Old Boston Days & Ways. Mary Caroline Crawford
of the royal army.
The dinner is cleared away and the port and madeira are going the rounds. The Earl is chatting with a strapping officer on his left whose handsome face is a fair legacy from the race of which he comes. This is Lieutenant Colonel Gunning of the 43rd Foot. . . . On the right of Lord Percy is a lad of twelve or thirteen years, who is the hero of the occasion.
This is Roger Sheaffe, son to the faithful customs collector whose memory is abhorred by rebellious Boston. He has won his way into the affection of the Earl who has promised to see to it that he gains a commission in his regiment. . . .
"The rather stout officer who sits beyond Sheaffe ... is the Hon. Henry Edward Fox, the youngest son of the late Lord Holland, and a captain in the 38th Regiment. Anyone familiar with the prominent faces at Westminster, at Brook's Club, or on the track at Newmarket, would recognize in the Captain a near kinsman to the celebrated Charles James Fox. . . . Harry Fox is said to have little of his brother's brilliancy and none of his vices, and when the 38th sailed for America Mr. Horace Walpole of Strawberry Hill informed Sir Horace Mann that they took with them Lord Holland's 'only good son.' . . . Across the table is Captain William Glanville Evelyn of the King's Own, a man of quiet, serious countenance marked with the scars of smallpox. ... He is flattered and happy to sit at Earl Percy's table to-night. Scandal has not left the Captain's name unsullied, and the curious among his acquaintance would know more of pretty Peggie Wright, who has come out to him from England. It is whispered that she was a servant in his father's household. . . .
"At the foot of the table the Reverend Mather Byles is discoursing with Major John Pitcairn of the Royal Marines, and keeping that staid old officer in a state of uproarious laughter.
Poor Dr. Byles labors under the disadvantage of being considered not only a preacher but a poet and wit as well. Within the year a doggerel rhyme describing the local clergy has gone the rounds of Boston, and in the two stanzas devoted to Byles even his friends admit that a lively portrait has been drawn.
"There's punning Byles provokes our smiles,
A man of stately parts;
Who visits folks to crack his jokes,
That never mend their hearts.
"With strutting gait and wig so great.
He walks along the streets,
And throws out wit, or what's like it,
To everyone he meets.
"Though not of the Church of England Dr. Byles is in the eyes of the army the most sensible as well as the most delightful clergyman in Boston. He has correspondents among the brightest literary lights in England, and will show with pride volumes from his library with the loving inscription of his dear friend, the late Mr. Pope of immortal memory. At heart an arrant Tory, he has kept his congregation in order by asserting that his functions are spiritual and that it is not for him to profane his pulpit by discussing the political problems of the day. .. .
"There is that in Major Pitcairn which attracts the Reverend Byles as it must all men who admire honest simplicity and courage.
Here in rebellious Boston, hot-headed townspeople affronted by quarrelsome or drunken soldiers are glad to leave their grievances in Pitcairn's hands for reparation. Blunt and outspoken, he is yet a modest man, and in the long years that have passed since he left his Fifeshire home he feels that he has made little of his life.
... If the time shall come, which God forbid, that the sword is really drawn in this distracted province, he will do his full duty to the King and will do it humanely by firing low with shotted muskets. In the meantime he is accomplishing as much for peace as any man in Boston who wears King George's livery."
Such were some of those whom Earl Percy entertained on Winter Street. He himself is shown by his pictures, and by letters and accounts which have come down to us, to have been a young man of courage and character, with a delicate high-bred face in which might be discerned just a tinge of melancholy, induced, very likely, by his unhappy domestic experience.
For it was now five years since he had separated from that sprightly granddaughter of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, whom he had made his wife in 1764, and of whom we are given a racy glimpse in the Journals and Correspondence of Miss Berry.
Percy, not having a wife to whom he could send accounts of his American campaign, addressed his letters to his friends and kinsfolk overseas. And they, as good fortune would have it, preserved his communications carefully. At first the letters are disposed to undervalue the character and courage of the Americans but, little by little, there creeps in an appreciation of the resourcefulness of a people who could cope with a royal army, and parry blows inflicted by royal edicts. Under the heading "Camp at Boston, Aug. 21, 1774," he says: "Their method of eluding that part of the Act [which swept away the rights of Massachusetts under the charter] relating to the town meetings is strongly characteristic of the people.
They say that since the town meetings are forbid by the Act, they shall not hold them, but as they do not see any mention made of county meetings, they shall hold them for the future. They therefore go a mile out of town, do just the same business there they formerly did in Boston, call it a county meeting, & so elude the Act. In short, I am certain that it will require a great length of time, much steadiness, and many troops, to reestablish good order & government. . . ."
To his father, a month later, Earl Percy writes: "Things here are now drawing to a crisis every day. The People here openly oppose the new Acts. They have taken up Arms in almost every part of this Province, & have drove in the Govr & most of the Council.
The few that remain in the country they have not only obliged to resign, but to take up arms with them. A few days ago, they mustered about 7000 men at Worcester, to wh' place they have conveyed about 20 pieces of cannon. . . ."
For " the General's great lenity and moderation," Percy is beginning by this time to have only scant respect. He grants that Gage is behaving with exceeding "discretion and prudence," but he sees clearly, none the less, that the time for temporizing is almost past.
With unmistakable pleasure he now writes that his superior officer has "given orders for fortifying the town." A dawning respect for his opponents, too, is discernible in this letter, albeit the same is not very graciously expressed. "What makes an insurrection here always more formidable than in other places," he writes, "is that there is a law of this Province wh' obliges every inhabitant to be furnished with a firelock, bayonet, & pretty considerable quantity of ammunition. Besides wh', every township is obliged by the same law to have a large magazine of all kind of military stores. They are, moreover, trained four times in each year, so that they do not make a despicable appearance as soldiers, tho' they were never yet known to behave themselves even decently in the field."
A pleasant touch of color is lent to Percy's next letter by his astonished reference to the Indian summer which Bostonians of to-day know so well. The date is October 27, 1774: "It was so warm yesterday," he writes, " and is again so warm to-day that I am obliged to sit with all my windows open. Nay, even this morning when I went to visit the outposts at daybreak it was quite mild and pleasant."
Earl Percy did his duty scrupulously, and there was probably very good ground for Dorothy Quincy's complaint that the morning exercises of the soldiers interrupted her beauty sleep.
"Things here grow more and more serious every day," confides Percy to a military kinsman in England under date of November 1, 1774. "The Provl' Congress at Cambridge have now come to resolutions which must be attended with fatal consequences to this country. They have voted an army of observation of 15,000 men, & have appointed a committee of 15 who are to have the conduct & management of the affairs of this Province; but they are particularly to take care that proper magazines are formed, & that their army is supplied with everything proper for carrying on war.
"They have chose Col. Ward, Col. Preble, & Col. Pomeroy, Genls to command this army, wh' is to be divided for the winter into 3 corps: one at Charlestown, wh' is just on the other side of the harbor from Boston, one at Roxbury, wh' is just at the