The Boston Tea Party: Whitehall’s Response

On December 22, 1773, the Hayley, a merchant ship owned by John Hancock, departed Boston Harbor; on January 19, 1774, the ship arrived at Dover, England. She was carrying news about the destruction of tea in Boston harbor on December 16. By nightfall the news had reached King George III in London. At first it did not seem to be an issue for him; he wrote, “I am much hurt that the instigation of bad men hath again drawn the people of Boston to take such unjustifiable steps; but I trust by degrees tea will find its way there.”[1]

Lord Dartmouth, the Secretary-of-State for the Colonies, was the most-informed, high-ranking officer in the Prime Minister’s Cabinet. On January 8, 1774, he received four letters from Thomas Hutchinson, the governor of Massachusetts. They were dated November 3, November 4, November 6 and November 15, 1773. In the letters, Hutchinson informed Dartmouth that the consignees—agents who represented the owners of the tea contracts—were being strong-armed by some colonists to resign their positions and that the governor’s council believed the best thing which could be done to quiet the people would “be the refusal of the Gentlemen to whom the Teas are consigned.” Hutchison made it clear that “Every thing that has been in my power . . . I have done & continue to do for the preservation of the peace & good order of the Town.” Dartmouth had the letters laid before King George III.

On February 5, Lord Dartmouth received four more letters from Hutchinson. They were dated December 2, December 15, December 17 and December 19. The first three were direct letters to Dartmouth; the fourth was a copy of the letter sent by Hutchison to the directors of the East India Company. In these letters, he described the damage done to a couple of the consignees’ homes, their joint response that they could not refuse the tea, and that for their safety the consignees, their families and four Customs commissioners were forced to move to Castle Island in Boston Harbor, and “350 chests of Tea in two hours was wholly destroyed.”[2] Dartmouth again had the letters laid before King George.

Dartmouth also received letters from John Montague, the Admiral of the British Navy in the harbor, Alexander Leslie, lieutenant colonel the 64th Regiment stationed at Fort William on Castle Island, and Frederick Haldimand, major general and temporary commander-in-chief of British Forces in North America, located in New York City. On January 8, he promised Hutchinson that

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the present Situation of the Province under this fresh Insult to the Authority of Parliament, & unjustifiable Endeavour to obstruct the lawfull Commerce of the Kingdom, requires very serious Attention.”[3]

His first act toward giving it attention was to organize the letters he had received in November and December and to put together an argument that the Boston Tea Party was a criminal act and quite possibly an act of treason. While he was preparing his argument, he received Montague’s official report on the 21st[4] and Leslie’s official report on the 28th, regarding what transpired on December 16. Dartmouth’s finished work would become known as the “Narrative Case.”[5]

The Cabinet and the Privy Council reconvened for the new year late on January 28 and 29. The Cabinet discussed the “consequence of the present disorders in America, [and] effectual Steps be taken to secure the Dependence of the Colonies on the Mother Country.” At the meetings was Lord North, Lord President Gower, Lord Chancellor Apsley, the Earl of Sandwich (First Lord of the Admiralty) and the three Secretaries-of-State—the earls Dartmouth, Rochford and Suffolk.[6] They discussed on the first day the removal of the Customs House and Assembly from the town of Boston;[7] they discussed on the second meeting shutting down the Port of Boston, altering who was appointed to the governor’s council, regulating juries and preventing town meetings except for elections.[8] Sometime in the morning or early afternoon on the 29th, Lord North shared the discussions from the previous night with King George and pointed out that the actions “could be taken immediately by the sole power of the Crown.”[9]

On February 5, Dartmouth presented his Narrative Case, including the four letters he had received that day, to the Cabinet. The documents confirmed all of the actions they had discussed the night before. After the meeting, Dartmouth sent the documents to the highest law officers in England, Edward Thurlow, the attorney-general, and Alexander Wedderburn, the solicitor-general, with the following letter:

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I am commanded . . . to transmit to you the enclosed narrative of facts relating to some of the late transactions of Boston in North America, accompanied with two questions.
The state of His Majesty’s Colonies in America, under the insults that have been offered to the Authority of this Kingdom, requires the most serious deliberation and speedy decision, It is therefore His Majesty’s Pleasure that you should transmit your answer to with all possible dispatch.[10]

The two questions were: “Do the Acts & Proceedings stated in the foregoing case, or any other of them amount to a crime of High Treason and if they do, who are the persons chargeable with such Crime and what will be the proper and legal methods of Proceeding against them?”[11]

Based on the documents, Dartmouth sent a list of thirty names that he believed were involved in the incident and should be arrested. Thurlow and Wedderburn reduced the list to eight names; three of those were Samuel Adams, John Hancock and Dr. Joseph Warren.[12]

Later that day, Dartmouth wrote to Hutchinson:

It is the King’s firm Resolution, upon the unanimous Advice of his Confidential Servants, to pursue such measures as shall be effectual for securing the Dependence of the Colonies upon this Kingdom, and for the Support and Protection of His Majesty’s faithful Servants.[13]

On February 10, Dartmouth, frustrated that he had not received any form of a response from Thurlow and Wedderburn, wrote to them and requested one.[14] His request was not well received by the two men, but it did produce the desired outcome. On February 11, Thurlow and Wedderburn gave the following responses:

We are of the opinion that the Acts and Proceedings, stated in the above-mentioned case do amount to the Crime of High Treason, namely to the levying of War against His Majesty.
Methods of proceeding against Them are either by prosecuting them for their Treason, in the country, in the ordinary course of Justice, or arresting Them there by the Justices of the Peace . . . and transmitting Them hither to [be] tried in some County of England . . . or by sending over a Warrant of a Secretary-of-State grounded on sufficient information upon Oath, to arrest and bring over the Offenders to be tried here.[15]

Dartmouth had a few follow-up questions for Thurlow and Wedderburn: Could the king create a commission under the Great Seal to conduct an “inquisition of the treason committed” and could the commissioners be granted “full Powers of Magistracy.”[16] The two men did not respond.

On February 12, Dartmouth wrote to John Thornton, a friend and trustee of the Dartmouth school for Native Americans in New Hampshire. His words were very telling:

How fatally and effectually they (the colonists) have now shut the door against all possibility of present relief for any of the things they complain of, and how utterly vain it must be to expect that Parliament will ever give it to them till there appears to be a change in their temper and conduct.[17]

On February 19, a committee of the Privy Council received the depositions of ten men that were present on the night of the incident and willing “to bear witness”: William Turner, William Tyler, Francis Rotch, James Hall, Nathan Frazier, John Dean Whitworth, David Black, James Henderson, Andre Mackenzie and Hugh Williamson. The depositions had been gathered by Hutchinson and sent to England on January 6.[18] After their examination, the depositions were sent to the Cabinet where they were again examined. By the end of their meeting, they had seen enough; they agreed that it was time to take a course of action. If the attorney-general and solicitor general agreed, warrants would be issued for the arrest and transportation to England of certain colonists accused of treason; a bill would be introduced in Parliament to close the port of Boston until the colonist had paid for the destroyed tea; and a bill would be introduced to alter the charter of the Massachusetts colony.[19]

At the next cabinet meeting on February 28, Thurlow and Wedderburn changed their position on sending warrants to the colony. They stated that the depositions did not present them with enough evidence to seek a conviction against any of the names Dartmouth had given them. When the meeting was over, John Pownall, one of their undersecretaries, caught up with Thurlow and asked him if he should begin to prepare the arrest warrants. Thurlow in an angry tone said,

No, nothing is done. Don’t you see that they want to throw the whole responsibility of the business upon the Solicitor-General and me . . . and who would be such damned fools as to risk themselves for such—fellows as these.[20]

He then walked away. Thurlow and Wedderburn had made it clear at the meeting that the matter was not a criminal problem but rather it was a political problem that fell under the responsibilities of Parliament. By the end of the meeting, it was decided,

As the charge of high treason cannot be maintained against any individual on the ground of the depositions taken at the [Privy] Council Board on the 19th instant, agreed that the depositions with the American advices be laid before Parliament . . . To address the King with assurances of support, [the] Boston Port Bill [is] to be brought in.[21]

On March 2, in a letter to William Tryon, governor of New York, Dartmouth expressed his concern as to how the King and Cabinet were going to carry out their plan, saying “No final resolution has yet been taken upon what has passed in America.”[22]

On March 7, this concern was amplified in King George’s message to Parliament:

His Majesty, upon Information of the unwarrantable Practices which have lately been concerted and carried on in North America; and particularly of the violent and outrageous Proceedings at the Town and Port of Boston . . . with a View of obstructing the Commerce of this Kingdom . . . hath thought fit to lay the whole Matter before His Two Houses of Parliament, fully confiding . . . that they will not only enable His Majesty, effectually, to take Measures, as may be most likely to put an immediate Stop to the present Disorders, but will also take into their . . . Consideration what farther Regulations and permanent Provisions may be necessary to be established for the better securing the execution of the Laws, and the just Dependance of the Colonies upon the Crown and Parliament.[23]

It is interesting that the king did not accuse the colonists of seeking independence or mention the word treason.

On March 9 Dartmouth, unsure how the colonists would respond to the king’s message, asked General Haldimand to put some of his troops in readiness to march to Boston in case they were needed, because “in the present madness of the people there is no answering for events.”

Five days later, Lord North stood up in the House of Commons and began to introduce a bill—the Boston Port Bill.

Lord North and his Cabinet had accomplished only one half of their task; convincing Parliament and having the bill read three times was yet to come.

[1] King George III to Earl of Dartmouth, January 19, 1774, in Historical Manuscripts Commission, Manuscripts of the Earl of Dartmouth, Thirteenth Report, Appendix, Part IV, (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1892), 31:499.

[2] The National Archives, UK, PRO, CO 5/763, ff. 8-9; ff. 23-26.

[3] The National Archives, UK, PRO, CO 5/765. Ff. 276-78.

[4] “Montague to Philip Stevens (secretary to the Admiralty Board), December 17, 1773, in Historical Manuscripts Commission, Eleventh Report, Appendix, Part V, 344. Montague reported that during the destruction of the tea neither the governor, council or customs officers called for his assistance.

[5] The Narrative Case was made-up of nineteen letters from November 2 to December 17. Manuscripts of the Earl of Dartmouth, Appendix, Part V, American papers (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1887), 2:193-94.

[6] Others present were undersecretaries and a former governor of the colony.

[7] Lord North to the King, January 29, 1774 in The Correspondence of King George the Third from 1760—to December 1783, Sir John Fortescue, ed. (London: MacMillan and Company, 1928), 3:55.

[8] Historical Manuscripts Commission, Report on Manuscripts in Various Collections (Dublin: John Falconer, 1909), 6:257.

[9] The Correspondence of King George the Third, 3:55.

[10] Dartmouth to Hutchinson, February 5, 1774, The National Archives, Colonial Records Office, 5/160, fol. 29.

[11] The National Archives, PRO, CO 5/160, fol. 11.

[12] The others were Benjamin Church, Thomas Denny, Andrew Johonet, William Molineux and Thomas Young.

[13] The National Archives, PRO, CO 5/765, ff. 279-80.

[14] The National Archives, PRO, CO 5/250, f. 144.

[15] The National Archives, PRO, CO 5/160: 79-86.

[16] The National Archives, PRO, CO/160. fo. 44.

[17] Manuscripts of the Earl of Dartmouth, Fourteenth Report, Appendix, Part X, American Papers, 2:197.

[18] Acts of the Privy Council of England, Colonial series, the Unbound Papers, ed., James Munro and Sir Almeric W. Fitzroy (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1912), 6: 550-54; The National archives, PRO, CO 5/763, f. 37.

[19] Manuscripts of the Earl of Dartmouth, Fourteenth Report, Appendix, Part X, 2:198.

[20] Historical Manuscripts Commission, Report of Manuscripts in Various Collections, 6:269-70.

[21] Manuscripts of the Earl of Dartmouth, Fourteenth Report, Appendix, Part X, American papers, 2:199.

[22] Dartmouth to William Tryon, March 2, 1774, in the Documents relative to the Colonial History of the State of New York, Edmund Bailey O’Callaghan, ed. (Albany, NY: 1853-1887), 8:413.

[23] R. C. Simmoms and P. D. G. Thomas eds., Proceedings and debates of the British Parliament respecting North America, 1754-1783 (Millwood, NY: Kraus International Publications, 1984), 4:26-31 (the House of Lords) and 4:31-35 (the House of Commons).