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XV

THE DAWN OF ACTIVE RESISTANCE

No institution in the life of early Boston played a more important part in promoting the break with the mother-country than the tav­ern.1 The attitude of a man towards England soon came to be known by the public house where he spent his evenings, and from the time of the establishment of the Royal Exchange (1711), which stood on the southwest corner of Exchange and State street, a line of cleav­age between kingsmen and others was faintly to be discerned. When Luke Vardy became landlord here the place took on the colour which has made it famous. It was then the resort of all the young bloods of the town, who, brave in velvet and ruffles, in powdered hair and periwigs, swore by the king and drank deep draughts of life and liquor. This tavern was distinctly the resort of the British officers and many an international romance is connected with the house, — notably that of Susanna Sheafe (eldest daughter of the Deputy), and the dashing Captain Ponsonby Molesworth, whom the maiden saw marching by with his soldiers as she stood in the balcony of the inn. Molesworth was immediately captivated by her beauty and pointing her out to a brother of­ficer exclaimed, "Jove! that girl seals my fate!" She did, very soon after, a clergyman assisting.

The Bunch of Grapes, too, though later as­sociated with many a Revolutionary feast, was, in the early part of the eighteenth century, a favourite resort of the royal representatives. It stood on what is now the west corner of Kilby street, on State street, and hither Gov­ernor William Burnet was enthusiastically es­corted by a large body of citizens upon his arrival in 1728. Governor Pownall, too, fre­quented the house, and there is a pleasant story of a kiss which he once delivered, stand­ing on a chair there. Pownall was a short, corpulent person but a great ladies' man, and it was his habit to salute every woman to whom he was introduced with a sounding smack upon the cheek. One day a tall dame was presented and he requested her to stoop to meet his prof­fered courtesy. "Nay, I'll stoop to no man, not even to your Excellency," exclaimed the lady, with a haughty toss of her head. "Then I'll stoop to you, madam," readily retorted the gallant governor, and springing to a chair be­side her he bent over to do his obeisance.


Governor Pownall

Ere long, however, there came a time when a scarlet coat was an inflammatory signal in the tap-room of this inn. Pownall was rather less to blame for this, though, than any of the governors who had preceded him. Our gallant hero had been in Boston twice before, in the em­ploy of Shirley, before he came to the town as governor (August 3, 1757), and he really had an intelligent idea of the underlying causes of the then smouldering American resentment. To be sure, he stood calmly and firmly for the pre­rogative of the king; but he appears to have divined tendencies, already at work, towards throwing off the yoke of royalty. At his own request, he was recalled, after a short term of service, and it so happened that from 1768­-1780 he was a member of Parliament. Thus he was able to use, in our behalf, the experi­ence he had gained while here. But his advice and protests were not regarded in England and he lived to see us take a place among the nations in fulfilment; of his own prophecies. After Pownall had sailed back to England (June 3, 1760) Thomas Hutchinson, the lieu­tenant-governor, had a chance to try his hand at the helm. To relieve him there soon came Sir Francis Bernard, who seems to have been, personally, a very delightful gentleman, but who, as the king's representative, had a most unhappy time of it while in Boston. Before his appointment to Massachusetts Bernard had been the successful administrator of affairs in New Jersey and he had high hopes, therefore, of getting on well with the Puritans. Writing to Lord Barrington of the matter he said, "As for the people, I am assured that I may depend upon a quiet and easy administration. I shall have no points of government to dispute about, no schemes of self-interest to pursue. The people are well disposed to live upon good terms with the Governor and with one another; and I hope I may not want to be directed by a junto or supported by a party; and that I shall find there, as I have done here, that plain­-dealing, integrity and disinterestedness make the best system of policy."

This optimistic vision was destined speedily to be dispelled by the facts. Though he was met, near Dedham, on his journey from New Jersey, by a number of gentlemen in "coaches and chariots," the new governor had hardly reached the seat of his province when things began to look blue for him. In his first speech to the Assembly (which came immediately after the fall of Montreal), he maladroitly put his hearers in mind of the blessings they de­rived from their "subjection to Great Britain, without which they could not now have been a free, people; for no other power on earth could have delivered them from the power they had to contend with." Hutchinson, in his nar­rative of this and succeeding events relates that "the Council, in their address, acknowledge that to their relation to Great Britain they owe their present freedom.... The House, without scrupling to make in express words the acknowledgement of their subjec­tion, nevertheless explain the nature of it. They are 'sensible of the blessings derived to the British Colonies from their subjection to Great Britain; and the whole world must be sensible of the blessings derived to Great Brit­ain from the loyalty of the Colonies in gen­eral, and for the efforts of this province in particular; which, for more than a century past, has been wading in blood and laden with the expenses of repelling the common enemy; without which effort Great Britain, at this day, might have had no Colonies to defend.'"


Sir Francis Bernard

The truth was that gratitude to Great Brit­ain was an emotion very remote, just then, from the mind of Boston. For two enactments of long standing, — but which, from disuse, had not hitherto been oppressive, — were now being very unpleasantly brought home to the people. The Navigation Act of Charles II and the Sugar Act of 1733 had been far from ac­ceptable to the New Englanders, but so long as there seemed slight disposition to enforce these statutes nobody minded them much. Then Pitt fell, and there came into power new men who were only creatures of the young king (George III), — and an era of experimen­tation, so far as the colonies was concerned, was immediately inaugurated.

Governor Bernard was especially instructed to see that the decrees of the English Board of Trade in regard to the collection of duties and the restriction of commerce were enforced. He therefore ranged himself with Hutchinson and Charles Paxton when there came a question of assisting customs officers in the execution of their duty. Hutchinson, as it happened, was Chief-justice of the superior court as well as lieutenant-governor, and it was, therefore, within his power to issue what came to be known as the Writs of Assistance, permits by means of which officers could forcibly enter dwelling-houses, stores and warehouses in search of goods which they believed, rightly or wrongly, to be smuggled. Charles Paxton, head of the Boston Custom House, who insti­gated the granting of these writs, was hung in effigy from the Boston Liberty Tree as a sign of the hatred his act inspired in the people. James Otis, on the other hand, a part of whose duty as advocate-general it would have been to support the cause of the customs officers, resigned his position under the Crown and en­gaged himself to argue, for the suffering mer­chants of Boston, against the legality of the writs!


James Otis

Thus there stepped upon the stage of the world's history, for the first time, one of the most brilliant men America has ever produced. The scene of the now-famous trial, in which Otis played so important a part, was the council-chamber of the Old Boston Town House, an imposing and elegant apartment at the east end of the building, ornamented with fine full-­length portraits of Charles II and James II. Hutchinson presided and there were also in attendance four associate judges, wearing great wigs on their heads and rich scarlet robes upon their backs. Thronging the courtroom were the chief citizens and officers of the Crown, all of whom well understood that a mat­ter of enormous importance was to be debated.

Among the young lawyers who were present on that important day was John Adams, a fresh-faced youth who had come up from his home in Braintree to hear what should be said. In his old age he wrote to William Tudor a description of the scene, which brings vividly before us the actors and the parts they took: "Round a great fire were seated five judges, with Lieutenant-Governor Hutchinson at their head as Chief-Justice, all arrayed in their new fresh rich robes of scarlet English broadcloth; in their large cambric bands and immense judi­cial wigs. At a long table were all the barristers-at-law of Boston and of the neighboring county of Middlesex, in gowns, bands and tie­-wigs. They were not seated on ivory chairs, but their dress was more solemn and more pompous than that of the Roman senate, when the Gauls broke in upon them. Two portraits of more than full length of King Charles the Second and of King James the Second, in splendid golden frames were hung up on the most conspicuous sides of the apartment. If my young eyes or old memory have not de­ceived me, these were as fine pictures as I ever saw;... they had been sent over without frames in Governor Pownall's time, but he was no admirer of Charles or James. The pictures were stowed away in a garret among rubbish until Governor Bernard came, who had them cleaned, superbly framed and placed in council for the admiration and imitation of all men, no doubt with the advice and concurrence of Hutchinson and all his nebula of stars and sat­ellites."

The case was opened by Jeremiah Gridley, the king's attorney, who defended the validity of the writs on statute law and English prac­tice. To which Oxenbridge Thacher replied in a strong legal argument which showed that the rule in English courts did not apply to America. Then the Advocate of Freedom began to speak, confounding all his opponents by the splendour of his eloquence.

"Otis," says John Adams, "was a flame of fire. With a plenitude of classical allusions, a depth of research, a rapid summary of his­torical events and dates, a profusion of legal authorities, a prophetic glance of his eye into futurity, and a torrent of impetuous eloquence, he hurried away everything before him!... Every man of a crowded audience appeared to me to go away, as I did, ready to take arms against writs of assistance. Then and there was the first scene of the first act of opposition to the arbitrary claims of Great Britain. Then and there the child Independence was born!"

For Otis had made a passionate appeal on the ground of human rights. He had said that the writs of assistance were instruments of slavery and villainy, and that he was standing there on behalf of English liberties. He de­clared that a man's house was his castle and that this writ destroyed the sacred privilege of domestic privacy. Thus for four hours he poured out a stream of eloquence which, if it did not avail to convince the Court (who ulti­mately sustained the legality of the writs), served admirably to bring home to the Boston people the rank iniquity of taxation without representation. The fight was on!

Governor Bernard did not appreciate this fact, though, and when he opened the legisla­ture, the following autumn, was once more sin­gularly unhappy in his choice of speech-making material. For he now recommended the mem­bers to "give no attention to declamations tending to promote a, suspicion that the civil rights of the people were in danger." Otis had just been elected a member of the body, and it was, of course, recognized that these words were aimed at him. The representatives re­plied to them with scarcely concealed resent­ment. Speedily, too, Governor Bernard found out that he would have to be very circumspect in order to avoid the adverse criticism of this clever lawyer to whom he had thrown down the gauntlet.

In the summer of 1762, during a recess in the sessions of the legislature, Governor Ber­nard, with the approval of the Council, ex­pended a comparatively trifling sum in fitting out a vessel with which to quiet the fears of Boston merchants who wished protection from the French for their fishing-boats off New­foundland. Instantly opponents of the admin­istration remonstrated against his "unwar­ranted outlay." The protest came through a committee of the legislature of which Otis was chairman! In the remonstrance it was said that "no necessity can be sufficient to justify the House of Representatives in giving up such a privilege; for it would be of little con­sequence to the people whether they were sub­ject to George or Lewis, the king of Great Britain or the French king, if both were arbi­trary, as both would be if both could levy taxes without a parliament." When this passage was read out, a member cried "Treason! treason!" in much the same way that it was cried against Patrick Henry, three years later. Yet it was only with considerable difficulty that the governor prevailed upon the House to ex­punge the passage in which the king's name had been so disloyally introduced. Poor Fran­cis Bernard! Well must he have understood, by this time, that Massachusetts was to give him anything but "a quiet and easy admin­istration!"

Yet if his official path was not always smooth, Governor Bernard was made very happy in his home life and in his social intercourse. He had three residences, one in Jamaica Plain, one at "Castle William" and one, of course, in the Province House. His youngest daugh­ter, Julia, who was a baby when the family moved from New Jersey to Massachusetts, afterwards wrote down, for the information of her descendants, her recollections of Boston in her girlhood and the resulting manuscript is freely quoted in "The Bernards of Abington and Nether Winchendon" by Mrs. Napier Higgins. From that delightful work I repro­duce by permission: "During the hot months we resided at the beautiful spot, Castle William [Castle Island], a high hill rising out of the sea in the harbor of Boston, where a residence was always ready for the Governor, a twelve-oared barge always at call to convey him backwards and forwards....

"My first recollections were of the large Government House, with a great number of servants, some black slaves and some white free servants; a peculiar state of intercourse with the inhabitants, everybody coming to us and we going to nobody, a public day once a week, a dinner for gentlemen, and a drawing-­room in the afternoon when all persons of either sex who wished to pay their respects were introduced, various refreshments handed about, and some cards, I can remember. We had a man cook, a black, who afterwards came to England with us. My Father had a country house also a few miles from Boston....

"The cold in winter was intense, but calm and certain; it set in early in November, and continued — a hard frost, the ground covered with snow-till perhaps the end of March, when a rapid spring brought in a very hot sum­mer. During the winter all carriages were taken off the wheels and put upon runners, that is — sledges; and this is the time they choose of all others for long journeys and ex­cursions of pleasure. It was a common thing to say to a friend: 'Yours are bad roads; I'll come and see you as soon as the snow and frost set in.' The travelling is then done with a rapidity and stillness which makes it necessary for the horses to have bells on their heads; and the music, cheerfulness and bustle of a bright winter's day were truly amusing and interesting. Open sledges, with perhaps twenty persons, all gay and merry, going about the country on parties of pleasure, rendered the winter a more animated scene than the hot summers present."

Concerning the house at Jamaica Plain Miss Bernard wrote that it was built chiefly by her father himself and that "there was a consid­erable range of ground, and a small lake [of] about one hundred acres attached to it with a boat on it.... This was called Jamaica Pond. To this residence we generally moved in May, I think, and here we enjoyed ourselves ex­tremely. My Father was always on the wing on account of his situation. He had his own carriage and servants, my mother hers; there was a town coach and a whiskey for the young men to drive about."

Governor Bernard's personal appearance is thus described by his daughter: "My Father, though not tall, had something dignified and distinguished in his manner; he dressed su­perbly on all public occasions." Of her mother she adds that she was tall and that "her dresses were ornamented with gold and silver, ermine and fine American sable." Miss Ber­nard tells us also that her father was musical and sometimes wrote both tune and words for a song he and his friends would after enjoy together. His was the age of toasts and it is interesting to know that the bitterly-hated royal governor originated the following amia­ble sentiment:

"Here's a health to all those that we love,
  Here's a health to all those that love us;
  Here's a health to all those that love them that love those
  That love them that love those that love us."

Events in the mother country were now ta­king place, however, which were bound to make Massachusetts people hate the royal governor, no matter how engaging that functionary might be in his private capacity. Charles Townshend had been made first Lord of Trade in England and secretary of the colonies. He proposed to grasp and execute absolute power of taxation. Whereupon George Grenville came to the front and planned a colonial stamp act designed to pay the expenses of the British army! Nat­urally the colonists protested. Yet it was not so much, now or at any time, unwillingness to pay their part of England's current expenses as unwillingness to help support a government in which they were not represented that we should see in ensuing events. "It was not the taxation of the Stamp Act that alarmed them, but the principle involved in it."

In this "strike" of the Bostonians as in many a strike since there were — unfortu­nately — outbreaks of mob violence as well as calm and effective opposition. And the very men who condemned unlawful measures were credited, just as they often are to-day in sim­ilar circumstances, with "standing for" the particular measure involved. Hutchinson fa­voured neither the Stamp Act nor the Sugar Act. He believed that the government, whose loyal servant he tried faithfully to be, was making a great mistake in instituting such measures in the colonies. But he regarded with the utmost horror what he saw to be a growing tendency towards revolt from the mother­-country. His whole attitude in this matter is expressed in a quotation which he selected as the title-page motto of his "History of the Revolt of the Colonies": "I have nourished children and brought them up and even they have revolted from me" (Isaiah). In other words he was a Loyalist in every drop of his blood.

Nobody, however, except Samuel Adams, looked with favour upon revolt at this stage of the game. What Otis and Franklin desired was Parliamentary representation for the colo­nies. But the redoubtable Adams had for twenty years been thinking along revolutionary lines. When he was graduated from Harvard he had taken for the subject of his master's thesis the question, "Whether it Be lawful to Resist the Supreme Magistrate, if the Com­monwealth Cannot Otherwise Be Preserved?" and from this beginning he had followed a methodical scheme of advance in pursuance of which such men as Otis, John Adams, Dr. Jo­seph Warren and John Hancock were enlisted as his co-workers.

Hutchinson had had the misfortune to re­ceive an office which James Otis had wished given to his father and he never recovered from the idea that all the Otis opposition was based upon personal resentment. Otis, on the other hand, was firmly persuaded that Hutch­inson was a rapacious seeker of power and so failed, on his part, to do justice to a strong and commanding personality glad of much work to do because conscious of ability to do it. That the brilliant young orator had a great principle on his side when he asserted, again and again, that judicial and executive power should not be invested in the same person we of to-day clearly recognize. But Montesquieu's doctrines are now well-established where he was then an author known in America only to Otis and a few choice others. So, though Hutchinson was conscious of no offence in ful­filling at one and the same time the functions of lieutenant-governor, president of the Coun­cil, chief justice and judge of probate, Otis could and did make capital out of his Pooh­-Bah-like personality. The result was that poor Hutchinson, as we shall see, had to pay very dearly for his honours.

The hated Stamp Act received the king's sanction March 22, 1765, and the news of it arrived in Boston on the twenty-sixth of the following May. The act was not to be opera­tive until the following November, however, so the people had five months in which to resent its enaction and plan their modes of resistance. The office of distributor of stamps was accepted by Andrew Oliver; he was promptly hung in effigy from the branches of the Liberty Tree. Later, on that memorable fourteenth of Au­gust, the effigy was burned in view of Mr. Oliver's residence and he himself was set upon by the crowd. The next day he resigned. It began to be seen that there would be no great demand for the stamps. Yet business could not go legally on without them. Vessels could not enter or go out of a harbour without stamped papers, colleges could not grant their degrees, marriages could not be made legal, and newspapers and almanacs would require this "mark of slavery" ere they could cir­culate undisturbed.


The Old State House

While feeling was at fever heat a sermon preached against violence was interpreted by a half-drunken mob, who seem to have heard only rumours of it, as urging people forcibly to resent the Stamp Act. And then there fol­lowed what is, without exception, the most dis­graceful scene in Boston's history, the out­rageous pillaging of an official's house by a mob frenzied with liquor. The story as told by the victim in his Autobiography is not a bit too prejudiced to be reproduced as narra­tive here:

"To Richard Jackson

"BOSTON, Aug. 30, 1765.

"MY DEAR SIR — I came from my house at Milton, the 26th in the morning. After dinner it was whispered in town there would be a mob at night, and that Paxton, Hallowell, the custom-house, and admiralty officers' houses would be attacked; but my friends assured me that the rabble were satisfied with the insult I had received and that I was become rather popular. In the evening, whilst I was at sup­per and my children round me, somebody ran in and said the mob were coming. I directed my children to fly to a secure place and shut up my house as I had done before, intending not to quit it; but my eldest daughter repented her leaving me, hastened back, and protested she would not quit the house unless I did. I couldn't stand against this and withdrew, with her, to a. neighboring house, where I had been but a few minutes before the hellish crew fell upon my house with. the rage of devils and in a moment with axes split down the doors and entered. My son, being in the great entry, heard them cry: 'Damn him, he is upstairs, we'll have him.' Some ran immediately as high as the top of the house, others filled the rooms below and cellars, and others remained without the house to be employed there.

"Messages soon came, one after another to the house where I was, to inform me the mob were coming in pursuit of me, and I was obliged to retire through yards and gardens to a house more remote where I remained until four o'clock by which time one of the best fin­ished houses in the Province had nothing re­maining but the bare walls and floors. Not contented with tearing off all the wainscot and hangings, and splitting the doors to pieces, they beat down the partition walls; and though that alone cost them near two hours they cut down the cupola or lanthorn, and they began to take the slate and boards from the roof, and were prevented only by the approaching daylight from a total demolition of the building. The garden-house was laid flat and all my trees etc broke down to the ground.

"Such ruin was never seen in America. Be­sides my plate and family pictures, household furniture of every kind, my own my children's and servants' apparel, they carried off about £900 in money, and emptied the house of every­thing whatsoever, except a part of the kitchen furniture, not leaving a single book or paper in it, and have scattered and destroyed all the manuscripts and other papers I had been col­lecting for thirty years together, besides a great number of public papers in my custody.

"The evening being warm I had undressed me and put on a, thin camlet surtout over my waistcoat. The next morning, the weather be­ing changed, I had not clothes enough in my possession to defend me from the cold, and was obliged to borrow from my friends. Many articles of clothing and a good deal of my plate have since been picked up in different quarters of the town, but the furniture in general was cut to pieces before it was thrown out of the house, and most of the beds cut open and the feathers thrown out of the windows. The next evening I intended with my children to Milton, but meeting two or three small parties of the ruffians, who I suppose had concealed them­selves in the country, and my coachman hear­ing one of them say, 'There he is!' my daugh­ters were terrified and said they should never be safe, and I was forced to shelter them that night at the Castle.

"The encouragers of the first mob never intended matters should go this length, and the people in general expressed the utmost detes­tation of this unparalleled outrage, and I wish they could be convinced what infinite hazard there is of the most terrible consequence from such demons, when they are let loose in a gov­ernment where there is not constant authority at hand sufficient to suppress them. I am told the government here will make me a compen­sation for my own and my family's loss, which I think cannot be much less than £3000 sterling. I am not sure that they will. If they should not it will be too heavy for me, and I must humbly apply to his majesty in whose service I am a sufferer; but this and a much greater sum would be an insufficient compensation for the constant distress and anxiety of mind I have felt for some time past and must feel for months to come. You cannot conceive the wretched state we are in. Such is the resent­ment of the people against the Stamp Duty, that there can be no dependence upon the Gen­eral Court to take any steps to enforce, or rather advise to the payment of it. On the other hand, such will be the effects of not sub­mitting to it, that all trade must cease, all courts fall, and all authority be at an end...."

The picture made in court, the day following the riot, by the stripped Chief Justice was a very pathetic one if we may trust the Diary of Josiah Quincy. The persecuted king's of­ficer, clad in tattered and insufficient garments, then protested in language which can leave no doubt as to his sincerity, "I call my Maker to witness that I never, in New England or Old, in Great Britain or America, neither directly nor indirectly was aiding assisting or support­ing, — in the least promoting or encouraging, — what is commonly called the Stamp Act; but, on the contrary, did all in my power and strove as much as in me lay to prevent it."

The mob violence visited upon Hutchinson was, of course, abhorred by Adams and by the soberer inhabitants generally. At a meeting held in Faneuil Hall a unanimous vote was passed calling upon the selectmen to suppress such disorders in the future. Hutchinson, how­ever, states grimly that many of the immedi­ate actors in the orgies of the night before were present at this meeting! The Stamp Act itself was, of course, roundly denounced on this occa­sion, notable as one of the first through which this fine old landmark came to be identified with the cause of liberty. The original building given by Peter Faneuil in 1740 to be a market­-house and town-hall had burned in 1761, but the edifice had been rebuilt the following year, and it was, therefore, in the hall substantially as we know it to-day (though the place was enlarged in 1805), that Liberty first found it­self. The beautiful mansion-house of the hall's donor stood On what is now Tremont street, opposite the King's Chapel Burial-ground.

As was to be expected no stamps were sold when November first dawned. The ports were closed, vessels could not sail, business was suspended. The news of all this naturally penetrated speedily to England, where Pitt soon stood up in Parliament and declared that he "rejoiced that America had resisted." In May accordingly there came to Boston news of the Act's repeal and every one was so glad of this tidings that no attention was paid to the Declaratory Act accompanying the revocation, an act of enormous importance, however, in that it maintained the Supremacy of Parlia­ment in all cases whatsoever not only in the matter of taxation but in that of legislation in general. It was in the train of this permissory measure that there followed the first steps of active revolution. For Samuel Adams had now been joined in the Assembly by John Hancock (who, through the death of his uncle, had just come into the largest property in the Province, and was beginning to visit with particular assiduity the daughter of Edmund Quincy, now a blooming girl of nineteen). Confronting these distinguished "patriots," as they soon came to be called, were Bernard, Hutchinson and the Olivers, henceforward widely branded by their enemies as "Tories."


Peter Faneuil's House

From this time on the influence of the chief town in the province grows, day by day, to be more and more important. In a speech deliv­ered in Parliament by Colonel Barré, one of the staunch friends of Massachusetts, the Bostoni­ans were characterized as "Sons of Liberty," and this name was soon adopted by a society comprising about three hundred active patri­ots, many of whom were mechanics and labour­ing men. The public gatherings of the society were held in the open space around the Liberty Tree, and Samuel Adams was the leading spirit of all that went on there and in the private ses­sions of the club. Both he and Otis encouraged the people to celebrations on anniversary days of significance in the development of the Revo­lutionary idea, and at these gatherings and the dinners which followed them Bernard and his colleagues were invariably stigmatized as ca­lumniators of North America and now and then pronounced worthy of "strong halters, firm blocks and sharp axes."


Samuel Adams

The people now saw clearly that they had really gained nothing by the repeal of the Stamp Act inasmuch as this hated measure had only given place to Townshend's Bill, so-called, a measure levying duty on glass, paper, paint­ers' colours and tea. In the excitement fol­lowing the announcement of this bill's passage Governor Bernard returned to England and the duties of his office were assumed by his lieutenant-governor, Hutchinson, — the great-­great-grandson of that strong-minded woman whom Massachusetts had cast out a century and a quarter earlier, and who was himself des­tined to be cast out, also. The manner of his expulsion and the violent scenes of which it was a part belongs properly to the revolution­ary period of Boston's history, however, rather than to this present volume. We may well enough, therefore, close our book with an order sent by Hutchinson to his London tailor for clothes which he very likely had by him and often wore in the troublous times of the Mas­sacre and the Tea-Party:

"October 6, 1769. To Mr. Peter Leitch: I desire to have you send me a blue cloth waistcoat trimmed with the same colour, lined, the skirts and facings with effigeen, and the body linnen to match the last blue cloath I had from you: — two under waistcoats or camisols of warm swansdown, without sleeves, faced with some cheap silk or shagg. A suit of Cloathes full-trimmed, the cloath something like the enclosed only more of a gray mixture, gold button and hole, but little wadding lined with effigeen. I like a wrought or flowered or embroidered bole, something, though not exactly, like the hole upon the cloaths of which the pattern is en­closed; or, if frogs are worn, I think they look well on the coat; but if it be quite irregular I would have neither one nor the other, but such a hole and button as are worn. I know a laced coat is more the mode but this is too gay for me. A pair of worsted breeches to match the colour, and a pair of black velvet breeches and breeches with leather linings. Let them come by the first ship...."

Hutchinson, though fifty-nine, and the head of a contumacious people, evidently had a care to his personal appearance! In other words he possessed the most important qualification of a royal governor in the Brocade Age.

______________________________________

1 For further data on this subject see "Old New England Inns."

THE END.
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