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By Root 1057 0

to create a new office of Secretary for the Colonies, to which Hillsborough was named. Because he held an Irish peerage with large estate, Hillsborough opposed any softening toward the colonies in fear, shared by other Irish landowners, of his tenants’ migrating to America and emptying his rent-rolls. Though he had held many offices, he was not known for tact or reason; even George III, who shared the same deficiency, said he did not know “a man of less judgment than Lord Hillsborough.” This shortcoming promptly made itself felt.

In a peremptory letter, the new Secretary ordered the Massachusetts Assembly to rescind its circular letter under pain of dissolution if it refused and informed other governors that any other assembly that followed Massachusetts’ seditious example was likewise to be dissolved. The punitive tone of his letter and its implication that Americans were to be compelled to accept taxation or have their representative assemblies closed down ignited outrage where there had been little before. When Massachusetts refused loudly and passionately to rescind, Pennsylvania and other colonies that had refused her first call now adopted resolutions on the Massachusetts model in defiance of Hillsborough. Self-interest in preserving the empire was not doing well in his hands.

At the same time the Customs Board, growing nervous, appealed in February 1768 for a warship and troops for protection. The arrival of H.M.S. Romney in Boston harbor from Halifax emboldened the Customs Board to seize John Hancock’s ship Liberty, setting off such a riot that the Customs Commissioners fled aboard the Romney in fear for their lives. Fearful of the mounting disorder, General Gage ordered two regiments down from Halifax; two more arrived from the mother country in November. “To have a standing army! Good God!” wrote a Bostonian, after watching the redcoats parade through the city. “What can be worse to a people who have tasted the sweets of liberty!” It would “hasten that independency which at present the warmest among us deprecate.”

Without any plan or decision, the use of armed force for coercion had entered the conflict. The unwisdom of this procedure disturbed many Englishmen including the Duke of Newcastle, now 75, who had administered the colonies as Secretary of State for a quarter century in his early days and believed that “Measures of Power and Force” should be avoided in dealing with them. “The measure of conquering the colonies and obliging them to submit is now becoming more popular,” he wrote to Rockingham. “I must in conscience protest against it and I hope our friends will well consider before they give in to so destructive a measure.”

The weight of the Cabinet, gradually infused by Bedfords and the King’s friends, was tipping the other way. Conway, who alone had tried to check Townshend and curtail the New York Suspending Act, resigned as Secretary of State, though retaining a minor post. His place was filled by a port-loving lord of small account except as a Bedford “connexion,” Viscount Weymouth, whose specialty was gambling all night and losing so consistently that his house was filled with bailiffs. As Secretary of State, he continued in his habits, going to bed at 6:00 a.m. and rising after noon “to the total neglect of the affairs of his office, the business of which was managed as much as it could be by Mr. Wood, his under-secretary.” Townshend’s empty place as Chancellor of the Exchequer was taken over by Lord North, an equable, comfortable person with a good deal of common sense and few strong opinions, though belonging to the no-compromise side. Two other places were filled by peers of the Bedford faction: Earl Gower when Lord Northington died, and the Earl of Rochford, recently Ambassador to Spain, where in order to leave Madrid he had to pawn his silver plate and jewels for £6000 to pay his debts. He was now named Secretary of State when Shelburne, the only Cabinet member to oppose Hillsborough’s coercive measures, finally resigned—or was pushed—after holding on to the rump of his office for eight