“Thus ended the Superior Court”

As I described yesterday, when the Massachusetts Superior Court tried to open a new session in Boston on Tuesday, 30 Aug 1774, all the men chosen for juries refused to serve under Chief Justice Peter Oliver.

John Adams was away at the First Continental Congress, so his former clerk William Tudor described the judges’ response for him: “The Court told them they should consider of their Refusal, and then adjourn’d to next Day.”

The jurors didn’t change their minds. On the morning of 31 August the court sat again. Oliver and associate justices Foster Hutchinson and William Browne were at the Province House, meeting with Gen. Thomas Gage as part of his appointed Council. That body advised the governor to keep his redcoats in Boston and not “send any Troops into the interior parts of the Province.”

Tudor wrote that the justices who remained on the bench

…continued all the continued Actions till next Term. They agreed to let us file Complaints and to enter up Judgement on them; which we had imagined they would not consent to, as some of the Judges the first Day had said that if the County would rise and prevent them doing Business generally, they should decline finishing it partially, and the County must thank themselves for the Inconveniences of their own Madness.

The next day:

One small Point was argued by Mr. J[osiah]. Q[uincy]. and [Samuel] Fitch, a few Complaints read, and after Mr. Fitch, in Complyance with a previous Vote of the Bar, had reccommended four of Us to be admitted to the Atty.’s Oath, the Court adjourn’d to next Day.

Tudor was among the young men hoping to be admitted to the Boston bar at this session.

On the morning of Friday, 2 September, “there were a Number of printed Bills stuck up at the Court house and other Parts of the Town, threatening certain Death to any and all the Bar who should presume to attend the Superior Court then sitting.” Someone with access to a print shop had produced those death threats, making them all the more ominous.

The justices postponed “All the new enter’d Actions” as well as the old ones. Then the jurists noticed that people were taking advantage of the lack of juries to enter appeals, thus postponing judgments against them. Tudor wrote to Adams at length on whether this tactic was valid. “You had but one [case] in this Predicament,” he added.

The court swore in one new attorney: Nathaniel Coffin, Jr., a professed Loyalist. The other three young men hung back. Finally, the justices adjourned. “Thus ended the Superior Court and is the last common Law Court that will be allowed to sit in this or any other County of the Province,” Tudor wrote.

That same day, thousands of rural militiamen gathered in Cambridge in what was later dubbed the “Powder Alarm.” People inside Boston worried about an armed invasion. By evening, it was clear that the rest of the province was no longer going to cooperate with the royal authorities at all.

William Molineux’s refusal to serve as a juror under Chief Justice Oliver in the summer of 1773 had grown into the legislature’s march to impeaching Oliver, crowds closing the courthouses in rural counties, Suffolk County citizens boycotting juries, and finally a halt to all Superior Court business. Colonial Massachusetts’s judicial system was frozen, and in some areas would stay jammed up until past the Shays Rebellion in the late 1780s.

“We Perceived A Battery Erected On the Hill on Dorchester Neck”

As I continue to recount merchant John Rowe’s experience of the end of the siege of Boston, I’ll skip his diary notes on the weather, socializing, and sermons unless they offer some unusual or pertinent detail.

Rowe had apparently gotten comfortable with life inside the besieged town, but that changed on Sunday, 3 Mar 1776:

This night The People from the Battery at Phipps Farm thro many Shells into Town which put the Inhabitants into great Fear—and they have done Damage to Many Houses Particularly [Joseph] Sherburne [shown here] [Samuel?] Fitchs Geo Ervings & [Thomas] Courtney the Taylor— . . .

afternoon I went to Church Mr. [Samuel] Parker Read prayers & Mr. [William] Walter preached . . . this was a serious Sensible Sermon & Well adapted to the Situation of our Present Disturbed Situation . . .

This Evening Capt. Johnson was burried.

Rowe’s habit of referring to “the People” outside town and “the Inhabitants” within avoided political labels. Writing “the Inhabitants” also distanced himself from the danger and emotion of the siege.

I haven’t been able to identify “Capt. Johnson of the Minerva” who had killed himself on 2 March. Rowe had an interest in the Minerva since he mentioned that ship multiple times in his diary, but how big a financial interest I can’t tell.

4 March:

All the Preceding Night The Town has been fir’d at by the People witho. from Every Quarter. I dont hear of Much Damage being done

The Guns from Cobles Hill on Charlestown Side have thrown there shot the farthest into Town one of them Struck [John] Wheatleys in Kings Street

5 March:

Southerly Wind & Warm—

This Morning We Perceived A Battery Erected On the Hill on Dorchester Neck—this has alarmd us very Much—

abo. 12 the Generall sent off Six Regiments—perhaps this day or to morrow determines The Fate of this truly distressed Place

All night Both Sides kept a Continuall Fire

Six Men of the 22d. Are Wounded in A house at the So. End—one Boy Lost his Leg— . . .

A Very Severe Storm WSo.So.E—it Blew down My Rail Fences Both Sides the Front of the House

It’s remarkable that Rowe’s fences had survived this long with firewood being a precious commodity in town.

Rowe’s bald line “abo. 12 the Generall sent off Six Regiments” referred to how Gen. William Howe ordered an amphibious attack on the Dorchester peninsula. But once he saw the stormy weather was making that mission even more impossible than it already was, Howe called it off and sped up his original plan.

TOMORROW: Plan A.

Owen Richards’s Lawsuits for Assault

When we left Owen Richards in May 1770, the magistrates of Boston were completely stymied in their inquiry into who had tarred and feathered him that month.

Richards, a Customs officer who had also been part of the disputes that led up to the Liberty riot of 1768, probably suspected those local officials weren’t really trying.

Eventually Richards took legal action himself. In On 24 Dec 1770 the Boston Gazette reported that he had

commenced an Action of Damage for Three Hundred Pounds lawful Money, against a young Gentleman of this Town, whose family Connections are among the better sort of folks, the friends of Government.

This Lad was taken by a single Writ and held to Bail—Upon his application to several of his near relations who are persons of fortune, to become sureties for him, we are told, they absolutely refus’d. But others had compassion upon him; for two Gentlemen were bound for his Appearance at Court.

The following 7 January an attorney—probably Samuel Fitch—wrote out a writ on Richards’s behalf, apparently aimed at another attacker:

Attach &c. Joseph Doble of Boston &c. Mariner, to answer unto Owen Richards of said Boston Yeoman, in a Plea of Trespass, for that the said Joseph, on the Eighteenth day of May last, 1770, Boston aforesaid, with Force and Arms an Assault on the Body of him the said Owen made and him did then and there violently beat, wound, bruise, and evil entreat, so that his Life was thereby put in great Danger, and He the said Joseph did then and there take and imprison him the said Owen, and him in Prison for a long Time, vizt. for the space of six hours, detained against Law, and the Custom of our Realm, and he the said Joseph then and there, did also grievously abuse the said Owen; forcibly took and placed him in a Cart, and stripped him naked to his Skin, and with Force as aforesaid, did tear off, from his Body, and take from him, his Hatt, Wigg, Coat, Waistcoat, and Shirt, and also a gold Sleeve Button, two Handkerchiefs, his Pocket Book, with sundrie Papers therein of the Value of [blank] vizt. an original Note of Hand, for seven Pounds, Ten Shillings, and Sundrie, original Receipts for Moneys paid, and other Papers of Value, also one Piece of Gold Money, called a Johannes, and two Spanish milled Dollars in Silver, being all of the Value of Thirty Pounds lawfull Money, none of which Things so taken from him the said Owen, have ever been returned to him again and He the said Joseph did then and there also cover and besmear the said Owen, Head, Face, and naked Body, with Tar and cover him over with Feathers, upon said Tar, and cruelly and inhumanly set fire to said Feathers; and then and there dragged said Owen in said Cart, through diverse Streets of said Town of Boston, and from one End of said Town to the other, for the Space of Six Hours, as aforesaid, and fixed a Label to his the said Owens Breast, with Writing thereon importing that he the said Owen was a common Informer, and in that Condition exposed him the said Owen to the Contempt and Resentment of our liege Subjects, and as a public Spectacle, thro said Town, and other Outrages and Enormities, on him the said Owen, He the said Joseph then and there committed, against our Peace, To the Damage &c. £1000.

Fitch filed that writ in April 1771, almost a year after the attack and 250 years ago this month. Richards sued two more men named Benjamin Jones and Joseph Akley (Aikley, Heakley) for assault. (That makes three or four suits, depending on whether either Doble, Jones, or Akley was the “young Gentleman” sued in December.)

Meanwhile, in February 1771 the Crown brought criminal charges for the same riot against a man named George Hamblin.

If that seems confusing, all I can say is that I’m not really clear on the whole situation myself. The colonial legal system is hard enough to understand already, few cases like these have left complete records, and I’m relying on mentions in the Legal Papers of John Adams.

TOMORROW: Tracking down the defendants?

“The Commissioners seemd rather inclined to Ad”

The Colonial Society of Massachusetts’s publication of the correspondence of Francis Bernard and Thomas Hutchinson, royal governor and lieutenant governor of Massachusetts in the 1760s, lets us cross-check John Adams’s recollection of being recruited to be advocate general.

Adams wrote in the early 1800s that his friend Jonathan Sewall came to him sometime in 1768 and said he was about to leave that post. According to Adams’s memory, Sewall said that Gov. Bernard wanted to offer it to Adams, despite their political differences. Furthermore, “one of great Authority,” which Adams took to mean Hutchinson, had recommended him as the best qualified candidate.

The Bernard and Hutchinson papers tell a different story. As Bernard recalled the situation in early 1769, Sewall first offered his resignation as advocate general the preceding July. At the time he was enmeshed in a dispute with the Customs Commissioners which only grew worse after the Liberty seizure and riot.

At that time, Bernard wasn’t interested in accepting Sewall’s resignation. Instead, the governor put his energy toward patching up the differences between the Commissioners and the attorney general. Eventually, it appears, all the principals decided to agree that the problem was the Commissioners’ secretary, Samuel Venner, stirring up trouble. He was removed in January 1769, and everyone made nice.

Late in 1768, however, word had arrived that the London government had reorganized the Vice Admiralty courts in North America and made Sewall a judge in Halifax. That gave Sewall a higher salary, but he had to leave Boston for court sessions. Bernard may have been pleased not to have Sewall around so much, but he wanted someone doing the job of advocate general in Massachusetts.

In early 1769, therefore, Bernard got serious about recruiting someone to replace Sewall. But there’s no indication in the governor's papers that he wanted John Adams. In fact, in a 15 March letter to an Admiralty official in London, Bernard explained that he definitely didn’t want a lawyer connected to the province’s Whigs:

at present I am not ready to name fit Persons for either of the Offices: such has been the prevalence of the popular Party in this Government, that some of the Lawyers, whom I should have been glad to have engaged in his Majesty’s Service, have by their abetting the Factious party rendered themselves unfit Objects of the favor of Government. . . .

For these Reasons it will be most advisable that Mr Sewall should continue to act in these Offices till the Causes in which he is now engaged shall be concluded & his Places can be properly filled.

Bernard asked the Admiralty to allow Sewall to appoint a local deputy in Halifax to do his job while he remained at work in Massachusetts.

Gov. Bernard himself sailed out of Boston harbor in early August 1769, to much rejoicing. That left Lt. Gov. Hutchinson in charge. On 20 September, he wrote to Bernard that Sewall had tendered his resignation at last.

Mr. Sewall has sent me his resignation of the place of Advocate, in form, and I have made the appointment of Mr [Samuel] Fitch until His M[ajesty’s]. pleasure shall be signified. The Commissioners seemd rather inclined to Ad[ams] but I think it very dangerous appointing a man to any post who avows principles inconsistent with a state of government let his talents otherwise be ever so considerable. Until this post & that of Attorney general have salaries annexed they will never be of very great use.

Bernard wrote back from London on 17 November:

I will certainly take Care to introduce the Subject of the Advocate & Attorney general by the first Opportunity, & will urge the Necessity of their being supported from hence. The Appointment of Mr. Fitch I will not neglect. . . .

I don’t see how you could possibly appoint or recommend the Person proposed to you under the present Notoriety of his Connections. I was asked by one of the Ministry to day who that John Adams was. I gave as favourable an Answer as I could, but not such as would have justified the Appointment of him to an Office of Trust.

Thus, there’s no evidence in Bernard’s papers that he wanted to name John Adams as advocate general, and no evidence in Hutchinson’s papers that he would have recommended him for a post in the royal government.

Bernard’s remark about “Lawyers, whom I should have been glad to have engaged in his Majesty’s Service” before they joined the political opposition suggests he may have been interested in Adams earlier in his career. That could fit with the story that Samuel Quincy later told Hutchinson about Sewall’s attempt to entice Adams with an appointment as justice of the peace.

It’s plausible that Sewall talked to his friend Adams in 1768 or 1769 about his thoughts of resigning, and the professional opportunity that would create, and in his memory Adams amalgamated that conversation with one in the early 1760s about the governor being ready to appoint him to a lower post. But if Sewall really did tell Adams that Bernard wanted to make him advocate general in 1768, he was getting way ahead of himself.

More mysterious is Hutchinson’s statement that “The Commissioners seemd rather inclined to Ad[ams]” for the post in late 1769. That was after Adams had argued in print against the Stamp Act and in court against the Liberty seizure. Perhaps the Commissioners thought that the appointment would bring a skilled lawyer to their side and muzzle a political opponent all at once. But it’s impossible to imagine Adams becoming a Customs Department protégé.

Ebenezer Richardson’s New Attorney

On 17 Apr 1770, 250 years ago today, the Massachusetts Superior Court convened to try Ebenezer Richardson and George Wilmot for murdering young Christopher Seider.

At least, the court tried to. The attorney whom the judges had ordered to represent Richardson, Samuel Fitch, didn’t appear. He was apparently home sick.

The judges therefore assigned the principal defendant a new lawyer: Josiah Quincy, Jr. (shown here in a posthumous portrait by Gilbert Stuart).

Already, back in late March, Quincy had agreed to help defend Capt. Thomas Preston and the eight soldiers charged with murder for the Boston Massacre. He explained his decision in a firmly worded letter to his father, which I quoted here.

That letter also said the top Boston Whigs supported young Quincy’s choice. They wanted the military men to receive what all of Britain would have to acknowledge was a fair trial. It’s not so clear that they felt the same about representing Richardson, but for Quincy the principle had been established.

Josiah Quincy would have to argue against his older brother, Massachusetts solicitor general Samuel Quincy, on the prosecution team with Robert Treat Paine. But the brothers didn’t have the most curious conflict in the case.

One of the judges overseeing the trial was Edmund Trowbridge, attorney general of Massachusetts from 1749 to 1767. Back in the early 1750s, he had also represented the Rev. Edward Jackson of Woburn in his defamation case against Roland and Josiah Cotton. Just when it looked like Jackson had lost his suit, another man admitted that he had fathered the illegitimate child that the Cotton brothers had blamed on Jackson.

That now-admitted real father was none other than Ebenezer Richardson. He had had to move out of Woburn into Boston. And he had to find a new form of employment—which involved serving Trowbridge as a confidential informant. In a document sent to London in the early 1760s, Trowbridge even cited Richardson for being “very serviceable to me in detecting a conspiracy to father a bastard child on the parson of a parish.” But in the small world of the colonial Massachusetts bar, that wasn’t enough of a conflict to take Trowbridge off the bench for this trial.

The judges rescheduled Richardson and Wilmot’s case for 20 April. In other words, Josiah Quincy had three days to prepare.

Samuel Fitch Takes the Case

Jonathan Sewall wasn’t the only attorney missing from the big trials in Boston in the spring of 1770.

As the Massachusetts Superior Court geared up for the Boston Massacre trials, Ebenezer Richardson was having a hard time finding a lawyer to represent him.

Richardson was arraigned on Monday, 19 March, and brought out for trial that Friday. British law already recognized that a man charged with a capital crime deserved to have legal representation. But no attorney, not even those politically allied with the Crown, had agreed to represent Richardson.

That echoed how on 2 March the Customs service, as I noted back here, had publicly and falsely claimed that Richardson had “never been employed as an Officer or Under Officer, or in any Capacity in the Customs.” Killing a child had made the man even more unpopular than he already was. No one wanted anything to do with him.

An anonymous correspondent for the Crown reported on Richardson’s lament:

He observ’d to the Court that he had made application to almost every Lawyer in town to undertake his cause, which no one would do, that the Constables had refused summoning his Witnesses, that the Jailer, had used him in so cruel a manner that he was even frequently debarred the Liberty of conversing with his friends, that every Newspaper was crouded with the most infamous and false libels against him in order to prejudice the minds of his jury; that without Counsel, without the privilege of calling upon his Witnesses to support his innocence he was now to be tried for his life.

The royal judges accordingly postponed the murder trial, which is just what the Boston Whigs were pressuring them not to do. They also tried to get Richardson representation.

The Court then made application to the several Lawyers present to appear as his Counsel but this one and all of them declined. The court finding that a requisition had no effect asserted their Authority and order’d Mr. Fitch the advocate General to appear on his behalf on his trial. Fitch made use of a variety of arguments in order to excuse himself which the Court did not judge sufficient. He concluded with saying that since the Court had peremptorily ordered him, he would undertake it, but not otherways.

Samuel Fitch (1724-1799) had come to Boston from Lebanon, Connecticut, and Yale College. He was an established lawyer but not particularly prominent. Politically Fitch leaned toward the Crown, though not so strongly as to prevent him from representing James Otis, Jr., in his lawsuit against Customs Commissioner John Robinson.

In 1768, Jonathan Sewall was seeking a successor to himself as advocate general in the Admiralty Courts, now that he was going to be attorney general. He approached John Adams with hopes of winning the younger lawyer to the side of the Crown. Adams later wrote that when he declined, he suggested that Fitch would be more comfortable in the job. Gov. Thomas Hutchinson eventually did give Fitch that permanent position.

The judges scheduled Richardson’s trial for 6 April. Fitch told the judges that he was feeling sick that month. Also, he had received an anonymous letter hinting at a valuable witness. The court postponed the trial to give Fitch time to investigate that information and decamped to Charlestown for a weeklong session in Middlesex County.

Richardson’s new trial date was Tuesday, 17 April. When the court convened that day, Fitch was nowhere to be found.

“James Otis having ever entertain’d a most consummate Contempt of seeking a Purse”

On 14 Sept 1772, a little more than three years after James Otis, Jr., and John Robinson got into a fight inside the British Coffee-House, the lead item on the front page of Edes and Gill’s Boston Gazette spelled out the end of that dispute.

Otis had sued Robinson for assault, won a whopping jury award of £2,000, and then moved on to the appeals level. Before the legal case came up in the court’s August term, however, the parties reached a settlement, as laid out in the newspaper:

BE IT REMEMBERED, That this same Term in a Case here depending, wherein James Otis of said Boston is Appellant and original Plaintiff against John Robinson, late of said Boston, Esq; the said John Robinson, Esq; by James Boutineau, Esq; his Father-in-Law and Attorney, comes into Court and on the Behalf and in the Name of said John Robinson, Esq; who is now in Parts beyond Sea, to wit, in the Kingdom of Great-Britain, being thereunto fully empower’d as by his Letters of Attorney on File in the Case may appear, FREELY confesses that in the Assault committed by him the said John Robinson, Esq; on him the said James Otis, in presumptuously attempting to take him the said James Otis by the Nose was the first Assault, which occasioned and brought on all the consequent Insults, Wounds and other Injuries whereof the said James Otis in his Declaration more particularly complains; HE the said John Robinson, Esq; was greatly in Fault, is very sorry for his Conduct and Behaviour that Night towards the said James Otis, and asks the Pardon of the said James Otis.

Boutineau signed that statement on behalf of his son-in-law.

The newspaper then published another document, written by Otis himself:

WHEREUPON the said James Otis being personally present here in Court, duly reflecting that he has ever been as ready to give, as to ask or demand Gentleman-like Satisfaction for an Insult real or suppos’d, at the same Time being fully conscious, and, as he apprehends, able abundantly to prove, that he then publickly offer’d that Kind of Satisfaction to the said John Robinson, Esq; previously to the said first Assault, as on the Part and in Behalf of the said John Robinson, Esq; by his Attorney James Boutineau, Esq; is above confess’d—

And the said James Otis having ever entertain’d a most consummate Contempt of seeking a Purse or pecuniary Reparation for a personal Insult, if any other more Gentleman-like could be obtained, by the Consent of the Parties, and that consistently with the Laws of his Country: ACCEPTS of the above Submission here in Court in full for the Assault, Insults, Injuries and Damages above complain’d of in the Declaration of the said James Otis and confess’d as above.

And upon the same Submission, so far as the said John Robinson, Esq; was concern’d in the Assaults, Insults and Injuries above mention’d and confess’d, as he thinks a Gentleman and Christian ought in such Case and on such Submission, freely forgives the said John Robinson, Esq; and by these presents remiseth, releaseth, acquitteth and dischargeth him the said John Robinson, Esq; from all Actions, Suits and Demands, by Reason of or occasion’d by the Premises; and also, all Right and Cause of Action in the Declaration specified.

FURTHERMORE the said James Otis knowing full and right well that by the Operation of the Law hereupon, he also of Course releaseth and dischargeth the alledged and suppos’d Confederates of the said John Robinson from all Demands supportable on the Premises by our Laws, but the said James Otis would by no Means be understood to give up any other Demands he may hereafter make by Reason of the Premises against any of the alleg’d or suppos’d Confederates—

At this point the original document on file with the Massachusetts courts contained a phrase that Otis crossed out before signing: “should he ever meet with either of them in a state of nature, or without the reach of municipal laws.” In other words, he threatened his enemies with a physical attack. (After all, that had gone so well for him before.) Ultimately, Otis decided not to make that bluster part of his legal and public statement.

The official document continued:

At the same Time the said James Otis of his own free Will and meer Motion thinks fit to give it under his Hand, to remain on Record in Favour of the said John Robinson, Esq; as the said James Otis has often privately and publickly, in the hearing of his Friends and others, and even in the Court of Common Pleas declared, as he now does in this honourable Court, That he looks on the said John Robinson, Esq; to be infinitely less to Blame in this (for both Parties in the Suit) very unhappy Affair, than those, who the said James Otis, were he inclin’d to give himself the Trouble, thinks, and is perswaded, he could fully prove artfully and most insidiously as well as maliciously incited the said John Robinson, Esq; to so very unworthy an Action.

Despite no longer openly threatening violence, Otis still had to include insinuations of a conspiracy behind the incident.

The final paragraph of Otis’s statement laid out what payments he wanted Robinson to make:

• £13.10s.8p. as “Common Costs of Court.”
• £30 for each of his attorneys—Samuel Fitch, John Adams, and Sampson Salter Blowers.
• £7.12s. for “the Doctors Bills.”
• £1.8s. for “taking Affadavits out of Court.”
• “not a Farthing for the Use of the said James Otis, he having (as before observ’d) a most thorough Contempt for a pecuniary Recompense when a better can be obtain’d.”

Thus, instead of £2,000 or more, Robinson had to pay only £112.11s.8d. and be done with the whole mess. In his accounts, John Adams noted receiving his £30 payment as “a genteel Fee.”

Those settlement documents ran also in the Boston Evening-Post, Essex Gazette, New-Hampshire Gazette, Providence Gazette, Boston News-Letter (after a week’s delay blamed on “Want of Room”), Connecticut Gazette, Pennsylvania Chronicle, and Connecticut Courant. Otis and his allies made sure everyone in New England knew about what they saw as his moral victory.

As I read that settlement, though, I can’t help but see the similarities between its language and the statements Otis was publishing back in September 1769, just before the fight. Once again, Otis was deploying the language of genteel honor (and dueling), hinting at conspiracies against him, threatening violence. In 1769, that mood led him into the conflict with Robinson. Three years later, a similar feeling of extravagance drove his proposal to make a public settlement.

Otis’s colleagues and successors praised his magnanimity at this moment. But they also knew that the leader of Boston’s Whigs in the 1760s had lost a great deal and would never be the same man again.

James Otis’s Legal Recovery

As James Otis, Jr., recovered physically from the blow on his head with the help of top Boston doctors, he also took legal steps with the help of top Boston lawyers.

In order of seniority, the three men Otis hired to represent him were:

• Samuel Fitch (1724-1799)
• John Adams (1735-1826)
• Sampson Salters Blowers (1742-1842)

Interestingly, Fitch and Blowers were already leaning toward the Crown politically and became Loyalist refugees during the war.

Of course, Otis himself was one of the province’s leading attorneys, and he no doubt directed his legal strategy.

Otis sued Customs Commissioner John Robinson for £3,000 in damages. To put that figure in perspective, in 1770 Paul Revere bought his house in the North End for a little over £213. When Thomas Hutchinson became royal governor of Massachusetts in 1770, the Crown granted him a salary of £1,500.

In In a Defiant Stance: The Conditions of Law in Massachusetts Bay, the Irish Comparison, and the Coming of the American Revolution, John P. Reid pointed out that any colonial jury award of £300 or more could be appealed to courts in Britain, which would have been much less sympathetic to Otis than one from Suffolk County. In other words, if Otis wanted to maximize his chance of receiving money, he could have asked for £299, and Robinson would have had no appeal. Otis’s huge demand was making a public point.

The court case came up in the January 1770 term, but was continued with the agreement of both parties. And then continued again.

In the meantime, on 5 Oct 1769 Robinson married Anne Boutineau (born 1748, shown above). After the Boston Massacre, the couple sailed for London, carrying documents showing the Crown side of that event. John Robinson never returned to New England.

The case of Otis v. Robinson finally went to court in July 1771. By that time Otis had suffered some very public episodes of madness, but he was back in the Massachusetts General Court. The jury awarded him less than he asked for but still a whopping £2,000. Both parties appealed, Robinson’s side asking for a smaller award and Otis’s for a larger one.

After further delays, that appeal came up in August 1772. Robinson’s father-in-law, merchant James Boutineau, acted as his attorney—probably meaning that he spoke for Robinson, not that he practiced lawyer. By then Otis no longer held public office, his mental instability having become apparent after one legislative session. However, he was still steering his case.

TOMORROW: James Otis’s magnanimity, and how he wanted everyone to know about it.

“A sort of an assembly at Concert Hall”

Yesterday we left the Boston Whigs in mid-December 1768 crowing over the failure of pro-Crown officials and army officers to pull off a dancing assembly.

That triumph didn’t last, however, and on 23 December the Whigs had to report:

It may now be said that the G[overno]r and C[om]m[issione]rs have the last night had a sort of an assembly at Concert Hall;

Never were the gentlemen concern’d more liberal in their invitations, even those ladies who declin’d subscribing, had their cards; the neighbouring towns were reconnoitred for females, and the good natured S——r [Solicitor Samuel Fitch?] of the B[oar]d of C[om]m[issione]rs was so complaisant as to offer to go as far as Salem to bring two damsels from thence; their efforts were finally so successful, as to procure from among themselves and their connections, about ten or twelve unmarried ladies, whose quality and merits have been since related with the spritely humour of a military gallant.—

The ball was opened by Capt. [John] W[illso]n,—a gentleman who has been already taken notice of in this Journal; There was indeed a numerous and blazing appearance of men, but the ladies of all ages and conditions so few, that the most precise Puritan could not find it in his heart to charge said assembly with being guilty of the crime of mixt dancing.—

A sick burn indeed.

At this point the recently arrived music and dance master James Joan was no longer advertising his own events in the home he had dubbed “Music Hall.”

The Deblois family who owned Concert Hall had advertised series of musical performances in previous years:

• Boston Gazette, 23 Sept 1765: “A CONCERT OF MUSICK is propos’d to be carry’d on at Concert-Hall for the ensuing Season. The Articles of Agreement may be seen by applying to Mr. Deblois at Said Hall: If a sufficient Number of Gentlemen subscribers, it will be opened the first Tuesday in October next.”
• Boston News-Letter, 2 Oct 1766: “Public Notice is hereby given, That a Concert of Musick is intended to be opened on Tuesday next, being the 7th of October, to be continued every Tuesday Evening for Eight Months. Any Gentlemen inclining to be Subscribers may know the Terms by applying to Stephen Deblois, at the Concert-Hall in Queen street.”

Stephen Deblois (1699-1778) was a professional musician, father of merchants Lewis and Gilbert Deblois (the latter shown above in a post-evacuation portrait by John Singleton Copley, courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts).

There were no such ads from Concert Hall in the fall of 1767 or 1768. One possibility is that the concerts were so popular that there was no need to advertise them in the newspapers. More likely, the Debloises hadn’t been able to sell enough season tickets in 1766 to make the events worthwhile.

The arrival of the British army regiments in October 1768 changed that. But even then the demand for concerts and balls probably wasn’t big enough to support two series in Concert Hall and Music Hall. Instead, it appears that in 1769 James Joan allied with the Deblois family to offer concerts in their building.

TOMORROW: The night it all went horribly wrong.

“It would give him the Appearance of having my Confidence”

When John Adams wrote those cranky letters from Philadelphia that I quoted yesterday, he had someone looking over his shoulder: a young lawyer named Benjamin Hichborn (1746-1817).

Hichborn was a cousin of Paul Revere, but he came from a branch of the family that was already upwardly mobile. He had attended Harvard, graduating in 1768, and then gone to work as a clerk for the Boston lawyer Samuel Fitch.

Fitch was a Loyalist. This should not have been a surprise to Hichborn since Fitch was already accepting royal appointments in the Vice Admiralty courts in 1768. Then he signed the complimentary farewell address to Gov. Thomas Hutchinson in 1774 and stayed in Boston during the siege.

Fitch’s actions made Hichborn’s political allegiance suspect. Or at least he said so. It might have helped if he’d been politically active before the war, like a couple of his older relatives, but I don’t see his name anywhere prominent. So Hichborn went to Philadelphia to prove his dedication to liberty.

As Adams remembered the situation decades later:

A young Gentleman from Boston, Mr. Hitchbourne, whom I had known as a Clerk in Mr. Fitch’s office, but with whom I had no Particular connection or Acquaintance, had been for some days soliciting me, to give him Letters to my Friends in the Massachusetts. I was so much engaged in the Business of Congress in the day time and in consultations with the Members on Evenings and Mornings that I could not find time to write a Line.

He came to me at last and said he was immediately to sett off, on his Journey home, and begged I would give him some Letters. I told him I had not been able to write any. He prayed I would write if it were only a Line to my Family, for he said, as he had served his Clerkship with Mr. Fitch he was suspected and represented as a Tory, and this Reputation would be his ruin, if it could not [be] corrected, for nobody would employ him at the Bar. If I would only give him, the slightest Letters to any of my Friends, it would give him the Appearance of having my Confidence, and would assist him in acquiring what he truly deserved the Character of a Whigg.

To get rid of his importunity, I took my Penn, and wrote a very few Lines to my Wife and about an equal Number to General James Warren.

Actually, Adams also included Hichborn on a short list of young Massachusetts men he hoped Warren could find appointments for.

One might think that Adams, facing a young man whom he barely knew and whose political loyalty was so debatable, would send him off with some innocuous correspondence. Adams had just written to his wife and his friend Warren, so he didn’t really have to say more to them. But maybe that was the trouble—trying to think of stuff he hadn’t already written.

In any event, in his “very few Lines” for Hichborn to carry, Adams managed to say impolitic things about John Dickinson, Charles Lee, and most of his colleagues in the Continental Congress, and also to advocate for radical measures that he and his Massachusetts colleagues were still publicly disavowing.

Adams wasn’t the only delegate to entrust Hichborn with letters. Benjamin Harrison (shown above in a miniature owned by the Virginia Historical Society) also gave him a letter to carry to Massachusetts, in his case to his fellow Virginian Gen. George Washington.

TOMORROW: And how did Hichborn carry out that task?