Michael Dean
How America came to fight Britain for its independenceSample Passages
Chapter 1 – Boston Lieutenant Governor & Governor's Residences
Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson sat alone in his mansion on Garden Court Street, the loveliest dwelling in Boston. His restless pale blue eyes swept over Turkish carpets and painted hangings; over mouldings and gildings; over marble tables and St Domingo mahogany panelling with the arms of England in the recesses of swan-like arches.
There was a polite tap on the door which led from the Hall Chamber into the Great Chamber, where he sat. A footman in the Hutchinson blue-and-gold livery walked softly in, ushering a Negro slave runner, as if he were driving a sheep to market.
‘A message for you, sir,’ said the footman.
Hutchinson raised one eyebrow, a trick handed down to him from five generations of Bostonian aristocracy. ‘From?’
‘From the Assembly, sir.’
Hutchinson permitted himself a bleak smile. Sure enough, the note, when the Negro slave runner handed it over, confirmed that the petition to the Massachusetts Assembly had been received and would be discussed.
Hutchinson’s smile widened. The petition was in the name of the Governor of Massachusetts, Hutchinson’s superior, Thomas Pownall. It requested the Assembly to approve measures designed to reduce smuggling and so increase the tax revenue from traded goods.
‘No reply,’ Hutchinson said.
‘Very good, sir.’ The footman shepherded the Negro slave from the room, watching him closely as if he feared some unspecified crime.
Thomas Hutchinson re-read the note. ‘That’ll show you, you little popinjay,’ he said aloud to the absent Governor. ‘Now what will you do, I wonder?’
Like all his predecessors as Governor of Massachusetts, Thomas Pownall lived in the Province House on Milk Street. This place, selected by the early settlers for their governor to dwell in, lacked the grandeur of the Hutchinson mansion but it was pleasant enough, being a three-storey brick building set in finely timbered lawns.
Governor Thomas Pownall was that most gregarious of creatures, an underlyingly lonely man. No wife for Thomas Pownall, at least not yet. Not even a regular companion in his bed, much as he loved women. The two moth-eaten lions on the Pownall coat of arms, the Governor used to joke, represented himself and his brother rampant and pawing the air because they were looking for a mate.
But at this moment, as he gathered together his drawing materials in his chamber, the Governor soared above the torments of his flesh. His mind was roaming the realms of art.
His sketch of the Boston waterfront, as seen from the British garrison, out on its island at Castle William, showed promise, he told himself judiciously. He had caught both the grace and the power of the British men-of-war at anchor. It needed more work … But at the last minute he decided to improve his map of Boston instead.
A footman in red and green livery appeared. He had neither knocked at the door nor sought permission to enter. The footman carried a message.
The Governor took the message and said ‘Wait, please’ to the footman. The footman smiled. This may have been because the Governor was famously polite to the underlings. Or
it may have been that the majority of people who encountered Thomas Pownall smiled at the sight of him.
His short, plump figure presented no threat. His artless grin aroused affection. He looked like the Lincoln Imp. This stone figure, grinning and gap-toothed, was mounted high on the east wall of Lincoln Cathedral, near the Pownall family home. It sat on a stone bench with one calf crossed over the other thigh. Whether by chance or out of impish imitation, Thomas Pownall habitually sat like that, too.
But as he read the message, the Governor’s half-smile faded. Even the laughter lines round his eyes appeared to droop. Thomas Pownall knew very well he was seen as pleasant but trifling. He did not particularly mind that. Usually, the love he won from those who knew him outweighed the occasional lack of respect. But this … THIS …
Thomas Pownall just stopped himself from screwing the message into a ball and throwing it on the floor. He thought hard, while the footman waited, looking concerned. The message confirmed a motion before the Massachusetts Assembly. It was in the Governor’s name but tabled by Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson. The motion was designed to reduce smuggling and increase revenue from customs duties.
Thomas Pownall had of course discussed this issue with the Lieutenant Governor, again and again. He had discussed it with everybody; it was vital. But Thomas Hutchinson putting it before the Assembly in the Governor’s name was the most rampant mischief. Of course they would reject it. It would arouse the utmost irritation – even fury. And he, Governor Thomas Pownall, would look crass and clumsy for such an inept attempt at root-and-branch reform.
Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson wished to wreck Governor Pownall’s policy once and for all. And he had been fiendishly clever about it. As he calmed, to a degree, and felt some of the colour come back into his face, Pownall could not help but admire Hutchinson’s political skill – or low cunning. It was worthy of Machiavelli himself.
Thomas Pownall sighed. His only course of action, the only one Hutchinson had left him, was to get this wrecking motion withdrawn from the Assembly. Then Pownall could go on pressing for what was clearly best for Boston – proper payment of customs duties – in the subtle manner he had always employed, working with the grain.
But Hutchinson and his faction dominated the Assembly. The only way to get the motion withdrawn was to go on bended knee to the Lieutenant Governor. Oh, how Hutchinson would enjoy that!
Pownall addressed the footman, speaking absently, mind elsewhere. ‘Make ready the landau and the greys.’
‘Not the chaise?’
‘No! Not the chaise.’
Should he have insisted the footman address him as sir, or as Governor? He did not know how to treat the servants and they knew it. They sensed it. A man carries his past like a sack on his back.
When he first arrived as Governor, some three years ago, the staff at the Province House assumed Pownall had been brought up in a house with footmen. And Thomas Pownall did not disabuse them. Nobody in Boston knew how far below the salt the Pownalls were. Thomas Pownall had hardly seen a footman, a servant or a secretary before he came to Boston.
His father, William, was a poor country squire and soldier who died young. With the family plunged into poverty by William’s death, they lived in the shadow of the Poor House, forever listening out for the heavy tread of the bailiffs. His mother, Sara, had to rent out part of the house in humble Saltfleet, Lincolnshire. In the nick of time, the industrious Sara Pownall had wangled a connection to Lord North. Otherwise they would have starved.
While waiting for the carriage to be made ready, Thomas Pownall changed his clothes. He habitually dressed informally – a short frock coat, no ruffled shirt, no powdered wig, as often as not no sword. But not this time. Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson was about to be impressed by the full majesty of Governor Thomas Pownall.
He would wear the yellow silk waistcoat. Oh yes! Hutchinson would not know what it meant, but he, Thomas Pownall, would. And that was all that mattered.
Chapter 12 – London American Department
At five minutes before eight in the morning, John Pownall jumped out of a sedan chair outside the lobby of the Admiralty Building, in the Cockpit, Whitehall, where the American Department was housed. He hauled his leather bag after him, grinding his teeth at losing more work-time than he had lost in months.
Seething with impatience, he paid the chair man with bad grace, proffering no tip, then ran into the building with the man’s sarcastic ‘Have a very good day, sir,’ ringing in his ears.
He ran up the wooden stairs, taking them two at a time. The American Department was on the first floor. The outer office housed seven clerks at seven standing-desks but only two of them were in at this early hour. They were presided over by the Chief Clerk, William Pollock. He was already at his post, sitting at his imposing desk at the front of the office, facing the clerks.
William Pollock stood as John Pownall burst in. He was steeped in the ways of the Civil Service, having spent twenty years at the Northern Department. He was greying at the temples, being over a decade older than the two Under-Secretaries, John Pownall and William Knox. That and his grand house in Downing Street, while the Under-Secretaries were both still in cheap lodgings, gave him a knowing air with his superiors, though he was never less than respectful.
‘Good morning, Mr Pownall, sir.’
‘Morning, Mr Pollock. Anything fresh in? Anything from Boston?’
John Pownall glanced impatiently at the mahogany panelling of the outer office, covered in shelves, compartments and pigeon holes all containing myriad petitions from America, loosely tied in ribbon. Most of the petitions remained unread, if only because there were so many of them, but reports from spies were a different matter. That is what John Pownall meant by ‘Anything fresh in?’ Reports from spies, especially spies from Boston, were taken through to John Pownall and William Knox immediately.
‘Yes, sir. There are fresh reports from our informants in Boston.’
‘On my desk quick as you can, please.’
‘Yes, sir.’
John Pownall walked through to the minuscule inner office. Hs face relaxed, as far as it ever did, falling into an automatic smile at the sight of Under-Secretary William Knox. He felt the familiar flush of affection, even love. Their work together, side by side at adjacent desks, elbows almost touching, had made them more like brothers than John ever felt towards his true brother, Thomas.
William Knox was an Irish descendant of the protestant radical John Knox, but he was no radical himself – he was loyalist in his blood and bones. As usual in the morning, he was reading a newspaper with his feet up on his desk, appearing to do nothing. But there was an almost finished background report on his desk, the work of many weeks.
Pownall regarded the last background report Knox had produced as the best analysis of the colonial question he had ever read. Knox’s paper pointed out that the Romans treated each colony differently, according to circumstance and need. The British tried to establish the same colonial policy not only for every American colony but for all the Caribbean colonies, and for India and Ireland. It was too broad and so, warned Knox, it was doomed to failure.
Knox was the only man on the British side to look at colonial issues from the colonists’ viewpoint, perhaps because he had spent some years living in Georgia as a rice planter. Pownall, deep though his factual knowledge of America was, never did that. He never saw any need to.
Having lived among its people, Knox understood the lack of hierarchy in American society: no religious hierarchy, no class hierarchy. Pownall always shrugged that off. Americans saw themselves as subject to the King and God only. They rejected every other man put over them, be it bishop or rule-maker. And they most certainly rejected the authority of the British Parliament.
That analysis, like all the others, had made its way to Lord Hillsborough’s office, where it – like all the others – lay gathering dust, unread by Hillsborough or anybody else.
William Knox lowered the newspaper as far as his nose, peering over it for comic effect. His deep blue eyes were twinkling, laughter lines creased his cheeks. The whole of his pleasant face appeared to be smiling, even the prow of his nose.
‘Top o’ the mornin’ to you,’ he said in a Drury Lane stage-Irish voice, exaggerating his natural Monaghan accent to the point of parody. ‘Where have you been?’ he added, speaking normally. ‘Secret meeting?’
The remark was said with Knox’s usual twinkle, but it had an edge to it. John Pownall habitually kept information to himself, even if it should be shared. On one occasion this had led to an eyeball-to-eyeball quarrel between the two Under-Secretaries, the only time they had ever fallen out. While Thomas Pownall was still Governor of Massachusetts, John had spoken to the Head of the American Department, Lord Hillsborough, about him. He had done this on his own initiative, without consultation. Thomas, John told Hillsborough, was too close to the Massachusetts Assembly. He had gone native; it was handicapping their work. As John knew perfectly well, William Knox took a diametrically opposite view, seeing Thomas, as many did, as the best colonial governor then in post.
Hillsborough had recalled Thomas soon afterwards. This may or may not have been what John had intended – it probably was not, in Knox’s opinion – but William Knox still did not approve, hence the row. The breach the incident had caused between the Under-Secretaries was healing, but slowly.
John Pownall shook his head, ruefully. ‘No, no secret meetings, William. I’ve given them up for Lent. My journey was delayed. The rioting is getting worse. London is going to rack and ruin.’
Knox, quickly mollified as ever, opened his arms in jokey avuncular embrace. ‘Come, come, now. Tell yer Uncle William all about it.’
Pownall threw his bag on his desk but remained tensely standing. He shut his eyes, saying nothing.
‘Have you been working all night, John?’
Pownall opened his eyes. ‘No. I slept for four hours. Maybe three.’ He smiled. ‘I nearly spent the night here at my desk but then I thought “What is the point of paying a princely three shillings and sixpence for exquisite rooms in Butcher Row, the envy of all who have seen them, and so convenient for a quick prayer at St Clements Church, if one is never in residence?” So I worked at home. Then I set off early, tried to do some work in a Hackney
carriage and … bang.’
‘Bang, eh? Who were they?’
‘Spitalfields weavers mainly. We should deport the lot to America.’
‘No doubt we will.’ Knox looked concerned. Beneath the bravado, Pownall looked and sounded shaken. ‘They are not happy people, I fear. Our London mobs. Not much laughter about them, or wit, or grace.’
Chapter 1 – Boston Lieutenant Governor & Governor's Residences
Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson sat alone in his mansion on Garden Court Street, the loveliest dwelling in Boston. His restless pale blue eyes swept over Turkish carpets and painted hangings; over mouldings and gildings; over marble tables and St Domingo mahogany panelling with the arms of England in the recesses of swan-like arches.
There was a polite tap on the door which led from the Hall Chamber into the Great Chamber, where he sat. A footman in the Hutchinson blue-and-gold livery walked softly in, ushering a Negro slave runner, as if he were driving a sheep to market.
‘A message for you, sir,’ said the footman.
Hutchinson raised one eyebrow, a trick handed down to him from five generations of Bostonian aristocracy. ‘From?’
‘From the Assembly, sir.’
Hutchinson permitted himself a bleak smile. Sure enough, the note, when the Negro slave runner handed it over, confirmed that the petition to the Massachusetts Assembly had been received and would be discussed.
Hutchinson’s smile widened. The petition was in the name of the Governor of Massachusetts, Hutchinson’s superior, Thomas Pownall. It requested the Assembly to approve measures designed to reduce smuggling and so increase the tax revenue from traded goods.
‘No reply,’ Hutchinson said.
‘Very good, sir.’ The footman shepherded the Negro slave from the room, watching him closely as if he feared some unspecified crime.
Thomas Hutchinson re-read the note. ‘That’ll show you, you little popinjay,’ he said aloud to the absent Governor. ‘Now what will you do, I wonder?’
Like all his predecessors as Governor of Massachusetts, Thomas Pownall lived in the Province House on Milk Street. This place, selected by the early settlers for their governor to dwell in, lacked the grandeur of the Hutchinson mansion but it was pleasant enough, being a three-storey brick building set in finely timbered lawns.
Governor Thomas Pownall was that most gregarious of creatures, an underlyingly lonely man. No wife for Thomas Pownall, at least not yet. Not even a regular companion in his bed, much as he loved women. The two moth-eaten lions on the Pownall coat of arms, the Governor used to joke, represented himself and his brother rampant and pawing the air because they were looking for a mate.
But at this moment, as he gathered together his drawing materials in his chamber, the Governor soared above the torments of his flesh. His mind was roaming the realms of art.
His sketch of the Boston waterfront, as seen from the British garrison, out on its island at Castle William, showed promise, he told himself judiciously. He had caught both the grace and the power of the British men-of-war at anchor. It needed more work … But at the last minute he decided to improve his map of Boston instead.
A footman in red and green livery appeared. He had neither knocked at the door nor sought permission to enter. The footman carried a message.
The Governor took the message and said ‘Wait, please’ to the footman. The footman smiled. This may have been because the Governor was famously polite to the underlings. Or
it may have been that the majority of people who encountered Thomas Pownall smiled at the sight of him.
His short, plump figure presented no threat. His artless grin aroused affection. He looked like the Lincoln Imp. This stone figure, grinning and gap-toothed, was mounted high on the east wall of Lincoln Cathedral, near the Pownall family home. It sat on a stone bench with one calf crossed over the other thigh. Whether by chance or out of impish imitation, Thomas Pownall habitually sat like that, too.
But as he read the message, the Governor’s half-smile faded. Even the laughter lines round his eyes appeared to droop. Thomas Pownall knew very well he was seen as pleasant but trifling. He did not particularly mind that. Usually, the love he won from those who knew him outweighed the occasional lack of respect. But this … THIS …
Thomas Pownall just stopped himself from screwing the message into a ball and throwing it on the floor. He thought hard, while the footman waited, looking concerned. The message confirmed a motion before the Massachusetts Assembly. It was in the Governor’s name but tabled by Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson. The motion was designed to reduce smuggling and increase revenue from customs duties.
Thomas Pownall had of course discussed this issue with the Lieutenant Governor, again and again. He had discussed it with everybody; it was vital. But Thomas Hutchinson putting it before the Assembly in the Governor’s name was the most rampant mischief. Of course they would reject it. It would arouse the utmost irritation – even fury. And he, Governor Thomas Pownall, would look crass and clumsy for such an inept attempt at root-and-branch reform.
Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson wished to wreck Governor Pownall’s policy once and for all. And he had been fiendishly clever about it. As he calmed, to a degree, and felt some of the colour come back into his face, Pownall could not help but admire Hutchinson’s political skill – or low cunning. It was worthy of Machiavelli himself.
Thomas Pownall sighed. His only course of action, the only one Hutchinson had left him, was to get this wrecking motion withdrawn from the Assembly. Then Pownall could go on pressing for what was clearly best for Boston – proper payment of customs duties – in the subtle manner he had always employed, working with the grain.
But Hutchinson and his faction dominated the Assembly. The only way to get the motion withdrawn was to go on bended knee to the Lieutenant Governor. Oh, how Hutchinson would enjoy that!
Pownall addressed the footman, speaking absently, mind elsewhere. ‘Make ready the landau and the greys.’
‘Not the chaise?’
‘No! Not the chaise.’
Should he have insisted the footman address him as sir, or as Governor? He did not know how to treat the servants and they knew it. They sensed it. A man carries his past like a sack on his back.
When he first arrived as Governor, some three years ago, the staff at the Province House assumed Pownall had been brought up in a house with footmen. And Thomas Pownall did not disabuse them. Nobody in Boston knew how far below the salt the Pownalls were. Thomas Pownall had hardly seen a footman, a servant or a secretary before he came to Boston.
His father, William, was a poor country squire and soldier who died young. With the family plunged into poverty by William’s death, they lived in the shadow of the Poor House, forever listening out for the heavy tread of the bailiffs. His mother, Sara, had to rent out part of the house in humble Saltfleet, Lincolnshire. In the nick of time, the industrious Sara Pownall had wangled a connection to Lord North. Otherwise they would have starved.
While waiting for the carriage to be made ready, Thomas Pownall changed his clothes. He habitually dressed informally – a short frock coat, no ruffled shirt, no powdered wig, as often as not no sword. But not this time. Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson was about to be impressed by the full majesty of Governor Thomas Pownall.
He would wear the yellow silk waistcoat. Oh yes! Hutchinson would not know what it meant, but he, Thomas Pownall, would. And that was all that mattered.
Chapter 12 – London American Department
At five minutes before eight in the morning, John Pownall jumped out of a sedan chair outside the lobby of the Admiralty Building, in the Cockpit, Whitehall, where the American Department was housed. He hauled his leather bag after him, grinding his teeth at losing more work-time than he had lost in months.
Seething with impatience, he paid the chair man with bad grace, proffering no tip, then ran into the building with the man’s sarcastic ‘Have a very good day, sir,’ ringing in his ears.
He ran up the wooden stairs, taking them two at a time. The American Department was on the first floor. The outer office housed seven clerks at seven standing-desks but only two of them were in at this early hour. They were presided over by the Chief Clerk, William Pollock. He was already at his post, sitting at his imposing desk at the front of the office, facing the clerks.
William Pollock stood as John Pownall burst in. He was steeped in the ways of the Civil Service, having spent twenty years at the Northern Department. He was greying at the temples, being over a decade older than the two Under-Secretaries, John Pownall and William Knox. That and his grand house in Downing Street, while the Under-Secretaries were both still in cheap lodgings, gave him a knowing air with his superiors, though he was never less than respectful.
‘Good morning, Mr Pownall, sir.’
‘Morning, Mr Pollock. Anything fresh in? Anything from Boston?’
John Pownall glanced impatiently at the mahogany panelling of the outer office, covered in shelves, compartments and pigeon holes all containing myriad petitions from America, loosely tied in ribbon. Most of the petitions remained unread, if only because there were so many of them, but reports from spies were a different matter. That is what John Pownall meant by ‘Anything fresh in?’ Reports from spies, especially spies from Boston, were taken through to John Pownall and William Knox immediately.
‘Yes, sir. There are fresh reports from our informants in Boston.’
‘On my desk quick as you can, please.’
‘Yes, sir.’
John Pownall walked through to the minuscule inner office. Hs face relaxed, as far as it ever did, falling into an automatic smile at the sight of Under-Secretary William Knox. He felt the familiar flush of affection, even love. Their work together, side by side at adjacent desks, elbows almost touching, had made them more like brothers than John ever felt towards his true brother, Thomas.
William Knox was an Irish descendant of the protestant radical John Knox, but he was no radical himself – he was loyalist in his blood and bones. As usual in the morning, he was reading a newspaper with his feet up on his desk, appearing to do nothing. But there was an almost finished background report on his desk, the work of many weeks.
Pownall regarded the last background report Knox had produced as the best analysis of the colonial question he had ever read. Knox’s paper pointed out that the Romans treated each colony differently, according to circumstance and need. The British tried to establish the same colonial policy not only for every American colony but for all the Caribbean colonies, and for India and Ireland. It was too broad and so, warned Knox, it was doomed to failure.
Knox was the only man on the British side to look at colonial issues from the colonists’ viewpoint, perhaps because he had spent some years living in Georgia as a rice planter. Pownall, deep though his factual knowledge of America was, never did that. He never saw any need to.
Having lived among its people, Knox understood the lack of hierarchy in American society: no religious hierarchy, no class hierarchy. Pownall always shrugged that off. Americans saw themselves as subject to the King and God only. They rejected every other man put over them, be it bishop or rule-maker. And they most certainly rejected the authority of the British Parliament.
That analysis, like all the others, had made its way to Lord Hillsborough’s office, where it – like all the others – lay gathering dust, unread by Hillsborough or anybody else.
William Knox lowered the newspaper as far as his nose, peering over it for comic effect. His deep blue eyes were twinkling, laughter lines creased his cheeks. The whole of his pleasant face appeared to be smiling, even the prow of his nose.
‘Top o’ the mornin’ to you,’ he said in a Drury Lane stage-Irish voice, exaggerating his natural Monaghan accent to the point of parody. ‘Where have you been?’ he added, speaking normally. ‘Secret meeting?’
The remark was said with Knox’s usual twinkle, but it had an edge to it. John Pownall habitually kept information to himself, even if it should be shared. On one occasion this had led to an eyeball-to-eyeball quarrel between the two Under-Secretaries, the only time they had ever fallen out. While Thomas Pownall was still Governor of Massachusetts, John had spoken to the Head of the American Department, Lord Hillsborough, about him. He had done this on his own initiative, without consultation. Thomas, John told Hillsborough, was too close to the Massachusetts Assembly. He had gone native; it was handicapping their work. As John knew perfectly well, William Knox took a diametrically opposite view, seeing Thomas, as many did, as the best colonial governor then in post.
Hillsborough had recalled Thomas soon afterwards. This may or may not have been what John had intended – it probably was not, in Knox’s opinion – but William Knox still did not approve, hence the row. The breach the incident had caused between the Under-Secretaries was healing, but slowly.
John Pownall shook his head, ruefully. ‘No, no secret meetings, William. I’ve given them up for Lent. My journey was delayed. The rioting is getting worse. London is going to rack and ruin.’
Knox, quickly mollified as ever, opened his arms in jokey avuncular embrace. ‘Come, come, now. Tell yer Uncle William all about it.’
Pownall threw his bag on his desk but remained tensely standing. He shut his eyes, saying nothing.
‘Have you been working all night, John?’
Pownall opened his eyes. ‘No. I slept for four hours. Maybe three.’ He smiled. ‘I nearly spent the night here at my desk but then I thought “What is the point of paying a princely three shillings and sixpence for exquisite rooms in Butcher Row, the envy of all who have seen them, and so convenient for a quick prayer at St Clements Church, if one is never in residence?” So I worked at home. Then I set off early, tried to do some work in a Hackney
carriage and … bang.’
‘Bang, eh? Who were they?’
‘Spitalfields weavers mainly. We should deport the lot to America.’
‘No doubt we will.’ Knox looked concerned. Beneath the bravado, Pownall looked and sounded shaken. ‘They are not happy people, I fear. Our London mobs. Not much laughter about them, or wit, or grace.’
