An Empire on the Edge

by Nick Bunker

  5. Public opinion: Tim Blanning, The Pursuit of Glory: Europe, 1648–1815 (London, 2008), pp. 332–35. For a comprehensive account of the political role of newspapers and their use by John Wilkes and his supporters, see another pioneering book by John Brewer, Party Ideology and Popular Politics at the Accession of George III (Cambridge, U.K., 1976), chap. 8. Newspaper circulation and readership: Hannah Barker, Newspapers, Politics, and English Society, 1695–1855 (Harlow, U.K., 2000), pp. 47–48; and Brewer, Party Ideology and Popular Politics, pp. 142–43.

  6. For “a Senate composed,” see speech by John Wilkes at the Guildhall, Oct. 8, 1772, Public Advertiser, Oct. 9, 1772. London politics in 1772–73: George Rudé, Wilkes and Liberty (Oxford, 1962), pp. 168–70; and Reginald R. Sharpe, London and the Kingdom (London, 1895), vol. 3, pp. 130–35. Wilkesite critique of Parliament: John Cannon, Parliamentary Reform, 1640–1832 (Cambridge, U.K., 1973), pp. 64–66.

  7. Hayley served as an MP for London from 1774 to 1781. Despite his importance as an intermediary between the Boston patriots and the Wilkesites in London and as one of the leading merchants trading with America, Hayley’s career remains obscure. For what little is known about his business career, see Katherine A. Kellock, “London Merchants and the Pre-1776 Debts,” Guildhall Studies in London History 1, no. 3 (Oct. 1974), pp. 120, 129. My own research suggests that Hayley probably originated from a Presbyterian family in the Kidderminster and Bewdley area of Worcestershire, an old Presbyterian stronghold, before joining the London mercantile firm run from Aldgate by the Storke family, who had been trading with New England since the late seventeenth century.

  8. On the financial plight of the East India Company, and for the sequence of events between September 1772 and February 1773, see the Secrecy Committee reports, cited above in note 17 of chapter 1; the board minutes of the Bank of England, at the Bank of England Archives, G4/21; and the minutes of the General Court of the East India Company, B/258, pp. 53–103, IOR. For the negotiations with Lord North, see official minute book of the Treasury Board, file T29/42, NAK. Also see Lucy S. Sutherland, East India Company in Eighteenth-Century Politics (Oxford, 1962), chaps. 8 and 9.

  9. September 23 meeting: General Evening Post, Sept. 24, 1772.

  10. For “The damned East India Company,” see Rochford to Gower, Oct. 10, 1772, PRO 30/29/1/14, fol. 667, NAK.

  11. Ownership of the East India Company: Huw Bowen, The Business of Empire: The East India Company and Imperial Britain, 1756–1833 (Cambridge, U.K., 2005), chap. 4, esp. pp. 102–4.

  12. Mrs. Thrale on Colebrooke: Katharine C. Balderston, ed., Thraliana (Oxford, 1942), vol. 1, pp. 333–35. On Colebrooke’s activities in 1771–73: Lucy S. Sutherland, “Sir George Colebrooke’s World Corner in Alum,” in Economic History: A Supplement to the Economic Journal, vol. 3 (1934–37), pp. 236–58; letters to Baron Mure of Caldwell relating to Colebrooke in Selections from the Family Papers Preserved at Caldwell (Maitland Club, Glasgow, 1854), vol. 3; and newspaper reports of his bankruptcy, in the Morning Chronicle, April 3 and April 13, 1773, and the Daily Advertiser, April 8.

  13. George III on the “rapine and ill-conduct” of the East India Company: George III to Lord North, March 9, 1773, in CG3, vol. 2, p. 459.

  14. For “Papers are ordered everyday,” see Burke to Dowdeswell, Oct. 27, 1772: See note 3 above.

  15. November riot: Rudé, Wilkes and Liberty; and Sharpe, London and the Kingdom.

  16. “The Fair Consumer”: His letter appeared in several newspapers, but the earliest publication seems to have been in The Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, Sept. 26, 1772.

  Chapter Seven: WHIGS, WEST INDIANS, AND THOMAS HUTCHINSON

  1. The king’s speech at the opening of Parliament, London Gazette, Nov. 24–28, 1772.

  2. For “poor dumb creature,” see ODNB, life of Rockingham by S. M. Farrell.

  3. Makeup of Parliament : Sir Lewis Namier and John Brooke, ed., The History of Parliament 1754–1790 (London, 1964), General Introduction.

  4. For “I never felt more distress,” see Rockingham to William Dowdeswell, Nov. 17, 1772, file WWM/R/I/1412 (a).

  5. For “Many men of tender feelings,” see Rockingham to Burke, Oct. 28, 1772, in Sutherland, East India Company in Eighteenth-Century Politics, p. 242.

  6. For “spoke incomparably,” see Frederick Montagu to Rockingham, Dec. 8, 1772, WWM/R/I/1416; for “panic struck,” see Dowdeswell to Rockingham, Dec. 20, 1772, WWM/R/I/1419.

  7. For the career of William Crichton, the principal published source is Huw Bowen’s sketch in the ODNB. His business activities can be pieced together from the records of Alexander Houston & Company, MS 8793, foreign letter book, 1776–78, NLS. Also see Vere Langford Oliver, ed., Caribbeana (London, 1912), vol. 2, pp. 236, 349.

  8. Society of West India Merchants: Microfilm of minute books (1769–79), M915, reel 1.1, Special Collections, Senate House Library, University of London.

  9. For “Irascible, intemperate,” see Nathaniel Wraxall, quoted in I. R. Christie, “George Johnstone,” in Namier and Brooke (1964).

  10. Hurricane: London Gazette, Nov. 24–28, 1772; and Oliver, Caribbeana, vol. 2, pp. 322–23.

  11. Robert Herries is another rather elusive character. He can be pursued by way of Jacob M. Price’s France and the Chesapeake (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1973), vol. 1, pp. 620–48; Scots Magazine, June 1773, pp. 292–94; and Sir William Forbes, Memoirs of a Banking House (London, 1860), pp. 29–30. His brother’s tea smuggling: Dermigny, La Chine et l’Occident, vol. 2, p. 643. Scottish connection between the Herries and Johnstone families: C. L. Johnstone, History of the Johnstones (Edinburgh, 1909), pp. 243–44.

  12. Hutchinson’s family: Bernard Bailyn, The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson (Cambridge, Mass., 1974), pp. 11–15, 154–55.

  13. Hutchinson and the Palmers: Biography of Eliakim Palmer, in Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, ed. Clifford K. Shipton (Boston, 1951), vol. 8, pp. 239–45. William Palmer: Burke’s Landed Gentry (1879), vol. 2, pp. 1227–28; and W. R. Powell, ed., A History of the County of Essex (London, 1966), vol. 5, pp. 140–50, with details of Palmer’s country estate at Nazeing Park. William Palmer’s holdings in East India stock can be found in the company’s share register, IOR, L/AG/14/5/18. This also gives his London address in Devonshire Square, where Thomas Hutchinson visited Palmer several times in 1775.

  14. Thomas Hutchinson Jr. to John Wendell of Portsmouth, N.H., Sept. 14, 1769, b. MS Am 1907 (191), Wendell Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University.

  15. Thomas Hutchinson, private letter to Lord Hillsborough, Sept. 10, 1771, Hutchinson Letter Books on microfilm, vol. 27, p. 225, MHS. Altogether, during 1772 and 1773 Hutchinson wrote eleven letters to William Palmer, almost all of them concerned with their dealings in tea.

  To understand the competitive dynamics of the tea trade in America between 1769 and 1772—when, because of the Townshend duty, Americans were boycotting tea imported from England—we need to know why the smugglers enjoyed such a clear advantage. The arithmetic was as follows. Purchased wholesale from the East India Company in London, a pound of Bohea cost about thirty-three pence, including the customs duties already paid by the company. On top of that, the dealer had to pay an excise duty that brought the total to about forty-one pence. If he intended to export the tea to America, he received a rebate of the customs and excise, bringing his cost per pound back down to about twenty-eight pence. However, in Amsterdam, a smuggler could buy the same Bohea more cheaply, at about twenty-four pence, because the Dutch had smaller overheads and lower costs of finance and used larger, more efficient ships to sail to China. So the smuggler from Holland to America had an advantage of four pence per pound, or seven pence when we include the effect of the Townshend duty payable in the colonies on legally imported tea. In other words, American smugglers could afford to undercut the legal traders by as much as 25 percent. Hence the need for Palmer, Hutchinson, and the East India Company to come up with a ploy to close the competitive gap.

  16. Thomas Hutchinson t
o William Palmer, Sept. 11, 1772, Hutchinson Letter Books, vol. 27, pp. 388–89, MHS.

  17. Palmer’s objections: Minutes of the East India Company Committee of Correspondence, Jan. 5–6, 1772, D/27, pp. 195–96, IOR.

  18. East India Company letter to the Hopes: Reply from Hope & Company, Jan. 12, 1773, E/1/57, fols. 21–22, IOR.

  19. Meeting of the General Court of the East India Company, Jan. 7, 1773, B/258, General Court Minute Book, 1770–73, pp. 100–101, IOR; and Craftsman; or, Say’s Weekly Journal, Jan. 16, 1773.

  20. For “pelted at & disavowed,” see Augustus Keppel to the Marquess of Rockingham, March 15, 1773, WWM/R/I/1428.

  21. North’s approval for shipping of surplus tea to America: Note of a conversation between Sulivan and Lord North, Jan. 14, 1773, WWM/R/I/1423(a).

  22. Colebrooke, Retrospection, part 2, pp. 45-47.

  23. Treasury paper on tea sales to America, January 18, 1773: Add. MSS 38398, vol. 209, fols. 1–5, Liverpool Papers, BL.

  24. “All depends upon Circumstances”: BFP, Vol. 20, p.147.

  CHAPTER EIGHT: MASSACHUSETTS ON THE EVE

  1. Samuel Adams to Darius Sessions (deputy governor of Rhode Island), Jan. 2, 1773, in The Writings of Samuel Adams, ed. Harry Alonzo Cushing (New York, 1904–8), vol. 2, p. 398.

  2. These comments about East Germany are based partly on the author’s personal recollections of his visits to Berlin, Weimar, and Leipzig in 1989–90 and partly on David Childs, The Fall of the GDR (Harlow, U.K., 2001), pp. 28–32.

  3. Pownalborough: Richard D. Brown, Revolutionary Politics in Massachusetts: The Boston Committee of Correspondence and the Towns, 1772–1774 (Cambridge, Mass., 1970), p. 106; and James S. Leamon, “Maine in the American Revolution, 1763–1787,” in Maine: The Pine Tree State from Prehistory to the Present, ed. Richard W. Judd et al. (Orono, Maine, 1995), pp. 144–52.

  4. Local government and public opinion in Massachusetts: Benjamin W. Labaree, Colonial Massachusetts: A History (Millwood, N.Y., 1979), esp. chap. 8; and Brown, Revolutionary Politics in Massachusetts.

  5. Topography and appearance of Boston: Thomas Pemberton’s description in Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society 3 (1794), pp. 241–304; Nathaniel B. Shurtleff, A Topographical and Historical Description of Boston (Boston, 1890), esp. pp. 66–70, 77–90; and Annie Haven Thwing, The Crooked and Narrow Streets of the Town of Boston, 1630–1822 (Boston, 1920). For anyone studying the subject, the best place to start is the excellent local history section on the open shelves in the Bates Hall in the Boston Public Library.

  6. Cotton Mather, in his Magnalia Christi Americana of 1702, in The Puritans: A Sourcebook of Their Writings, ed. Perry Miller and Thomas H. Johnson (Mineola, N.Y., 2001), p. 173.

  7. Trade statistics: HM Customs, Accounts of Vessels Entering American Ports, 1772, MS North a.12, Bodleian Library; and Jacob M. Price, “New Time Series for Scotland’s and Britain’s Trade with the Thirteen Colonies and States, 1740 to 1791,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 32, no. 2 (April 1975), pp. 307–25. Social and economic conditions: Richard Archer, As If an Enemy’s Country: The British Occupation of Boston and the Origins of Revolution (Oxford, 2010), pp. 7–9, 21; Allan Kulikoff, “The Progress of Inequality in Revolutionary Boston,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 28, no. 3 (July 1971); and William Pencak and Ralph J. Crandall, “Metropolitan Boston Before the American Revolution: An Urban Interpretation of the Imperial Crisis,” in Proceedings of the Bostonian Society (1977–83), pp. 57–79.

  8. The countryside: Robert A. Gross, The Minutemen and Their World (New York, 1976), chap. 4; and Brian Donahue, The Great Meadow: Farmers and the Land in Colonial Concord (New Haven, Conn., 2004), esp. chap. 8.

  9. Brattle Square: Samuel K. Lothrop, A History of the Church in Brattle Street (Boston, 1851), esp. pp. 20–26, with the manifesto of 1699, and 92–102, concerning its rebuilding in 1772–73. Also see Boston Post-Boy, Feb. 24, 1772, and Massachusetts Gazette, Feb. 27 and Oct. 15, 1772.

  10. Samuel Cooper: Charles W. Akers, The Divine Politician: Samuel Cooper and the American Revolution in Boston (Boston, 1982), pp. 20–22. For more about the flavor of religious thinking in Boston, see Edward M. Griffin, Old Brick: Charles Chauncy of Boston, 1705–1787 (Minneapolis, 1980), esp. pp. 109–25, 172–75, dealing with the cooperation between Chauncy and Cooper.

  11. John Adams on John Hancock: Adams to William Tudor, June 1, 1817, in Works of John Adams, vol. 10, pp. 260–61. The best Hancock biographies are William M. Fowler, The Baron of Beacon Hill (Boston, 1980) and W. T. Baxter, The House of Hancock: Business in Boston, 1724–1775 (Cambridge, Mass., 1945).

  12. Johnny Dupe: Quoted by Shipton, in his strangely hostile biography of Hancock in Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, pp. 422–23.

  13. Hancock the public man: Fowler, Baron of Beacon Hill, p. 143. Hancock, Palfrey, and Wilkes: the William Palfrey Papers in the Houghton Library at Harvard University, and esp. the 1774 inventory of Palfrey’s home, in bMS Am 1704.18 (14), folder 18; and his entertaining journal of his visit to London in 1771, at bMS Am 1704.18 (46).

  14. Hancock’s donation of books: UA III 50.15.30, Gifts of Books Presented by Mr. Hancock, Harvard University Archives.

  15. Decline of Hancock’s business: Hancock letter book (1762–83) on microfilm at the Baker Library of the Harvard Business School, vol. JH-6, pp. 392–420; also, in the Hancock Papers at the Baker Library, letters from London, 1772–74, box 16, folder 5; and in the Palfrey Papers at the Houghton Library, a letter from Hayley & Hopkins, June 25, 1773, at MS Am 1704.3 (93). This period is discussed by Baxter, House of Hancock, pp. 281–82. My quotation comes from the letter book, JH-6, pp. 409 and 411, letter from Hancock to Hayley, Nov. 4, 1772.

  16. Adams, writing as Candidus, in Boston Gazette, Oct. 7, 1771.

  17. The Boston pamphlet: The Votes and Proceedings of the Freeholders and Other Inhabitants of the Town of Boston, in Town Meeting Assembled (Boston, 1772). For the context in which it appeared, see Brown, Revolutionary Politics in Massachusetts, pp. 65–74.

  18. Hutchinson’s reply: Bailyn, Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson, pp. 202–11.

  19. Adams to Lee, April 9, 1773, in Cushing, Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. 3, p. 24.

  Chapter Nine: THE BOSTON TEA PARTY: PRELUDE

  1. George III to Lord North, May 22, 1773, in CG3, vol. 2, p. 491.

  2. The debate on the Tea Act, April 26, 1773: PDNA, vol. 3, pp. 487–92.

  3. Diplomatic situation in 1773: Roberts, “Great Britain and the Swedish Revolution,” pp. 1–46. For a more general account of British foreign policy at the period, see H. M. Scott, “Britain as a European Great Power in the Age of the American Revolution,” in Britain and the American Revolution, ed. H. T. Dickinson (London, 1998), pp. 180–96.

  4. For “If I sail,” see Roberts (1964) p. 40n, and the life of Saunders in ODNB. The navy’s monitoring of the situation at Toulon and the plan to use fireships: Sandwich’s letter of April 24, 1773, to the commanding officer in Gibraltar, Secret Letters, ADM2/1333, fols. 7–8, NAK. Strength of the Royal Navy relative to France and Spain and problems of mobilization: Nicholas Tracy, Navies, Deterrence, and Independence: Britain and Seapower in the 1760s and 1770s (Vancouver, 1988), pp. 31–33, 40–42; and N. A. M. Rodger, The Insatiable Earl (London, 1993), pp. 131–45.

  5. Spithead review: George Marsh, “An Account of the Preparation Made for the Entertainment of the King at Portsmouth in June 1773,” Colburn’s United Service Magazine (1887), pt. 1, pp. 433–49, 517–30; and Annual Register for 1773 (London, 1793), vol. 1, pp. 202–7.

  6. Lord Suffolk: Roberts, “Great Britain and the Swedish Revolution,” p. 40.

  7. British diplomatic isolation: Scott, “Britain as a European Great Power,” and the wide-ranging, provocative analysis by Brendan Simms, Three Victories and a Defeat: The Rise and Fall of the First British Empire, 1714–1783 (London, 2007), chaps. 20 and 21.

  8. Dunmore: ODNB; and DAR, vol. 4.

  9. Smith’s letter: D.1778
.II/592, SCRO.

  10. Dartmouth’s comment to Franklin: Franklin to Cushing, May 4, 1773, in BFP, vol. 20, pp. 200–203. Dartmouth’s “veil of error” letter to Hutchinson: From the Colonial Office, Dec. 9, 1772, in DAR, vol. 5, pp. 238–41.

  11. George III and the Massachusetts petition: BFP, vol. 20, pp. 222–24.

  12. Dartmouth’s letter to Cushing, and Cushing’s August letter in reply: Ibid., pp. 376f–79.

  13. On the role of William Palmer and the other London dealers in the sending of the tea: the evidence from London was transcribed and published in America in the nineteenth century by Francis S. Drake, Tea Leaves: Being a Collection of the Documents Relating to the Shipment of the Tea to the American Colonies in 1773 (Boston, 1884), pp. 189–247. However, the picture only becomes complete with Hutchinson’s letters to William Palmer, Nov. 15 and 16, 1772, Feb. 25, April 21, June 26, and Aug. 7, 1773, Letter Book 27, Hutchinson Letter Books, MHS.

  14. In December—this is hard to believe, but it is true—John Pownall had to write to a Whitehall colleague for confirmation that the Treasury had issued the export license: HMC Dartmouth, 14th report, app. 10, vol. 2 (London, 1895), p. 184.

  15. Franklin to Cushing, Sept. 12, 1773, in BFP, vol. 20, pp. 400–401.

  16. Franklin to Cooper, July 7, 1773, in BFP, vol. 20, pp. 268–71, with other letters of the same date to Cushing and the Massachusetts House of Representatives, pp. 271–86.

  17. Text of the Hutchinson letters: BFP, vol. 20, app., pp. 539–80. Thomas Whately: ODNB, and above, note 13 to chapter 4.

  18. For “a gentleman of character and distinction,” see Bailyn, Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson, pp. 224–38, for a full discussion of the affair. Professor Bailyn makes an excellent case for identifying John Pownall’s brother Thomas, the ex-governor of Massachusetts, as the gentleman in question.