“Those Letters were not the writings he meant”

When William Story told Thomas Hutchinson in the summer of 1772 that he’d seen some problematic “writings” by the governor, he probably didn’t couch that in the form of a threat.

Rather, Story likely used the language of the patronage system, speaking about loyalty and reciprocal favors as he sought a royal appointment.

But Hutchinson certainly took Story’s words as a threat. In October 1773 he wrote to a correspondent in Britain:

One Story who had been in London…sollicited me for a place that was vacant and upon my declining it he let me know by a letter that he hoped he should not be obliged to make publick the substance & purport of some writings of mine he had seen in London & which I should not like to have known.

We have a third-hand source on the two men’s interaction from the Rev. Ezra Stiles of Newport. On 10 June 1773 the minister recorded a conversation he’d just had with Judge Peter Oliver (shown here), close to Hutchinson by both politics and family. Stiles didn’t get Story’s name correct, and he was a sucker for any good story that confirmed his beliefs, so we can’t rely on everything he wrote down. But this is how he understood the situation:

Mr. Storer of Boston suffered in the Stamp Act 1765 and went home for Redress. The Ministry put him off, till he should obtain Governor Hutchinson’s Recommendation, and indeed it was finally referred to the Governor to provide for him some provincial office. It has not been done.

Mr. Storer to have a Rod over &c. procured 18 Letters of Lt. Gov. [Andrew] Oliver and half a dozen of Governor Hutch. to one of the Secretaries of some of the Ministerial Boards in London, as a specimen of their Correspondence for 15 years past urging and recommending the present arbitrary Government over the Colonies. The Governors Hutchinson and Oliver were last year given to understand that Mr. Storer had them in his power by means of a Collection of these Letters, and that the only Condition of not exposing them was his being provided for. The matter was neglected.

Judge Oliver now here once took occasion to ask the Governor whether there was any Danger &c. when the Gov. said he was under no Apprehensions. The Judge says, he himself apprehended both for Governor Hutchinson and especially for his Brother the Lieutenant Governor who was greatly exasperated in the Time of the Stamp Act.—

Stiles wrote that down as the Massachusetts house was tussling with the governor over the letters but hadn’t yet made them public. Stiles had nonetheless heard correctly that that collection contained a letter from “Mr. [George] Rome of Newport Rh. Isld.”

I wrote about how the Massachusetts Whigs dealt with those documents starting here. Later that June, the house did publish the papers it had received. The collection included six letters from Hutchinson, four from Andrew Oliver, and a handful from other men in their circle. All that correspondence had gone to Thomas Whately, a Member of Parliament who died in June 1772, and then been copied and distributed as part of a push to change Massachusetts’s constitution in 1770.

When Gov. Hutchinson heard about these letters, he naturally thought back to his interaction with William Story the year before. At first he believed the man had brought those letters back from London. But on reflection, the governor realized, the timing didn’t work, in two ways:

• First, people in London suspected that the letters had been purloined from Whately’s brother, executor of his estate. Since Whately died a few weeks after Story set sail for Boston, Story couldn’t have carried out such a theft.
• Second, Hutchinson knew that Story had returned a full year before the letters were published. “I cant trace them in this country farther back than the last Spring,” the governor wrote of those documents. He believed there was no way the Boston Whigs could have sat on that evidence for so long without making a fuss, and in that he was definitely correct.

Furthermore, Story himself started to insist that as for “the Letters which were before the Assembly that he never saw them and they were not brot by him to N. E.” At the end of October Hutchinson wrote to Whatley’s brother:

It has been reported that the original letters which had been wrote by the Lt. Gov. & by me to your late worthy brother were bro’t over here by one Mr. Story. I am desired by the Lt. Gov. to acquaint you that altho Mr. Story gave out that he had seen in London writings of mine yet he has affirmd to me those Letters were not the writings he meant & that he knew nothing of the manner in which they came here.

In sum, Story confirmed that he’d tried to pressure Gov. Hutchinson with the content of some embarrassing letters, but he insisted that he meant some other embarrassing letters.

And the details Stiles wrote down support that. The minister understood Story to have procured six letters from Gov. Hutchinson and eighteen from Lt. Gov. Oliver to “one of the Secretaries of some of the Ministerial Boards.” The documents that came over in the spring of 1773 included only four from Oliver, and Whately hadn’t been a board secretary since 1765. That suggests there were at least two sets of supposedly scandalous letters from Hutchinson and Oliver circulating in London in the early 1770s.

It also looks to me like Story might never have brought back documents at all, just knowledge of documents. Only Stiles wrote that Story had “procured” letters; Hutchinson didn’t say that. The Boston Whigs made no additional disclosures from Hutchinson and Oliver’s correspondence before the war began. Maybe what Story had seen in London seemed minor compared to what the house revealed in June 1773. Maybe enough damage had been done. 

Or maybe Story hadn’t seen any letters at all. He might have only heard about the letters to Whately while he was seeking favors in London, came back to Boston, and added incorrect details while he played a weak hand the best he could. 

[My thanks to John W. Tyler, editor of the Hutchinson letters for the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, for some peeks at the governor’s correspondence in late 1773 as he tried to figure out what had happened.]

“The Solicitation and Expectation of such Reward”

I left William Story on his way to London in late 1771 bearing letters of reference from three major political players in Boston—from royal governor Thomas Hutchinson, speaker of the house Thomas Cushing, and house clerk Samuel Adams.

Hutchinson had recommended Story, a former deputy register of the Vice Admiralty Court, to the Secretary of State for the colonies, Lord Hillsborough, and to Sir Francis Bernard, the former governor.

On the other side of the political aisle, Cushing had written a letter to Benjamin Franklin, the house’s agent, and Adams one to Arthur Lee, the house’s alternate agent. Story and Adams had been part of Boston’s political caucus back in the early 1760s.

But then, unbeknownst to Story, Adams had sent a second letter to Lee, warning that since Story might not be trustworthy since he’d also sought a favor from Hutchinson. That could have been a big problem for Story except that Lee viewed Franklin as a rival and never told him about Adams’s warning. 

Story’s patron in Massachusetts, John Temple, was also in London. He’d been a Customs official in Boston but instead of working closely with the royal governors and the other Customs Commissioners he’d allied himself with the local merchants and Whigs, marrying James Bowdoin’s daughter. In late 1770 Temple sailed for London to bolster his position, only to lose his post as Commissioner for being absent. Sometime in 1771, however, Temple secured the position of Surveyor General of Customs in England.  

In sum, everyone was maneuvering around everyone else. In particular, Story and Temple were trying to maintain a foot in both political camps.

Still ignorant of Adams’s suspicions, Franklin happily “introduc’d Mr. Story to a Secretary of the Treasury,” as he told Cushing in a letter on 13 Jan 1772. That connection helped Story with one of his problems: being pressured to pay Massachusetts the value of a worthless note from the late bankrupt Nathaniel Wheelwright, which he had accepted to gratify Temple. 

But Story didn’t just want to escape that debt. Back in 1765, mobs had attacked his house on the same riotous night when they damaged the homes of Hutchinson and Benjamin Hallowell. The Massachusetts legislature had grudgingly recompensed all three men for part of their losses along with Andrew Oliver, attacked earlier. But Hutchinson, Oliver, and Hallowell had also received promotions within the royal bureaucracy. Story, in contrast, had lost his post in the Vice Admiralty Court, possibly for being too close to Temple. 

Now Story wanted “some Appointment in consideration of his Sufferings from the Mob,” in Franklin’s words. Franklin wasn’t optimistic about the chances: “I doubt whether it may be worth his while to attend here the Solicitation and Expectation of such Reward, those Attendances being often drawn out into an inconceivable Length, and the Expence of course enormous.” 

It looks like some officials in London told Story that he had a better chance of landing a royal salary through Hutchinson. So that spring he sailed home. Traveling with him was a Massachusetts-born protégé of Franklin named Edward Bancroft, who made only a short visit in Boston before heading back to London. 

(During the war, Bancroft served as Franklin’s secretary in Paris. But he was really a spy for the British. In 1777, Arthur Lee, by then another American diplomat in Paris, accused Bancroft of corresponding with the enemy. But since by this time no one trusted Lee, Franklin continued to rely on Bancroft. His spying didn’t become public until 1891.) 

After landing in Boston in June 1772, William Story went to Gov. Hutchinson and told him he wanted an appointment, preferably a lucrative one. Hutchinson declined to offer any position. According to the governor, Story then “let me know that he hoped he should not be obliged to make publick the substance…of some writings of mine he had seen in London.” 

As I said, everyone was maneuvering around everyone else.

TOMORROW: Writings from London.

Arthur Lee “in the light of a rival”

Yesterday I quoted two letters from Samuel Adams in 1771, the first recommending William Story to a lobbyist in London and the second warning the same man that Story might be conspiring with Gov. Thomas Hutchinson.

One might think that on receiving those two letters, Arthur Lee (shown here) would have passed on that warning to his fellow agent for Massachusetts interests, Benjamin Franklin. But that’s not how Lee operated.

Back in April 1770, the London merchant Dennis DeBerdt had died, opening up the job of representing the lower house of the Massachusetts General Court to British officials and lawmakers.

(Lord Hillsborough, the Secretary of State, soon took the position that there was no such job, that the legal agent for Massachusetts in London had to be approved by the Council and governor as well. Nevertheless, the house persisted in employing its own lobbyist.)

House speaker Thomas Cushing and most of the other, more moderate Whigs wanted to make Benjamin Franklin the body’s agent. He had represented colonial governments in London for many years, amassing a long list of clients. He thus already knew everyone in London and was the most famous, respected native of Massachusetts in the British Empire. Franklin was trying to present himself as the voice of all the American colonists, and having an official mandate from one of the larger and more oppositional provinces would strengthen that claim.

However, Franklin wasn’t always in tune with the Whigs back in America. He had misjudged how angry the Stamp Act would make people. He had told Parliament that colonists objected only to “internal taxes” and not tariffs, which shaped the design of the Townshend Acts. Franklin was also growing old—in his mid-sixties—and his attention was divided among many colonies.

For those reasons, Samuel Adams, James Otis, Jr., and some other radicals in the house preferred Arthur Lee—younger, more aggressive, firmly opposed to tariffs, and more recently in America. The result in November 1770 was a compromise, with Franklin the official representative but Lee, as the house told Franklin, ”their Agent in case of your Death or Absence from Great Britain.”

Did that make Franklin and Lee colleagues? Not to the younger man. In his letter to Adams on 10 June 1771, Lee accused Franklin of betrayal and explicitly described their relationship as a rivalry:

I have read lately in your papers an assurance from Dr. Franklin that all designs against the charter of the colony are laid aside. This is just what I expected from him; and if it be true, the Dr. is not the dupe but the instrument of Lord Hillsborough’s treachery. . . .

I feel it not a little disagreeable to speak my sentiments of Dr. Franklin, as your generous confidence has placed me in the light of a rival to him. But I am so far from being influenced by selfish motives, that were the service of the colony ten times greater, I would perform it for nothing rather than you and America, at a time like this, should be betrayed by a man, who, it is hardly in the nature of things to suppose, can be faithful to his trust.

Thus, when Lee received Adams’s letter expressing doubt about William Story, he apparently said nothing about it to Franklin. He just let the older man shepherd Story around to royal officials and waited for another opportunity to undermine him.

COMING UP: William Story in London and later.

Samuel Adams’s Two Character References for William Story

When William Story was preparing to sail to London in late 1771, Thomas Cushing wasn’t the only Massachusetts Whig he asked for a letter of reference.

Story also asked Samuel Adams, clerk of the Massachusetts house, to write on his behalf. On 27 September, Adams obliged with a postscript on his regular letter to Arthur Lee, the house’s alternate agent in Britain:

P.S.—The Bearer hereof is William Story Esqr. formerly of this town, but now of Ipswich a Town about 30 Miles East. He was Deputy Register in the Court of Vice Admiralty before & at the time of the Stamp Act & would then have given up the Place as he declared but his Friends advisd him against it—he sufferd the Resentment of the people on the 26 of August 1765, together with Lt. Govr. [Thomas] Hutchinson & others for which he was recompencd by the Genl. Assembly, as he declares in part only.

He tells me that his Design in going home is to settle an Affair of his own relating to the Admiralty Court, in which the Commissioners of the Customs as he says declare it is out of their power to do him Justice. One would think it was never in their Power or Inclination to do any many Justice. Mr. Story has always professd himself a Friend to Liberty for many years past.

I tell him that I make no doubt but you will befriend him as far as shall be in your power in obtaining Justice, in which you will very much oblige,
Samuel Adams

Five days later, however, Adams had second thoughts. That was the same day that Cushing wrote his letter about Story to Benjamin Franklin, quoted yesterday. But Adams had heard something which made him no longer trust Story.

In a second letter to Lee, dated 2 October, Adams said:

I have already written to you by this conveyance, and there mentioned to you Mr. Story, a gentleman to whose care I committed that letter. I have since heard that he has a letter to Lord Hillsborough [the Secretary of State for the colonies] from Gov. Hutchinson, which may possibly recommend him for some place by way of compensation for his joint sufferings with the governor. I do not think it possible for any man to receive his lordship’s favour, without purchasing it by having done or promising to do some kind of jobs.

If Mr. Story should form connexions with administration upon any principles inconsistent with those of a friend to liberty, he will then appear to be a different character from that which I recommended to your friendship. I mention this for your caution, and in confidence.

By this point, Adams viewed any cooperation with Gov. Hutchinson as a sign that a man couldn’t be trusted.

Story probably felt himself well positioned for his meetings in London. He had Gov. Hutchinson’s letter to the Earl of Hillsborough as well as another to Sir Francis Bernard, former governor. But he also had Cushing’s and Adams’s letters to Franklin and Lee on the Whig side. He didn’t realize that his ship carried another letter from Adams canceling out the first.

COMING UP: How’d that work out for him?

When William Story Sailed to London

On 2 Oct 1771, the speaker of the Massachusetts House, Thomas Cushing, wrote a letter to that body’s lobbyist in London, Benjamin Franklin.

Though the letter enclosed some legislative news, Cushing was really writing a reference for the man who would carry it to Britain, William Story. Story is an intriguing character because for several years he worked both sides of the political divide in Boston.

In 1763 John Adams listed Story among the members of the Boston political caucus, along with his cousin Samuel, his great-uncle William Fairfield, host Thomas Dawes, John Ruddock from the North End, and other men.

But Story was also a royal appointee, deputy register of the Vice Admiralty Court. That made him a target on 26 Aug 1765, when an anti–Stamp Act protest blew up into an attack on the homes of officials who had nothing to do with that law, including Lt. Gov. Thomas Hutchinson. And William Story.

Those gentlemen asked the Massachusetts General Court to compensate them for their losses. The legislature did so only reluctantly and partially since most of the money would have gone to Hutchinson. Out of the £136 Story asked for, he received £97. Thus, he had a solid reason to resent the Boston Whigs and the General Court.

On the other hand, Story also had a grievance against the Customs Commissioners, and that was the main reason he crossed the Atlantic in the fall of 1771. Cushing’s letter to Franklin laid out the issue:

This will be handed you by William Storey Esqr. who will deliver you the Votes of the last sessions of the General Court.

He goes home to sollicit for releif from the Difficulty under which he at present labours; Natha. Wheelwright Esqr. during Mr. Storeys being Deputy Register in the Court of Admiralty had a Vessell and Cargo Seized and Condemned in said Court from which judgement he appealed; However the Vessell and Cargo were Sold at Public Auction at which Mr. Wheelwright was a Considerable purchaser.

Sometime in the early 1760s, the Customs service seized Wheelwright’s ship and goods for smuggling and put them up for auction. But Wheelwright himself was top bidder on a lot of the stuff, thus regaining ownership, perhaps at a bargain price. (Not a bargain when compared to getting away with the smuggling, but possibly still low enough to be profitable.)

Furthermore, Wheelwright made this purchase with the support of a top Customs officer:

Mr. [John] Temple the surveyer General, with a View of favouring Mr. Wheelwright as much as possible directed Mr. Storey, as he Informs me, to take Mr. Wheelwrights note of hand, in lieu of the Money, p[er?] amount of such goods as he purchased payable [as] soon as the affair of the appeal was fully determined.

At the time, Bostonians traded Wheelwright’s personal notes like cash, so it didn’t seem like a big risk for Story to accept one as payment. But in January 1765 Wheelwright went suddenly, spectacularly bankrupt, and dragged a considerable swath of Boston society down with him.

After some Time Mr. Wheelwright failed and has never been able to Discharge his Note. The Kings Advocate [Samuel Fitch?] has sued Mr. Storey for the Money. Mr. Storey thinks [torn: it would be unreaso?]nable and unjust to oblidge him to pay it, [torn: when he?] Acted in Consequence of orders received from the Surveyer General.

He has applied to the Commissioners of the Customs here, but as it was a Matter transacted before their appointment they can do nothing about it, he therefore has undertaken this Voyage in order to apply for releif to the Commissioners at home. Any assistance you may afford him by your Advise or thro your Influence with those before whom this matter may lie I shall esteem as a favor.

Temple actually was one of the Customs Commissioners from 1767 to 1771, when he sailed to Britain himself in search of even better prospects. But the other Commissioners hated and distrusted him, so they happily disavowed any promise that he had made to Story a decade before.

I would just mention that Mr. Storey was a Considerable Sufferer in the time of the Stamp Act by having his House and Furniture much Damaged by the Mob, who distroyed most of his Books and Papers amoung which there were some relative to the Seizure above mentioned, and for want of which he is fearfull he shall be a great Sufferer.

He had some Compensation made him by our General Court but as all the rest of the Sufferers at that time excepting Mr. Storey, have been Consider’d and in some way or another Compensated by the Government at home he hopes he shall have the more favourable hearing relative to this Matter.

Story was thus hoping for some cash from the royal government, as well as being shielded from the lawsuit over Wheelwright’s payment. And, even though he was carrying letters from some of Massachusetts’s leading Whigs, Story might have taken a new royal appointment as well.

TOMORROW: Samuel Adams’s doubts.

“It was Impossible to prevent the Letters being made public”

On 14 June 1773, Massachusetts speaker of the house Thomas Cushing wrote a letter to Benjamin Franklin in London. He had a thorny topic to address.

Franklin had sent Cushing a bundle of letters written by royal officials and supporters in New England a few years before. The letters came with strict conditions of secrecy about who could see those documents; Franklin insisted that they not be copied or published.

Cushing stressed how he had really, really tried to keep the letters as secret as Franklin had asked:

I have endeavoured inviolably to keep to your Injunctions with respect to the papers you sent me, I have shewn them only to such Gentlemen as you directed, no one person excepting Dr. [Samuel] Cooper and one of the Committee of Correspondence know from whom they Come or to whom they were sent. I have constantly avoided mentioning your name Upon the Occasion so that it never need be known (if you incline to keep it secret) who they Came from or to whom they were sent and I desire so far as I am Concerned my name may not be mentioned, for as I hold an office in the Government subject to the Governor’s negative, it may be a damage to me.

Notwithstanding all my Care and precaution it is now publicly known that such Letters are here; the Governor [Thomas Hutchinson] suspects they were brought over by Mr. William Storey; Considering the number of Person’s who were to see them (not less than Ten or fifteen) it is astonishing to me they did not get Air before.

When I first received them I was in great doubt whether to Communicate them to one single person or not, for when I considered the number of Persons I was directed to Communicate them to, I apprehended, it would be almost Impossible to Keep them secret, however I considered further that they Contained matters of Importance that very nearly affected the Government, that they were sent as much to the Persons named in your Letter as to my self and consequently that they had as good a right to determine what Improvement was to be made of them.

In 1765 William Story was deputy registrar of the Admiralty Court in Boston. A mob had attacked his house on 26 August, the same night people did much greater damage to Hutchinson‘s mansion. Later his career in the royal government stalled. He had resigned and moved to Ipswich with his second wife.

In 1771 Story sailed for London “to settle an Affair of his own relating to the Admiralty Court, in which the Commissioners of the Customs as he says declare it is out of their power to do him Justice”—which means he had first tried to work through the Customs board and been disappointed.

On that trip Story carried a letter of introduction from Gov. Hutchinson to Lord Hillsborough, Secretary of State, and another from Samuel Adams to Arthur Lee, Virginia-born agent for the Massachusetts house. He was ready to work both sides.

Story didn’t get what he wanted, and he returned to Massachusetts. Evidently Hutchinson thought he might have brought back the sensitive letters. Story hadn’t done that, but he had finally come down on the side of the Whigs. In 1775 Ipswich elected him to the Massachusetts General Court, and he became one of the busiest members of the wartime legislature.

Back to Cushing. The speaker finally got around to the news that back on 3 June he’d broken his promise to Franklin and let the whole house hear the letters read aloud in a stream of 355 words spinning around the subject:

Besides one of the Gentlemen to whom they were to be Communicated had advice of their being sent before they were Communicated to him, if not before their arrival, and it was strongly suspected for some time by his Informer that they were secreted on purpose to preserve the Governor, so that If I had determined it not to be prudent to reveal them under the restrictions I was laid, it would have been out of my power to have prevented it’s being known that such Letters were sent,

however they were kept very secret till the annual Election [of the Council] when it generally got abroad that such Letters were come and as some of the Persons to whom they were sent were members of the Court they thought they were Obliged to mention that they had seen such Original Letters,

this made the rest of the Members very sollicitous to have a sight of them and they talked of moving the House to send for Persons and papers as they said they had a right to such knowledge and Intelligence as very nearly and Essentially affected the public and rather than have any public order about it and by that means let the House have the Entire possession of the Letters,

it was thought adviseable by those to whom they were sent to Communicate them to the House provided they would engage they should not be printed nor Copied in whole or in part and that they Should return them again after a Convenient time when called for, which Engagement the House Entered into and they were read, upon which the House resolved it self into a Committee of the Whole House and after due Consideration the Committee reported to the House that it was their opinion that it was the design and Intention of these Letters to overthrow the Constitution of this Government and to Introduce arbitrary Power within this Province, which report was accepted by the House–101 Members for it, but 5 against it, and then the Letters were Committed to a Committee of nine to Consider what was proper to be done thereupon.

But wait, there was more! At least one copy of all the letters was circulating in Boston. That required more explanation.

While this matter was under Consideration of the House several Vessells arrived from London by Whom, it was reported, that Copies of these very letters were arrived and Wednesday the 9th Instant Mr. [John] Hancock Informed the House that he had received a Number of Letters which were said to be Copies of those that were before the House, and as the House were under some Engagements with respect to the Letters that had been Communicated to them, he moved that the Copies he had received might be Compared with those before the House and if they proved to be true Copies the House might have them and make what use of them they thought proper.

So the house was still keeping the original letters that Franklin had sent under wraps. People were sharing copies of those letters from a source that no one ever named. Copies that for all anyone knew might have been made in London, and not during the months when the originals were being passed around in Massachusetts or the recent days when the legislature was hotly debating them.

This was a great releif to the House as they were under some Difficulty about proceeding upon the other Letters under their present Engagements as they were thereby prevented from taking any Copys of them in whole or in part. What determinations the House will Enter into I cannot at present say, but it is universally apprehended that the G–v–r will never be able to recover the Confidence of this People and that his Usefullness is at an End.

I have done all in my power strictly to Conform to your restrictions, but from the Circumstances above related you must be sinsible it was Impossible to prevent the Letters being made public and therefore hope I shall be free from all Blame respecting this Matter.

The next day, the Massachusetts house officially voted to have “a sufficient Number of printed Copies of the Letters” made. In fact, the printers Edes and Gill had recorded the house’s order for 316 copies of the letters back on 10 June, four days before Cushing wrote to Franklin. In his long explanation he managed not to mention that the letters were already being set in type.

But after all, the speaker might as well have concluded, how could this disclosure in Boston harm Franklin’s career?

“The usual Notice of their intention to plunder & pull down an House”

Eleven days after Andrew Oliver resigned as Massachusetts’s collector of the stamp tax on 15 Aug 1765, the Boston crowd mobilized again.

It looks like the Stamp Act was no longer the main grievance on people’s minds on 26 August. Instead, Bostonians were out to chastise other royal officials for holding back the town’s economy. And, with a wave of personal bankruptcies coming on top of the post-war recession, that economy was hurting.

Back in 1760, the Boston Customs office had been rocked by infighting. On one side was a lazy, lenient, and therefore popular official named Benjamin Barons. On the other were a handful of colleagues who collected confidential testimony about Barons’s cozy relationship with Boston merchants and sent it to London.

In early 1764 a ship’s captain named Briggs Hallowell (1728-1778) returned to Boston with news that he’d seen that testimony, and “that the whole body of merchants had been represented as smugglers.” Of course, many of Boston’s merchants were smugglers, but they didn’t want people talking about it. The town meeting had lodged official protests which went nowhere. But the mobbing of Oliver’s house appeared to have produced results—so maybe, people thought, the same treatment could make other royal appointees back off.

Gov. Francis Bernard’s report on that evening presented the action as preconcerted, not spontaneous—which may reflect his prejudices or be entirely accurate. He wrote:

Towards Evning some boys began to light a bonfire before the Town house, which is an usual signal for a Mob: before it was quite dark a great Company of People gathered together crying liberty & property, which is the usual Notice of their intention to plunder & pull down an House.

Barons’s main rival in the Customs office had been Charles Paxton, known for his courtly manners. He was also the office’s point person on writs of assistance in 1761, and he had reportedly sheltered Oliver on 14 August. Paxton, a lifelong bachelor, rented half of a three-story brick house near Fort Hill, putting his elegant furniture conveniently close to the South End gang’s favorite spot for bonfires. So, the governor said:

They first went to Mr Paxton’s House (who is Marshall of the Court of Admiralty & Surveyor of the Port); & finding before it the owner of the House (Mr Paxton being only a Tenant) He assured them that Mr Paxton had quitted the house with his best effects; that the house was his; that he had never injured them; & finally invited them to go to the Tavern & drink a barrel of punch: the offer was accepted & so that House was saved.

Paxton’s landlord was Thomas Palmer (1743-1820), shown above in later life courtesy of Harvard University. He had only recently come of age and come into that building from his father’s estate. He seems to have been a quiet, studious gentleman (here’s his bookplate), not involved in politics. And he did offer everyone punch.

So the crowd left Paxton’s home alone and moved on. There’s some evidence people might have split up at this point, which could suggest either coordination or the opposite, lack of clear leadership. Some went to the house of William Story near the Town House. Just that day Story had placed a notice in the Boston Gazette protesting that he hadn’t advocated for the Stamp Act or given harmful testimony about the merchants. Still, that didn’t save his house from the mob.

As soon as they had drinked the punch, they went to the house of Mr Story, Registrar deputed of the Admiralty, broke into it & tore it all to pieces; & took out all the books & papers among which were all the records of the Court of Admiralty & carried them to the bonfire & there burnt them. They also lookt about for him with an intention to kill him.

Contrary to the governor’s suggestion of homicidal intent, the crowd probably just wanted to cripple the Vice Admiralty Court that Story helped to maintain. Mobs never targeted him again. In the next few years Story sought higher positions from the Crown, even traveling to London to lobby for an appointment, but got stymied. In the early 1770s he moved to Ipswich, threw in with the Patriot movement, and became one of the busiest members of the Massachusetts General Court in 1775 and 1776.

Another part of the crowd headed to Hanover Street and the house of Briggs Hallowell’s older brother.

From thence they went to Mr [Benjamin] Hallowell’s, Comptroller of the Customs, broke into his house & destroyed & carried off evry thing of Value, with about 30 pounds sterling in cash. This House was lately built by himself & fitted & furnished with great elegance.

Over the next decade Benjamin Hallowell, Jr., vied with Paxton to be the least popular Customs official in Boston. He was mobbed in one way or another about every two years until the war broke out, and then he even got into a fistfight with a Royal Navy admiral.

Gov. Bernard didn’t deign to mention another victim of the mob, but the 26 August crowd also did some damage at the house of Ebenezer Richardson. Those London documents had revealed how Paxton had paid Richardson to ferret out and inform on smugglers in the early 1760s. By the end of the month, Boston’s Overseers of the Poor sent Richardson and his family back to his home town of Woburn, perhaps for their own safety. But he was just as unpopular there for old reasons, and soon returned to Boston to work for the Customs service openly.

Gov. Bernard ended this portion of his report to London, “But the grand Mischief of all was to come.”

TOMORROW: The mob gets to Lt. Gov. Hutchinson’s house.

“Echoes of the Past” Game on 15 Aug.

As I described earlier in the week, the Bostonian Society is helping to commemorate the sestercentennial of Boston’s Stamp Act protests with a reenactment on Saturday, 15 August.

Before that event, from noon to 4:00 P.M., the society is also inviting the public to participate in a live-action game designed to provide extra illumination of that historical event and the people involved.

“Echoes of the Past” is a free “single-day gaming event” that blends live historical characters, puzzle-solving, and mystery to unspool the story of what happened in Boston’s streets 250 years ago. The society explains:

Players of all ages are invited to begin their adventure by picking up a guide booklet at the Old State House admission desk, or at the information cart in Downtown Crossing. With the guidebook in hand (or using a web version on their mobile device) players will hunt for ghosts, or “Echoes of the Past.”

These live costumed interpreters will quickly draw players into the political intrigues of 1765. With riddles, ciphers, secret societies, grudges, and plots, every interaction will entertain and enlighten, and every player’s choices will make their experience unique.

After collecting a stamp for their book from each character in the game, players will discover the game’s thrilling climax at 4:00 P.M. when they join together with an 18th-century mob to participate in a protest march from the site of the Liberty Tree to the hub of colonial power, the Old State House.

This special event grows out of the Bostonian Society’s established “Revolutionary Characters” program, which includes a lot of familiar folks. The person I’d like to discuss the Stamp Act riots with? William Story, one of the Crown officials targeted by the mob on 26 Aug 1765 and a very busy Patriot legislator ten years later.

Colonial Boston Vocabulary: "caucus"

As the U.S. of A. digests the results of the 2008 Iowa caucuses, it seems timely to discuss the term “caucus,” which first surfaced in pre-Revolutionary Boston. The earliest appearance of the word that anyone can find, by about one month, is in John Adams’s diary:

Boston Feby. 1763. This day learned that the Caucas Clubb meets at certain Times in the Garret of Tom Daws, the Adjutant of the Boston Regiment. He has a large House, and he has a moveable Partition in his Garrett, which he takes down and the whole Clubb meets in one Room.

There they smoke tobacco till you cannot see from one End of the Garrett to the other. There they drink Phlip I suppose, and there they choose a Moderator, who puts Questions to the Vote regularly, and select Men, Assessors, Collectors, Wardens, Fire Wards, and Representatives are Regularly chosen before they are chosen in the Town.

Uncle Fairfield, [William] Story, [John] Ruddock, [Samuel] Adams, [William] Cooper, and a rudis indigestaque Moles of others are Members. They send Committees to wait on the Merchants Clubb and to propose, and join, in the Choice of Men and Measures. Captn. [James] Cunningham says they have often solicited him to go to these Caucas, they have assured him Benefit in his Business, &c.

The Latin phrase rudis indigestaque moles means “rude and undigested mass.” It sounds like John Adams might have been a little miffed at not having been let in on the secret of this smoke-filled room before. Of course, at the time he was still living in Braintree.

Thomas Dawes (1731-1809), host of this caucus club, was a Boston builder who was successful enough to eventually be deemed an architect. He was serving as elected coroner at the time of the Boston Massacre, and achieved the rank of colonel in the Massachusetts militia. His son of the same name became a judge in the early republic. Dawes’s nephew William Dawes, Jr., succeeded him as adjutant of the Boston regiment. In 1806 Gilbert Stuart painted Dawes’s portrait, shown above courtesy of Historic New England.

Most of the other men preparing for Boston’s big March 1763 town meeting were office-holders themselves:

• William Story was Deputy Register of the Vice Admiralty Court, and as such became a target of the Stamp Act rioters in 1765. A couple of years later, his career in the royal government stalled. Story moved to Ipswich and sided with the Patriots.
• John Ruddock was a shipyard owner, militia officer, and justice of the peace in the North End. He became a selectman in 1764. Ruddock was also amazingly fat, and died suddenly in 1772.
• Samuel Adams was John’s second cousin, then serving as elected tax collector.
• William Cooper was Boston’s town clerk for decades both before and after the Revolution.

I haven’t identified “Uncle Fairfield,” who was presumably one of John Adams’s uncles. [How’s that for historical detective work?] Capt. Cunningham was another uncle, and Adams often stayed with him while visiting Boston.

TOMORROW: How far back did the Boston caucus go?