THE HISTORY OF THE PROVINCE of MASSACHUSETTS BAY, FROM 1749 TO 1774, comprising a detailed narrative of the ORIGIN AND EARLY STAGES of the AMERICAN REVOLUTION. BY THOMAS HUTCHINSON, ESQ., L.L.D. formerly governor of the province. edited from the author's ms., by his grandson, LONDON: JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. MDCCCXXVIII. ΤΟ THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE LORD LYNDHURST, LORD HIGH CHANCELLOR OF GREAT BRITAIN. MY LORD, In soliciting the distinguished introduction to the public, which I am allowed to prefix to this work, I presumed on your Lordship's family connexion with its author, and with other leading individuals, who, during a long period of revolutionary excesses in the Province of Massachusetts Bay, maintained, at the frequent risk of their lives, and with the final loss of their estates, an unshrinking allegiance to the Crown of which they were the delegated servants. To you, my Lord, thus interested in the leading narrative of these pages, I considered, that, as the work of a writer, equally qualified by his profound knowledge of the history of the Colonies, and by his high and responsible station, to trace with accuracy and minuteness the origin and early progress of the American Revolution, they might, with the fittest appropriation, be submitted and dedicated. The permission of placing your Lordship's name in the front of the volume, is, therefore, accepted with more than ordinary acknowledgment, by, My Lord, Your Lordship's very obliged, And very obedient Servant, John Hutchinson. Blurton Parsonage, March 29th, 1828. PREFACE. The appearance of a work fifty years after being completed for the press, renders it necessary to explain both the occasion of the delay, and the grounds on which it is still deemed suitable for publication. The editor is proud to state, that the same deep respect for legitimate authority, and the same ready submission to its decrees, which the reader will discover in the whole of Governor. Hutchinson's public conduct, as detailed in this work, descended, without diminution, to his late representatives, the editor's venerated uncle and father*: and that, in accordance with such feelings, when the government of England had acquiesced in the dismemberment of the empire, both those gentlemen resisted every inducement to give to the public the following pages, at a time when they were eagerly sought, lest the publication of such a work, on their part, should, notwithstanding its * Thomas and Elisha Hutchinson, Esqrs., mentioned in page 425 as joint consignees with several others, of the tea destroyed in Boston harbour in 1773. The former died at Heavitree, near Exeter, in 1811, at the age of 71; and the latter at Blurton Parsonage, Trentham, Staffordshire, in 1824, in his 81st year. |