“The Body of Michael Johnson then and there being Dead”

Revolutionary Spaces preserves what might be the first piece of legal paperwork arising from the Boston Massacre: the report of an inquest convened the day after the shooting.

This document a printed form filled out with specific details on the deceased and the names and signatures of the coroner and his jury. I’ve transcribed it with the printed words in boldface:

Suffolk, ss.

AN Inquisition Indented, taken at Boston within the said County of Suffolk the Sixth Day of March in the tenth Year of the Reign of our Sovereign Lord George the third by the Grace of God, of Great-Britain, France and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith, &c. Before Robert Pierpont Gentm. one of the Coroners of our said Lord the King, within the County of Suffolk aforesaid;

upon the View of the Body of Michael Johnson then and there being Dead, by the Oaths of Benjamin Waldo Foreman Jacob Emmons John McLane William Fleet John Wise John How Nathaniel Hurd William Baker junior William Flagg William Crafts Enoch Rust Robert Duncan William Palfrey & Samuel Danforth good and lawful Men of Boston aforesaid, within the County aforesaid; who being Charged and Sworn to enquire for our said Lord the King, When and by what Means, and how the said Michael Johnson came to his Death: Upon their Oaths do say,

That the said Michael Johnson was wilfully and feloniously murdered at King Street in Boston in the County aforesaid on the Evening of the 5th. instant between the hours of nine & ten by the discharge of a Musket or Muskets loaded with Bullets, two of which were shot thro’ his body, by a party of Soldiers to us unknown, then and there headed and commanded by Captain Thomas Preston of his Majesty’s 29th. Regiment of foot against the peace of our Sovereign Lord the King his Crown and dignity and so by that means he came by his death as appears by evidence.

In Witness whereof, as well I the Coroner aforesaid, as the Jurors aforesaid, to this Inquisition have interchangeably put our Hands and Seals, the Day and Year aforesaid.

This document was made so early that Bostonians hadn’t realized that “Michael Johnson” was really named Crispus Attucks.

Revolutionary Spaces shared an essay about this document’s history as a museum artifact and the work that’s been done to conserve it.

Tonight I’ll speak online to the American Revolution Round Table of New Jersey about how Massachusetts’s legal system responded to the Boston Massacre. Four criminal trials followed that event, though we usually hear about only one or two (so I might end up talking more about the others). 

Capt. Preston at the Castle

The Boston Whigs don’t appear to have been surprised or terribly upset when Capt. Thomas Preston was acquitted of murder for the Boston Massacre in October 1770.

The 5 November Boston Gazette reported the not guilty verdict without comment.

Writing to John Wilkes on behalf of the Whigs, young merchant William Palfrey complained at length about how the jury had been seated and called the trial a “farce,” but he also said:

It must however be confessed that the confusion of that unhappy night was so great that the Witnesses both for the Crown & the prisoner differed materially in some parts of their testimony, and even in my own mind there still remains a doubt whether Capt Preston gave the orders to fire, as the two Witnesses who swore to that point, declared also that Capt Preston had on a Surtout Coat, which he proved was not the case.

Preston and his friends nonetheless still feared a lynching, or at least more harassment. On 31 October, the captain wrote to Gen. Thomas Gage in New York:

They have endeavourd to lodge an Appeal against me, in behalf of one of the relations of the deceasd, but it won’t lie, as there are not any near enough of kin now surviving, but their busy malice has found out another way to distress me, by sueing me for damages on acct. of the wounded, & if taken wou’d involve me in endless lawsuits…

The next day, Lt. Col. William Dalrymple added, “I understand there are fresh warrants out against him.” No lawsuit went forward, however.

To be safe, Capt. Preston had headed for Castle William, where the 14th Regiment could protect him against both mobs and constables.

We even have a glimpse of the captain’s departure for that island fort in a document that Christie’s auctioned in 2005. That was a handwritten copy of Preston’s “Case,” including a section not published in the London newspapers.

Bound with that plea for a pardon was a letter from the Rev. Richard Mosley dated 7 November. He recounted the captain’s trial and stated, “After Capn Preston was discharged…I escorted him to a boat” headed to Castle Island. Mosley believed the locals still wanted “Blood for Blood.”

Mosley was then the chaplain of H.M.S. Salisbury, which had arrived in Boston harbor earlier in October carrying Commodore James Gambier, recently appointed naval commander of the North American station. Some Whigs had speculated that the Crown had sent the warship to Boston to ensure the town remained peaceful during the Massacre trials.

As for the Preston/Mosley document, I don’t know where it is now. The selling price was over a quarter-million dollars, so it’s not in the Boston 1775 collection.

TOMORROW: Preston’s own view of his trial.

Dinner at the Sign of Liberty Tree

On 14 Aug 1769, 250 years ago today, Boston’s Sons of Liberty gathered to celebrate the anniversary of the first public protest against the Stamp Act, four years earlier.

Of course, they were also celebrating what they saw as their triumph over Gov. Francis Bernard, who had sailed away from Massachusetts at the start of the month, never to return.

The celebration actually began with fourteen toasts at Liberty Tree at eleven o’clock. Those started with “The KING” and “The QUEEN and Royal Family,” moved through John Wilkes, the “Glorious Ninety-Two,” Paschal Paoli and his Corsicans, “American Manufactures,” and finally “May the 14th of August be the annual Jubilee of Americans, till Time shall be no more.”

Then the company left town. The Sons had organized dinner for more than 300 at Lemuel Robinson’s tavern in Dorchester, the Sign of Liberty Tree. [In the winter of 1775, that tavern was a crucial spot in the story of The Road to Concord.] By dining outside of Boston, the upper-class politicians guaranteed that they could control their setting and the level of festivity.

This dinner was in honor of “the Farmer”—John Dickinson, author of The Farmer’s Letters and coauthor of “The Liberty Song.” He wasn’t there. But two of his friends from Philadelphia were: his brother, Philemon Dickinson, and Joseph Reed, then secretary of the colony of New Jersey.

John Hancock’s business protégé William Palfrey made a list of 355 gentlemen at the dinner. That list included far more than Boston's political activists. The most important elected officials were all there, including some who would later be Loyalists. The town’s schoolmasters had taken the day off, as had many merchants, doctors, lawyers, and militia officers. John Adams wrote in his diary about feeling pressure to attend: “many might suspect, that I was not hearty in the Cause, if I had been absent whereas none of them are more sincere, and stedfast than I am."

Adams described the banquet setting this way:

We had two Tables laid in the open Field by the Barn, with between 300 and 400 Plates, and an Arning of Sail Cloth overhead, and should have spent a most agreable Day had not the Rain made some Abatement in our Pleasures.

There’s that New England non-rhotic R in how Adams spelled “awning.”

Because the fourteen toasts before noon weren’t enough, after dinner the party drank forty-five more. This series started with the “King, Queen and Royal Family,” followed by “A Discharge of Cannon, and three Cheers.” The toasters named fourteen British politicians considered friendly to America and the historian Catharine Macaulay. They honored “The Cantons of Switzerland,” “The States General of the seven United Provinces” of Holland, and “The King of Prussia.”

Some of the after-dinner toasts delineated the Whigs’ political ideals: “Annual Parliaments,” “A perpetual Constitutional Union and Harmony between Great Britain and the Colonies,” and “Liberty without Licentiousness.” Others identified enemies: “May the detested Names of the very few Importers every where, be transmitted to Posterity with Infamy” (more cannon). And finally “Strong Halters, Firm Blocks, and Sharp Axes, to all such as deserve either.”

Evidently the diners didn’t imbibe deeply at each and every toast because Adams declared, “To the Honour of the Sons, I did not see one Person intoxicated.”

As for the subsequent entertainment, the Sons of Liberty had provided…a hatter.

TOMORROW: But not just any hatter.

“A More Circumstantial Account” of the Massacre

After describing what he saw on King Street during and after the shooting that became known as the Boston Massacre, William Palfrey’s 13 Mar 1770 letter to John Wilkes (shown here) continued:

The return of morning exhibited a most shocking spectacle; the gutters of the street running with blood, & the snow on the ground dyed crimson with the blood & brains of our fellow citizens.

I went the next morning to view one of the bodies; when I was call’d upon a jury of inquest. In the course of the examination many witnesses were sworn, which enables me to give you a more circumstantial account of the matter than you may possibly receive from others, unless they had the same advantage.

At that point Palfrey’s description of events shifted from what he experienced firsthand to what he’d heard other people say. His story became the Boston Whigs’ official line, what they wanted British sympathizers to understand about the event. But there were still some interesting statements reflecting what locals believed.

For example:

It appear’d by the oaths of credible witnesses that Soldiers had been to the houses of some of their friends the Sunday Evening before this tragical event happen’d, and desir’d them, as they tender’d their own safety, to keep out of the way the two nights following: that there would be more blood shed then, than ever was known since the country had been settled.

While these stories were meant to show a premeditated attack, they also show how soldiers had made “friends” in Boston.

As for stationing a sentinel in front of the Customs office:

This has been Customary since the Regiments were quarter’d here. The town have ever since kept a strong military watch, not only to prevent a rescue of the prisoners which was threatened by the soldiers, but also to prevent the lower sort of our own people from making any attempt to revenge the murder of their brethren.

Genteel Whigs like Palfrey were willing to cast the common people as prone to rioting—as long as they could blame outside forces like lawless soldiers for provoking those riots.

The centinel at the Custom house door on seeing the lads approach loaded his piece, which they seeing gatherd near and laugh’d at him without offering any other insult.

Actual eyewitnesses said that Pvt. Hugh White had loaded his musket, pounding the butt on the street, after the barbers’ apprentices had started to bother him. Throughout his letter, Palfrey insisted that locals had given the soldiers no reason to be nervous.

Having reported that Capt. Thomas Preston had ordered his men to fire, Palfrey still had a good word for him:

I cannot leave this subject without doing justice to Capt. Preston so far as to inform you that before this unfortunate event, he always behav’d himself unexceptionably & had the character of a sober, honest man & a good officer,—but Influence, fatal influence!

The letter also tells us how locals watched the removal of soldiers from town:

The 29th have since been sent down [to Castle William], & the embarkation of the 14th begins this day. We shall soon get rid of our Military inmates, & I hope the town will thereby be restor’d to its former state of tranquility.

In this striking passage, Palfrey raised the possibility of the Massacre provoking armed rebellion.

The people, tho’ drove almost to despair by this act of violence, and ready to take immediate vengeance on the offenders, were however restrain’d by the example & persuasion of many of those very men who have been on your side the water branded as incendiaries, & enemies of Great Britain. If there had ever been any intention in the Colonies to rebel, what a fair opening was here made! The military, without the least provocation, slaughtering the unarm’d, defenceless & innocent citizins. The Country for a great distance round was alarm’d & prepar’d themselves to join the people in Boston upon the first signal, & however despicable an opinion Collo. Dalrymple or his associates may entertain of the Bostonians, I assure you, Sir, forty thousand men could have been brot into the gates of this city at 48 hours warning.

Finally, Palfrey noted a rumor that the Crown would appoint Col. William Dalrymple as successor to the departed governor, Francis Bernard:

I have just heard that Collo. Dalrymple is a candidate for our Government. I pray God most heartily we may never be govern’d by a Scotchman, & above all by a Military Scotchman.

Palfrey’s correspondent, Wilkes, had of course made his political name attacking Scottish influence on the British government in his North-Britain magazine, so he would have responded well to badmouthing Scotchmen.

William Palfrey at the Boston Massacre

William Palfrey (1741-1780, shown here) was an apprentice and business protégé of Nathaniel Wheelwright, one of Boston’s leading merchants in the early 1760s. Wheelwright’s personal notes circulated like currency in the Boston economy.

In January 1765, Wheelwright suddenly went bankrupt. Palfrey apparently lost his savings and ended up having to take a job as manager of John Hancock’s shop—a big comedown in a society that expected gentlemen not to work for anyone else.

Palfrey made his way back up the ladder, soon managing a lot of Hancock’s transatlantic trade and also much of the Boston Whigs’ correspondence with like-minded British politicians, most notably John Wilkes.

On 5 Mar 1770, Palfrey was writing a letter to Wilkes when he was distracted by a noise outside his house. It took eight days before Palfrey resumed writing the letter, explaining:

I was oblig’d to break off the above by the alarm of ringing a Bell which I at first imagin’d to be for fire, & being not quite recovered of my late illness did not quit the house but sent my servant to see where it was.

He very soon return’d & told me there was no fire but that some of the inhabitants & soldiers were fighting near King Street. I immediately ran out towards the scene of action & had just got to the East end of the Court house [the Town House] which makes the front of King Street, when I heard the discharge of six or seven musquetts.

I ran with many others towards the place, where I was witness to one of the most shocking scenes that ever was exhibited in a Christian Country. Three unhappy victims lay weltering in their gore; two others mortally wounded, & six others dangerously.

This inhuman piece of barbarity was perpetrated by a party of eight men under the command of one Capt. Thos. Preston of the 29th Regiment. All the bells in Town were immediately rung. The inhabitants gather’d. Some in attempting to remove the dead & wounded were threaten’d & wounded by the soldiers.

The Governor [Thomas Hutchinson] met his Council the same night, & he requested the people to disperse and promis’d they should have justice done them. They very justly urg’d to His Honor that the course of justice had been always hitherto evaded or obstructed in favor of the soldiery, and they were determin’d not to disperse till Capt. Preston was committed. Accordingly at three o’clock in the morning he was taken into custody & committed.

This is the transcription published by the Massachusetts Historical Society in 1863. The letter is now at Harvard’s Houghton Library, and Taylor Stoermer shared a slightly different, probably more accurate transcription of part of the letter here.

TOMORROW: Palfrey on the morning after.

Meeting George Washington’s Indispensable Men

Back when I was researching Gen. George Washington’s life and work in Cambridge for the National Park Service, one of the books I drew on heavily was Arthur S. Lefkowitz’s George Washington’s Indispensable Men.

This is a study of the commander’s military secretaries and aides de camp throughout the Revolutionary War. It starts with a useful definition of its subject because descendants and local histories seem to have named almost any officer who was ever in a council with Washington as an aide. Lefkowitz focused on the men whom Washington officially appointed in his daily orders. Then he added Caleb Gibbs of the headquarters guard and Martha Washington, both of whom can be identified as helping with the headquarters paperwork.

And that paperwork is a major theme of the book. Early on Washington learned that he didn’t need young men to dash messages around battlefields.  (See George Baylor.) Instead, he needed penmen to help keep up with a vast correspondence directing an army spread out over thirteen governments. Washington quickly came to prefer professional men: lawyers (e.g., Robert Hanson Harrison), experienced merchants (William Palfrey), and even doctors (James McHenry).

One result of that preference is that it’s a mistake to think of Washington’s most famous aide, Alexander Hamilton, as a typical staff officer. He was younger and less established than most of his colleagues. Each of those men gets a thorough biographical profile in this book as Lefkowitz moves through the war, discussing how the work at headquarters developed in response to changing needs.

And speaking of Hamilton, I got to meet Arthur Lefkowitz last year. I suggested that Hamilton’s new Broadway hotness might help the book. He took that message back to folks at the publisher, Stackpole, and I’m pleased to report that George Washington’s Indispensable Men is now coming out in paperback—with the new subtitle Alexander Hamilton, Tench Tilghman, and the Aides-De-Camp Who Helped Win American Independence. I recommend it for anyone wanting to know about how Gen. Washington learned to manage the war.

Washington Asks Lee for an Aide

In February 1776, Gen. George Washington was desperate enough for an aide de camp with the right skills that he asked Gen. Charles Lee to send him one. Specifically, he wanted William Palfrey (1741-1780, shown here), one of Lee’s aides in New York. Palfrey had worked for John Hancock before the war and was well respected by the Boston Whigs.

At that time, Washington was keeping the job of his military secretary open for Joseph Reed to return to it—which Reed never did. Aide de camp Robert Hanson Harrison was doing the secretary’s job, mustermaster general Stephen Moylan was helping out, but aide de camp George Baylor wasn’t much help at all when it came to office work.

On 10 February, Washington explained the situation to Lee in a letter:

It is unnecessary for me to observe to you, the multiplicity of business I am Involved In—the number of Letters, Orders, & Instruction’s I have to write—with many other matters which call loudly for Aids that are ready Pen-men—I have long waited in exasperation of Colo. Reeds return, but now despair of it. [Edmund] Randolph who was also ready at his Pen, leaves me little room to expect him [back from Virginia]; my business in short, will not allow me to wait, as I have none but Mr. Harrison (for Mr. Moylan must be call’d of to attend his duty as Commissary of Musters) who can afford me much assistance in that way, and he, in case Colo. Reed should not return, has the promise of succeeding him.

Now the Intention of this preamble is to know, whether, if Mr Palfrey (who from what I have seen and heard, is ready at his Pen) should Incline to come into my Family, for I have never directly or indirectly intimated the matter to him, although he has been very warmly recommended to me by some of his Friends for any thing that might cast up, you would consent to it—He would be of Singular use to me on another Acct also, and that is, the universal acquaintance he has with the People & characters of this Government [i.e., Massachusetts], with whom I have so much business to Transact.

Mr Baylor is as good, and as obliging a young Man as any in the World, and so far as he can be Serviceable in Riding, & delivering verbal Orders as useful; but the duties of an Aid de Camp at Head Quarters cannot be properly discharged by any but Pen-men—Mr [Anthony Walton] White in case of vacancy expected to be provided for in my Family, but as I believe he would be just such another as Baylor I must however disappointed he is be excused. Business multiplies so fast upon my hands that I am confined almost intirely to the House, and should be more so, if I am depriv[e]d of that assistanc[e] which is necessary to divide, & take of part of the trouble from my own Shoulders.

Lee would have had to invoke a military emergency to resist such a clear request by his superior and stand in the way of a promotion for Palfrey. At the time there was much more action in Boston than in New York. So Lee cheerfully sent Palfrey north, thus saving Washington’s headquarters from the return of Anthony Walton White.

In 2005 Sotheby’s sold this letter for $36,000.

TOMORROW: How Washington managed to divest himself of George Baylor.

Henry Knox: “I beg some directions about your tea”

People writing about Henry Knox after the Revolutionary War said that he was always an ardent Whig. However, in sources from the early 1770s, his political views aren’t so pointed. There’s no evidence he was involved in any of the Whigs’ political organizations, such as the North End and South End Caucuses. He wasn’t on town committees. Attorneys on both sides of the Boston Massacre trials called him to testify.

Of course, Knox was still only in his early twenties, and thus not in line for political leadership yet. But he’s also not linked to the Boston Tea Party, a rare distinction for a Boston Patriot of his age.

Knox did have a significant encounter with the tea trade, which had major political implications after 1773. On 28 July 1774, New York printer James Rivington (shown above, from the collections of the New-York Historical Society) told him that he’d sent four chests of Hyson tea for Knox to sell on consignment. That tea had been landed without any duties paid, Rivington added, meaning both that it was illegal and that selling it wouldn’t mean paying the tea tax. (That letter was published by the Massachusetts Historical Society in 1928 and is now in the collection of the Gilder-Lehrman Institute.) On 15 August, Rivington wrote that more tea was on its way.

Knox’s earliest biographer, Francis S. Drake, wrote of this episode: “Knox declined the commission, and in September Rivington orders its delivery to a Mr. Palfrey.” (William Palfrey was a business associate of John Hancock.) Later Knox biographers—Noah Brooks, North Callahan, and Mark Puls—similarly wrote that the young bookseller refused to sell the tea, presenting that as evidence of his steadfast support for Whig political platform.

However, Cyrus Eaton printed Knox’s letters on the subject in his 1865 History of Thomaston,…Maine, and they present Knox’s reluctance as based on business, not politics. They also show that he kept trying to sell that tea discreetly for months.

On 4 August, Knox told Rivington:

I received yours of the 28th of July, and am much obliged to you for your kind recommendation of the Officers of the 23d [Regiment], but am extremely sorry for your mistake in consigning Hyson Tea to this place. I have conversed with the first tea dealers in town, who say this is the dullest time for it they ever knew, and that 100 lbs. would supply the probable demand for a twelvemonth.

The person who informed you about the price is also mistaken, as my informers say they would be very glad to take $3 per pound for theirs which is exceedingly good. Souchong tea would have answered much better than Hyson—but as they are both entirely out of my way I should be well pleased to have nothing to do with them. If by any good Fortune the ship should be detained till this arrives, by all means take it out.

The Gentlemen of the army and navy brought their Tea with them, as they were informed it was not to be had here; and a report of its being scarce has occasioned great quantities to be poured in from the neighboring seaports.

Two weeks later, Knox wrote again about the difficulty of selling tea. He never refused the business on political grounds. On 29 September, Rivington did tell Knox to deliver the tea to Palfrey, but on 15 October he was still asking the bookseller “to get as much above twenty shillings for the Tea as you possibly can.”

As late as 6 Feb 1775, Knox reported to Rivington:

I beg some directions about your tea. I have tried every person in this town who usually deals in it, but have not been able to succeed. One chest I sold to my particular friends at the rate of 12s. sterling per pound, but have not been able to sell one ounce to any other persons. Pray give me your speedy commands about it. As the Provincial and Continental Congresses have determined to suspend the use of it after the first of March, it will be too great a risque for me to vend any of it after that time, altho’ I should be glad to do every thing in my power to serve you.

Knox was eager to adhere to the Patriot boycotts, and his other letters of the time expressed opposition about the Boston Port Bill. But the tone of Knox’s pre-war letters was far from radical, and he seemed more concerned with business than with politics.

COMING UP: Knox’s marital politics.

“Making Fine Music to My Ear”?

Yesterday I quoted a January 1776 letter from William Palfrey about his modified Anglican service in Christ Church, Cambridge. On 30 Dec 1875, the Boston Daily Advertiser published another account of that event, quoting what the newspaper’s editors understood was the transcription of a letter that Lydia Biddle had written on 1 Jan 1776.

It described the service at Christ Church in detail, with particular attention to the music:

Unfortunately, the organ could not be used; some of the leaden pipes had been taken out to furnish ammunition for our men at the fight in Charlestown last June, and it was quite out of order, but a bass viol and clarionet, played by some musical soldiers, led the singing, which was very good, the strong voices of the many men who thronged the church making fine music to my ear; and when part of Psalm cxviii. and a verse from the cxix. was rolled out, I saw some tearful eyes…

As soon as this letter appeared, people wrote to the newspaper to express doubts about its authenticity.

The letter was addressed “To Mrs. Sarah Morris Mifflin,” wife of Continental Army quartermaster general Thomas Mifflin, at Philadelphia. (The couple appears above in a pre-war portrait by John Singleton Copley.) Right away that made me dubious for two reasons:

• That woman was known during her married life as “Sarah Mifflin.” Not until the nineteenth century did it become common to preserve a married woman’s maiden name as her middle name.
• Sarah Mifflin was actually in Cambridge with her husband over the winter of 1775-76.

And back in 1876, Boston newspaper readers offered other reasons for skepticism.

There was still no definite information about the source of the letter, however. The Cambridge historian Samuel F. Batchelder spent some time around the turn of the century trying to solve the mystery. In a 10 May 1905 letter, he wrote (with a little pique) about having just learned that it had been composed by a local lady named Isabella James—his own aunt.

James also contributed a nonfiction article to the Cambridge of 1776 volume that included Mary Williams Greeley’s “Diary of Dorothy Dudley”—another literary attempt to recreate life in Cambridge during the Revolutionary War. And, just like the Dudley diary, James’s fiction continues to be quoted as a reliable source, particularly by historians of music. But, alas, our only source on the New Year’s service in Cambridge’s Christ Church is Palfrey’s letter.

TOMORROW: An authentic look at Christ Church from about 1781.

Capt. William Palfrey: “What think you of my turning parson?”

On 2 Jan 1776, Capt. William Palfrey, an aide-de-camp to Gen. Charles Lee, wrote to his wife about an unusual ceremony:

What think you of my turning parson? I yesterday, at the request of Mrs. [Martha] Washington [shown here], performed divine service at the church at Cambridge. There was present the General and lady, Mrs. [Elizabeth] Gates, Mrs. [Eleanor] Custis, and a number of others, and they were pleased to compliment me on my performance. I made a form of prayer, instead of the prayer for the King, which was much approved. I gave it to Mrs. Washington, at her desire, and did not keep a copy, but will get one and send it you.

The reference to the “church at Cambridge” instead of a meetinghouse, and to a proscribed prayer for the king mean that Palfrey had presided over a service in Christ Church. As an Anglican, Martha Washington probably felt more at home in that house of worship than in Cambridge’s Congregationalist meeting.

A mid-1800s minister and chronicler of Christ Church, the Rev. Nicholas Hoppin, examined this document and concluded:

The letter is dated Tuesday evening, 11 o’clock, 2d January, which would make the service to have been held the day before, i.e. Monday, New Year’s Day; but it bears some marks of having been written or sketched on Monday, and copied on Tuesday. The word “Last” stands erased before the portion quoted above: so that the service was probably on Sunday, the last day of the year 1775.

Palfrey’s new “form of prayer” offered a transition from the Book of Common Prayer’s standard plea for the king’s welfare to one that asked God to “Open his eyes and enlighten his understanding, that he may pursue the true interest of the people over whom thou, in thy providence, hast placed him.”

Palfrey also added a prayer “to bless the Continental Congress,” and to

Be with thy servant, the Commander-in-chief of the American forces. Afford him thy presence in all his undertakings; strengthen him, that he may vanquish and overcome all his enemies; and grant that we may, in thy due time, be restored to the enjoyment of those inestimable blessings we have been deprived of by the devices of cruel and bloodthirsty men, for the sake of thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord.

This prayer reflected how American feelings of allegiance to the British king were waning, while still stopping short of a total break from royal authority.

TOMORROW: Was there music at that ceremony?