Capt. Daniel Malcom, Brandy, Wine, and Punch

In the mid-1760s, while John Malcom was trading out of Québec, his younger brother Daniel Malcom was becoming prominent in Boston.

On 24 Sept 1766, three high officials came to his home on Bennett Street in the North End:

• Benjamin Hallowell, Comptroller of the Customs for the Port of Boston
• William Sheaffe, Deputy Collector of the Port
• Stephen Greenleaf, Sheriff of Suffolk County

Those men had brought some lesser Customs officers as well, to do the heavy lifting.

Malcom didn’t really want the honor of their visit. Those authorities had come to search his cellar for brandy and wine allegedly smuggled onto shore without the legal duties being paid.

To be technical, the Customs officers wanted to search Malcom’s whole cellar, while he was happy to show them part of it but insisted he’d rented a locked portion to his friend William Mackay, so it wasn’t up to him to open that. Also, Malcom insisted the writs should name the officers’ source of information, which of course they didn’t want to do. And occasionally he brandished (empty) pistols to make his point.

This produced a stalemate that lasted hours. A crowd grew to watch and/or intimidate the legal authorities. Among the people involved in the incident were John Ruddock, Paul Revere, John Pigeon, John Tudor, Nathaniel Barber, and the boys of the North Latin School. Ebenezer Richardson, whom I’m speaking about tonight, hovered just off-stage.

Ultimately the Customs officials gave up on this particular search, but they used Malcom’s intractability and the threat of crowd violence to lobby for beefing up their powers. Gov. Francis Bernard ordered an inquiry. The many depositions thus created are printed in George G. Wolkins’s “Daniel Malcom and Writs of Assistance,” a study presented to the Massachusetts Historical Society in 1924 and now available through JSTOR.

After that event, the Boston town meeting started to name Daniel Malcom to committees on merchants’ issues, particularly complaints about the Customs. Late in 1768 he was on hand for the Liberty riot, and his testimony about events was sent to London and even published in the St. James’s Chronicle.

Malcom, Mackay, Barber, and twelve more friends commissioned Revere to make and engrave a silver punch bowl, now in the Museum of Fine Arts. The text on that bowl celebrates the Massachusetts General Court’s refusal to rescind the Circular Letter of 1768. It’s called the “Sons of Liberty Bowl,” but those fifteen men weren’t the town’s political leaders. Daniel Malcom was the only one at the head of a crowd.

TOMORROW: 1769, a year of change.

The Resources of the Royal Governor

Andrew Roberts’s Spectator essay about the Boston Tea Party, discussed yesterday, ends with the line:

One wonders what would have happened if only Governor [Thomas] Hutchinson had put an adequate armed guard on the ships.

This facile suggestion reflects popular depictions of Boston in 1773 showing redcoats pushing around civilians (e.g., Assassin’s Creed III, Deryn Lake’s Death at the Boston Tea Party, &c.). So it’s worth explaining the reality Hutchinson faced.

The only British soldiers in greater Boston in late 1773 were the 64th Regiment out on Castle Island. They were too far away to quell a disturbance and too few to patrol the whole port.

Hutchinson did order that regiment’s commander, Lt. Col. Alexander Leslie, to be ready to fire Castle William’s guns on any ship that tried to leave the harbor without unloading and being authorized to sail.

Hutchinson could also call on, though not command, the resources of the Royal Navy. Adm. John Montagu stationed warships in secondary channels of Boston harbor, also preventing the tea ships from leaving with their cargo. Thus, the governor did act rather strongly with military power.

What civilian authorities did Gov. Hutchinson have at his disposal? Not many. Inside Boston, the royal government had one arm of law enforcement: the Customs service. That department’s administrators took the same hard line Hutchinson did, refusing to bend the rule that required ships to be unloaded within three weeks.

But then top Customs officials lay low, staying at Castle William or their country homes. Lower-level officers carried out their job of watching the ships at the wharf but put up no resistance when scores of men showed up on 16 December and started destroying the tea. There were too few of them to stand up to the united populace.

Boston had no police force yet. It had about a dozen watchmen who walked around town at night, looking for trouble and fires. Those men were employed by the town, not the colonial government, and therefore answered to the selectmen rather than the governor.

Hutchinson could give orders to Stephen Greenleaf, the appointed royal sheriff of Suffolk County. However, in Massachusetts the sheriff wasn’t an active law enforcer with armed deputies, like in western movies. His job consisted mainly of delivering writs and warrants.

On 30 November the governor actually sent Sheriff Greenleaf to the Old South Meeting-House with a declaration that the gathering there was illegal and the people must disperse. Instead, the people there voted unanimously to go on with their meeting. And then they had that vote published. Clearly the populace wasn’t cowed by that expression of royal authority.

Then there were the magistrates—justices of the peace and of the quorum. Royal governors appointed these men, too, and theoretically commanded their loyalty. But many had commissions for life from past governors, and they tended to act, or not act, independent of Hutchinson.

One magistrate, Nathaniel Hatch, was in the Clarke family warehouse when a crowd attacked it on 3 November. Hatch tried to invoke the Riot Act. Hutchinson’s described what happened:

Mr. Hatch a gentleman of Dorchester & a Justice of peace commanded the peace & required them to disperse but they hooted at him & after a blow from one of them he was glad to retreat. It had no effect.

How did British law expect magistrates to enforce such orders? By calling on a larger group of people to help enforce the law against the lawbreakers, either in a “hue and cry” emergency or in the form of a mobilized militia. Obviously, this system didn’t work when most people supported the behavior in question.

In fact, there was a “guard on the ships” in the weeks leading up to the Tea Party. It was set up at the 28 November meeting of the people in Old South. Those patrols were composed of fervent volunteers; eventually Boston’s militia companies took turns supplying the men. That guard carried out the orders of the people, not the royal government. Its job was to ensure the tea wasn’t officially landed, and it succeeded.

Thus, the counterfactual that Roberts proposed is unrealistic. Under British and Massachusetts law the governor had no way to put armed guards on the tea ships strong enough to hold off an assault.

Another counterfactual that could actually have happened is:

One wonders what would have happened if only Governor Hutchinson had let the ships sail back to England with the tea.

Obviously the imperial government wouldn’t have been pleased with that outcome. Lord North might have responded with actions similar to what he and Parliament enacted in 1774: replacing Hutchinson with a stricter governor like Gen. Thomas Gage, rewriting the Massachusetts constitution, even sending in troops to patrol the port—but to protect free trade (i.e., the unloading of tea ships) rather than to stop all trade.

The next question would be how that situation would have played out differently in Boston and in the other North American colonies.

Dots on the Ensign’s Map

Yesterday I started to discuss a hand-drawn map from the Library of Congress that Ed Redmond has identified as likely coming from British army spy Ens. Henry DeBeniere weeks before the march to Concord.

That map marks several individual homes. Some of those are places where DeBerniere and his fellow scout, Capt. William Brown, visited on their two treks into the Massachusetts countryside in early 1775.

Others aren’t mentioned in the officers’ report but were the estates of Loyalists, and therefore potential safe houses or places for troops to camp.

Here’s a list of all those marked properties:

“Hatch’s”: Nathaniel Hatch of Dorchester, Loyalist.

“Davis’s”: This site is a bit of a mystery. My best guess is that this is Dr. Jonathan Davies, who bought half of the old Auchmuty estate in the 1750s. Unlike almost all the other homeowners named on the map, Davies wasn’t a Loyalist. Another possibility is that this is the house of Aaron Davis, which ended up on the front lines of the siege.

“Auchmuty’s”: Robert Auchmuty of Roxbury, attorney and Vice Admiralty Court judge, Loyalist.

“Hollowel’s”: Benjamin Hallowell, Jr., in Jamaica Plain, Commissioner of Customs.

“Comm. Loring”: Joshua Loring, Sr., in Jamaica Plain, Loyalist. His mansion remains as the Loring-Greenough House.

“Mr. Fanuil”: Benjamin Faneuil, merchant, Loyalist.

“Mr. Greenleaf”: I’m guessing this home was managed by Sheriff Stephen Greenleaf, who normally lived in Boston. In 1765 his daughter Hannah married John Apthorp, who inherited his father’s Little Cambridge mansion. John and Hannah Apthorp sailed to Charleston, South Carolina, for his health in late 1772, but their ship was lost at sea. Sheriff Greenleaf became the guardian for their young children, and thus probably the custodian of the Apthorp property. Sheriff Greenleaf was seen as a stalwart of the royal government before the war, but he remained in Boston after the siege.

“Brewers”: Jonathan Brewer’s tavern on the Watertown-Waltham line. Unlike the other people named on the map, Brewer was a Whig, as DeBerniere wrote in his report. But the officers did make a memorable stop there, so it was worth mapping.

“Major Goldthwaits”: Joseph Goldthwait of Weston, Loyalist.

“Colonl: Jone’s”: Isaac Jones of Weston, a Loyalist before the war and a supporter of the Continental Army during it. Brown and DeBerniere used his Golden Ball Tavern as a base, and it’s still standing.

“Doctor Russell”: Dr. Charles Russell of Lincoln, Loyalist. His house survives in altered form as the Codman House.

“Nineteen Mile Tavern”: This establishment appears to be in Sudbury, but I haven’t found any mention of such a place. The most famous surviving tavern in Sudbury is the Wayside Inn, but this appears to have been closer to the center of town.

TOMORROW: The map’s proposition.

Sentenced and Punished for the Boston Massacre

The 17 Dec 1770 Boston Gazette reported on the third trial for the Boston Massacre by naming all the defendants and concluding, “After a few Hours Trial, they were acquitted.”

Unlike that same day’s Boston Evening-Post, the Gazette said nothing about how the jury had declared those men innocent without even leaving their seats.

Instead, the town’s leading Whig newspaper turned to insisting that there wasn’t “a single Instance of Indecency either in or out of Court” even after eleven of the thirteen men charged with multiple murders were acquitted. Edes and Gill gave much more space to making the case that Boston was a peaceful, law-abiding town than to the embarrassing trial.

Now to do that, the newspaper had to explain away a handbill complaining about the verdict, which I’ll discuss soon. After that, the same issue of the Boston Gazette got to the latest development:

Friday last [i.e., 14 December, 250 years ago today] Kilroy and Montgomery, who were convicted of Manslaughter, at the late Superior Court held here, were branded in the Hand in open Court, and discharged.

The published trial record didn’t specify the date of the sentencing and punishment, so this is a valuable source.

We have a description of the sentencing from one of the presiding judges, Peter Oliver. In 1783 he wrote out a memoir/anslysis of the coming of the Revolution in Massachusetts, which was eventually published as Peter Oliver’s Origin and Progress of the American Rebellion.

Oliver had a lot of acidic comments about the Boston radicals, which makes for fun reading. He told this particular story to complain about the lingering Puritan attitude toward the Anglican church. Since Oliver created a privately shared manuscript, there was no chance for Bostonians or others who had witnessed the scene to object that he was fictionalizing. Nonetheless, I think there’s a good chance this anecdote is accurate.

At the Conclusion of the Trial of Capt. [Thomas] Preston’s Soldiers in Boston; one of them, who was brought in guilty of Manslaughter, standing at the Bar, was asked by the chief Justice, what Objection he had to offer why sentence of Death should not be passed upon him? The simple Fellow did not know what to say. A Bystander whispered to him, to pray the Benefit of the Clergy. The Man not understanding the whole of the Direction, bawled out with an audible Voice, “may it please your Honors! I pray the Death of the Clergy”—& many present nodded their Amen.

The defendant who seems most likely to have made this mistake was Pvt. Mathew Kilroy. We know from a previous filing in the case that Kilroy couldn’t sign his own name, so he probably hadn’t been educated in the details of the common law. Ironically, in pleading benefit of clergy, Kilroy would have been making a nominal claim to literacy, as explained here.

We also have John Adams’s comment on the punishment as collected by his colleague Josiah Quincy’s family and published in their Memoir of the Life of Josiah Quincy, Junior, of Massachusetts Bay, 1744-1775. That book quoted a conversation with Adams in 1822:

I never pitied any men more than the two soldiers who were sentenced to be branded in the hand for manslaughter. They were noble, fine-looking men; protested they had done nothing contrary to their duty as soldiers; and, when the sheriff [Stephen Greenleaf] approached to perform his office, they burst into tears.

Peter Oliver’s manuscript preserves another post-trial development in the story of the Massacre. The judge wrote of the shooting:

…a Stout Fellow, of the Mob [Crispus Attucks], knocked down one of the Soldiers; & endeavoring to wrest his Gun from him, the Soldier cried, “D——n you fire,” pulled Trigger & killed his Man. The other Soldiers, in the midst of the Noise, supposing it was ye. Captain who gave the Order, discharged their Pieces, & five Persons were killed. Let me here observe, that upon the Trial great Stress was laid upon the Captain’s giving the Order to fire, but there was no Proof of it; & the Doubt was not cleared up for many Months after; when the Soldier who gave the Word of Command, as mentioned above, solved the Doubt.

We have a complementary version of that same story from acting governor Thomas Hutchinson. In a handwritten addition to his history of Massachusetts, eventually published in the American Antiquarian Society Proceedings, Hutchinson said:

[Pvt. Edward] Montgomery afterwards acknowledged to one of his counsel that he was the man who gave the word fire which was supposed by some of the witnesses to come from the Captain; that being knocked down & rising again, in the agony from the blow he said Damn you, fire and immediately he fired himself & the rest followed him.

With two sources (albeit not independent of each other), I’m convinced that Pvt. Montgomery made such an admission. Having been been tried and sentenced, he was safe from further prosecution. His remark clears up one of the mysteries from King Street.

There’s no evidence in the papers of John Adams or Josiah Quincy, Jr., that those men ever heard this story from Montgomery. It certainly wasn’t bruited about by Samuel Adams or other local Whigs writing about the case. Montgomery therefore probably spoken in private to his third attorney, Sampson Salter Blowers, who passed it on to fellow supporters of the Crown.

TOMORROW: Whatever happened to the defendants?

Capt. Preston and the Boston Committee

At 3:00 P.M. on Friday, 13 July 1770—250 years ago today—the white men of Boston resumed their town meeting in Faneuil Hall.

There was only one item of real business: approving a town committee’s response to what was being published in London about the Boston Massacre.

People knew the acting governor, army officers, and other royal officials had sent reports on that March shooting. But they had been surprised by one document in the Public Advertiser. As the town meeting’s committee said:

We have observed in the English papers the most notorious falshoods, published with an apparent design to give the world a prejudice against this town, as the aggressors in the unhappy transaction of the 5th of March, but no account has been more repugnant to the truth, than a paper printed in the Public Advertiser, of the 28th of April, which is called The Case of Captain Preston.

Writing for the committee, Samuel Adams continued: “we thought ourselves bound in faithfulness to wait on Captain [Thomas] Preston, to enquire of him, whether he was the author.” After all, he had sent a letter with a very different tone to Edes and Gill’s Boston Gazette.

Receiving the town committee in the town jail, Preston replied “that he had drawn a state of his case, but that it had passed through different hands, and was altered at different times; and, finally, the publication in the Advertiser was varied from that which he sent home as his own.”

The committee asked Preston about parts “to which we took exception,” inviting him to say he hadn’t written them.

Preston declined, “saying, that the alterations were made by persons, who, he supposed, might aim at serving him, though he feared they might have a contrary effect, and that his discriminating to us the parts of it, which were his own, from those which had been altered by others, might displease his friends, at a time when he might stand in need of their essential service.”

In fact, the only big alteration to Preston’s “Case” was that the newspaper left off the last part, where he pleaded for a royal pardon before the colony could hang him. The officials who released the document to the London press might have thought that raising that possibility was premature and could backfire in the worst way.

Resolutely clinging (at least openly) to the idea that Preston was being misrepresented, the committee concluded:

we cannot think that the Paper, called The Case of Captain Thomas Preston, or any other Paper of the like import, can be deemed, in the opinion of the sensible and impartial part of mankind, as sufficient in the least degree to prejudice the character of the Town. It is therefore altogether needless for us to point out the many falsehoods contained in this paper, nor indeed would there be time for it at present…

As for Preston’s fear of being lynched, the committee blamed whoever published his “Case” for stirring up resentment against him.

so glaring a falsehood would raise the indignation of the people to such a pitch as to prompt them to some attempts that would be dangerous to him, and he accordingly applied to Mr. Sheriff [Stephen] Greenleaf for special protection on that account. But the sheriff assuring him there was no such disposition appearing among the people, (which is an undoubted truth) Capt. Preston’s fears at length subsided; and be still remains in safe custody, to be tried by the superior court of judicature, at the next term in August, unless the judges shall think proper further to postpone the trial, as they have done for one whole term, since he was indicted by the Grand Jury.

I wonder if the town put the sheriff’s younger brother, William Greenleaf, on this committee to get inside information or credibility.

Under a regular schedule, Preston and the soldiers of the 29th would already have gone on trial for murder. Judicial maneuvers, illnesses, and injuries had put off the trial, keeping everyone on edge.

Earlier in July, furthermore, the Customs Commissioners had sent some dispatches to London with Capt. Joseph Hood on the Lydia. Since Hood worked for John Hancock, that news quickly got back to the town. Locals rightly assumed the Commissioners were complaining about attacks on their employees and their homes.

Thus, Boston was under a lot of pressure to represent itself well to the people in London.

“Enraged upon reading Capt. Preston’s Narrative”

The publication of Capt. Thomas Preston’s “Case” in Boston in June 1770 heightened the danger that had prompted the captain to write to the British government in the first place: the possibility that he would be killed for the Boston Massacre.

One threat was that a Massachusetts jury would convict Preston of murder and the local authorities would quickly carry out a death sentence. The 21 June Boston News-Letter reported that the government in London had anticipated that possibility:

The Ministers expect, That if Captain Preston, and the soldiers, who committed the late murders at Boston, are condemned, That the Lieutenant Governor (Hutchinson) will respite them during the King’s pleasure [i.e., put off executions until the London government had a chance to pardon them], which may occasion another Porteu’s affair)

John Porteous was a captain of the Edinburgh City Guard in 1736. After he and soldiers under his command killed people while putting down a riot, he was convicted of murder. Rumors said he might be reprieved, so on the night before his scheduled execution a crowd took him out of the jail (shown above) and hanged him themselves.

Thus, the second danger that Preston and the ministry feared was that Bostonians would lynch him.

On 22 June, 250 years ago today, Lt. Gov. Thomas Hutchinson wrote to Gen. Thomas Gage in New York:

I ever supposed it would be necessary for me, at all events if Capt. Preston & the Soldiers should be found Guilty and Sentence be passed to grant a Reprieve until His Majesty’s pleasure should be known. I am now under stronger Obligation to do it than before having received His Majestys express commands so to do.

I am much less concerned from an apprehension of the rage of the people against me than I am from the danger in our present dissolute state of Government, of the people’s taking upon themselves to put the Sentence into execution. I do not believe I have one Magistrate who would be willing to run any risque in endeavouring to prevent it. If Troops were in the Town I don’t know that a Magistrate would employ them on such an occasion but I think they might notwithstanding be the means of preventing it.

Hutchinson sent that letter from Boston and then went to his country house in Milton. As evening approached, he received a message from Lt. Col. William Dalrymple, commander of the 14th Regiment stationed on Castle William. Dalrymple enclosed “a Letter he had received from Capt. Preston expressing his great fears that the people were so enraged as to force the Gaol that night and make him a sacrifice, several of his friends having informed him this was their intention.”

The acting governor dashed off a note for Preston which said in its entirety:

Dear Sir

I will take every precaution which is in my power which I wish was greater than it is and am Yours sincerely

TH

Hutchinson told Gage the next day what other steps he took:

I sent immediately proper Orders to the Sheriff [Stephen Greenleaf] & I directed to every precaution I could think of but, being extremely uneasy, I went to Town. I found the people were enraged upon reading Capt. Preston’s Narrative which I wish had not been published in England.

I sat up until midnight and until the Scouts which had been sent to different quarters made return that all was quiet and I find that where Capt. Prestons fears have come to the knowledge of the Liberty People they have generally remarked that what ever danger there may be after Trial it would be the heighth of madness to think of any such thing before.

I shall however continue all the caution I have in my power.

Hutchinson thought Preston’s trial for murder would come in “ten or twelve weeks,” or sometime in September. Both the royal authorities and Boston’s political leaders had to keep him and the soldiers alive until then.

The Trial of Ebenezer Richardson

On 20 Apr 1770, 250 years ago today, Ebenezer Richardson went on trial for the killing of young Christopher Seider.

This was just short of two months after the fatal confrontation at Richardson’s house in the North End, but for the Boston Whigs that was too long.

They suspected that the judges and attorneys who leaned toward the Crown had delayed the trial to cool the passions aroused by the violent death of a child. The Crown was definitely trying to delay the Boston Massacre trials.

At various times the provincial Attorney General, the appointed defense attorney, and some judges didn’t show up for procedures in Rex v. Richardson and Wilmot. But at last on 20 April everyone was present.

Justice Benjamin Lynde presided, with Edmund Trowbridge, Peter Oliver, and William Cushing on the bench with him. The prosecutors were Massachusetts solicitor general Samuel Quincy and Robert Treat Paine, hired by the town of Boston. The newly appointed defense attorney was Josiah Quincy, Jr.

The two sides agreed on the basic facts of the case. After Richardson had tried to break up a boys’ protest outside of importer Theophilus Lillie’s shop, the boys attacked his house. The violence and damage escalated. Eventually Richardson fired a musket full of birdshot out of his window. Christopher Seider fell, mortally wounded.

The question was whether Richardson was rightfully defending his home and family from attack. Did the boys’ actions justify a lethal response? Was Christopher participating in illegal activity? Did Richardson aim at the child? Possible verdicts included guilty of murder, guilty of manslaughter, and not guilty entirely.

(Of course there was also the sailor George Wilmot, who had gone into Richardson’s house to help but hadn’t fired a gun.)

Samuel Quincy opened by questioning the prosecution witnesses, as his partner’s notes show. They played down the danger from the riotous boys and talked about Richardson’s anger. Among those witnesses were the Whig activists Edward Procter, David Bradlee, and Dr. Thomas Young.

Josiah Quincy’s notes preserve his strategy to win over the jurors:

1st. To open the Defence with a proper Address to the Jury to remove all popular Prejudices and Passions and engage them to make a fair, candid and impartial Enquiry and to give their Verdict agreeable to Law and the Evidence, uninfluenc’d by any other Motive; to mention the manner of my becoming engaged as Council for the Prisoners, explain my Duty and the Part I ought and am determin’d to act.

2d. The Witnesses for the Crown having been carefully and thoroughly cross-examined, to produce those for the Prisoners, and endeavour to find out what the Nature and Degree of Provocation offered; how far the Attack upon the house was carried; Whether and to what Degree the Windows were demolished before the firing, and whether the Door was broke open, and any Attempt made upon it; whether any actual Attempt was made to enter; or any Evidence of such Design from threatning Words; Whether Men as well as Boys were not concerned in that Attack; What Weapons were used or thrown into the house; and whether any One within was wounded; and upon the whole whether this is not to be consider’d as an Attack upon the Persons of the Prisoners.

3d. To sum up the Evidence and state the Facts as they shall appear upon Evidence.

4thly. To explain the Nature of the Crime of Murder and the different Kinds of Homicide, as justifiable, excusable (as se defendendo) and felonious: and to shew the Distinction between felonious Homicide of Malice prepense, which is properly Murder, and without such Malice, which is Manslaughter.

The defense witnesses included Richardson’s daughters Sarah and Kezia, possibly Harvard student William Eustis, schoolmaster Elias Dupee, and one of the Dr. Perkins. The witness testimony and then the legal arguments of Paine and Josiah Quincy lasted well past dark.

An unofficial factor in the courtroom were the many people who had come to see the trial. So many, in fact, that there were complaints of pickpocketing afterward. Judge Oliver called this audience “a vast Concourse of Rabble.”

Today we expect a judge to sum up legal issues and options for the jury but to leave the decisions to them. At this time, however, the multiple judges also advised on guilt and innocence. A report sent to Gov. Francis Bernard said that all those gentlemen felt the facts favored Richardson’s case:

They said it appeared by the Evidence that the prisoner was attacked in his own house by a number of tumultuous people. That what he had done was in his own defence. That self-defence was a right inherent in every man. . . . they were convinced the jury could find him guilty of nothing more than manslaughter.

According to acting governor Thomas Hutchinson, his friend and relation on the bench went even further:

Mr. Just. Oliver doubted whether it could amount to that and with great spirit charged the death of the Boy upon the Promoters of the Effigies and the Exhibitions which had drawn the people together and caused unlawful and tumultuous assemblies and he did not excuse such as had neglected suppressing these Assemblies as the Civil Magistrate had done.

At that, Oliver heard someone in the audience shout, “Damn that Judge, if I was nigh him, I would give it to him!” Other Crown informants said they heard people call, “Remember, jury, you are upon Oath”; “Blood requires blood!” and “Damn him, hang him! Murder, no manslaughter!”

At 11:00 P.M. the jurors went into a private room to deliberate. The defendants were supposed to be taken back to the jail, but the judges had heard that some spectators had brought “an Halter, ready at the Door of the Court Room,” to hang Richardson. (People had nearly lynched him on the day of the shooting.) Sheriff Stephen Greenleaf locked the defendants inside the courthouse instead.

The judges also waited in the building for most of the crowd to disperse. They finally ventured out at midnight. Even so, one Crown informant said, “The judges were hissed and abused in a most shameful manner in passing from the bench to their carriages.”

Meanwhile, the jury was still deliberating.

TOMORROW: The verdicts.

The Boston Town Meeting Takes Action

On Tuesday, 13 Mar 1770, 250 years ago today, Boston took a couple of major steps in its official response to the Boston Massacre.

The town had started its annual meeting the day before, reelecting the seven selectmen and then moving on to overseers of the poor, wardens, and such specialized offices as surveyors of boards and sealers of leather. But there were a lot of agenda items specific to that month.

Sheriff Stephen Greenleaf warned about possible jailbreaks. The town agreed to cover the cost of more watchmen in case the court system didn’t. This may well have been an oblique way of pointing to the number of soldiers in jail after the shooting on King Street. In fact, those prisoners might have been even more nervous than the townspeople, worried that as soon as there were no regiments in town they might be lynched.

The 29th Regiment had already moved to Castle William, but the 14th was still in town. The meeting appointed a high-level committee led by John Hancock and Samuel Adams to urge Col. William Dalrymple to remove his regiment immediately. Dalrymple assured those gentlemen “that between Thursday Night and Fryday Morning [i.e., by 16 March] not one of the 14th. Regiment, except himself, would remain.”

On Monday the meeting appointed Thomas Cushing, John Adams, and Josiah Quincy to write to the town’s agents and major contacts in London about the Massacre.

Resuming on Tuesday, the town appointed a committee of small businessmen to “draw up an Agreement for the Shopkeepers that have or do deal in Tea, not to dispose of any more of that Article untill the Revenue Acts are repealed.” It formed another committee of major merchants to discuss how to strengthen non-importation.

Finally the meeting reached this item:

What steps may be further necessary for obtaining a particular Account of all proceedings relative to the Massacre in King Street on Monday Night last, that a full and Just representation may be made thereof

The meeting approved these actions:

• Commissioning James Bowdoin, Dr. Joseph Warren, and Samuel Pemberton to write a thorough report on the event and who was responsible for it, which became A Short Narrative of the Horrid Massacre.
• Asking the selectmen “to employ one or more Council to offer to the Kings Attorney as Assistance to him in the tryal of the Murtherers”—a special prosecutor paid by the town in the name of the victims.
• Referring the question of whether “a public Monument may be Erected on the spot where the late Tragical Scene was acted” to the Massachusetts General Court, presumably because it had more funds.

The Boston town meeting wanted strong measures, but it was still chary about spending money.

Riot at the Richardson House

By 22 Feb 1770, 250 years ago today, the anonymous informant reporting events in Boston to Customs Collector Joseph Harrison judged that the Sons of Liberty had “seemed greatly to gain ground” over the previous week.

One piece of evidence was that “a subscription was sett on foot amongst the females in town to discontinue to Drinking of Tea.” The newspapers also featured a spinning meeting in the North End. (I’ll get back to that.) On the night of 21 February, another anonymous letter said, someone “besmeared…the Importers windows with feathers & tar & feathers.”

In another sign of Whig strength, on 22 February the boys doubled their picket lines enforcing non-importation. According to the letter to Harrison: “The Exhibition at [William] Jacksons [was] the same as Last week—there was likewise an Exhibition at Theopiluis Lillie.” Jackson’s Brazen Head hardware store was in the center of town, but Lillie’s dry-goods shop was up in the North End on Middle Street (now Hanover Street).

Another person living in that neighborhood, “about fifty or sixty paces away,” was Ebenezer Richardson, a Customs service land-waiter. Richardson was a notorious outcast. While living in Woburn in the 1750s, he’d gotten his wife’s sister pregnant, then kept quiet for over a year as people blamed one of the town’s ministers. Once the truth came out, Richardson, now widowed, and his sister-in-law had to move to Boston, where they married at King’s Chapel.

In Boston, Richardson began to supply confidential information to the province’s attorney general, Edmund Trowbridge, and then to Customs official Charles Paxton. That work stopped being confidential after some documents leaked from London in the early 1760s. The Customs office then hired Richardson officially, but Bostonians continued to refer to him as “the Informer.”

During the anti-Stamp Act riots of 24 Aug 1765, a crowd attacked the Richardsons’ house, and a few days later the Overseers of the Poor paid to have the family removed back to Woburn, perhaps for their own safety. By 1766 Richardson was back in Boston. After Capt. Daniel Malcom defied Customs officials, boys went over to Richardson’s house to taunt him for not gaining a reward—and it’s not even clear he was involved in that case.

Not that Richardson was quietly minding his own business in the political disputes of the period. According to William Gray, “Some mention of Effigies” had come up on 21 February, and Richardson said “he hoped if these was before Importers Doors there be a Dust beat up, wish’d the 14. Regiment there. They would Cut up the d——d Yankees.” (Richardson came from an old Puritan family himself, so here “Yankees” was a political epithet.)

According to the next week’s Boston Evening-Post:

Soon after it [the non-importation pageantry] was set up, Ebenezer Richardson, the famous Informer, came by and endeavored to persuade a countryman to overturn it with his wagon; which he refusing, he applied to a charcoal man to drive his cart against it; but he said he had no business with it, and would not concern himself about it.

Richardson (as the boys say) pressed him to it, saying he was a magistrate in the town and would bear him out in it. The man still denying to meddle therewith, Richardson laid hold on the horses and endeavored to shove them upon the pole which supported the pageantry; the cart, however, passed without disturbing it.

Frustrated, Richardson started to stomp off. But by this point some Whig men had arrived “to see Pagentry before Lilly’s Door,” as one of them, Edward Procter, later testified. Richardson saw them, perhaps laughing at him, and shouted, “Perjury! Perjury!”

Nobody’s sure what Richardson meant by that. Was he saying that calling Lillie an enemy of the country was perjury? Was he accusing those men of having perjured themselves in the past? Was he denying what they might have shouted at him (and, as shown above, Bostonians had a lot of stories to tell)? The men challenged Richardson to explain, and he replied that he was directing his comment not at Procter but at another man, Thomas Knox—which doesn’t help.

A neighbor named Deborah Warner said Richardson “Went into his house, and then…he came out in a great Rage, doubling his Fists and challenged the Gentlemen to the Door. Said it should be hot enough before night.” Sarah Richardson, one of the land-waiter’s daughters, testified that Knox and Capt. John Matchet responded, “come out you damn Son of Bitch, I’ll have your Heart out your Liver out.”

The yelling outside of Richardson’s door caught the attention of the boys. They left the signs and shoppers in front of Lillie’s shop and ran over to Richardson’s to “call him Informer,” in the Evening-Post’s words. Richardson and his wife Kezia—the woman who had once been his sister-in-law—tried to shoo the boys away, “flourishing their arms and advancing out into the street, with high threatenings.” That didn’t work. As the newspaper reported, “the children would retreat and on their return, advance, with the squealing and noise they usually make on such occasions.”

Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson later wrote that he “gave express directions to the Sheriff [Stephen Greenleaf] to go and suppress this unlawful assembly…but he did not think it safe to attempt it nor is there a J[ustice]. of P[eace]. in the town who will appear upon such an occasion.”

Outside the Richardsons’ house, the young mob started throwing “light rubbish.” Ebenezer came out “with a stick” and ordered the boys to go away. Invoking traditional British liberty, the children “said they would not, Kings high Way”—i.e., they had the right to be in the street. They threw more garbage. Kezia Richardson threw some back and was in return struck by an egg.

At some point a sailor who worked for the Customs service named George Wilmot came to the Richardsons’ house and offered to help his colleague. According to Sarah Richardson, “Wilmot said he would stand by him as Long as he had breath. Wilmot asked if he had any Gun. R[ichardson]. said he must get his Gun.”

Becoming desperate, “Richardson opened the door and snapped a gun” at the crowd—showing that he had a working musket but not firing anything. He reportedly threatened, “if you dont go away I’ll blow a hole thro you enough to Drive a Cart and Oxen” or “as sure as there was a G— in heaven, he’d blow a Lane thro ’em.” After a moment of fright, the young mob just started flinging things more ferociously.

Multiple witnesses said that someone threw a stick or brickbat out of the house and hit a passing soldier. He threw it back, smashing a window. That got the boys even more excited. Witness Andrew Tewksbury stated, “They threw Limon Peels then Stones. Some Men looked on Boys and they threw faster. Men shew’d no signs of Approbation but laughing.” Ebenezer, Kezia, and Sarah Richardson were all hit by stones.

Soon most of the windows in the house were broken. Sarah Richardson testified, “I staid till no Lead, no Frame, and then went away.” Ebenezer Richardson and George Wilmot retreated to an upper story. The active Whig tailor David Bradlee testified, “I saw one or two Men in the Room with Guns in their hands. R[ichardson] put a Gun on edge of Window.”

Finally, Richardson fired his musket. This time it was loaded.

TOMORROW: Rough justice.

An Order from the Governor: “seperate and disperse”

At ten o’clock on the morning of Tuesday, 23 Jan 1770, Boston’s “Body of the Trade” resumed meeting in Faneuil Hall. William Phillips was once again in the moderator’s chair.

The painter George Mason was present, not because he supported non-importation but because he was reporting on developments for Customs Collector Joseph Harrison. Mason wrote that the meeting

began with reading a long Letter from Philadelphia address’d to Mr. [John] Hancock, the purport of it was, that they generally adher’d to the non-importation Scheme. Extracts from this Letter has since been Publish’d in Edes & Gills Paper, but they have thought proper to omit the most material part, this was a proposal for a General Congress from all the Committees on the Continent

That would have been something like the Stamp Act Congress of 1765. It never happened. Instead, men in Faneuil Hall voted unanimously to have other parts of the letter published.

The gathering then took up the business of how to condemn four merchants who still refused to cooperate with the boycott: William Jackson, Theophilus Lillie, John Taylor, and Nathaniel Rogers. According to Mason, the proposed language went so far as to say, “those Gentlemen had commited hostilities against their Country, and were no aliens to the Commonwealth”—i.e., they were traitors.

In the midst of that pleasant discussion, Sheriff Stephen Greenleaf arrived with messages from Lt. Gov. Thomas Hutchinson (shown above in his youth). The previous week, Hutchinson had surprised Phillips by saying that he would tell his sons to cooperate with the non-importation committee. Once he could no longer be accused of trying to protect his own kin, the acting governor felt he had more freedom to exercise his authority. So how was he bringing the hammer down?

First, Hutchinson told Phillips, “I send you a Paper herewith, and I expect from you that you forthwith cause it to be read.” Instead of obeying that instruction, the meeting “appointed a Committee of three Gentlemen, to peruse the Paper.” Only after that committee deemed the acting governor’s message worthwhile did Phillips read it to the whole crowd, exhibiting little deference to the authority of the Crown.

Hutchinson had written:

To the PEOPLE assembled at Faneuil-Hall.

I should be culpable if I should any longer omit to signify to you my Sentiments upon your Proceedings. Your assembling together for the Purposes for which you profess to be assembled, cannot be justified by any Authority or Colour of Law. Your going from House to House and making demands of the delivery of Property, must strike the People with Terror from your great Numbers, (even if it be admitted that it is not done in a tumultuous Manner) and is of very dangerous Tendency.

Such of you as are Persons of Character, Reputation and Property, expose yourselves to the Consequences of the irregular Actions of any of your Numbers who have been assembled together, altho’ you may not approve of them, and altho’ it may be out of your Power to restrain them.

Therefore as the Representative of his Majesty, who is the Father of his People, I must from a tender Regard to your Interest caution you: And as cloathed with Authority derived from his Majesty, I must enjoin and require you without Delay, to seperate and disperse, and to forbear all such unlawful Assemblies for the future, as you would avoid those Evils to which you may otherwise expose yourselves and your Country.

The governor of Massachusetts thus declared this gathering illegal and ordered the men inside Faneuil Hall to disperse. At the time there were still two regiments of the British army patrolling the town, answerable to Crown officials.

TOMORROW: The meeting’s response.

“For being accessory in beating Mr. Otis”

Back in September, before other Sestercentennial anniversaries came along, I started to explore the 5 Sept 1769 brawl in the British Coffee-House between James Otis, Jr., leader of the Boston Whigs, and John Robinson, one of His Majesty’s Commissioners of Customs.

As those two gentlemen were going at each other with canes and fists, other men intervened. The most energetic on Otis’s side was young John Gridley, identified here. On 6 September, Dr. Thomas Young wrote to John Wilkes that Gridley “had the ulna of his right arm fractured in the fray.”

The Whigs complained that several officers of the British army, navy, or Customs took Robinson’s side, but the one they named was William Burnet Brown, a native of Salem who had married and moved to Virginia. As I discussed here, he was probably visiting Boston to finish selling his New England property.

Interestingly, several recent authors credit Benjamin Hallowell, Jr., comptroller of the Boston Customs office, for breaking up the fight. I’ve read more anecdotes about Hallowell getting into disputes than stopping them, so this offers a novel perspective on him. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find the contemporaneous source for that detail.

Robinson went into hiding after the brawl, probably moving out to Castle William, the Customs officers’ usual refuge, which was now in army hands. That kept him beyond the reach of Whig magistrates or writs. Otis’s supporters therefore focused their legal efforts on William Burnet Brown. In fact, some people accused Brown of having attacked Otis himself.

On 6 September the merchant John Rowe wrote in his diary: “this afternoon the sheriff took Mr. Brown, Esq., formerly of Salem, for being accessory in beating Mr. Otis; he was carried to Faneuil Hall.” Sheriff Stephen Greenleaf was acting on a legal complaint sworn out by John Gridley, not making an arrest on his own authority the way police do now.

The magistrates overseeing the hearing at Faneuil Hall that evening were justices of the peace Richard Dana and Samuel Pemberton. Dana was a highly respected member of the Boston judiciary. Pemberton was a magistrate of long standing and a selectman. However, they were also both known for challenging Crown decrees and ignoring complaints from British officers. They were the Whig activists’ go-to magistrates, as the cases of Capt. John Willson, Ens. John Ness, and John Mein show.

In an attempt to counterbalance such magistrates, Gov. Francis Bernard had appointed James Murray (1713-1781) as a justice of the peace in the previous year. Murray was a Scottish gentleman who had settled in North Carolina in 1735, becoming a member of the governor’s council there. However, he didn’t do nearly so well financially as his little sister Elizabeth did in Boston, so in 1765 Murray moved north to join her.

In 1769 Elizabeth (Murray Campbell) Smith was widowed for a second time and decided to visit family in Britain, leaving her brother to manage her extensive property. They had already rented one large building to the British army; locals called that “Smith’s barracks” or “Murray’s barracks.” The public knew Justice James Murray supported the Crown in other ways.

On the evening of the 6th, Murray was taking a walk around the Town House when a gentleman named Perkins told him that Brown had been taken to Faneuil Hall. At the end of the month Murray wrote:

consulting my feelings for another's distress more than my own safety, [I] went directly to the Hall to attend the proceedings. Soon as the multitude perceived me among them, they attempted repeatedly to thrust me out, but were prevented by Mr. [Jonathan] Mason, one of the selectmen, calling out, “For shame, gentlemen, do not behave so rudely.”

What had started as a personal fight between two gentlemen had grown into a legal case. And now it was threatening to become a public fight that would make Boston look like a lawless place.

TOMORROW: Inside and outside Faneuil Hall.

“A bayonet wrested from one of the pursuers”

Yesterday I quoted a deposition by a sergeant of the 29th Regiment about his run-in with John Ruddock, justice of the peace and captain of militia in Boston’s North End, 250 years ago this month.

Justice Ruddock was used to getting his way in that neighborhood. He was a big man—probably 300 pounds or more. In September 1766 he told Sheriff Stephen Greenleaf that he was “Unable to Walk far [and] must be Carried in his Chaise.” At that time, Ruddock was rattling off excuses why he couldn’t come help the sheriff and Customs officers search the storehouse of Daniel Malcom for smuggled goods. Because Ruddock was no fan of royal officials.

When the Crown government stationed troops in Boston in 1768, Ruddock was among their most active opponents. He was one of the magistrates who prosecuted Capt. John Willson for allegedly encouraging enslaved Bostonians to revolt. He arrested soldiers for disturbing the peace in both January and February 1769.

Sgt. John Norfolk of the 14th Regiment complained about another such confrontation:

That on or about the 22d. February 1769, in the evening, he heard a great noise in the street; and found it was occasioned by some Soldiers and Inhabitants who were at high words amongst whom was one Ruddock, who said he was a Justice of the peace, and expressed the words, Go fetch my broad sword and Fusee and Damn the Scoundrels, let us drive the Bloody backs to their Quarters, Send for my Company of Men, for I think we are men enough for them.

He the deponent did what was in his power to prevent their Quarreling and in striving to part the Soldiers and Inhabitants Received great abuses from a son of the said Ruddocks who took him by the hair and pulled him into a passage leading into the yard of Said Ruddocks house, shutting the Door upon him, and by repeated blows laid him on the ground quite insensible after he came to himself thay opened the door and kick’d him out of the passage, at the same time they took the opportunity of taking him his side, his Bayonet which he wore (being then a Corporol), and which is now in the possession of said Ruddock who hath refused to return it tho’ properly demanded, both by himself and a Serjeant sent By his Captain for that purpose.

According to Norfolk, Justice Ruddock wasn’t slowed at all by his weight that night. And his son—either John, Jr., or Abiel—yanked him into the family home.

Of course, the justice had his own view of the situation. He thought he was keeping the peace in the face of rowdy military men. Here’s how the Whigs reported the same event for newspapers in other colonies:

As some sailors were passing near Mr. Justice Ruddock’s house, the other night, with a woman in company, they were met by a number of soldiers, one of whom, as usual with those people, claimed the woman for his wife; this soon bro’t on a battle in which the sailors were much bruised, and a young man of the town, who was only a spectator, received a considerable wound on his head; a great cry of murder, brought out the justice, and his son, into the street; when the former who is a gentleman of spirit, immediately laid his hands upon two of the assailants, and called out to one who pretended to be an officer, and all other persons present, requiring them in his Majesty’s name to assist him as a magistrate, in securing those rioters;

instead of this, he was presently surrounded with thirty or forty soldiers, who had their bayonets in their hands, notwithstanding the unseasonable time of night; some of whom endeavoured to loose his hold of the persons he had seized, but not being able to do it, they then made at him with their fists and bayonets; when he received such blows as obliged him to seek his safety by flight;

they struck down a young woman at his door holding out a candle, and followed him and son into the entry-way of his house with their bayonets, uttering the most profane & abusive language, and swearing they would be the death of them both;

upon the first assault given to the magistrate, one of the persons present posted away to the Town-House, and acquainted the commanding officer of the picquet guard, of what was taking place; but it seems the officer did not apprehend himself at liberty to order a party out to secure, or disperse those riotous drunken soldiers.

Due enquiry is making for the discovery of those daring offenders, in order to their being presented to the grand jury, a bayonet wrested from one of the pursuers in the entry, may lead to a knowledge of the owner, and be a means of procuring proof.

The bayonet that the Ruddocks came away with is the link between these two accounts.

On 27 March, the Whigs reported a grand jury had brought charges “against a number of soldiers, for assaulting with drawn cutlasses and bayonets; smiting and wounded [sic], John Ruddock, Esq; one of his Majesty’s justices of the peace, when suppressing a riot at the north part of the town, late at night, in which they were actors.”

As of 21 April the royal judges still hadn’t begun that trial, the Whigs reported, “nor has any thing been done upon it, as we can yet learn.” Norfolk said nothing about being tried, so probably the whole matter dropped, leaving everyone angry.

“We have advice from New-York…”

The dispute over the Manufactory in Boston in late 1768 was so controversial that it managed to spark a secondary dispute in New York.

That city was already the British army’s main base of operations in North America, with tensions between soldiers and local working men. Its politicians argued with the royal authorities not over barracks (because those were already built) but over firewood that the Quartering Act required the local government to provide. So New York’s more radical Whigs were primed to support Boston in its resistance.

On 17 Nov 1768, John Holt’s New-York Journal, or the General Advertiser squeezed in this item at the end of its local news. And by “squeezed in,” I mean that this story was set in smaller type so it could fit into the column.

On Monday last a Report prevail’d that the Effigies of Governor [Francis] Bernard, and Sheriff [Stephen] Greenleaf of Boston, were to be exhibited that Evening:

At 4 o’Clock in the Afternoon, the Troops in this City appear’d under Arms, at the lower Barracks, where they remained till after 10 o’Clock at Night, during which Time Parties of them, were continually patrolling the Streets, in order it is supposed to intimidate the Inhabitants, and prevent their exposing the Effigies;

Notwithstanding which, they made their appearance in the Streets, hanging on a Gallows, between 8 and 9 o’Clock, attended by a vast Number of Spectators, who saluted them with loud Huzzas at the Corner of every Street they passed; and after having been exposed some Time at the Coffee-House, they were there publickly burnt, amidst the Acclamations of the Populace, who testified their Approbation by repeated Huzzas, and immediately dispersed, and returned to their respective Homes.—

The Affair was conducted with such Regularity and good Order, that no Person sustained the least Damage, either in his Person or Property.

Holt added a pointing finger and a line in italic type: “A Postscript to this Paper was intended, but could not be got ready.”

The Boston Whigs happily reported in December:

We have advice from New-York, that on the 14th inst. [i.e., of this month] there was exposed and burnt in that city, the effigies of G.B. and S. G. in resentment at the parts they acted in endeavouring to get the troops quartered in the town; contrary to the letter and spirit of the act of Parliament relative to billetting troops in America, as also to the advice of His Majesty’s Council.

But that celebration may have been premature.

TOMORROW: Government crackdown.

More Maneuvering about the Manufactory

Boston 1775 readers might remember the conflict over the Manufactory House that occurred in October 1768, soon after the British regiments arrived in Boston.

The soldiers’ “siege” of the building was surprisingly short, given all the attention it received in Whig writing. But the legal and political argument over that event was still going on months later.

With all the soldiers in rented barracks, the argument shifted to the legality of royal appointees’ attempts to move the Brown family of weavers out of the Manufactory. And had the Massachusetts Council authorized those efforts in any way? Here’s the Boston Whigs’ report on a Council meeting on 28 Dec 1768:

The C——l met this day, and the G[overno]r renewed his request, that they would agreeable to the petition of Sheriff [Stephen] Greenleaf, indemnify said sheriff as to his conduct at the Manufactory-House, in the action brought against him by Mr. William Brown, and in order to shew the reasonableness of this requirement, he was pleased to tell the C——1, that in this business Mr. Greenleaf pursued their vote and did not act as sheriff ut as their bailiff, he having commissioned him so to do.

This is the first time I’ve seen the name “William Brown” linked to the Manufactory. Previous reports had referred to the weaver who was suing the sheriff as John Brown. This might be just an error, or this might be another member of the Brown family not previously heard from.

The writer of this newspaper dispatch got so caught up in describing this confrontation that he forgot to disguise the word “Council” in the next bit:

The Council were the more surprised at this demand, and G——rs assertion to support it, as he could not but remember, that when they first heard of the sheriff’s extraordinary procedure respecting the Manufactory-House; they were so alarmed as to have a meeting among themselves on the 22d of October last, when seven of the eleven of the Council, (six of whom, by continual application were drawn into the unhappy vote,) which were all whose presence could then be procured, waited upon the G——r and acquainted him that it was their unanimous opinion, that the whole procedure of the sheriff was expressly contrary to their intention in said vote, which was only general for the clearing the Manufactory-House for the reception of the troops after the barracks at the Castle should be full; and that they never had an idea of the sheriff’s making a forceable entry contrary to law; and that notwithstanding this application, the siege of the Manufactory was continued for about twelve days after:

I quoted Gov. Francis Bernard’s account of the Council meetings on those days here.

One of the C——l then asked the G——r whether the sheriff acted as bailiff when he sent for a number of the regulars to assist him when he forceably entered the said house, as part of the posse-comitatus, or whether a bailiff could legally do it; and it was then observed that this could not be done; the presumption, was that Mr. Greenleaf had acted only as sheriff in that business:

All that was offered by the C——1 did not discourage the G——r from exerting his influence in support of this officer, he insisted upon the question being put, and it was according put in words of the following import, viz. Whether the C——1 would take upon themselves the defence of said action on the part of the sheriff, or indemnify said sheriff.—To which question the C——1 replied in a manner that has brought as much credit upon themselves as it has cast reproach upon the G——r.

That they would not at present determine that question, the C——1 being of opinion that for them to do any thing that might give a bias, either to court or jury, would be extremely wrong: That for the C——1 now to determine, whether they would indemnify Sheriff Greenleaf, or would not indemnify him might give such a bias, and therefore they desire to be excused from giving any answer till the cause shall be determined in a court of justice.

It is said that the G——r was greatly mortified by the foregoing vote of C——1, and could not forbear expressing his resentment, by telling them that if he was in their place he should be ashamed of looking the sheriff in the face, and that their conduct would make an ill appearance on the other side the water, where they might depend it would be properly represented, and where he apprehended measures might be taken to procure justice to that officer.

Like so many times before, Gov. Bernard and the Council were at a stalemate.

This newspaper item also shows us how people used the phrase “on the other side the water” to mean over in Britain.

“The Negroes shall be free, and the Liberty Boys slaves”?

As I described back here, on the night of 28 Oct 1768 Capt. John Willson of the 59th Regiment was reportedly heard “to persuade some Negro servants to ill-treat and abuse their masters, assuring them that the soldiers were come to procure their freedoms.”

The next day and again on Monday, 31 October, the Boston selectmen’s official business included “Taking Depositions relative to Capt. Willson & Negros.” Selectman John Rowe’s diary confirmed that “they were all present” for the Saturday discussion.

One result of those meetings was officially that “The Several Constables of the Watch [were] directed by the Selectmen, to be watchful of the Negros & to take up those of them that may be in gangs at unseasonable hours.” Or as the Boston Whigs interpreted it for newspaper readers in other ports:

In consequence of the late practices upon the Negroes of this town, we are told that orders have been given by the Selectmen to the town watch, to take up and secure all such Negro servants as shall be absent from their master’s houses, at an unseasonable time of night.

It’s notable that the selectmen’s directive specified “those of them that may be in gangs” while the report for other colonies referred to “all such Negro servants.” In practice the watchmen probably were stopping all black people, in groups or alone, enslaved or free. Not that there was any real evidence for an incipient uprising.

The selectmen also took action in the court system. The Whigs’ “Journal of Occurrences” reported on 31 October, 250 years ago today:

The following complaint was regularly made this day, viz

to the worshipful Richard Dana and John Ruddock, Esqrs. two of his Majesty’s justice of the peace for the county of Suffolk, and of the quorum.

The subscribers Selectmen of the town of Boston, complain of John Willson, Esq; a captain in his Majesty’s 59th Regiment of foot, a detachment whereof is now quartered in the said town of Boston, under his command, that the said John, with others unknown, on the evening of the 28th day of October current, did, in the sight and hearing of divers persons, utter many abusive and threatening expressions, of, and against the inhabitants of said town, and in a dangerous and conspirative manner, did entice and endeavour to spirit up, by a promise of the reward of freedom, certain Negro slaves in Boston aforesaid, the property of several of the town inhabitants, to cut their master’s throats, and to beat, insult, and otherwise ill treat their said masters, asserting that now the soldiers are come, the Negroes shall be free, and the Liberty Boys slaves—to the great terror and danger of the peaceable inhabitants of said town, liege subjects of his Majesty, our Lord the King, and the great disturbance of the peace and safety of said town.

Wherefore your complainants, solicitous for the peace and wellfare of the said town, as well as their own, as individuals, humbly requests your worship’s consideration of the premises, and that process may issue against the said John, that he may be dealt with herein according to law.

Joshua Henshaw
John Rowe
Joseph Jackson
Sam. Pemberton
John Hancock
Henderson Inches

Boston elected seven selectmen, but only six signed this complaint to the magistrates. Who was the seventh? None other than John Ruddock, one of the magistrates who took the complaint. Bostonians must have known that he’d been in the discussion that led to that legal action before him. But people in other American ports wouldn’t have spotted that maneuver.

The next day, 1 November, the Whigs reported:

In pursuance of a complaint made to Mr. Justice Dana, and Ruddock, relative to Capt. Willson and others, a warrant was issued by those justices for taking up said Willson and bringing him before them, which was delivered to Benjamin Cudworth [1716-1781], a deputy sheriff of the county, who being opposed in the execution of it, applied to the high sheriff [Stephen Greenleaf], who with divers constables went to apprehand him; at first he also met with opposition from one of the officers, but the said Willson soon after surrendered himself to the sheriff, who brought him before the justices at Faneuil-Hall, which was crowded with people; and after the examination of divers witnesses upon oath, the complaint, was so well supported, that the justices ordered him to become bound with sufficient sureties for his appearance at the Superior Court in March next, to what shall then be alledged against him, touching the matters complained of, as also for his good behaviour in the mean time.

Sheriff Greenleaf had tried to seize the Manufactory for the Crown earlier in the month, but here he was taking Capt. Willson before the law. In both cases, Greenleaf was doing his main job to serve legal papers. (He wasn’t a peace officer the way we picture sheriffs in the Old West.)  The magistrates held their hearing in Faneuil Hall, “crowded with people,” which only a couple of days before had been crowded with troops.

John Rowe recorded the 1 November action in his diary, “Capt. Willson was carried before Justice Dana for some Drunken Behaviour & bound over to the Sessions.” Rowe had signed that formal complaint, of course. But privately he referred to Willson’s alleged incitement to bloody rebellion merely as “some Drunken Behaviour.”

As usual, Rowe was playing both sides. He spent part of that evening socializing with James Otis, William Molineux, and other Whiggish merchants and the rest at a gathering with Gen. Thomas Gage, Col. James Robertson, Col. William Dalrymple, Col. Maurice Carr, and other high-ranking army officers.