Boston was not large by European standards, barely 15,000 souls, but it had the feel of a real city. I quickly settled in. One evening, I was dining at the Green Dragon and happened to speak to a man who mentioned he was reading a book by my old friend Voltaire. I told the man I knew Voltaire having dined at his house and attended his salons. The man shook my hand and engaged me in conversation till late at night. He made me promise to return the next night, introducing himself as a lawyer, John Adams.
I did return the next evening and Mr. Adams was joined by several friends. I was introduced and the questions began about Voltaire and his philosophy. I hesitated, explaining I was no philosophe myself, but they would have nothing else but my answers. I was able to tell them of the questions I had asked of Voltaire and his answers to my questions. I became something of a celebrity among the leading men of Boston.
I could not live my life at the inn however. I found myself in an English Crown colony without any real occupation. In this state, a young man engaged me in conversation one evening. It was known among the men that I had been a tradesman in England. None knew I was a Lord as I did not want that known, there being at this time some tension between the colonists and the Crown. This young man, George Smith, had a burning passion to establish a trading company in Boston but lacked the necessary means to start. He proposed a partnership, him running the business, me providing the start. He was eager and sincere.
Young Smith was currently employed by a firm engaged in trade. I went round and spoke to the manager of the firm, who gave me very good recommendations for Smith’s work and commitment. That evening, I accepted his proposal. I had enough on me to rent a warehouse and hire some rough men for the hard work. I also immediately sent off to England a letter requesting funds be sent immediately.
With this additional money, we were able to establish a first class trading company. I even was able to establish contact with M. Pichette, who was trapping with many men in New York, and provide a regular outlet for their furs to the European markets when George established a branch office in that city. My knowledge of French allowed Smith and Northam to become the largest trader of furs to Europe.
It was during this period that France and Britain once again waged war, a seemingly endless occupation from before the Norman Conquest until the present Eighteenth Century. The French and Indian War was fought in the colonies and resulted in a general militarization of the Americas, with many regulars coming from Europe and the active involvement of the colonists. It was during this war, which extended the influence of the Crown in the Americas, that the colonists learned the arts of war which they would employ so soon for their revolution. It was to pay for this needless war that the Crown would impose so many onerous taxes on the colonies.
My partner became an able smuggler, bringing in molasses to manufacture rum from non-British islands in the Caribbean, though the British were actively seeking to block such trade to collect tariffs on molasses to the colonies. The choice was between smuggling and bribery since no one paid the tariffs. Why 20,000 hogsheads of molasses were used in the distilleries each year to manufacture rum and tariffs were paid on perhaps 600 or so hogsheads of molasses. My partner and I were responsible for many of those 20,000 and none of the 600. The Bostonians were sorely vexed by these attempts to block trade. Perhaps rum was more responsible for the revolution than tea. Young George’s energy and acumen actually grew our company until it was worth more per year than the Barony, though that was some years in the future.
Even in the beginning, I was earning enough from the business that I did not require funds from the estate. I let them accumulate in England, and actually expanded the Barony, purchasing several prime lands bordering it and renting these out. I became respected and admired in Boston for the colonists had little truck with titles but respected accomplishment and enterprise beyond all else.
But what of the ring? Ah, yes, this is the story of the ring. I had little occasion to use it. A neighbor was a woman of some repute, a few years old than I, a Mrs. Chatham, who had lost her sea-faring husband. His ship had sailed for the West Indies to bring sugar and molasses to Boston and none had returned from the voyage. Perhaps the ship had been caught in the great storms which battered those islands. Perhaps the ship had found a reef. No one would ever know.
His loss had left her with little. I, being a Good Christian, offered her some help. Without trying to seem too overbearing, I might bring a goose and ask if she could prepare it as I had no wits in the kitchen, then share it with her and family. I might ask for a pie, leaving a sack of flour, butter and fruits enough for her family. And so I became in some ways, part of the family.
It was then I learned my next lesson of the fair sex. Having once been familiar with a man’s bed, women do not forget the pleasures available. One night, after the children were asleep, she walked me back to my door and followed me in. I found myself led to my bedroom and she expressed her gratitude in a most delightful way. Older women, make grateful lovers and with their experience, pleasant as well. In short, I was well tended in body and soul as I tended to business.
It was some years later that the tensions between the Crown and the colonists began to reach fever pitch. I can say that I was an objective observer, being a Peer of the Crown as a Lord, and a working colonist as a trader, I had feet in both worlds. As such, the Crown, so far away and with pressing concerns on the continent, made several horrible blunders in dealing with the colonies. The Crown desperately needed money to pay off the debt incurred in the French and Indian War and allowed that need to press it into these blunders which on their side of the Atlantic seemed quite reasonable.
Even without those blunders I believe that the colonies were ripe for their revolt. Too many of the leading men of the colonies were steeped in the doctrines of my old teacher, Voltaire and others, like Trenchard and Gordon and their Cato Letters, men of the new thought concerning Man’s Natural Rights. I had never imagined what others would do with the philosophy of Voltaire, he being such a gentle and civilized man, but many in the colonies used them to reach conclusions I found an anathema.
In 1762, I believe it was, a lawyer, James Otis, argued in the King's own court in the colony that the King’s actions in issuing Writs of Assistance, what would be called unlimited search warrants later, were unconstitutional because they deprived a person of their property without the person’s consent. My dear friend, John Adams, had witnessed the trial and told me later at the Green Dragon that, "The child independence was then and there born, every man of an immense crowded audience appeared to me to go away as I did, ready to take arms against writs of assistance." The founding of the new nation was based on the sacred right of persons to be secure in the possession of their own property. Even though my allegiance to the Crown did not waiver, I found myself in sympathy with this position.
Pamphleteers sprang up like weeds in an untended garden, and the Crown’s indifference was much like letting the garden grow wild. One pamphlet, Common Sense, sold 500,000 copies, an unheard of number that meant nearly every house in the colonies possessed a copy. Agitators and lunatics wrote long treatises proclaiming the rights of man. Whereas in the thinkers I had read, these rights were natural, the agitators drew perverse syllogisms that the natural rights of man allowed a man to abrogate his duties to the Crown. Supporters of the Crown published their own pamphlets, a war of paper one might say.
It was about this time that my old friend sent me a new work. I read it gladly. Stunned, I began to see that the calls of the pamphleteers were one and the same with the works of my esteemed teacher. I began to understand why M. Voltaire was disliked by the French nobility and adored by the colonists. They fought the same fight. The call for the rights of man echoed on both side of the Atlantic.
I was now a fixture at the Green Dragon having many years residence and began to converse with especial interest in the thoughts of several of the leading men of Boston who had also read much of the work of Voltaire and an Englishman, Locke. One man, Samuel Adams who would become a bit of a firebrand, lent me a copy of the works of Locke in exchange for my recent works of Voltaire. We had many fruitful conversations on the meaning and import of these ideas. I was drawn into the ferment. I was of two minds on this issue. One, as a servant of the Crown, I had certain duties and responsibilities. Two, as a man, I also had duties, rights, and responsibilities and these seemed to be in conflict. The arguments at the Green Dragon were lively.
In the spring of 1770, the whole atmosphere of the colonies changed. The Crown had again angered colonists by requiring them to house and feed soldiers and officers without recompense for the Crown had more soldiers, owing to the concluded war, than they could pay for in the colonies. In response, the colonists demonstrated against the soldiers causing them some fear.
One day, the angry colonists in Boston grew into a mob, always a bad omen since mobs have many arms and legs and no brain, and harangued a group of soldiers by throwing rocks, sticks, and ice. One soldier was hit and his gun discharged leading to the rest of the soldiers firing in panic into the crowd killing and injuring many.
That night at the Green Dragon, the anger overflowed and turned to madness. One of the members of the group, a fine silversmith, Mr. Revere, agreed to create an etching based on an image of Henry Pelham who had drawn it that very night. This image was widely circulated and hung in houses throughout the colonies giving the impression that the British soldiers were bloodthirsty barbarians gunning down innocents. It certainly inflamed colonists along the entire breadth of the Americas.
Eventually, the soldiers were tried and convicted though not punished severely considering they had killed, and the incident died down, leaving much bad feeling in its wake on both sides. I can say from having lived through it, that from that point on, the colonists of Boston had a hatred and fury towards the crown and its minions, His Majesty’s soldiers, that never waned. The Crown continued to blunder, imposing onerous taxes on tea and other staples on the colonies. Since only Parliament could impose taxes on the Motherland, the Crown had no way to raise monies to pay off its debts than to tax the colonies, a devil’s proposition, for the colonists could see the unequal treatment they received. Let me emphasize one thing lost in the mists of history. The colonists protests were always an appeal to maintain their rights as British citizens. They saw the crown's actions as a breach of their rights as Britians, there was little real desire to overthrow the established order.
Then in 1773, Samuel Adams, and others of like mind, organized protests. At one, half the population of Boston was present at the Old South Church. Adams also called for agents and consignees of the East India Company to abandon their positions; consignees who hesitated were terrorized through attacks on their warehouses and even their homes. I was invited to participate in an adventure, or so my friends at the Green Dragon claimed. Not being much for adventure, I demurred. Several nights later, ‘Indians’ attacked a ship of the East India Company and threw the cargo of 45 tons of tea into the harbor causing great loss to the company.
This led to another series of horribly punitive acts by the Crown which only made the colonists' resolve all the greater. I admit that one of the acts, the Quebec Act, giving French papists equal rights with loyal British subjects caused even my ire to rise. I watched in the Green Dragon as the resolve of the leaders grew more and more stony. They began to openly say that ‘America’ as they began to call it, instead of British Colonial possessions, must be self-determined, by which they meant free of the British Crown. I watched helplessly as these thoughts grew more open.
By spring 1775, the colonists had armed themselves and formed groups of militia. The local British army commander determined to put an end to the local militia and capture their armory. Unfortunately, the militia knew the British plans and ambushed the regulars at Concord, surely an inauspicious name for a battle. The British regulars suffered heavily and captured no arms. The rebellion had broken into armed conflict. Battle occurred throughout the summer. I witnessed one battle at Breeds Hill, later called the Battle of Bunker Hill, and saw the British Garrison nearly decapitated. Only one officer survived the battle. The British ‘won’ by driving off the colonists, but it was a Pyrrhic victory if there ever was.
It was then that the British commander made his great mistake; he withdrew his forces from revolting Boston and moved to loyalist New York. Boston celebrated as if the Devil himself had been vanquished. More importantly, the colonists took this as a sign that they could defeat the forces of the Crown with guns. It is my belief that had General Sir William Howe stayed in Boston and put down the insurrection there, the whole revolution would have been stillborn.
Even at this late date I believe that the Crown could have saved the day and kept the colonies loyal by making them equal citizens with the same rights and obligations as the home islands. But the Crown wanted the colonials to be second class citizens, subordinate to the Mother Island and without the protections available to other British citizens. George III issued a proclamation to that effect. Again, his need for money and perhaps the personal insult to his Sovereignty outweighed prudence and common sense. Even colonials who still wanted to preserve the union with Britain found the idea of being second class citizens of the Realm unacceptable.
By 1776 the breach could no longer be covered between the colonies and the Crown. As a leading trader in Boston, and because I was a ‘personal friend’ of Voltaire, I was invited to a special congress to be held in Philadelphia. I again demurred. It was with great sorrow that I read some months later the outcome of that meeting. I have since wondered if I had attended could I have persuaded the assembly to a less rebellious path. I will never know. A firebrand of the worst sort, a Virginia planter, wrote an inflammatory document proclaiming the colonies free of the Crown. Rapprochement was no longer possible.
The colonists really had no chance to win against the might of the British Empire. My partner George and I suffered losses during the war as the British closed the Boston Harbor. As I could not easily obtain funds from the estates in England with the rebellion in progress, it was good that George and I had laid aside funds for emergency. George continued his smuggling, using small coasters and packet boats to get goods in and out of Boston.
From my long vantage I have seen the legends grow. But as an honest man, I tell you that it was a narrow thing, winning this rebellion. Perhaps a fifth of the colonists joined the radicals in their terror and intimidation of the colonists to forsake their homeland. Another fifth of the colonists remained true and loyal to their lord, the Sovereign British Monarch. The other three fifths simply wished the whole affair to go away so that they might continue their drinking and wenching undeterred. The Amercian historian John Shy supports my numbers.
The war turned when the European enemies of the Crown sensed their vulnerability in the Americas and joined with the rebels. The French especially helped turn the tide of battle. They defeated a British force at Yorktown and led to the surrender of a large army under Cornwallis. This led to a defeat of the pro-war faction in Parliament and a negotiated end to the war.
Suddenly, I was no longer a British subject. I was an ‘American.’ I truly never expected this outcome, so sure was I that the British Crown would overcome this rag tag group of militias. The citizens of Boston were giddy. I was of two minds. I was still a Peer of the British Empire and a servant of the Crown. Could I abandon all that this meant? I spent long hours in thought.
The local leaders, not knowing of my internal doubts, invited me to join a special commission to establish a government for the new Massachusetts, an independent government. I again demurred arguing my little knowledge of such great endeavors. In truth, by the time this had come to pass, I had come to the conclusion that I must return to England.
