Knollenberg Bernhard. Growth of the American Revolution: 1766-1775
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Colonies) that the colonial rangers sent to his support appeared “little
better than canaille”: “The Americans are in general the dirtiest most
contemptible cowardly dogs that you can conceive....Such rascals as
these are rather an encumbrance than any real strength to an army.”²²
Had not Colonel Lord Percy written from Boston to his father, the
Duke of Northumberland, as recently as July, : “The people in this
part of the country are in general made up of rashness & timidity. Quick
& violent in their determinations, they are fearful in the execution of
them (unless indeed, they are quite certain of meeting little or no oppo-
sition, & then like all other cowards, they are cruel and tyrannical.) To
hear them talk, you would imagine they would attack us & demolish us
every night; and yet, whenever we appear, they are frightened out of
their wits.”²³
Even more impressive were the assurances given by speakers in
Parliament itself. Colonel James Grant, who had fought in the colo-
nies during the French and Indian War and served as Governor of East
Florida, stated on the floor of the House of Commons that he “knew
the Americans well; was certain they would not fight. They would never
dare to face an English army....”²⁴ And Lord Sandwich, First Lord of
the Admiralty, in the House of Lords, said: “Supposing the Colonies do
abound in men, what does that signify? They were undisciplined, cow-
ardly men. I wish instead of forty or fifty thousand of these brave fellows,
they would produce in the field at least two hundred thousands, the
more the better, the easier would be the conquest....”²⁵
Colonel Grant’s assurance that the colonists would not dare resist
was shared by the King, who wrote: “I have not the smallest doubt...
when once vigorous measures appear to be the only means left of bring-
ing the Americans to a due Submission to the Mother Country that the
Colonies will submit.”²⁶
A letter that was to put the King’s confidence to the test was already
on its way to Gage in Boston. On January , , Lord Dartmouth,
Secretary of State for the Colonies, had instructed him “to arrest and
imprison the principal actors & abettors” in the Massachusetts Con-
gress “if they should presume again to assemble for...rebellious pur-
poses,” even though their arrest be “a Signal for Hostilities.”
By the time Dartmouth’s letter, long delayed in transit, reached
li
Gage on April , it was too late for him to seize members of the Mas-
sachusetts Congress, but the letter clearly implied that he was to take
the offensive even though this might precipitate war.
Spies had informed Gage that the rebel Congress had collected a
large quantity of military stores at Concord, twenty miles inland from
Boston. Acting on this information he ordered Lieutenant-Colonel
Francis Smith to lead a detachment on the night of April , , “with
the utmost expedition and Secrecy to Concord, where you will seize
and destroy” the “Ammunition, Provision, Artillery, Tents and small
Arms...collected...for the avowed purpose of raising and support-
ing a Rebellion against His Majesty.”
When, early in the morning of April , an advance party of Smith’s
detachment, led by Major John Pitcairn of the marines, reached Lex-
ington, on the way to Concord, it encountered a group of Massachu-
setts soldiers assembled on the village green. One side or the other fired
a shot, the evidence as to which fired first is hopelessly conflicting, and
in the ensuing firing, eight Americans were killed.
By the time the detachment reached Concord, hundreds of Mas-
sachusetts soldiers had gathered there. The detachment succeeded in
destroying some of the military supplies stored in and near Concord,
but not without some hard fighting. On the return of the detachment
to Boston, thousands of Americans dogged their march, killed over fifty
British officers and men, and wounded many more, not without heavy
losses of their own.
News of the casualties at Lexington and Concord and false reports
of the wanton butchery by British troops of helpless old men, women,
and children hardened the hearts of colonial Whigs against Britain.
Though over a year was to pass before the Congress adopted the Dec-
laration of Independence, the rebellion, ripening into the American
War for Independence, was soon in full swing.²⁷
lii
GROWTH OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION: 1766–1775
THE ROCKINGHAM MINISTRY
AND THE STAMP ACT
D
and protests against the pro-
posed tax, the British Parliament, in March, , passed an act
levying a stamp tax in the colonies on newspapers, newspaper adver-
tising, playing cards and dice, and a wide range of documents.¹ The
Stamp Act was approved in May by commissioners representing
George III, who was ill,² and, soon afterward stamp distributors were
appointed for the several colonies, and stamped paper was shipped to
America for distribution and sale. But in all of the thirteen old colonies
of North America, except Georgia, the act, scheduled to take effect No-
vember first, was nullified. The distributors were forced by threats of vi-
olence to resign, and the colonists proceeded to use unstamped paper
for newspapers and other articles in defiance of the act.³
Furthermore, at an intercolonial congress, held at New York City in
October, , petitions to the King and both Houses of Parliament
were adopted denying the right of Parliament to levy any kind of taxes
for revenue in the colonies.⁴ And merchants in Boston, New York, and
Philadelphia made concerted efforts to put pressure on British mer-
chants and manufacturers to seek repeal of the Stamp Act by subjecting
their orders for British goods to the condition that the act be repealed.⁵
If George Grenville, whose Ministry introduced and secured pas-
sage of the Stamp Act, had still been in office when news of these de-
velopments reached England, he probably would have had the British
army in North America try to enforce the act. (At his final interview
with the King before leaving office, Grenville told the King that “if any
man ventured to defeat the regulations laid down for the Colonies, by
a slackness in the execution, he should look upon him as a criminal and
the betrayer of his country.”)⁶ If the army had been so employed, the
American Revolution might well have been precipitated in in-
stead of nine years later.
But in July, , after months of political jockeying (described in the
appendix to this chapter), the Grenville Ministry had been replaced by
the Ministry of the Marquis of Rockingham, First Lord of the Treasury
and First Minister, as the head of the Ministry was then called.*
One of the most striking aspects of the British Cabinet in the eigh-
teenth century is that, as a rule, the overwhelming majority of its mem-
bers were drawn not from the relatively large House of Commons, but
from the smaller House of Lords. Historians have frequently pointed
out that the House of Commons represented only a small percentage of
the people of Great Britain. Less noticed has been the fact that so few
of the members of the Commons were represented in the Cabinet. The
Cabinet in the Rockingham Ministry was no exception to the rule. Of
its eight members only one, Henry Seymour Conway, was a member of
the House of Commons
—and even he was the younger brother of an
English earl.
Still comparatively young (thirty-five), Rockingham had never be-
fore held ministerial office, nor Court office higher than a Lord of the
Bedchamber. But he had long been one of the most powerful political
figures in the wealthy and populous County of York and an important
ally of Newcastle, who was First Lord of the Treasury, –, and
leader of the then most influential group of Whigs. Following the resig-
nation in of Newcastle and his important ally, the Duke of Devon-
shire, Rockingham resigned his Court office and took a leading part in
the councils and activities of the opposition led by Newcastle.⁷
It is not clear why Newcastle, who replaced Marlborough as Lord
Privy Seal, was not asked to head the new Ministry. Perhaps he had
* P. Langford, The First Rockingham Administration, – (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ),
chs. and ; Ross J. S. Hoffman, The Marquis: A Study of Lord Rockingham, – (New York:
Fordham University Press, ), ch. ; Fred Anderson, Crucible of War: The Seven Years’ War and the
Fate of Empire in British North America, – (New York: Vintage Books, ), ch. . [B.W.S.]
ruled himself out as too old (he was nearly seventy-two);⁸ perhaps it was
thought that giving him chief place would antagonize Pitt, from whom
the Ministry hoped for support⁹ and who had long been openly cold to
Newcastle.¹⁰
Next to Rockingham and Newcastle probably the most important
member of the new Ministry was Conway, appointed a Secretary of
State (with responsibility for the Southern Department, the department
in charge of colonial affairs) and Leader in the House of Commons.
A brother of the Earl of Hertford and nephew of the great Sir Robert
Walpole, Conway had excellent political connections. He was commis-
sioned in the army long before he was of age, and, by , after con-
siderable active service, had become colonel of the crack first regiment
of dragoons and attained the rank of lieutenant general. Furthermore,
from the time he came of age in , he had been a member of Parlia-
ment, and in was appointed Secretary to the Duke of Devonshire,
Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and, in , a Groom of the King’s Bed-
chamber.
But in he was dismissed from his place in the King’s household
and also from the colonelcy of his regiment for having voted against the
Ministry on important issues in the House of Commons.¹¹ He there-
upon became one of the leaders of the opposition to the Grenville Min-
istry. In , he not only opposed the proposed Stamp Act, but was one
of the very few members of Parliament, and a highly important one, to
base his opposition on the ground that Parliament had no right to tax
the colonies.¹²
The other Cabinet members were Conway’s fellow Secretary of
State, the Duke of Grafton, a follower of Pitt; Rockingham’s uncle, Lord
Winchilsea, and two holdovers from the old Ministry, the Lord Chan-
cellor (Lord Northington) and Lord Egmont,¹³ First Lord of the Admi-
ralty. Also, the King’s uncle, the Duke of Cumberland, though holding
no ministerial office, was an active member of the new Cabinet until his
death in October, .¹⁴
On receipt of word of the alarming anti-stamp tax disturbances in
several of the North American colonies, Conway wrote a circular letter
(October ) to their Governors to call on the commanders of the
British army and navy in North America to help enforce the Stamp
Act, but only after the Governors had taken “every Step, which the ut-
most Prudence and Lenity can dictate” to restore order without mili-
tary assistance.¹⁵ The tenor, if not the exact wording, of the letter had
been agreed upon at a recent meeting of the Privy Council Committee
on Plantation (Colonial) Affairs, attended by Winchilsea, Grafton,
Egmont, Conway, William Dowdeswell, Chancellor of the Exchequer,
and Newcastle’s follower, Lord Grantham, joint Postmaster-General.¹⁶
The Ministry’s plan seems to have been to avert bloodshed until Par-
liament met and then to propose modification of the Stamp Act or repeal
depending upon the attitude of Pitt. On December , Newcastle sent a
message to Pitt that Rockingham, Grafton, Conway, and Egmont had
made a “hearty resolve to determine the question about the stamp act in
favour of the West Indies [i.e., the colonies], and exactly conformable”
to Pitt’s ideas.¹⁷ But Pitt refused to commit himself, replying icily that
“When his Grace does me the honour to say that anything is ‘exactly
conformable to my ideas,’ he is pleased to use the name of a man, who has
never communicated his ideas to the Duke of Newcastle upon the pres-
ent state of affairs....Whenever my ideas, in their true and exact di-
mensions, reach the public, I shall lay them before the world myself.”¹⁸
Perplexed by Pitt’s refusal to commit himself and by news of a recent
particularly violent outbreak against the Stamp Act in New York,¹⁹
which was received on December ,²⁰ the Cabinet, though in general
opposed to enforcement of the act as it stood, was undecided as to what
course to take.²¹ Hence the King’s speech to the joint Houses at the
opening of Parliament on December , and the Houses’ replies were
noncommittal. The speech referred to “Matters of Importance [that]
have lately occurred in some of My Colonies in America, which will de-
mand the most serious Attention of Parliament.” The proposed replies
assured the King that (quoting the Commons’ reply) “we will not fail...
to apply ourselves with the utmost Diligence and Attention to those im-
portant Occurences in America...and to exert our most zealous En-
deavours for the Honour of His Majesty’s Government...in all parts
of His extended Empire.”²²
Grenville immediately moved that this reply be amended by adding
a clause “to express our just Resentment and Indignation at the outra-
geous Tumults and Insurrections which have been excited and carried
on in North America, and...to assure His Majesty that His faithful
Commons...will firmly and effectually support His Majesty in all such
Measures as shall be necessary for preserving and securing the legal De-
pendence of the Colonies upon this their Mother Country....”²³
After some discussion, Grenville withdrew his motion,²⁴ and a simi-
lar motion in the Lords by one of Grenville’s followers, Lord Suffolk,²⁵
was defeated by a vote of to .²⁶
But division in the Ministry itself over enforcement of the act was re-
vealed when, in the course of debate on Suffolk’s motion, Northington
said “give up the Law & Great Britain would be Conquered in America
& become a Province to her own Colonies. America must submit.”²⁷
Furthermore, in the House of Commons, the Paymaster-General,
Charles Townshend, declared that he approved of the Stamp Act and
of enforcing it and that “sooner than make our Collonies our Allies [in-
stead of subject provinces] he would wish to see them returned to their
Primitive Desarts.”²⁸
The division in the Ministry is further known from letters between
Newcastle and Rockingham during the holiday recess of Parliament.
On January , , Newcastle wrote Rockingham complaining of the
latter’s failure to report to him an important dinner meeting on De-
cember , at Rockingham’s house, attended by Rockingham, Egmont,
Conway, Lord Dartmouth, President of the Board of Trade, Dowdeswell,
and Attorney-General Charles Yorke. At this meeting (according to
Newcastle’s informant) Yorke had proposed and a majority present
agreed to a “Strong Motion...for an Act of Parliament declaring the
Right of the Parliament of England [over the colonies] & also an Ad-
dress to the King promising to support His Majesty to the utmost ex-
tent”; the latter of which, at least, was “strongly objected to by Lord
Egmont and Mr. Conway.”²⁹
Rockingham replied the next day, in no way challenging the accu-
racy of Newcastle’s information as to the meeting on December ,
and telling him of another recent meeting. This was a dinner meeting
on December , attended by Rockingham, Dowdeswell, Dartmouth,
Conway, Barlow Trecothick, a merchant trading to North America,
and two other London businessmen, Sir William Baker and George
Aufrère, who had important colonial interests and were members of
Parliament.³⁰ “Upon the whole that has yet passed,” said Rockingham,
“either at the former or this latter Dinner, I think one thing seems to be
the General Opinion
—that is that the Legislative Right of this Country
over the Colonies should be declared
—& upon the Plan of Act th of
Geo. I relating to Ireland....³¹
“The Grave Matter in which as yet I can not see where & how the
different Opinions can be brought to agree is
—what must finally be
done upon the Stamp Act. All would agree to various Amendments³² &
Curtailings of the Act
—Some, as yet not very many to a Suspension &
very few to a Repeal.
“Yesterday,” Rockingham continued, it had been decided to have
Thomas Townshend (a junior member of the Treasury Board, on
friendly terms with Pitt) “talk with Mr. Pitt on the present important
matter...& Mr. Townshend set out for Bath early this morning....
“I called at the Chancellor’s [Northington’s] today; he is got back &
well but I did not see him. I hope he will become more moderate. I think
Charles Yorke does.”³³
Newcastle replied on January , thanking Rockingham for his letter,
and adding, “I own, I fear, (as I should have said if I had been present at
the Consultation) that the Idea of Authority & Relief going Hand-in-Hand
. . . will be found very Difficult. And for one, I shall incline rather to be
Deficient in that which is only a Declaration in Words than in the Other,
on which depend the most Material Interests of this Country, viz., the
Recovery or Enjoyment of our Trade & Commerce...to America....
The other Branches of Trade to Foreign Countries is at present so low
& depends so much on the Will & Caprice of the Powers with whom we
trade, that there is no great Dependence to be had upon it....
“I am extremely glad to Find that the King & his Ministers have
thought proper to learn Mr. Pitt’s Sentiments upon this great Question;
and I hope Regard will be paid to them.”³⁴
Townshend’s mission proved abortive. Pitt said he would not give his
opinion as to what to do concerning the Stamp Act to anyone but the
King or the public. He expressed his willingness to take office, but only
if his brother-in-law, Lord Temple, were offered Rockingham’s place
(Rockingham to have some other office) and Newcastle dismissed for
“there could not be Two Ministers [and] that wherever the Duke of