London had been gossiping for weeks about who had supplied Boston with the Whatley letters. Franklin had managed to keep clear of the speculation. But in December William Whatley accused John Temple, a former customs commissioner, of stealing his father’s letters, and the two men fought an inept duel. On Christmas Day, 1773, Franklin felt obliged to acknowledge his role. A month later he was called before the Privy Council, which was meeting to consider the demand from the Massachusetts House that Thomas Hutchinson and Andrew Oliver be removed from office.
For the occasion, Franklin appeared in an old-fashioned full wig and wearing his best suit of figured velvet. The man who would be questioning him, Solicitor General Alexander Wedderburn, was no friend of America. He had once glanced through a copy of Samuel Adams’ pamphlet on the rights of the colonies. “It told them of a hundred rights of which they had never heard before,” he said, “and a hundred grievances which they had never before felt.” Wedderburn had once caused a scandal in Edinburgh by abusing a judge in open court, and the British officials who packed the hall were primed for a similar performance.
With Franklin standing before him, Wedderburn began by praising Governor Hutchinson as a distinguished jurist and a scholar of proved integrity. Now, he said, the governor was the victim of thieves who had stolen his private letters in an attempt to ruin him. And the reason was clear—it was because Hutchinson had put a stop to the scheme of Dr. Franklin’s clients to inflame their own colony and then the other twelve. That was their true motive for seeking Hutchinson’s removal.
Wedderburn then turned to the letters. “Nothing then will acquit Dr. Franklin of the charge of obtaining them by fraudulent or corrupt means, for the most malignant of purposes,” he declared as the galleries burst into applause.
Franklin had decided ahead of time on his strategy. Although he was sixty-eight years old, he would stand impassively during the entire tirade, which was running on for almost an hour. Whatever the provocation, he would not change his expression.
Wedderburn went on to say that it was Franklin, not Hutchinson, who should be stripped of his office. “I hope, my lords,” he added, “you will mark and brand this man for the honor of this country, of Europe and of mankind.” From this time on, men would hide their papers from Franklin and lock up their desks. Henceforth men would consider it libelous to be called “a man of letters.”
As he endured the insults, Franklin was baffled. Why hadn’t the Ministry seen the advantage of blaming Hutchinson and his allies for the frictions of the last decade? Then Britain could have changed her policy with no loss of dignity and could have restored harmony with America. Instead, Wedderburn chose to pillory him.
In its ruling, the Privy Council held that Thomas Hutchinson’s letters were not at all reprehensible and called the petition for his removal scandalous. As Wedderburn greeted his admirers in the Council’s anteroom, Franklin went home alone. The next day he received a letter telling him he had been dismissed as deputy postmaster general for America. He also heard that William Whatley was suing him to collect any profits from the edition of letters the patriots had printed and sold. At first Franklin thought of sailing for home, but friends persuaded him he still had a role to play in London. His position was hazardous, but he decided that the worst thing that could befall him was prison.
All the same, Franklin added, he preferred to avoid that eventuality. Prison was expensive and vexing and dangerous to one’s health.
Port Act
1774
WHEN Lieutenant General Thomas Gage traveled to London to explain the Americans to Lord North, he could draw upon his experience with the New Jersey woman he had married. The colonists would be lions, he said, as long as the British went on being lambs. But if Britain took resolute measures, the Americans would prove very weak. Send four regiments to Boston; that should end the problem. Although he had just come from America, General Gage said he was ready to turn around and direct those regiments himself.
New Yorkers might have found his belligerence out of character. To them, Gage had seemed distinguished for having a viscount as his father, for his patience, and for the dull conversation at his table. Some who knew them both thought Gage bore a striking resemblance to Samuel Adams, except that he lacked Adams’ firmness. But his show of militancy was not altogether new. He had tried to force Francis Bernard to request British troops in 1768, and at least two years before that he had recommended that Boston be subdued by having two regiments stationed there.
Lord North sized up Gage as honest and determined, and George III, who hated disagreements, concurred. Fourteen years after ascending to the throne, George had turned out to be even more obstinate than Charles Townshend had predicted. Now, in Lord North and Thomas Gage, he had a pliant prime minister and a general who was telling him what he wanted to hear.
As a result, Solicitor General Wedderburn and Attorney General Thurlow drew up a bill to punish Boston properly. Rumors arose that Lord Dartmouth opposed it. Certainly Pitt, Lord Chatham, did. He called the measure wicked and cruel. Even North was said to have some doubts. But in London the anger over the deliberate insult to England in dumping the tea pushed the bill toward victory. In mid-March 1774 Lord North introduced it in Parliament, and several days later he rose to defend it. The bill, called the Port Act, would transfer the Boston customs office to Plymouth. From that day forward, no vessel would be permitted to enter Boston Harbor. Only boats carrying fuel or supplies for the town would be admitted, and even those would have to stop for inspection at Marblehead. The province’s government would be moved to Salem. Boston as a great port and political center would be destroyed.
One member of Commons warned that only armed strength could enforce such oppressive acts.
“If a military force is necessary,” North replied, “I shall not hesitate for a moment to enforce a due obedience to the laws of this country.” The bill did not provide for lifting the penalties if Bostonians agreed to pay the East India Company for its tea. As North explained, “Obedience, not indemnification, will be the test of the Bostonians.”
For all his resolve, North’s was a temperate voice during the debate. One member of Parliament said that the town of Boston ought to be knocked about the ears and destroyed. Isaac Barré, who had named the Sons of Liberty, now supported Lord North, although members laughed when he exclaimed, “Boston ought to be punished. She is your eldest son!”
William Bollan, representing Massachusetts, asked to speak, but the House voted 170 to 40 against hearing him. Lord North said it would only mean listening to the colonies deny again that Parliament had the right to tax them. There was no enthusiasm, either, for one member’s advice that it was time to give up the colonies altogether because they were becoming more a burden than an asset. North’s opposition didn’t even press for a formal vote. Edward Gibbon, working on his book about the collapse of ancient Rome, was one member who supported North. He wrote to a friend that the Port Act had passed unanimously because it seemed so mild. From the throne, George III jeered at the opposition’s weakness, although he understood the stakes. “The die is now cast,” the king told North. “The colonies must either submit or triumph.”
—
The London merchants who traded with Boston remained convinced that the town would pay for the ruined tea. Forming a committee, they met with Lord North to guarantee the East India Company sixteen thousand pounds sterling—six or seven thousand pounds above the tea’s value—if North would give them six months to negotiate with Boston before he closed the port. North asked whether they would answer for Boston’s behavior if more tea was shipped there. The merchants knew better than that; on March 7 another load of tea had arrived in Boston and had been dumped almost casually into the sea. Lord North advised the merchants to return to their countinghouses and leave politics to him.
Their ease in passing the Port Act emboldened North’s ministers to propose changes in the Massachusetts charter that Francis Bernard had once urged. One new b
ill would allow the king to name the governor’s Council, rather than letting the colony’s House select its members. The governor would be given sole power to appoint sheriffs and judges in the lower courts. In the greatest swipe at the patriots, each community would be limited to one Town Meeting a year and then only to elect its municipal officers. Whenever Samuel Adams wanted to call a special meeting, he would have to get the governor’s permission. That last change reflected the ministers’ ignorance of the realities of Boston. Hutchinson’s attempt to disband a meeting had been hissed down. Lord Dartmouth seemed to understand the situation better than the other ministers, and he supported only the change in naming the Council. The other provisions were enacted over his protest.
The sweep of the new acts shocked those friends of America who hadn’t condoned the Tea Party. Isaac Barré attacked a provision that would prevent the colonies from holding their own trials of government officials in America. He had supported the Port Act, Barré said, only as “a bad way of doing right.” With this bill, he told Parliament, “you are becoming the aggressors.”
On April 9, 1774, Lord Dartmouth instructed Thomas Gage to leave for Boston at once in His Majesty’s ship the Lively, to replace Thomas Hutchinson as governor. The king’s dignity still required a full and absolute submission, Dartmouth said, but once that was given, the colony would regain its full privileges. Gage should use mild and gentle persuasion in winning the people of Boston over to the new laws.
General Gage had lobbied for the job. He arrived in Boston sixteen days before the Port Act would go into effect on June 1. Since no welcoming committee awaited him at the harbor, Gage joined Thomas Hutchinson at Castle William until festivities could be arranged. The Bostonians who might have turned out from courtesy to greet the man who was delivering them from Hutchinson were otherwise occupied. They were attending a Town Meeting, listening to Samuel Adams and the other patriots attack the Port Act. News of its passage had reached Boston four days earlier, and it was being denounced as intolerable.
—
The Tea Party had been a tonic for Samuel Adams, but he expected retribution and had been busy throughout the spring. For the last four years the anniversary of the Boston Massacre had been marked by a major oration in front of a massive crowd. Adams had always chosen the speakers. In 1772, when John Adams was still resisting a more active role in the cause, he had declined the honor. He was thirty-seven, he had told his diary, and too old. That year Joseph Warren had accepted the invitation. In March 1773 it was the other doctor, Benjamin Church. But the Tea Party had made it essential to have the most popular patriot of all, and if that man lacked the fluency of his predecessors Samuel Adams was happy to draft appropriate phrases for him. Adams’ daughter Hannah watched as John Hancock came each day to consult with her father, but she was told she must never mention their collaboration. At 10 A.M. on March 5, 1774, at the Old South, John Hancock had delivered Samuel Adams’ speech.
Throughout the month of March, Thomas Hutchinson’s future had continued in limbo. In February he had booked passage on one of the large ships headed for London. Hutchinson intended to negotiate with the Ministry for a substantial pension and then sail back to America as a private citizen and devote himself to his history of Massachusetts. His children would stay behind to look after the trade that he considered an inheritance for his sons and a dowry for Peggy, who was now twenty-one. But when Peggy wouldn’t hear of his making the trip alone, Hutchinson relented and booked a place for her.
On March 3, Hutchinson’s lieutenant governor, brother-in-law and dearest friend, Andrew Oliver, had died from a bilious attack, and his death put an end to Hutchinson’s travel plans. He couldn’t leave the province with no lieutenant to take command. Nor could he expect any widespread mourning in Massachusetts over Oliver’s death. Instead, the Boston mob had followed Oliver’s hearse and had given three cheers when the onetime stamp master was lowered into his grave. At the burial grounds, men were overheard saying that they would like to put on that same show for their governor.
General Gage’s arrival in May meant that Hutchinson could finally board the Minerva on the morning of June 1, 1774, the day the Port Act took effect in Boston. Just before his departure, dozens of merchants, lawyers, Episcopal clergymen and neighbors from Milton bestowed warm and affectionate tributes on him. Samuel Adams said that the testimonials came from obscure and insignificant people, mere law clerks, but that parting shot couldn’t dull Hutchinson’s pleasure at the outpouring of goodwill. Elisha Hutchinson had also insisted on going to England with his father and his sister, even though making the journey meant leaving his pregnant wife at home. It turned out to be a wise decision, since the passage was short but unusually rough and both Thomas Hutchinson and Peggy were continually seasick. They had barely landed, traveled from Dover to London and notified the Ministry of their arrival when Hutchinson received a note from Lord Dartmouth asking him to call that same afternoon.
At 1 P.M. on July 1, the two men met for the first time. After they had talked for an hour, Dartmouth suggested that the governor meet the king. Hutchinson protested that he was still weak from the voyage and not dressed for court. Dartmouth insisted. The king wouldn’t be having another reception for some days. But after Hutchinson agreed to go, Dartmouth then took so long over his own toilette that the public audience had ended by the time they reached St. James’s Palace.
All the same, Hutchinson was admitted to the royal presence. In the privacy of his chambers, the king—contrary to custom, Thomas Hutchinson noted happily—permitted his American visitor the privilege of kissing his hand. From his first question, George III was extremely amiable. “How do you, Mr. Hutchinson, after your voyage?”
“Much reduced, sir, by seasickness,” Hutchinson replied. “And unfit, upon that account, as well as my New England dress, to appear before Your Majesty.”
Dartmouth explained that since Hutchinson had just come ashore, he had assured him that his appearance would give no offense. The king graciously agreed.
George asked how the people had responded to Parliament’s recent acts. Hutchinson explained that when he sailed he had known only about the shutting of the port and that had been extremely alarming to the people.
Dartmouth told the king that Governor Hutchinson had received a paper praising his conduct from merchants, clergy and lawyers. He showed it to George.
“I do not see how it could be otherwise,” the king said. “I am sure his conduct has been universally approved of here by people of all parties.”
Hutchinson said, “I am very happy in Your Majesty’s favorable opinion of it.”
“I am entirely satisfied with it,” said the king. “I am well acquainted with the difficulties you have encountered and with the abuse and injury offered you. Nothing could be more cruel than the treatment you met with in betraying your private letters.”
Hutchinson assured the king that in his letters he had tried to avoid dealing in personalities.
George asked, “Could you ever find, Mr. Hutchinson, how those letters came to New England?”
“Dr. Franklin, may it please Your Majesty, has made a public declaration that he sent them,” Hutchinson replied. Speaker Cushing said he had shown them to only six people.
“Did he tell you who were the persons?” the king asked.
“Yes, sir.” Hutchinson named the six but added that Cushing’s list did not include the two Mr. Adamses.
“I have heard of one Mr. Adams,” the king said. “But who is the other?”
“He is a lawyer, sir.” Hutchinson could have volunteered much more about John Adams.
“Brother to the other?”
“No, sir, a relation.” Hutchinson explained that John Adams had been a member of the House but was not currently, that he had been elected to the Council but had been refused a seat by the governor.
The king said he thought the episode of the letters had been strange and wondered aloud where Benjamin Franklin might be at the moment.
Then, apparently still musing, the king asked, “In such abuse, Mr. Hutchinson, as you have met with, I suppose there must have been personal malevolence as well as party rage?”
For Hutchinson, the size of his pension could depend on his answer to that innocent question. It was vital that the king appreciate how much he had endured in his service. The upheaval in Massachusetts must not come to look like petty bickering among colonials. “It has been my good fortune, sir,” Hutchinson began cautiously, “to escape any charge against me in my private character.” Then he explained respectfully to George that the attacks had come only over what the king had required him to do.
George did not drop his line of pursuit. “I see they threatened to pitch and feather you.”
Since Hutchinson was there to instruct the king, he would be thorough. “Tar and feather, may it please Your Majesty. But I don’t remember that ever I was threatened with it.”
Lord Dartmouth stepped in to protect the king from seeming to be wrong, since being contradicted could excite George to near-madness.
“What guard had you, Mr. Hutchinson?” the king then inquired.
It was not the time for Hutchinson to tell about his flights to Milton or the armed forces at Castle William. “I depended, sir, on the protection of Heaven. I had no other guard.” He added that he had hoped the mob meant only to intimidate him. “By discovering that I was afraid, I should encourage them to go on.”
“Pray,” George asked, “what does Hancock do now? How will the late affair affect him?”
“I don’t know to what particular affair Your Majesty refers.”
“Oh! A late affair in the city,” the king said vaguely. “His bills are being refused.” He turned to Dartmouth, who this time couldn’t help him.
Hutchinson recalled that there had been a minor flap between Hancock and a London merchant. “Mr. Hancock, sir,” Hutchinson went on, since the king seemed intrigued, “had a very large fortune left to him by his uncle, and I believe his political engagements have taken off his attention from his private affairs.”
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