merchant Hopestill Capen locked up in the Boston jail in mid-1777.

As a Sandemanian, Capen had stayed loyal to the British Crown—but then he’d stayed in Boston after the British military left. He refused to pledge allegiance to the colonies declaring independence in July 1776, rendering himself suspicious.

As I previously quoted, Capen tried a public plea for his release. His wife Patience petitioned the state government. His friends in the merchant community vouched for him.

On 20 June 1777, the Massachusetts Council approved a petition from merchant Robert Pierpont and others for Capen’s release. The lower house of the General Court “concurr’d as taken into a new Draught.”

A resolution is printed in Massachusetts Acts and Resolves, stipulating that Pierpont and friends would give “Give bond to the Treasurr. of This State in the sum of five hundred Pounds” that Capen would “appear before any Court in the County of Suffolk.”

But apparently the House never agreed to that wording, or those terms. Capen remained in jail.

On 24 Feb 1778, the Council took up a new petition from Patience Capen. That board named Benjamin Austin to a committee to consider it along with whatever members the House named.

On 3 March, the Council accepted that committee’s recommendation. Moses Gill (shown above) delivered the news to the House. And the House disagreed, telling the committee instead to “enquire of the Committee of Correspondence, &c. of the Town of Boston, respecting Mr. Capen.”

A week later, there was a new report. The Council again agreed with the committee, Jabez Fisher reported. The House again disagreed, and voted to set the petition aside.

The Council, made up of richer men, was apparently inclined to be more lenient, but the House, dominated by rural delegates, was still not in a forgiving mood.

The Massachusetts government had exchanged some of its Loyalist prisoners to bring captives back from New York. That wasn’t an option for Capen since he didn’t want to go over to the enemy.

And thus the legislative term ended in the spring of 1778 with Hopestill Capen still in the Boston jail.

TOMORROW: Change of heart.

“We have esteemed him to be an honest and peaceable citizen”

In May 1777 Boston had a series of town meetings concerned chiefly with its military defenses.

On 17 May that discussion went further to assembling a list of “Persons belonging to this Town, as have been endeavouring since the 19th. of April 1775, to counteract the united Struggles of this & the neighbouring States.”

The town meeting voted to have those twenty-nine men “apprehended & confined”—while recognizing that would require an order from the Massachusetts Council.

Boston’s official list of suspected Loyalists included the Rev. Dr. Mather Byles, Dr. James Lloyd and four other physicians, William Jackson of the Brazen Head, and others. Three of those men were already in jail: Hopestill Capen, Thomas Edwards, and Benjamin Davis, Sr.

On 22 May the town elected seven representatives to the Massachusetts General Court, with John Pitts and Ellis Gray getting the most votes—more than 500.

Some prominent people disagreed with the town’s list of Loyalists. Soon after the new legislative session started, the Council received a petition “praying the Court to give Orders for the Removal of Hopestill Capen, a Prisoner in Boston Goal.” That petition came from a group headed by Robert Pierpont, a Roxbury merchant and official with impeccable Patriot credentials.

Furthermore, it appears Patience Capen had collected ninety signatures on this statement, transcribed in American Archives:

We, the subscribers, inhabitants of Boston, do hereby certify, that Mr. Hopestill Capen is well known to us, and we have esteemed him to be an honest and peaceable citizen; some of us in particular, have experienced his kind and faithful services in securing and saving our interest and property when we were out of the town; and we all join with the petitioner that he may be released from gaol and restored to his family.

The phrase “when were were out of the town” referred to the siege of Boston. Capen had evidently looked after other shopkeepers’ goods or real estate.

Again, those signers included some men deeply involved in Boston’s Patriot movement and town government: William Dawes, Samuel Dashwood, Moses Grant, Timothy Newell, Edward Payne, John Scollay, Pool Spear, Henry Bass, and so on. Other signers were more moderate Whigs—Ezekiel Price, John Andrews, Thomas Fleet, Thomas Handysyd Peck, Duncan Ingraham. But none of those names would raise political or religious suspicions.

Ninety signatures on a petition was a very impressive number. Nonetheless, those men would have been a decided minority in a town meeting attended by up to 500 citizens worried about the town being attacked from without or undermined from within.

On 18 June, Council member Dr. Samuel Holton brought the businessmen’s petition to the House with a proposal to form a committee “to examine the Commission of the Court of Enquiry, and their Doings thereon at large, together with this Petition, and report what is best to be done thereon.” The House approved that step the next day.

And then, it appears, nothing happened for months.

COMING UP: The repetition of Patience Capen.

“Mr. Capen insults the State, by denying their jurisdiction”

At the end of 1776, Hopestill Capen was still locked away from his wife Patience.

And Capen lost patience in another way. On 30 December, he sent a letter from “Boston Prison” to Joseph Greenleaf, a justice of the peace.

As transcribed in American Archives, that letter says:

It is now one hundred and forty-seven days since you, with John Hill, Joseph Gardner, and Samuel Pemberton, Esqrs., accused and judged me unfit to go at large, for no other cause whatever than my plainly and simply pleading conscience in obeying the plain Scripture commands; and for that only, you, with the other three of my accusers, committed me to close prison in a felon’s room, there to be kept until delivered by a due course of law.

Can any one with truth say this is not unjust, and against the law of the God of Heaven, who speaketh in the Scriptures? Is there any law that forbids any man’s obeying the plain commands of the great Lawgiver, who is the Maker and Judge of all men? [Multiple citations from the Bible follow] . . .

But I shall be very glad of my just liberty; and I beg that you will not persecute me any longer for that I cannot in conscience do. Can you, on a cool reflection, take any pleasure in such tyranny, while you profess to be the supporters of liberty? What liberty is dear as the liberty of conscience? And I again beg of you to release me from such cruel oppression. . . .

P.S. Surely injustice continued will not atone for past wrongs; and I most heartily entreat you not to keep me away any longer from my just and lawful liberty.

Capen sent similar letters to Sheriff William Greenleaf (not a close relative of the justice) and jailer Joseph Otis (not a close relative of the Barnstable family).

Justice Greenleaf forwarded his copy to James Warren, speaker of the Massachusetts House (and not a close relative of the Roxbury family), with this request:

I must beg the protection of the Court from the insults of Mr. Capen, who stands committed for signing an association to join the enemies of his country whenever called upon, and other crimes. Mr. Capen insults the State, by denying their jurisdiction. He disowns me as a Magistrate, because appointed by the present Administration, while he owns the jurisdiction of the other members of the Court of Inquiry, because appointed by the King’s Governour, and (as he apprehends derive) their authority from thence.

The “association” Greenleaf referred to was a Loyalist militia formed during the siege of Boston. Capen hadn’t just signed up; he’d volunteered to be a sergeant. Greenleaf had “the Books, which contain the Names of the Associations.”

This letter might help to explain why the Massachusetts General Court took no action on Patience Capen’s petition asking for her husband’s release. He was still in jail as the spring of 1777 arrived.

TOMORROW: Yet another approach.

“the long Confinement of her said Husband in close Goal”

Yesterday’s post recounted Hopestill Capen’s plea to be let out of jail, where he was locked up on suspicion of being inimical to the newly independent Massachusetts in August 1776.

That long, religiously based argument, printed as a broadside, didn’t work. So on 22 October his wife Patience took over the case.

It’s possible that, like Benjamin Davis, Hopestill refused to petition the Massachusetts legislature because that would mean recognizing that as a legitimate government authority.

It’s also possible that Patience Capen was willing to argue a position that her husband would not. Or she expected that as a woman she could garner more sympathy than he did.

The Massachusetts Archives displays a digital copy of Patience Capen’s petition to the Council in this online exhibit, albeit captioned with her husband’s name.

Patience Capen acknowledged that her husband handbill hadn’t gone over well:

That altho your Pet[itione]r’s said Husband signed certain Obnoxious Papers, in which he declares he acted from the Principles of his Religion and the Dictates of Conscience, by “Submitting to the Powers that be,” yet he never had in his Heart the least intention of taking up Arms against his country but on the contrary exerted himself and was actually the means of securing and saving the Property and Interest, to a very considerable Value of several of the Inhabitants of Boston, who removed out of Town, and left their Interest & Property exposed to the Ravage and Plunder of our Enemies.

That by means of the long Confinement of her said Husband in close Goal, she and her Children have suffered great Distress

She asked that the authorities release Hopestill so he could get busy “obtaining a support for them”—with the implied threat that the family might soon need public charity. That sort of plea was designed to catch officials’ attention.

On 24 October, Council member Caleb Cushing shared Patience Capen’s petition with the Massachusetts House. Which of course referred the matter to a committee.

American Archives included the transcription of a document datelined “In the House of Representatives, November 25, 1776.” It laid out a plan for Hopestill Capen to be released once he arranged for a bond of £100. However, there’s no sign of that proposal in the official records of the House. I suspect this was a draft that went nowhere.

Hopestill Capen remained in jail.

TOMORROW: Hearing from Hopestill again.

In Exchange for John Callender

In June 1777, as quoted here, the Massachusetts General Court voted to send imprisoned Loyalist Benjamin Davis, Jr., with his father to New York on condition that the royal authorities send back John Callender in exchange.

Callender (1747-1797) had been one of four provincial officers ordered to lead their artillery companies onto the field at the Battle of Bunker Hill.

Only one of those officers, Samuel Russell Trevett, actually stayed through the whole battle doing damage to the regulars. Only one—again, Trevett—kept any of the provincials’ valuable cannon from being captured.

However, two of the other officers had the advantage of being related to Col. Richard Gridley, commander of the artillery. They were Maj. Scarborough Gridley, the colonel’s son, and Capt. Samuel Gridley, his nephew.

Eventually both young Gridleys were removed from the ranks. But that took months, and in July 1775 the new commander-in-chief, Gen. George Washington, had to make an example of someone. So John Callender was cashiered in a very public way.

Callender carved out a second chance for himself. He went to New York in the fall of 1776 as a gentleman volunteer or “cadet” attached to the artillery company commanded by Capt.-Lt. John Johnson (c. 1753–1818, self-portrait shown above).

During the Battle of Brooklyn, Johnson was “desperately wounded,” in the words of Henry P. Johnston. Callender took command of the company and “fought his piece on Long Island until the enemy’s bayonets were at his breast.” Both officers and their men became prisoners.

Johnson was exchanged in May 1777 but was in no physical shape to return to the army. He became Boston’s leading portrait painter during and immediately after the war.

Callender was awarded a Continental Army commission as a captain-lieutenant, dated 1 Jan 1777. And the Massachusetts legislature tried to get him back, as its June resolution showed.

But that didn’t work. Callender was still a prisoner in New York in September. And I rather doubt Benjamin Davis, Jr., returned to Massachusetts to be locked up again.

I suspect the British authorities didn’t see a fair trade in exchanging a Continental officer captured in battle for a young man, barely of age, who just happened to be with his father on a merchant ship when it was seized. It’s possible the Crown freed another young American man whose identity I haven’t found, and it’s possible the issue of Benjamin, Jr.’s trade faded away.

In September 1777, John Callender’s wife Hepzibah asked the Massachusetts legislature to approve another swap for her husband. The man to be freed from the Boston jail this time was John Hill, a Loyalist captured during the evacuation in the spring of 1776.

The General Court approved that swap on 17 September. I presume it actually happened because by the end of the year Callender and Hill were both back on their own sides.

In subsequent years Hill served as “a Capt. of Marines on board a Privateer for 8 months, than as Capt. of Marines in the Jason.” Then with his brother Richard he was inspector of the ferry between Manhattan and Brooklyn.

Callender remained on duty in the Continental artillery force for the rest of the war, mustering out in 1784.

TOMORROW: The Davises in New York.

The Capture and Release of Capt. Samuel Richards

By 1777, both sides of the Revolutionary War held a significant number of prisoners.

Some of those people were soldiers or sailors captured in military operations while others had been detained as politically suspect.

American authorities were ready to arrange exchange prisoners as long as the British released someone of equal importance.

There were disputes about what that meant, of course. In July, a Boston crowd forcibly prevented Dr. Benjamin Church, suspected traitor and spy, from being traded for Dr. James McHenry, a young military surgeon who had already been paroled.

The Massachusetts government balked at releasing the Loyalist merchant Benjamin Davis, Sr., until a petition linked his case to Samuel Richards of Norwalk, Connecticut, as quoted yesterday.

Richards (1716–1777) lived in the village of Rowayton. He was a committee man clamping down on local Loyalism and captain of the militia company that guarded the shore.

Another Norwalk man, Stephen Hoyt (c. 1750–1809), had crossed to Long Island, New York, to work for the Crown. He cruised the coast in a sloop, picking up recruits for a Loyalist regiment called the Prince of Wales’s American Volunteers.

On the rainy night of 16 March, Capt. Hoyt led about twenty men into Rowayton to raid Richards’s farm. He captured fifteen armed men, including Capt. Richards, three Continental soldiers on leave, and eleven local guards.

Hoyt took those prisoners to New York, where they were locked up in the Provost jail. On 10 April the city’s Royal American Gazette praised the raid: “Such excursions as these will keep the Rebels in constant trepidation & give life & Spirit to our new made Soldiers & Officers.”

In May, Richards’s brother petitioned the Massachusetts General Court to exchange Benjamin Davis, Sr., for Capt. Richards. The legislature approved that plan on 2 June.

Davis traveled to New York. Samuel Richards returned to Norwalk but died very soon after, on 23 June. His gravestone appears above, courtesy of Find a Grave.

TOMORROW: Benjamin, Jr.

“Leave for his brother Benjamin, his son and servant, to depart this State”

As the year 1777 began, the Loyalist Benjamin Davis remained in the Boston jail along with his son and an enslaved servant.

Davis refused to petition the Massachusetts General Court for his release since he didn’t want to recognize the independent state government. But his religious scruples didn’t stop his brother Edward.

On 4 February, Massachusetts Council member Benjamin Austin came into the assembly chamber with

a petition of Edward Davis, of Boston, in behalf of his brother, Benjamin Davis, and son, prisoners in Boston Goal, praying that they may be permitted to go with a cartel to Newport

A “cartel” was the mechanism for a prisoner exchange.

The legislature named a joint committee of Austin and two House members to consider the request. The next day, that committee recommended “That the petitioner have leave to withdraw the same.” The General Court approved. That was a polite way of saying no.

On 18 February, jailer Joseph Otis listed his prisoners. Among the men noted as “being Enemical to the States” was Benjamin Davis but not his son. Benjamin, Jr., might have been paroled into the town, or at twenty years old he might still have been too young to merit his own listing.

On 6 March, the House noted

A petition of Edward Davis, praying leave for his brother Benjamin, his son and servant, to depart this State, in a cartel vessel bound for Halifax.

This time the response was “Read and dismissed.” That was a blunt way of saying no.

A newly elected legislature took their seats in May. Even as the House was getting itself in order

Nathan Cushing, Esq; brought down a Petition of James Richards, of Norwalk, praying that Mr. Benjamin Davis, a Prisoner in Boston, may be exchanged for his Brother Capt. Samuel Richards, a close Prisoner in New York Goal.

Again, the lawmakers referred this to a committee.

On 2 June, the Massachusetts House and Council reached this agreement:

Resolved that the prayer of the within petition be granted, & that Benjamin Davis now a Prisoner in the Goal in the town of Boston, be exchanged for Capt. Samuel Richards a prisoner in New York, provided that proper care be taken that sd Davis does not carry any papers with him & is cautiously sarched when deliver’d up. And it is also

Resolved that Benjamin Davis junr. Son of the aforesaid Davis, now a Prisoner in Boston Goal be exchanged for Mr John Callender a Prisoner in New York, provided due caution be taken that he does not carry any papers with him & is properly sarched when deliver’d up. But if said Callender or some person of equal rank should not be procured in Exchange for said Davis that said Davis be returned to this State.

Two days later, according to what Davis later told the British government, he was let out of the Boston jail. By the end of the year, it appears, the Davises were established in New York.

TOMORROW: The other side of those exchanges.

Hopestill Capen from the Cornfields to the Jail

On 6 Aug 1776, 250 years ago today, authorities in Boston locked merchant Hopestill Capen (1731–1807) in jail for “aiding and abetting those called enemies to the Colonies.”

For decades Capen had run his dry goods business at the sign of the Cornfields in a building he owned, now known as the Union Oyster House. He served as a militia officer and held minor town offices.

Late in 1769 Capen took on Benjamin Thompson as an apprentice, but that arrangement didn’t last long. The merchant later reportedly told the teenager’s mother “he oftener found her son under the counter, with gimblets, knife, and saw, constructing some little machine, or looking over some book of science, than behind it, arranging the cloths or waiting upon customers.”

From 1771 until just before the war, one of Capen’s tenants in the building was the Whig printer Isaiah Thomas.

During that time, Capen had become known as a mild Loyalist. He signed the complimentary addresses to Gov. Thomas Hutchinson and Gen. Thomas Gage, and he joined the protest against the Solemn League and Covenant.

Capen chose not to evacuate with the British military in 1776, however. Unlike many Loyalists, he had deep family roots in Massachusetts, and all his property was there.

In April 1776 the Massachusetts House directed the Suffolk County justices and sheriff to detain and question dozens of individuals suspected of disloyalty. Capen was fifth on that list, showing his prominence in town.

But it wasn’t until the summer, after Massachusetts had declared independence from the Crown, that the Council ordered those authorities to lock Capen up. No one ever appears to have ever produced evidence of him “aiding and abetting” Crown forces, but he did refuse to pledge allegiance to the new state.

Capen presented himself as a conscientious objector, motivated by religion. In the 1760s he had joined Boston’s small Sandemanian sect, and he said that his faith required him to stay out of the war.

Some analysts have described the Sandemanians as pacifist because of statements like Capen’s. But he wasn’t opposed to military action in principle. He’d been an active member of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company as well as the colonial militia, and during the siege he became a sergeant in a Loyal Associated Volunteers under Capt. Adino Paddock.

Rather, the Sandemanian creed said believers should be loyal to the government in control on the grounds that it must be divinely ordained. With the war still going on, and thus divine will not yet clear, Capen insisted that he couldn’t promise his allegiance to the U.S. of A.

COMING UP: Capen’s release.

“The consideration of the Petition of Preserved Clap”

In the spring of 1776, Dr. Preserved Clap was forty-five years old. He had a wife and young children back in Amherst. And in Boston he was being hailed as a “Genius” for his idea of how to put damaged cannon back to work. So he stayed.

Though he used the title ”Doctor” and was identified by the Rev. Samuel Cooper as “a Country Surgeon,” I haven’t come across any example of Clap performing medicine. But he threw himself into mechanical tasks.

The authorities put Clap in charge of a team to salvage as many of the artillery pieces the British left behind as they could. Those men appear to have worked into the summer, and then Clap petitioned the Massachusetts General Court for pay.

On 16 September that legislature put into its record:

MEMORIAL of PRESERVED CLAP Overseer. of the Men employed in opening, and stocking the Cannon at Boston, and Castle William.
setting forth
That he and the Men attended that service, for the term of Time specified, for which he, nor they have received any pay therefore the memorialist prays, that the Honorable Court would give him an Order upon the Treasurer for the State aforesaid for the Amount of his Account. or otherwise relieve him as shall seem meet.

The Committee to whom was referr’d the consideration of the Petition of Preserved Clap, have attended that Service, and beg leave to Report by way of Resolve.

several other Accounts exclusive of said Clap’s accompanying this petition, the Committee did not take into consideration as said Clap had no orders to receive the amount of the same,

said Committee do not know of any further service for said Clap.

Resolved that there be paid out of the Publick Treasury of this state to Preserved Clap Forty Three Pound one shilling & Tenpence in full for his within account

and whereas Said Clap Says that he has envented a machine for Boreing Cannon, which may be improved to the grate advantage of this State, therefore

Resolved, That if Said Clap will exhibet a Plan, or Modle of Said Machine, to Hugh orr Esqr and others, a Comtee. for Casting Large Cannon So as to Satisfy them of its Superior utility, upon their report thereof to this Court there Shall then be granted to him Such a Sum for his envention as may appear to be adequate to its Superior usefulness.

Hugh Orr (1715–1798) had come to Massachusetts from Scotland in 1737, settling in Bridgewater after a couple of years. There he built a forge and the first known trip-hammer in British America. Though Orr’s main product was farming implements, at times of war he shifted his works toward making weapons, including muskets in 1748.

In 1776, Orr was representing Bridgewater in the General Court and working to set up a cannon manufactory. Naturally, the legislature set Dr. Clap to him. However, there’s no evidence anything came of that.

Two months later, on 14 November, the Independent Chronicle newspaper ran this notice:

BOSTON, November 11, 1776.

THIS may certify, that Doctor Preserved Clap, has opened the cannon at Castle-William that were spiked up by the enemy; and is the real inventor of a carriage, whereby the cannon that had their trunnions broken off, by this new invented carriage the guns are rendered serviceable, which otherwise would have been useless.

Attest, RICH. GRIDLEY, Chief Engineer.

I looked to see if there was any competing claim to have invented that method of mounting guns in 1776, but I couldn’t find one. Dr. Clap really wanted public credit for his ideas.

TOMORROW: Making a national case.

“They talk of sinking Hulks by the Castle”

On 29 Apr 1776, one week after writing the letter to John Adams that I quoted yesterday, the Rev. Dr. Samuel Cooper wrote to Samuel Adams:

this Town…is now in some better Posture of Defence, but the Works proceed slowly. I must repeat what I said to you in my last, There is an absolute Necessity of some able active Commander here, such as [Nathanael] Green, [John] Sullivan, [Israel] Putnam &c upon other Accounts besides fortifying, tho this is of extreme Importance in our Situation— . . .

We have some good Lines, excellent Cannon at Fort Hill; this is all our Defence at present, except the Works thrown up at Dorchester Point which are said to be good—We are now going to erect Works at the Castle, & hope to have a Line of Guns well defended, on the Eastern Point; & are preparing to sink Hulks, between the Rocks of Castle Island, & the lower middle Ground.

The Enemy employ’d no little Time in ruining all the old Works there, and destroying the Guns…

Cooper still wanted someone besides Gen. Artemas Ward to supervise the defense of Boston, but his description of the town’s defenses was a little advanced from the previous week.

A 22 April letter from Boston quoted in the Connecticut Gazette of New London also said: “Tomorrow they talk of sinking Hulks by the Castle.” Those hulks were the keels of old ships, meant to impede Royal Navy warships from sailing easily into the inner harbor.

Of course, those same obstacles would also be a problem for merchant vessels, or American warships. On 30 April James Warren told John Adams: “No hulks as yet sunk; the people of Boston seem much against it; and whether it will be done or not I can’t say.” After all, Warren was merely the speaker of the Massachusetts house.

On 9 May that legislature directed its harbor defense committee “without delay to sink the Hulks.” But on 23 May the Boston town meeting voted (unanimously, it was later said) against that measure. The General Court on 5 June suspended the operation, though empowering the committee to proceed “upon any sudden Alarm or appearance of danger.”

Soon enough, fear of British warships invading Boston waned. No hulks were sunk in the harbor.

“In what a defenceless State we still remain”

I was preparing to write about a document from the Samuel Adams Papers at the New York Public Library, digitized as “Letter from John Scollay” dated 22 Apr 1776.

But after taking a closer look, I realized that only the first two four pages at that link come from a letter by selectman John Scollay. And the first two pages of Scollay’s letter are at this link, called “Letter from William Davis”—which is indeed accurate for the first two of four pages there.

The file called “Letter from John Scollay” also contains a two-page letter from the Rev. Samuel Cooper, dated 29 Apr 1776. His signature is abbreviated, but the handwriting matches Cooper’s other letters in this collection.

The Cooper letter closes by saying he’d recently written to John Hancock and John Adams. The letter to Hancock isn’t listed in the John Hancock Papers project, so it probably hasn’t survived. But the Adams Papers does offer a 22 April letter from Cooper matching the style and concerns as the letter to Samuel Adams.

In particular, Cooper told John Adams he was worried about Boston’s defenses:

After so many Weeks Possession of this Town you would be surpriz’d to see in what a defenceless State we still remain. The Business of Fortifying has lain between Genl. [Artemas] Ward and a Committee of the General Court: Between them both, little or nothing has yet been done. We have but 7 or 8 Guns mounted on Fort Hill. Nothing yet done on any Island in the Harbor.

A British Ship of 40 or 50 Guns with two or three small arm’d Vessells are in Possession of King Road and Nantasket. They take or drive away almost all supplies coming to us by Water; and (would you believe it!) with this inconsiderable Force the Harbor has been, and is now effectually block’d up. Two or three Ships of War have had it in their Pow’r ever since the Evacuation of the Town to come up and cannonade it.

That warship’s primary mission was to stop other British ships from going into the harbor unaware that it waw now in rebel hands. But of course Cooper and other Bostonians couldn’t be sure it wouldn’t attack.

Ward complains that too small a Force, but 5 Regiments not full, were left him. The Court blame him for Inactivity, and He them. I was pleas’d to see your Letters and others from Gentlemen of the Congress mentioning the Importance of putting this Harbor into the best State of Defence. Pray write again and again to press this Matter.

There is a Report here that Ward has desir’d to resign. I wish from my Heart He would do it. He is a good Man, a thoro N. England man, and dispos’d to do us ev’ry Service in his Power. But He certainly wants Decision and Activity. It is of absolute Necessity that some General Officer of the best Qualities be sent to this Department immediately. Pray let [Nathanael] Green or some other be plac’d here.

We are in the utmost Hazard, should the Enemy return, of loosing in this Quarter much more than we have gain’d, by the Departure of the British Forces. Had there been a Man here, at the Head of the Military who would have discern’d at once what was proper to be done; and stated it to the Court, we might have been in a good Posture of Defence Weeks ago.

Ward had indeed put in his resignation on the grounds of ill health, then asked to remain so he could help Massachusetts rebuild. Cooper wasn’t the only local to say Ward moved too slowly. When the minister wrote this letter, however, it had been less than three weeks since Gen. George Washington had departed and left Ward in charge. It therefore doesn’t seem fair to suggest Boston could have been fortified against ocean attack “Weeks ago.”

“John Hill be sent under a proper Guard to Boston Goal”

As recounted yesterday, on 25 Apr 1776 the Massachusetts General Court issued a resolve to catch John Hill, an Irish-born Loyalist accused of helping to loot Boston as the British evacuated.

I haven’t found any newspaper advertisements for Hill, suggesting that local authorities located him within just a few days.

The Marblehead committee of correspondence sent the man back to Watertown, and on 1 May the legislature passed a new act: 

Whereas John Hill a Prisoner now before this Court is justly suspected to have been assisting Crean Brush in Robbing the Inhabitants of the Town of Boston of their Goods & Merchandize

It is therefore
Resolved that the said John Hill be sent under a proper Guard to Boston Goal, there to be confined as a prisoner until he shall be Examined by the Seven Justices of the Peace of the County of Suffolk or the major part of them who are appointed to try associators and abetters of the Ministerial Army, which Justices are impowered to Examine the said Hill and deal with him in the same manner as if he had remained in Boston after the said Fleet & Army had gone away

Magistrates in Boston were questioning a long list of people who had stayed in town through the siege about their political loyalties.

Boston’s “goal” or jail appears on the detail from the 1769 town map above, but barely. At the bottom of that image are two large buildings: the Town House, now the Old State House (lowercase a), and the First or Old Brick Meeting-House (big A). Above the meeting-house is the label “Church Square.” And above that, mostly worn off because of a fold, is the label “Prison.” That building faced onto Queen Street, now Court Street—named for the courthouse, which was conveniently near the prison.

Hill remained in that Boston jail for several months. The United States declared independence. The British military returned to New York in force.

On 18 October, the Connecticut Gazette of New London reported:

Last Saturday [12 October], the Wife and Daughter of one John Hill, a Prisoner in Boston Goal, for being concerned with Crean Brush and others, in Robbing the Inhabitants of Boston, when that Place was evacuated; came to this Town from Providence by Water, and was endeavouring to get a Passage to the West End of Long-Island, but were stopped by the Committee of this Town, and on Examination were found upon them, sundry Papers, containing Matters of Intelligence respecting the People, and State of the Country, sent from said Hill and others in Boston, to be communicated to General [William] Howe;…

TOMORROW: Mystery women.

“That the said Hill be immediately apprehended”

John Hill was yet another of the Loyalists captured aboard the brig Elizabeth.

[I feel like I’m never getting away! Then again, that’s probably how those passengers felt when they were brought back to New England after trying to evacuate.]

According to recent research shared in the Loyalist Directory, John Hill was born in Ireland about 1737. He moved to New York City in the early 1770s and ran an inn.

In March 1775, Hill came to the aid of William Cunningham during a fight near New York’s Liberty Pole (shown here). Hill later told the Loyalists Commission that “a Mob…beat us with Clubs, and stoned us.” The two men were thrown into prison and put on trial in April. But the foreman of the jury, John Wetherhead (another future Loyalist), kept them from being convicted and punished.

Cunningham and Hill “escaped to Boston,” reaching the besieged town by 5 May. They enlisted in the militia company of James Forrest, another man from Ireland. Hill said he was “appointed Quarter Master to the same Company.”

In March 1776, Gen. William Howe decided to evacuate the town. He ordered Crean Brush to confiscate all cloth that could be useful to the Continental Army. Brush enlisted Richard Hill, formerly sheriff in his county of northeastern New York (which would become Vermont), as an assistant. Richard presumably brought his younger brother, John Hill, onto that team.

As ships pushed off from Boston’s wharves, John Hill and his family squeezed onto the Elizabeth along with Brush, most of the confiscated goods, a squad of British soldiers, and other Loyalists. In Hill’s words, “on the 17th of March 1776, he left Boston, with the Royal Army; but was taken at Sea, by the Rebels.”

The brig, its property, and its wealthiest passengers were sent to Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The Hill family and several others were landed on Cape Ann by 7 April. The Massachusetts authorities summoned John Hill to Watertown for questioning.

On 19 April, the Massachusetts Council reported:

The Committee appointed to examine sundry Persons taken on board the Brigt Sally [sic] bound to Hallifax, & sent to the Council by the Committee of Marblehead…examined [John] Hill who informs your Committee that he is a native of Ireland that he came to New York three or four years since that he came to Boston about ten months ago on the removal of the troops from New York to Boston for the recovery of monies due to him from them and that for the same purpose he was going to Hallifax having acted as a Sutler among the troops.

Sailing off to Canada out of political loyalty was suspect. Sailing there just to collect debts from soldiers seemed more reasonable to these office-holders.

The Council agreed that Hill should be allowed to go free after providing a “written parole not to bear arms against the United Colonies, nor in any way aid or assist the Enemies of the said Colonies.” He probably headed back to Cape Ann to find his wife and at least one child.

In Boston, however, some merchants were still seething at how Brush and his assistants had taken their property. That property itself was up in Portsmouth, being sorted by Continental agent Joshua Wentworth. More information filtered back to Watertown.

On 25 April, 250 years ago today, the whole Massachusetts General Court passed a new resolve:

WHEREAS a certain John Hill, lately taken Prisoner by Commodore [John] Manly, in a Vessell bound from Boston to Hallifax, and brought into Portsmouth, was examined before the Council; and no Evidence then appearing against him, he was discharged & set at Liberty;

And whereas it hath since been made to appear to this Court; that the said Hill, at the time he was taken, as aforesaid, had in his possession Chests, Trunks & Packages of Goods and Merchandizes to the value of three hundred pounds Sterlg. supposed to have been stolen from the distressed Inhabitants of the Town of Boston; and was an Assistant to Crean Brush in his late unwarrantable and highhanded Thefts & Robberies
Therefore

Resolved, That the said Hill be immediately apprehended, wherever to be found, & brought before this Court for Examination, touching the Premises, and all Sheriffs, Constables & other executive Officers, and all the good People of this Colony, are hereby directed & impowered to apprehend the said Hill, wherever he may be found, and bring him forthwith before this Court, in order that he may be dealt with for his aforesaid highhanded Crimes, as to Law & Justice appertains.

TOMORROW: The manhunt was on!

[Boston also had a justice of the peace named John Hill, very involved in events surrounding the Boston Massacre. Unfortunately, the same tag applies to both men, but I think context will make it easy to sort out their stories.]

“Without the Privelege of Pen, Ink, Paper or Candle”

In April 1776, Watertown was the seat of Massachusetts’s government.

Though people could now go into Boston, that town was still reeling from the siege. Plus, there was smallpox.

So the Massachusetts General Court stayed in Watertown—the assembly in the town’s meeting-house and the Council in an upper chamber of Edmund Fowle’s house (now headquarters of the Historical Society of Watertown, shown here).

Under the provincial charter, because the governor and lieutenant governor were absent (both driven away by the war), the Council exercised executive power.

That’s why, on 12 April, James Otis, Sr., as senior member of the Massachusetts Council, signed this order to imprison five genteel Loyalists captured aboard the brig Elizabeth:

To the Keeper of the Goal at Boston, in the County of Suffolk—Greeting—

You are hereby directed and commanded to take into your Custody Crean Brush, William Jackson, Peter Ramsey, Edward [K]eighley, and Richard Newton, lately taken in their flight from Boston in attempting to carry away from thence under the protection of the British fleet, large Quantities of Goods Wares & Merchandizes, the Rightful Property of the Inhabitants of that town, and having joined themselves with the Fleet & army employed against the united Colonies of America—

and you are commanded to confine the said Crean Brush William Jackson & Peter Ramsen [sic], each in an apartment by himself, without the Privelege of Pen, Ink, Paper or Candle, and not suffer them, or either of them to converse with any person whatever, unless in your hearing, and for the better Security of the said Crean Brush you are further ordered & commanded to put him into Handcufts immediately—

And them and each of them safely keep, ’till the further Order of the Major part of the Council, or they be otherwise discharged by due Course of Law—Hereof fail not at your Peril.

Two days later, Maj. John Grizzage Frazer, as assistant quartermaster for the Continental Army, wrote to Gen. George Washington to say that those men were now locked up. Brush was “in Irons.”

Frazer also passed on the news that on 12 April “8 british seamen” had made off with the cutter from H.M.S. Renown, one of the Royal Navy ships still hovering in the outer harbor, and got into Boston. Those defectors were much more welcome than the Loyalists who had tried to leave.

TOMORROW: Free William Jackson!

“Such Cost and Charge as hath arisen by their being brought before the General Court”

On 13 Apr 1776, the Massachusetts General Court decided that “Caleb Wheaton and others [well, other men], who were taken aboard the brig,” should be brought to its meeting-place in Watertown ”for Examination.”

Four days later, as quoted yesterday, the Marblehead committee of correspondence wrote to say they now thought two of Wheaton’s sons—Joseph and Caleb, Jr.—had stolen a local man’s boat about six weeks before. That apparently focused the legislators’ attention on the family.

On 19 April the Council and the House named members to a joint committee to question the Wheatons.

Four days later, those members determined that Caleb Wheaton, Sr., had been “an Associator”—a member of the Loyalist militia—inside besieged Boston. Furthermore, he had been “in other Instances unfriendly to American Liberty,” perhaps a reference to his work as a Customs officer in Maine, or his statements supporting Parliament back in early 1775.

But the two legislative houses disagreed about what to do with the Wheatons. The published record of the Massachusetts House, readable here, says simply that the Council approved the first recommendation from the committee and the assembly didn’t concur.

Peter Force’s American Archives, evidently based on more complete manuscript records from the Council, revealed more details. The committee recommended

that the said Caleb Wheaton give bond to the Treasurer of this Colony for the sum of three hundred Pounds, with sufficient surety for his future good behaviour, or be confined in some Jail within this Colony until he shall find such surety; or if the said Wheaton shall think proper, and shall procure his passage for himself and family to Nova-Scotia, he may have liberty to remove there on his own expense, provided he will give his promise in writing, not to bear arms against the United Colonies.

And that the said Caleb Wheaton, Jun., and Joseph Wheaton, upon their giving their written paroles not to bear arms against the United Colonies, nor any way to aid or assist the enemies of said Colonies, and they paying the expense of being brought before this Court, may be discharged.

After the lower house said that wasn’t good enough, two more legislators were added to the joint committee, and they went back to rethink their recommendation.

The next day the Council approved a revised proposal:

• All three Wheatons would be responsible for a £500 bond.
• They not only had to promise not to fight the colonies, but also “not correspond with any of the Enemies of America.”
• They had to “pay such Cost and Charge as hath arisen by their being brought before the General Court.” 
• If any of those conditions weren’t met, they would be “committed to close confinement.”

There was no more mention of letting the Wheaton family resume their trip to Nova Scotia.

On 25 April the House considered those strictures and agreed. (Its journal says “close Imprisonment” instead of “close confinement,” if that matters.)

The committee report on that measure, signed off by Caleb Cushing of Salisbury for the Council, Perez Morton as Council secretary, and James Warren as speaker of the house, went up for auction last year.

Caleb Wheaton came back on 4 May with a petition to the House

setting forth that he has been apprehended as inimical to his Country, that he is released by giving Bonds, and is now in low Circumstance; and praying therefore that he may be enabled to recover his Household Furniture, Provisions, &c. on board the Brig Elizabeth, at Portsmouth; whereby he may support himself and Family.

The assembly gave Wheaton “Leave to withdraw his Petition.” In other words, it said no.

The Massachusetts legislature, especially the lower house, was in no mood to do any favors to Loyalists. In fact, the Wheatons even had to pay the costs of being transported to the General Court. And it appears Caleb, Sr., later told the British government that he was locked up for three months. The Wheatons’ case reflects a popular mood in the spring of 1776 that affected other Loyalists as well.

TOMORROW: William Jackson returns to Boston.