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David Niescior Spring,2015

“American Greivances red-dressed:” Imperial Politics, the Breakdownof Authority, and Theft by Boston Crowds During the Townshend

Acts Crisis On the 29th of May, 1770, Serjeant William Henderson, and

private soldiers William Leeming and Eustace Merryweathers were

walking together on the Boston Common. They described their

behavior as “inoffensive,” and they had good reason to be

careful. Only weeks before the town of Boston had to be largely

abandoned by the army following the Boston Massacre, and after

late March the only lingering elements of the 16-month garrison

which had previously quartered in the town were a regimental-

sized garrison at Castle William, an island several miles into

the harbor, and a small military hospital, maintained on the

Common until the soldiers were well enough to rejoin their

regiments. The Massacre had been the pinnacle of months of

building tensions and violent interactions, and the inhabitants

of the town had not forgotten the victory of forcing the soldiers

out of the town. Despite all of their efforts to behave well and

avoid trouble, the 29th of May proved to be yet another day of

violence. Several soldiers recalled later that they were met by a

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crowd and beaten with clubs and other weapons, and Henderson,

Leeming, and Merryweathers had the unfortunate luck of being the

first soldiers to meet the crowd.

As they later recalled, “a number of Towns people” came upon

them, and “attacke’d [them],” demanding of them “their swords and

Cockades” adding that “there should be no Bloody backs permitted

to walk on the Common.” The soldiers refused the demand,

answering that “they had authority from his Majesty, the Serjeant

to wear a Sword, and all of them Cockades and saw no right they

[the crowd] had to make that Demand.” The crowd did not take

kindly to the answer, and appeared to grow “Tumultuous.” Taking

the advice of a nearby onlooker, who urged them to get away as

soon as they could, the soldiers quickly removed themselves from

the crowd. Unsated, the crowd moved on, eventually assaulting at

least two recovering soldiers, striking them on the backs with

clubs, before finally dispersing.1

The events of May 29th, 1770, have been almost entirely

forgotten. No article has ever been published about it, nor has

1 Colonial Office [hereafter CO] 5/88, The National Archives, Kew, England, [hereafter TNA] deposition of William Henderson, Serjeant, William Leeming andEustace Maryweathers [alternatively Merryweathers] Soldiers in his Majesty’s 14th Regiment, 25 August, 1770.

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any of the major works about the Boston Garrison of 1768-1770

ever adequately detailed them.2 The reason enough is clear: this

event does not seem, at first, to be of great importance. The

massacre had occurred months before, and save for this handful of

soldiers yet on the Common, the town was free of the army. No

events were altered in course or decisions made because of the

attacks of the May 29th and, indeed, very little was recorded

about them. Excepting a few soldiers’ depositions, taken for a

defense of the conduct of the army that was never published, the

occurrences of the date could easily have been entirely forgotten

by time, consigned to the memories of those who are no more.

But history is made of such nearly-forgotten moments, to say

nothing of those who experienced them and can no longer be

remembered. The way we interpret and act in the world around us

is influenced tremendously by the occurrences of the day to day.

Indeed, the event of May 29th could only have happened because of

numerous previous experiences, most of which we as historians

2 Richard Archer, in As if An Enemy’s Country: The British Occupation of Boston and the Origins of Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), gives a passing mention tothe incident, but errs in dating the event to 1769. The wording of the depositions describing the event, contained in CO 5/88, TNA, makes it clear that the attacks occurred on the 29th of May, 1770, weeks after the Boston Massacre, not months before.

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cannot access. To seek to understand our historical forbears,

then, those moments must be considered. For in those moments is

the manifestation of the most basic assumptions, ideologies, and

ideas of the people who made them transpire. If ideology is “the

air we breathe,” an abstract, uncodified way of seeing the world

which is hardly noticed and rarer still commented on, then it is

in moments like the 29th of May, 1770, that the ‘air’ Bostonians

and their soldier enemies were immersed in can be discerned. If

considered more deeply, the account of Henderson, Leeming, and

Merryweathers reveals a striking window into the changing world

of Boston in the midst of the Townshend Acts Crisis.

So much of the Imperial Crisis can be challenging to

understand because many of the participants, like the moments

they took part in, have been forgotten. They left very little

traces of their lives behind, and thus it is very difficult to

know who they were, let alone understand what they were thinking

and why they were thinking that way. Such a situation is a result

of both intentional and unintentional consequences. Many of the

people in question did not record their thoughts. Perhaps it was

because they did not think to, were too busy, or were illiterate,

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but regardless there is very little left to reconstruct their

worldviews. Adding to this, such perspectives were oftentimes

purposely buried. The political radicals of Boston were ever

conscious of the image of the town, in their cross-Atlantic

effort to portray themselves as the downtrodden victim of

ministerial tyranny. Allowing the voice of people who attacked

soldiers to be heard would have run directly counter to that

mission. If the goal is to shed light on the way the low-down and

forgotten, on both sides of the conflict, perceived and acted as

parts of the ‘great’ political events of their day, then we have

to look at the low-down and (nearly) forgotten events.

But what, specifically, to look for? The depositions left by

the soldiers are fragmentary, but laden with important details if

one looks for them. Certainly there are some details that are

obvious. We know that the soldiers were walking on the Common,

and that they had reason to be “inoffensive.” But such details

don’t give us more than a bare narrative. That the dispute began

over parts of the soldiers’ uniforms, however, reveals a great

deal about people who, outside of their depositions and names

listed in muster rolls, we know nothing about. Importantly, the

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soldiers, fully knowing the danger (they were, it must be noted,

familiar with the dangers of Boston crowds, having survived 18

months of them) refused the demands of the crowd. But why? The

sword was no doubt a typical serjeant’s sword; low quality, more

for show than use. And the cockades- small bits of horsehair

cloth arranged to form a sort of bow and affixed to a hat- were

trifling things. But both sides in this affair invested them with

tremendous meaning. To both sides those small objects were more

than just a cheap blade and bits of horsehair, they were the

symbols of the “authority of his Majesty[.]” In short, those

small, seemingly innocuous objects defined in a discrete,

physical way, not only the political disagreements of the day-

the stuff of the Imperial Crisis- but the ideologies which made

those disputes possible.

The articles demanded from the Henderson, Leeming, and

Merryweathers were parts of their uniforms. Military uniforms

were, by design, suits of clothing to be interpreted by the

people observing them. They were not purely practical, or more

precisely, intended only to provide body covering and protection

from the elements, but carried with them strong political,

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cultural, and ideological meanings which were unspoken but widely

understood. Those messages, however, could be given very

different meanings depending on the observer, and how those

messages were interpreted differently helps reveal what defined

the political world of Boston during the Imperial Crisis.

Physical things, including weapons and uniforms, were perceived

as symbols of the conflict, and by interpreting those symbols,

the politics and ideologies at the lowest level of the Imperial

Crisis can be discerned and understood.

Uniforms

A soldier’s uniform, it bears repeating, was more than just

clothing. Military uniforms of the 18th century carried

tremendous and polysemic meaning. They represented state power

and societal stratification, whilst simultaneously providing a

source of pride, identification, and identity for the individual

soldier. The personal and the political, then, was joined

inextricably with each other in the mind of the soldier via the

uniform, and that incumbent ideology was reflected in the way

soldiers and civilians in Boston made use of those uniforms

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politically.

The army’s role in Boston was primarily as a constabulary,

and appearance played an essential role in achieving that goal.

The soldiers sent to Boston were intended to represent and

reinforce the authority of the Parliament and the Customs

Commissioners in Boston. Use of the army in the role of law

enforcement was well precedented. Indeed, that was the army’s

primary peacetime role, especially in regards to enforcing trade

regulations and suppressing riots.3 Soldiers, then, represented

the authority of the state and functioned as its means of

asserting it, especially as expressed through their uniforms. The

power of spectacle was well understood by the army, and was well

utilized in the arrival of the army in Boston. On October 1st,

1768, the troops marched into the town “under Cover of the Cannon

of the Ships of War… with Muskets charged [loaded], Bayonets

fixed, Colours flying, Drums beating and Fifes, &c. playing.”4

The deacon John Tudor made note in his diary that the army “made

3 J.A. Houlding, Fit For Service: The Training of the British Army, 1715-1795 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981) 57-74. 4 The Journal of the Times, October 1st, 1768.

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a gallant appearance.”5 Making a show of military power was

necessary to make clear the authority of the civil power which

sent it.

Appearances were thus essential to the army’s role as a

constabulary, and thus uniforms were essential to establishing an

authoritative appearance. The Army went to great lengths to

ensure a good and “shewy appearance.” In an age where tailoring

was among the largest trades, the Army could count on there being

numerous tailors within the individual regiments. This allowed

the army to be very particular about the good appearance of the

men. As Bennett Cuthbertson, an officer in the 5th Regiment of

Foot and author of a widely read military treatise argued,

“nothing contributes more to the good appearance of Soldiers,

than having the several appointments which compose their Dress,

fitted with the greatest exactness, it is necessary that no pains

be spared, to accomplish so advantageous a design…”6 Officers

5 William Tudor ed., Memorandoms from 1709, &c., by John Tudor, to 1775 & 1778, 1780 and to '93: A Record of More or Less Important Events in Boston From 1732 to 1793 / By An Eye-Witness, October 1st, 1768. 6 Bennett Cuthbertson, Cuthbertson’s System, for the Complete InteriorManagement and Œconomy of a Battalion of Infantry (Bristol: Rouths and Nelson, 1776), 67. Reprint. Originally published by Cuthbertson in 1768, Cuthbertson’s System represents the most detailed guide to the administration of a marching regiment in the 18th century. In an age where official military manuals were few and primarily concerned with drill, military officers filled in the void and published

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were instructed to be none too careful in examining the soldiers’

clothes after they were altered, taking care to ensure that

“every Man is exactly fitted, without wrinkles in any part, at

the same time that he is not confined, either in his arms or

shoulders; he is also to insist in the Lining, Lapells, Cuffs,

and Seams being worked in the strongest manner…”7 The same

attention to detail in fitting the coats was to be observed in

the waistcoats and breeches as well. The tailors, further, while

obliged to work at the trade for the regiment, were paid extra

for the work, so that not only did the care taken to fit the

clothing mean more work to have the clothing made, and the

soldiers who were tailors by trade taken out of the ranks for

some time, the fitting entailed a financial expense as well.

Soldiers in public were expected to look “good,” or to make

the “gallant appearance” Deacon Tudor described in Boston,

because it reflected on the army. As Cuthbertson argued, “an

exact Neatness in the appearance of a Battalion, not only does

honour to the attention of its Officers, in the opinion of every

numerous volumes detailing all of the things an officer needed to know. Cuthbertson was very widely read, and many regimental orderly books are filledwith regimental orders taken verbatim from his System. 7 Ibid., 68.

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indifferent spectator, but gives great reason to the more

discerning part of the world, to suppose, that proper regulations

are established… for the support of Discipline.”8 Any soldier

who failed to make a good appearance was a danger to the honor of

the entire corps, and if repeatedly had “faults… in any part of

their dress” was to be “threaten[ed] with the consequence of

appearing so again.”9 Such consequences could be quite severe. A

soldier caught “presuming to carry a load [weight] on his head

with his hat on” was to be confined in the black hole (a hole dug

into the parade ground, just large enough to accommodate a man,

and covered over) for “a day or two.” Such was essential to keep

the “shape and cock of [the hats] from being spoiled.”10

Well dressed, combed, and powdered, soldiers made a military

spectacle at every public exhibition of the power of the state.

At public executions, particularly those involving rebels or

traitors, the army was sure to be present. Soldiers represented

state authority, and in contemporary images of executions, such

as The Beheading of the Rebel Lords on Great Tower Hill (fig. 1) well dressed

8 Ibid., 107.9 Ibid., 108.10 Ibid., 114.

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and orderly soldiers are prominently visible. To any observer,

clearly visible agents of the state surrounded the (literal)

execution of the state’s will. Soldiers even wore badges of the

monarchy on their persons, in the form of cockades on their hats.

The black cockade of the British soldier was emblematic of the

House of Hanover, just as much as the orange cockades of Dutch

troops represented the House of Orange, the white cockades of

French soldiers represented the French Bourbons, and the red

cockades of Spanish troops represented the Spanish monarchy.

Simply mounting guard in a city was, besides achieving a

practical, military goal of protecting and observing certain

places, an opportunity to exhibit the discipline and good

appearance of the army. Soldiers and non-commissioned officers

could be punished for doing their duty haphazardly- such conduct

damaged the appearance of the regiment, army, and government.

That aspect of the military spectacle actually contributed to the

discontent of the civilians of Boston, however, particularly as

guards were mounted and relieved. As the Journal of the Times noted in

early 1768, “[T]he Minds of serious People at Public Worship were

greatly disturbed with Drums beating and Fifes playing, unheard

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of before in this land- What an unhappy Influence must this have upon the

Minds of Children and others; in eradicating the Sentiments of Morality and Religion,

which a due Regard to that Day has a natural Tendency to cultivate and keep alive.”11

In this case the outcome of mounting guard was a population more

annoyed by the army than awed by it, which fell far short of the

intention, but the importance to the Army of making a show is

clearly evident.

11 Journal of the Times, 6 November, 1768. Italics as originally printed.

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Figure 1: Detail, The Beheading of the Rebel Lords on Great Tower Hill,

M. Cooper, 1746. (Anne S.K. Brown Military Collection, Brown

University Library)

One of the most important events in which a good appearance

was to be made was when recruiting. As Cuthbertson suggested, “a

recruiting party should, by a remarkable neatness in their dress,

and always appearing with the air of formed Soldiers, draw on

themselves the attention of the country people…”12 The soldiers

had to make a good appearance, because a significant part of the

incentive to enlist was the promise of becoming as respectable

looking as the soldiers. As a formulaic recruiting speech, widely

published in a contemporary military treatise, promised,

To all aspiring heroes bold, who have spirits above slavery and trade, and inclinations to become gentlemen, by bearing arms in his Majesty’s regiment, commanded by themagnanimous let them repair to the drum-head [Tow row dow.] where each gentleman volunteer shall be kindly and honourably entertained, and enter into present pay and good quarters: besides which, gentlemen, for your further and better encouragement you shall receive one guinea advance; a crown to drink His Majesty King GEORGE’s health; and when you come to join your respective regiment, shall have new hats, caps, arms, cloaths, and accoutrements,

12 Cuthbertson, 63.

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and every thing that is necessary and fitting to compleat a gentleman soldier.13

Clothing was essential to the formation of a new recruit into a

“gentleman soldier,” a common verbal trope which played on social

distinctions and the inherent absurdity of a man paid 6 pence per

day characterizing himself as a gentleman. Indeed, clothing and

the imposition of a “smart, soldierly carriage” was the only

thing which distanced a soldier from the “sullen, stubborn

disposition which characterized the peasants of most

countries[.]”14 Contemporary depictions of recruiting parties

often depicted the perceived differences between the smartly-

dressed soldiers and the bumbling country folk they enlisted

(fig. 2). Such distinctions were appealing to potential recruits,

and newly enlisted men were often given new articles of dress,

including hats and elaborate cockades.15 As one soldier recalled,

“The splendid uniform and glittering epaulettes, the beauty of

the horses and grandeur of the parade… won my heart, and I

13 Thomas Simes, The Military Medley: Containing the most necessary Rules and Directions for Attaining a Competent Knowledge of the Art: To which is added an Explanation of Military Terms, Alphabetically Digested, (London, 1768), 284. Reprint. Blanks in the text as originally printed. 14 Cuthbertson, 107.15 Don N. Hagist, British Soldiers, American War: Voices of the American Revolution (Yardley: Westholme Press, 2012) 16.

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enlisted[.]”16 The idea that one could enlist into the service

and be transformed into a “gentleman soldier” (if not truly a

gentleman) was a captivating one to recruits.

Figure 2: Recruits., M.H. Bunbury, 1790 [Original 1780] (Anne S.K.

Brown Military Collection, Brown University Library)

16 Ibid., 61.

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Contrary to conventional wisdom, prevalent at the time as

much as it is today, the fact that people entered into the

British army was not entirely the result chicanery, cheating, and

deceit. The mistake of considering recruits as mere dupes derives

primarily from contemporary literary and visual depictions of

recruiting. George Farquhar’s famous play, The Recruiting Officer, for

example makes constant use of a leitmotif of conquest;

militarily, sexually, and in the job of recruiting. Drawing in

part on Farquhar’s own experience as a recruiting officer, the

sense of soldiers as fools brought into the army under false or

ignoble pretenses was a recurring one throughout the period.17

One need only consider the prevalence of different prints titled

the “Recruiting Serjeant” depicting a new recruit deciding to

take “Brown Bess,” a nickname for a soldier’s musket, “sooner

than Big Belly’d Betty” to realize the extent of the theme. But

as surviving memoirs of British soldiers show soldiers who

entered into the service voluntarily (the vast majority of them)

did so seeking some sort of personal improvement. Some sought

17 Kathleen Wilson, “Empire of Virtue: the imperial project and Hanoverian culture c.1720-1785”, Lawrence Stone ed., An Imperial State at War: Britain From 1689 to 1815 (New York: Routledge, 1994) 139-141.

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escape and adventure, others sought education, and yet others

wanted to appear as noble as the recruiting party who enlisted

them. The army was a means of achieving betterment, and the

military costume was essential to that.18

Once a soldier was enlisted, and doing regular duty, his

clothing and accouterments established him as being distinct from

other Britons. Deserting soldiers were frequently quick to rid

themselves of their uniforms, an act designed to disguise them

and divest themselves from the identity of soldier. Such an

action, in the eyes of yet serving soldiers, denigrated a

deserter. A captor could describe the deserters they found not

only as criminals, but as fallen men, “not… in any Solider like

dress, but disguised in a Frock and trousers.”19 Such a

consciousness was by design. As Cuthbertson stated, “a Non-

commission officer, Drummer, Fifer, or private Man should never

appear abroad without having his sword or bayonet properly fixed

in his belt, nothing being more unsoldier-like than seeing him

without it… a Soldier without his side arms, when walking through

18 Hagist, passim. 19 War Office [hereafter WO] 71/77, TNA, 399. The General Court Martial of William Pound, 1771.

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a town, is at once reduced to a level with the vilest plebian,

and deprived of that, which gives him an air of consequence, not

only in his own opinion, but likewise in that of the common

people, who are principally caught by outside shew.”20 A soldier

was not a soldier without the things he wore and carried on him.

However much it instilled pride in the soldier as superior

to the “clownish country people,” a soldier’s uniform was itself

a reminder of the social and military rank of a soldier. The

army, in its composition, reflected British society. The enlisted

ranks were filled up with the common people: tradesmen, laborers,

and other working people. They were almost entirely volunteers,

but understood upon joining that their role would be defined by

their societal rank. Soldiers very rarely ever advanced into the

ranks of the officers, though it did happen occasionally

(generally highly experienced senior NCOs, promoted to fill gaps

made by changes to the establishment strength of the army or to

fill an important administrative position like quartermaster with

an experienced man) and even then as exceptions which prove the

20 Cuthbertson, 113.

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rule.21 The dress of the army subsequently reflected the society

it was derived from.

Soldiers uniforms were made of common grade woolen

broadcloth, which had to be “dipt in clean fresh water and… laid

in the sun to dry” so as to avoid “their shrinking after being

fitted, which coarse cloth is apt to do.” 22 The buttonholes of

soldiers’ coats were bound in worsted lace, with colored stripes

arranged in patterns unique to the regiment. The buttons, too,

cast from white metal (generally good pewter) were unique to the

regiment, with regimental designs which included the number of

the corps. Other aspects of the uniform were made simply and with

an eye towards practicality. Soldiers’ waistcoats typically

employed welted pockets, a simple design which utilized less

material and was more functional for soldiers who typically wore

waistbelts from which slung their sidearms. As to breeches,

Cuthbertson argued that a soldier needed only “one cross pocket

of a moderate depth… as it will answer every purpose he can

want.”23 Soldiers’ hats were made of cheap wool felt, and bound

21 Houlding, 105. 22 Simes, 38. Cuthbertson, 68.23 Cuthbertson, 72.

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in white woolen tape. Upon the hat the soldier bore a black

horsehair cockade, which the soldier could occasionally oil to

maintain its shiny appearance. A soldier’s shirt (which doubled

as underwear) was to be made of stout white linen, with a small

ruffle at the breast (an ornament which contributed to the idea

of the gentleman soldier), but the enlisted men were typically

supplied with only two to four to sustain them through the year.

One recruit was surprised to learn what that meant for the

soldiers in his first night with the army when he was “put to bed

to a naked man, which [he] thought strange. But this [was] a

common custom with the soldiers in order to save their linens, as

it is a policy of soldiers to preserve their clothing; for we had

to appear three times a day dressed and powdered.”24 Maintaining

clothing was of monetary as well as disciplinary importance for

the soldier. Their pay was stopped, generally by a tuppence per

day, to pay for their clothing. The soldiers ultimately owned

their clothing, and replacing it could be costly.

Regardless of the quality of their clothing, soldiers

derived a great deal of pride from the regimental distinctions of

24 Hagist, 16-17.

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their uniforms. Indeed, it seems that both soldiers n dofficers

took the contemporary adage that “clothes make the man”

seriously. Cuthbertson argued that it behooved an officer to

ensure that soldiers took care to appear well by instructing

recruits to “dress themselves like Soldiers, by the gentlest

methods which will unpreceptibly [sic] steal them into a liking

for the Corps[.]”25 Serjeant Ned Botwood of Colonel Lascelle’s

47th Regiment of Foot, plainly stated as much in a song he penned

in 1758:

When the Forty-seventh Regiment is dashing ashore,When bullets are whistling and cannon do roar,Says Montcalm, ‘Those are Shirley’s, I know their lapels.’‘You lie,’ says Ned Botwood, ‘We are of Lascelles!Though our clothing is changed, yet we scorn a powder-puff;So at you, ye bitches, here’s give you Hot Stuff!

The 47th Regiment had been given the clothing of Shirley’s 50th

Regiment, which had been disgraced at Oswego earlier in the war,

as its own clothing had not made it to America. The idea of being

confused for the 50th Regiment was disgusting to Botwood, who

wanted it known that they were proud members of Lascelle’s 47th

Regiment.26

25 Cuthbertson, 109.26 “Hot Stuff”, attributed to Serjeant Ned Botwood. Quoted in Stephen Brumwell, Redcoats: The British Soldier and War in the Americas, 1755-1763 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 2002) 114.

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Non-commission officers also derived pride from the badges

of their rank. Corporals, besides being paid better than private

soldiers and separated from the men by “messing,” or eating and

tenting together, were by regulation to wear a silk epaulette on

their right shoulder. Serjeants, ranking even higher, wore coats

of slightly finer materials, generally dyed a more brilliant

scarlet than the ruddy madder red of the soldiers’ coats. They

also carried swords, a distinction among the enlisted men

reserved for serjeants and grenadiers by the 1760s, and wore a

sprang woven worsted sash. Serjeants, further, wore finer hats,

with fine metal binding of silver.27 Even the lowest echelons of

military leadership wore and carried symbols of their rank,

reminders of both their position and responsibility.

Officers uniforms, in contrast, were much finer than

soldiers’ uniforms. They had to be; officers were esteemed

gentlemen, and their dress reflected their social rank. Whereas

the soldier was provided with a suit of clothes once a year, and

expected to pay for it over the course of the year, an officer

had to provide his own clothing out of pocket, because as

27 Royal Clothing Warrant of 1768

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gentlemen they were expected to have the wherewithal to afford

it. As officers and gentlemen their uniforms had to be made of

finer cloth, and extant officers’ uniforms bear out the

differences (figs. 3, 4 and 5). By the 1760s it had become

fashionable for officers to wear plain frocks when performing

mundane duties or on campaign, but they were also expected to own

a suit of full dress clothes, to be worn upon requisite

occasions. Such uniforms were produced bespoke from established

tailoring houses, and reflected not only superior workmanship as

compared to soldiers’ clothing, but also superior materials.

Besides arms and accouterments, an officer could be expected to

provide for himself upon entering into the army with a suit of

regimental clothes, two frock suits, two hats with cockades, a

pair of leather gloves, a sash and gorget, two pairs of white

spatterdashes, and one of black with tops, one pair of garters,

one pair of boots, a blue great coat, a Portugal cloak, six white

waistcoats, one pair of leather breeches, six pairs of shoes, two

dozen shirts, a black neck stock, eighteen pairs of stockings,

and twelve handkerchiefs. Added to this expense was the officer’s

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camp equipage, watch, and other personal baggage, all paid for

out of pocket.28

Besides regimental pride, soldiers also felt their yearly

uniform issuance to be a matter of contractual obligation. In A

People’s Army: Massachusetts Soldiers and Society in the Seven Years’ War, Fred

Anderson demonstrated convincingly in one of the finest early

efforts in “New” military history that the soldiers of

Massachusetts’ provincial corps considered the terms of their

service to be contractual in nature.29 Stephen Brumwell has added

greatly to the historiography of the British army by showing a

similar streak of rights consciousness in the way the soldiers of

the regular army perceived their service.30 Soldiers were always

keenly aware of what they were owed, whether it be money, food,

drink, or clothing. In 1772 soldiers of the 62d Regiment, for

example brought their colonel to a General Court Martial on the

charge that their pay had been stopped for the clothing of the

year 1768 but they did not receive new clothing until 1769.

28 Simes, 195-196. Derived from A List of Things necessary For a young Gentleman to be furnished with, upon obtaining his first Commission in the Infantry; with a Scheme of his constant Expenses and some farther Advice.29 Fred Anderson, A People’s Army: Massachusetts Soldiers and Society in the Seven Years’ War (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1984)30 Brumwell, 127-136.

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Essentially, they had paid for a year of clothing but they never

received it. Unfortunately for the soldiers, the charge formally

brought against their colonel was for the year 1769 rather than

1768, and the colonel was acquitted by means of a mistrial (and

no doubt the colonel’s own influence helped with that) but

regardless of the failure, the event reveals the lengths to which

soldiers would go to obtain what they felt they were owed.31

31 WO 71/27, TNA. General Court Martial of Lt. General William Strode, 1772.

Figure 3: Detail of thecollar and coarse

construction methods,Private Soldier’s

Uniform, 1st Regiment ofFoot Guards, (TheNational Trust,

Berrington Hall).

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Figure 4: Private

Soldier’s Uniform,

1st Regiment of Foot

Guards, (The

National Trust,

Niescior 28

To soldiers, then, their uniform was much more than just the

clothing on their backs. Their clothing represented themselves in

almost every possible way, from their social position to the

ideal conception of themselves. Uniforms embodied the things by

right owed to them, as well as the personal improvement those

things offered. They were builders of espirit de corps, as well

as reminders of the authority of the sovereign. Soldiers’

uniforms were manifest embodiments of a soldier’s purpose.

Figure 5: The Uniform of Loyalist Officer Capt. Jeremiah French, (Canadian War Museum)

Niescior 29

Unfortunately for the soldiers in Boston, their purpose in the

town of enforcing compliance with the Townshend Duties, made them

targets.

Uniforms in Boston

Given the above, it becomes clear why Henderson, Leeming,

and Merryweathers would refuse to abandon articles of their

dress. To those soldiers, the serjeant’s sword not only

represented his rank but also his status as a soldier. To be

deprived of it was to be deprived of his life’s achievement and

personal identity as a soldier. All of the soldiers resented and

resisted the demand to turn over the cockades from their hats,

because far from being simply pieces of ornamental horsehair

cloth, they represented their allegiance to the King and the

source of their own authority to bear arms.

But to the inhabitants of Boston, those uniforms represented

the tyrannical overstepping of Parliamentary authority. To many

of the inhabitants of Boston, the presence of the army was

entirely illegitimate, and representative of the impolitic and

Niescior 30

unconstitutional policies of the ministry since 1764. The

colonies drew on longstanding British constitutional traditions

of the legitimate use of the military power. Indeed, even in

Britain the use of military force as a reinforcement of the civil

power was carefully dictated by procedure that by the 1760s was

well established and never challenged.32

The deployment of troops to America, however, seemed to

reveal in a new and frightening way how dangerous and powerful a

ministerial conspiracy to supplant British liberty with tyranny

had become. Over the course of the latter 1760s and early 1770s,

ministerial attempts to impose taxes upon the American colonies

evolved from a mere mistake, an improper policy instituted by

unthinking ministers, to a veritable conspiracy to override the

British constitution entirely. The colonial opposition to

government policy was quick to find conspiracies in everything,

once that line of thought emerged as a viable means of accounting

for governmental actions. In the radical mind, the failure to

support Paoli in his bid to fight the French in Corsica became as

damning as the effort to suppress John Wilkes in London, and

32 Houlding, 61-62.

Niescior 31

evidence that the effort of the ministries of Grenville,

Rockingham, Chatham, and Grafton to implement illegitimate

taxation was part of a broader, world-wide conspiracy.33

When soldiers marched into Boston in October of 1768, then,

the soldiers acting as the means by which Whitehall sought to

enforce compliance with the Townshend Duties represented, as

usual, the authority of the state. To the soldiers, they were not

only following orders but acting in defense of the King’s peace

against unruly Americans. But when the actions of the state, as

influenced by an ill-designing ministry, were perceived as

illegitimate then the soldiers themselves came to be perceived as

illegitimate. While in England the business of suppressing riots

was generally considered “a most Odious Service which nothing but

Necessity can justify” the troops in their transports in Boston

harbor the night before the landing could be heard tauntingly

singing “Yankee Doodle.”34 The soldiers were not in the least

troubled, nor did they think of themselves as agents of tyranny.

33 Pauline Maier, From Resistance to Revolution: Colonial Radicals and the Development of American Opposition to Britain, 1765-1776 (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1991) 161-197.34 Quoted in Houlding, 65. The Journal of the Times, 1 October, 1768.

Niescior 32

But that was exactly the way in which the inhabitants of Boston

perceived them.

The uniform of the soldiers quickly came to be rhetorically

and symbolically representative of their “impolitick” presence.

Occasionally the soldiers’ clothes were noted with some degree of

humor. One newspaper made light enough to note how “a Divine of

the Punny Order, being in the Field [observing the troops on the

Common], was pleased to observe that we might now behold American

Greivances red-dressed[.]” The report rapidly reminded the readers

of the seriousness of the matter, however, by continuing to

describe “the glitter of the Arms and Bayonets” and that “this

hostile Appearance of Troops in a Time of profound Peace, made

most of the Spectators very serious[.]”35

More typical of the way soldiers, and their uniforms, were

imagined in the minds of opposition propagandists was as a great

foil to the symbols of British liberty. Trade was, in many ways,

imagined to form one of the essential elements of a Briton’s

liberty. The British commercial empire increased the wealth of

all who participated in it, and was itself a product of a

35 The Journal of the Times, 25 October, 1768.

Niescior 33

constitution perfectly designed to promote it. Trade was the glue

of the empire, whilst simultaneously being the primary means by

which Britons could afford to enjoy ‘Old English Roast Beef,’

where the starving subjects of absolutist and popish France had

none. Trade was as important to Britons as their Protestantism,

and the only means by which either could thrive was in a

condition of political liberty, made possible by the British

constitution. Indeed, “Religion and trade equally thrive in

liberty,” wrote one English minister, “and are alike injured by

oppression and persecution.”36 The litmus test of good

government, then, was whether or not Protestantism and trade

could flourish. And in Boston, it seemed as if both were under

attack by the Army. Squealing fifes and pounding drums, as a

distraction from worship, had “unhappy Effects… on the Minds of

our inconsiderate Youth, and lower Class of People.”37 More

illustrative of the diminishing liberties of the inhabitants of

Boston, however, could be seen at the Merchants Exchange. “What

36 Benjamin Fawett, M.A., The Religious Weaver: Or, Pious Meditations on the Trade of Weaving. (London: J. Eddowes, sold by J. Buckland, 1773) quoted in Zara Anishanslin, “Producing Empire: The British Empire in Theory and Practice”, Andrew Shankman ed., The World of the Revolutionary American Republic: Land, Labor, and the Conflict for a Continent (New York: Routledge, 2014) 30.37 The Journal of the Times, 5 June, 1769.

Niescior 34

an Appearance does Boston now Make!” wrote a report, “One of the

first commercial Towns in America has now several Regiments of

Soldiers quartered in the midst of it, and even the Merchants

Exchange is picquetted… so that instead of our Merchants and

trading People transacting their Business, we see it filled with

Red Coats[.]”38 The supposition could be made that “[i]f we were

a dull stupid Race of Mortals, and had seasonably relinquished

Trade to Great Britain, the Operation of Cutlary Ware [bayonets

and other weapons], and the Rhetoric of Red Coats, would be of no

Service.”39 The message was clear to any true Briton reading it:

in the places of trade- the symbol of virtue, liberty, and good

government- the red coats of soldiers who represented arbitrary

tyranny now were to be seen.

In the opposition press, soldiers were typically depicted as

the very essence of arbitrary tyranny. Perhaps the most useful

tool opposition writers deployed was their depiction of the way

soldiers used their bayonets. Soldier’s sidearms became a common

trope of the daily journal published by the opposition, The Journal

of the Times. Bayonets were tools by which a sentry could threaten

38 The Journal of the Times, 11 November, 1768.39 The Journal of the Times, 8 March, 1769.

Niescior 35

and wound, such as in incidents like the 2nd of November, 1768,

when “Two Men and a Lad coming over the Neck into the Town” were

attacked, one of whom was “badly cut on his Head and Grievously

wounded in divers Parts of his Body.”40 Soldiers’ sidearms were

more than just tools of an oppressive guard, however, and were

also reported to be used by soldiers attempting robberies or

assaulting women. In one case, reported the Journal of the Times, a

“Woman not happening to please some Soldiers, received a

considerable Wound on her Head with a Cutlass; and [another]

Woman presuming to scream, when laid hold of by a Soldier, had a

Bayonet run through her Cheek.”41 If sidearms were, to the

soldier, badges of their status, they were imagined by the

political opposition in Boston to be the means by which they

could be emasculated and hurt. They were the tools by which the

people of Boston could be forced to comply with impertinent,

illegitimate sentries, and by which their women could be

brutalized and attacked.

Ultimately, the ways in which soldiers and civilians in

Boston imagined the meaning of soldiers’ uniforms centered on

40 The Journal of the Times, 2 November, 1768. 41 The Journal of the Times, 17 December, 1768 and

Niescior 36

perceptions of manliness. To a soldier, the uniform was a means

by which they could be better men than they were before they wore

it. To the inhabitants of Boston, however, a soldier was a

brutish, captive, brutalized tool of ministerial tyranny.

Soldiers were lesser men because of their commitment to the

King’s service, and the easily identified symbols of that status

were the same uniforms and arms which the soldiers perceived as

improving them.

New Englanders, for their part, went to great lengths to

remove the uniforms from the soldiers, by way of enticing them to

desert into the countryside. With a concerted effort, soldiers

were encouraged to desert in large numbers. The 29th Regiment

alone in the first year of the garrison experienced some 71

desertions, which accounted for nearly 20% reduction in

strength.42 Such efforts were not ignored by the army, however,

and the garrison shifted gears very early after arrival from a

body concerned with preserving the peace, to a body concerned

with preserving itself. The soldiers at the Neck and at various

sentry posts throughout the town were less concerned with

42 WO 12/4493, TNA.

Niescior 37

suppressing riots, and more concerned with preventing desertion.

In that effort the army became even more offensive to the

inhabitants of Boston, as sentries imposed on passers-by to

identify themselves and inspected coaches for hidden deserters.

Officers upbraided men that the “Practices of the Inhabitants to

entice them away was not out of Affection to them, but from

Disaffection to the Government,” a seemingly meaningless

distinction, supposed the opposition press, when given the

opportunity to escape to a place where “the common People [were]

cheerful, hearty, and well clad” in clothing that wasn’t

regimental.43 Officers instructed men to turn in anybody

attempting to induce them to desert for the reward of 10 guineas.

This strategy failed to do little more than, in the eyes of the

opposition, to turn soldiers into money-seeking informers, and

was regardless entirely impossible to sustain with a judicial

system dominated by judges as much opposed to the presence of the

soldiers as anybody else in Boston.

The ways in which the army itself abandoned uniforms in

certain circumstances signaled to the opposition in Boston the

43 The Journal of the Times, 13 October, 1768 and 17 January, 1769.

Niescior 38

impolitic nature of the garrison and its general illegitimacy. In

response to deserters taking shelter in the countryside, the army

in Boston began dispatching disguised parties of soldiers in

sailor’s clothes in pursuit (fig. 6). The method had first been

used in New York, where it worked to return at least two

deserters from that garrison, and in Boston it seemed to work, at

first. 44 A party which had ranged at least 25 miles out of Boston

was tipped to the location of a deserter who was working as a

laborer at a nearby farm. They subsequently captured him. The

party quickly left the area after catching their deserter,

Richard Eames of the 14th Regiment, “for fear the Country should

be alarmed.”45 The party had good reason to be cautious. In early

February, 1769, another disguised party which had managed to

capture two deserters in New Hampshire was surrounded by a group

of men, of about 100-150 men, and freed the two prisoners.46 In

another incident, in October of that year, yet another party in

New Hampshire was set on by a mob of “very great numbers” whose

“faces [were] blacked,” and who managed to free one of two

44 WO 71/77, TNA, the General Courts Martial of Cpl. Thomas Bomstead and Gunner Isaac Chamberlain.45 Ibid., the General Court Martial of Richard Eames.46 The Journal of the Times, 2 February, 1769.

Niescior 39

prisoners. The other prisoner only remained because he refused to

be taken by the mob, choosing instead to aid the party, perhaps

to earn a later reprieve.47 Commenting on the earlier incident,

the opposition press noted that “if any of his Majesty’s immediate

servants, or any other persons, shall presume to enter a town disguised

in such a manner as not to be known, and without any lawful authority

violently seize upon and attempt to carry away, any of the proper

inhabitants, or even strangers, cohabiting with them, such persons

might reasonably expect opposition, and without satisfaction suffer

the consequence.”48 Troops acting legitimately, with lawful

authority, needed not to exchange their uniforms for disguises.

That the army was losing great numbers of men to desertion was

evidence enough of the illegitimacy of their presence, that they

were compelled to eschew the uniforms which gave them authority

made that illegitimacy even clearer.

47 CO 5/88 Lieutenant Colonel Dalrymple to General Thomas Gage, 22 October, 1769.48 The Journal of the Times, 2 February, 1769.

Niescior 40

The one deserter that the army was able to return became a

mourned victim of the garrison, and impolitic ministerial policy.

Richard Eames was sentenced to death by a General Court Martial,

and on the 31st of October was executed by firing squad on the

Common. Clothing was again symbolically used in descriptions of

the incident by the radical press. Eames was dressed in white

(likely wearing only his white shirt, stockings, and breeches)

and was described in a way which made him seem like a martyr. The

real Richard Eames was given the character in his court martial

Figure 6: Lt. GabrielBray RN, A Sailor Bringing

Up His Hammock, 1775(National MaritimeMuseum, Greenwich,

London)

Niescior 41

of being “an Honest man tho’ sometimes unfortunate in Liquor” but

the scene of the 14th Regiment being marched by Eames’ dead body

was too obvious a political tool to miss.49

Soldiers’ Uniforms and the Limits of Deference

So far the Boston opposition to the presence of the army in

Boston has seemed to be characterized by a remarkable degree of

consensus. Bostonians largely agreed (if we set aside the small,

if perhaps not negligible number of government supporters in

Boston) that colonial policy as directed by the ministry in

Whitehall in the years after 1763 was wrong, and generally drew

on the same ideological points in articulating why those policies

were unconstitutional. British liberty was at stake, and all

seemed to be alarmed by it.

But the ways in which people responded to the crisis varied

tremendously, and the protest tools used by colonists put

tremendous strain on the deferential society in which they

emerged. As Alfred Young ably shows in his tremendously valuable

work The Shoemaker and the Tea Party, the deferential society of

49 WO 71/77, the General Court Martial of Richard Eames. The Journal of the Times, 31October, 1768.

Niescior 42

colonial Massachusetts did not begin to break down as a result of

a conscious effort. Instead, as colonial opposition relied more

and more on the action of the “lower sort,” the socially inferior

began to act less like inferiors, and more like equals. Young’s

shoemaker, George Robert Twelves Hewes who at one time squirmed

and wavered to merely be in the presence of John Hancock, the

wealthy, well-placed merchant, within a few years had no qualms

about being referred to as “Captain Hewes” and standing by

Hancock to aid in the ‘Destruction of the Tea’ in 1773. By 1778,

after a stint in the militia and aboard a privateer, Hewes

refused to “take his hat off… for any man.” In resisting British

authority, Hewes had come to believe that there was no difference

of station in life, and that he was the equal of any man,

regardless how he acted in his youth.50

But merely ceasing to doff a hat after years of political

involvement is not the only way in which the culture of deference

was undermined. During the Townshend Acts Crisis deference began

to break down in a significantly different way- the lower sort

simply ignored what the nominal leaders of resistance wanted.

50 Alfred F. Young, The Shoemaker and the Tea Party: Memory and the American Revolution (Boston: Beacon Press, 1999) 3-4, 42-45.

Niescior 43

Whereas Hewes began to adopt a sense of equality, whilst still

doing what those who ranked above him (militarily and

economically, if not mentally) wanted him to do (Hewes served in

a military capacity, for example, which requires the ability to

follow orders), deference could also break down when the “lower

sort” did what their ostensible leadership did not want them to

do. The deferential culture of Massachusetts was pushed past its

limits in the period of the Imperial Crisis, in ways which were

not readily apparent contemporaneously but which ultimately

contributed to the breakdown of the deferential culture.

Essentially, the course plotted by the Sons of Liberty, an

informal group of well-connected New Englanders, including Samuel

Adams and John Hancock, was one of non-consumption and non-

importation, written and verbal protest, and transatlantic

coordination. Above all, following the violently destructive

crowd actions of 1765, during which the Lt. Governor Thomas

Hutchinson’s house was ransacked, the Boston Sons of Liberty

desired a policy of “No Mobs.” Routinely they argued that the

presence of troops in America and the delay in repeal of taxes by

Parliament was due to misrepresentation of the colony to the

Niescior 44

leadership in Britain. Boston was, after all, a town in “profound

Peace[.]” Soldiers could only have been committed because the

government was misled, and that if the fact of that peace could

be proven, the soldiers would be called away again, and efforts

to prevent the abrogation of British liberties in America could

continue to make progress. The order of the day was “no mobs, no

confusions, no tumults.”51

But the Boston crowd did not heed this advice.52 Instead, as

soldiers repeatedly insulted and aggravated the people of Boston,

the people of Boston replied in kind with violence. Over the

course of the garrison, many soldiers were attacked by crowds,

sometimes as a response to certain circumstances, and other times

without provocation. Corporal William Lake of the 14th Regiment

described a fairly typical event in which during

the latter end of November 1768 He was going on his Duty to the North end in Boston about 7 o’Clock in the evening, he was met bya number of Inhabitants, one of which struck him with a Club which brought him to the ground without the least provocation some of the Mob crying out keep him down whilst he is there, he the deponent as soon as he recover’d his senses a little, beg’d they wou’d not kill him, some time after they departed, and the

51 Maier, 123.52 Contrary to what Pauline Maier argues, 126.

Niescior 45

Deponent went to his Barracks in the best manner he cou’d being very much bruised and beaten a barbarous manner.53

While the patterns of resistance adopted by colonists in Boston

deserve to be studied in wider detail, such a project is outside

of the purview of this essay. Instead, by focusing on particular

ways in which some Bostonians utilized pieces of army and soldier

property as political props, we can begin to see how the

resistance measures taken by large numbers of Boston’s generally

poorer population differed from what was wanted by those

nominally directing the course of opposition in Boston.

The primary tactic utilizing the property of soldiers was

theft. In a fairly typical instance, for example, William Hollam,

a corporal in the 14th Regiment, “on the 4th. of November 1769 as

he was going to his barracks in Boston, was met by a number of

towns-people who immediately knock’d him down (without a word

passing on either side) and took his hat and bayonet from him and

left him on the spot for dead.”54 In another instance, a soldier

in the 29th Regiment, William Normanton, was attacked by a man

wielding a hatchet and “two large mastiff dogs.” He was savagely

53 CO 5/88, TNA, deposition of William Lake, 25 August, 1770.54 CO 5/88, TNA, deposition of William Hollam, 25 August, 1770.

Niescior 46

attacked, and had his hat stolen from him as he was rescued by

the timely arrival of “of two Negroes Whose assistance he

implored.”55 Other soldiers reported similar incidents, primarily

involving the theft of hats or sidearms.

Given the tremendous symbolic weight sidearms and uniforms

had in the Boston garrison, their theft carries remarkable

political meaning. The ideology of opposition was not merely

reserved for the people writing the pamphlets and the newspapers,

but extended deep into the social structure of Boston. To deprive

a soldier of his bayonet, for instance, particularly after having

knocked him down, was to remove from him both a military badge

and the chance the soldier might use it in the town. Theft of

hats, too, the only easily snatched part of the uniform, rendered

insult to the soldier as well as the army as a whole. The

soldiers in these instances were bested, and they lost parts of

their identity, just as an 18th century regiment might lose its

colors in battle, and face subsequent disgrace. Theft was

personal, political, and material.

55 CO 5/88, TNA, deposition of William Normanton, 24 July, 1770.

Niescior 47

These kinds of stolen items do not, however, seem to have

become publically displayed, or even acknowledged, trophies. The

knowledge that these instances even happened was in fact

suppressed. The Sons of Liberty, concerned for a strategy of “No

Mobs,” could not afford to celebrate, condone, wink at, or even

admit to mob and crowd actions in the city. News of these attacks

and trophies were thus entirely ignored, and never made it into

the publications of the opposition. Only one soldier even made an

effort to retrieve a stolen bayonet, but he failed to get it

back. His and other bayonets may have been pressed into militia

service, and hats may have been stripped of military appointments

and recocked into new hats, but there is no way to know. Such

information is simply not to be found. Once removed from the

scene of the theft, the articles became more liabilities than

trophies, and were hidden from view. They, at the very least,

drop from the historical record.

Following the Boston Massacre, however, on March 5th, 1770,

the army was finally forced to leave the town. The massacre was

precisely not what the Sons of Liberty wanted, a massive mob of

unprecedented size, but they were forced to make political use of

Niescior 48

the outcome. When the smoke had cleared on King Street, the

political ability of the government supporters to maintain the

army in the town was made untenable, not the least reason being

that the population threatened to call up the militia and force

the soldiers out. The army was immediately confined to barracks,

and by the end of the month the two remaining regiments of the

garrison, the 29th and 14th had been moved away to New Jersey and

the barracks at Castle William, respectively.

The militia was yet called up, however, and revealing how

much the Boston population could appreciate appearances, began

immediately to fill the posts abandoned by the regular army.

Militiamen now stood guard where the soldiers had been sentries,

and the guardhouse at the neck was filled with New England men,

headed by a militia captain. The experience of Serjeant John

Ridigings of the 14th Regiment is typical:

on the 6th. of March last in the evening of that day he was the Commanding Officers Orderly serjeant, and being dismiss’d by him, he was going to his Barracks, on his way thither he was stopt by three Men armed, &two more with Bludgeons, who demanded him to go with them to the Town Guard, he tould them he had been upon duty, and was just dismiss’d by the Commanding Officer, they said they did not care for that, and insisted on his going with them which he was obliged to do, and when they came to the Guard, they

Niescior 49

call’d out for the Captain of the Guard, who came and demanded what business he had from his Barracks, & was answered the same as before, he said it was well for him it was so, otherwise he would have committed him to Jail, for he saw no right that any soldiers had in Town then, or at any other time, he there asked the Captains name which he refused to give, but order’d him to his Barracks, desiring the Mob not to use him ill on his way thither,_ In going there, he was stopt several times by a number of Armed men, some calling him Lobster and other abusive Names.56

In a coordinated and concerted effort, the people of Boston and

the surrounding area denied the legitimacy of the army’s

presence, and demonstrated the only truly acceptable military

force.

Enter again Henderson, Leeming, and Merryweathers. By May of

1770, they were among the few remaining soldiers in the town

proper. The small hospital on the Common was therefore the last

vestige of the tyrannical ministerial effort to oppress the

colonies, and as a remainder it constituted to the inhabitants of

Boston a reminder of the illegitimacy of the army. The mob which

accosted the soldiers was sure to remind them of that, telling

them that “there should be no Bloody backs permitted to walk on

56 CO 5/88, TNA, the deposition of John Ridings, 25 August, 1770.

Niescior 50

the Common.”57 But this crowd was different than previous ones.

Whereas in previous events in which soldiers’ hats and bayonets

were stolen they had been taken at the end of a fight, as a

parting gesture on the part of the inhabitants to a beaten

soldier, this crowd, however, felt it more cutting to demand at

the outset of their meeting articles of the soldiers’ dress and

arms. And it is in that departure from the previous norm that the

political message lies: the army has been beaten, and has no

authority here. Justice Richard Dana of the Boston courts had

earlier in the garrison made a habit of upbraiding soldiers

brought before him, expressing much of what his fellow Bostonians

felt:

What brought you here, who Sent for you, and by what authority doyou mount Guard, or march in the Streets with arms, it is contrary to the laws of the Province, and you should be all takenup for so offending. We want none of your Guards, We have arms ofour own, and Can protect ourselves. Adding also you are but a handfull, and had Better take care not to provoke us.58

But what to Dana was only a potential use of force, the use of

the town’s own weapons, was to the people of Boston a readily 57 Ibid., deposition of William Henderson, Serjeant, William Leeming and Eustace Merryweathers, 25 August, 1770.

58 CO 5/88, deposition of Ensign John Ness, 25 August, 1770. Similar speeches were also recounted in depositions by Captain Charles Fordyce, Serjeant James Hickman, Ensign Alexander Mall, and Corporal Henry Cullen.

Niescior 51

perceivable and, by May of 1770, openly demonstrated reality.

The crowd which accosted the soldiers on the 29th of May was not

simply taking advantage of outnumbered soldiers, but

demonstrating its members’ politics and putting them to work in

ways the opposition leadership would rather have ignored. To the

crowd which accosted the soldiers, the weapons and cockades of

the garrison were symbols of the usurped and illegitimate

military authority, things that the crowd felt were rightfully

theirs to take.