Boston 1775

John Sawbridge (1732–1795) was of the radical Whigs who joined the Rev. John Horne in supporting John Wilkes during the 1760s, forming th...

William Fitzmaurice was born in Dublin in 1737 and grew up in rural southern Ireland. His parents were from aristocratic families, though ne...

George Grenville was the prime minister of Great Britain in 1765, when he pushed Parliament to pass the Stamp Act . The Duke of Portlan...

On 2 June 1780, as I described yesterday , a crowd of over 50,000 people surrounded Parliament while Lord George Gordon presented a petiti...

On 29 Feb 1768, as I described yesterday , the passengers on the Abigail finally made it to solid ground in Boston after a terrible fourtee...

The story of the Massachusetts Circular Letter of 1768 starts with the previous year’s session of the Massachusetts General Court. That...

As stated in a passage I quoted a couple of days ago, soon after Charles Townshend died, his post as Chancellor of the Exchequer was offe...

Last month Geri Walton, author of Marie Antoinette’s Confidante , profiled Elizabeth Armistead (1750-1841). A courtesan and actress in ...

James Townsend (1737-1787) was a London alderman from 1769 to his death, sheriff of London in 1769-70 and Lord Mayor in 1772-73. He was...

The Rockingham government’s strategy to extricate itself from the unenforceable Stamp Act and yet maintain Parliament ’s authority was t...

I’ve been writing about the on-again, off-again correspondence of Benjamin Franklin and David Hartley , British scientist and Member of ...

The Englishman who edited Benjamin Franklin ’s essays for the press in 1779 was his admirer Benjamin Vaughan (1751-1835). Like Franklin, ...