I’ve been researching Salem’s Tories for a while, and I think it’s time to name the top guy. Gilbert Streeter, whose “Salem before the Revolution” essay is full of gossipy details and strident assertions (I don’t know if I would call it “history” but it sure is fun to read), refers to William Browne as “easily the First Citizen of Salem” in the early 1770s, but he lost that status over the course of 1774, and became the First Loyalist of Salem in my humble opinion. His classmate at Harvard, John Adams, later referred to Browne as “a solid, judicious character…They made him a judge of the superior court and that society made of him a refugee. A Tory I verily believe he never was.” I can’t really understand why Adams made that last assessment: Browne seems like the ultimate Tory to me, by his own words, and by his sacrifices, which included Salem’s grandest “mansion house,” a farmhouse in South Salem which later became the home of Revolutionary hero John Glover, and thousands of acres in Connecticut which he had inherited from his grandfather. He left all of that behind when he departed for England in the Spring of 1776, and it was formally confiscated by the Provincial Congress of Massachusetts several years later. This was not devestating to Browne: he moved on, taking on the not-uncommon role for Loyalists newly-arrived in Britain, that of tourist, for a few years before his appointment as the royal Governor of Bermuda.In his will, he left thousands of pounds to his daughters, but no property, He also refers to himself as “late of Salem.”

A Joseph Blackburn portrait of a young William Browne, donated to the Bermuda Historical Museum late in 2023 by Judith Herdeg of Chadds Ford, PA.

Browne’s commitment to the King is clear; he never faltered. His loyalism was manifest. He was one of the 17 rescinders of 1768, described by Adams as Wretches, without Sense or Sentiment, after they voted to rescind the Massachusetts Circular Letter which had been drafted by the House of Representatives (well, really Samuel Adams I believe) in opposition to the Townshend Acts.  The Letter, which was disseminated among the colonies, called for resistance, and Massachusetts Governor Francis Barnard ordered the House to rescind it or be dissolved. A vote was held in the assembly, which resulted in 92 nays and 17 yeas in favor of rescission, with Salem’s representatives Browne and Peter Frye (to whom I would give the title Second Loyalist) voting YEA. The non-rescinders were lionized in Massachusetts, and the rescinders demonized, quite literally by Paul Revere, who cast them into hell. But it was not so easy to dismiss the well-connected (and well-liked, by most accounts) Browne and Frye in Salem.

Paul Revere (1735-1818) & Benjamin Church (1734-1778), A Warm Place — Hell…. While gasping Freedom wails her future fate, and Commerce sickens with the sick’ning State… [Boston: Edes & Gill, 1768].87. A rare copy of this broadside sold last month at Christie’s for over $63,000.

On July 18, 1768, one of the most extraordinary meetings in Salem’s history occurred, a gathering that exposed the division of the town’s leaders over royal policy. It was a response to a petition of 58 men who wanted a public denouncement of Brown and Frye, expressed in more civil language, of course–or maybe not. And so the body voted to approve the action of the House of Representatives in not rescinding the Circular Letter and to thank the House for its defense of American liberties. After these votes, the moderator of the meeting, Benjamin Pickman (I think he would be my Third Tory), expressed a minority view, bolstered by other “placemen,” that what is proposed to be done (whether design’d or not) may tend to injure the Gentlemen who represented this town in the last General Assembly of this Province, and especially if so design’d, may discourage every suitable Person from serving the Town in any capacity whatsoever. About 30 men, Browne and Frye included, signed on to this addendum, but the majority judgement stood. The Boston Gazette and Country Journal followed up with an article identifying the connections (family, marriage, business) between the protesters and Browne, and anonymous letters to the editor of both Boston and Salem papers heaped scorn upon the Salem Rescinders for the next few months.

The division exposed by the town meeting in the summer of 1768 continued to harden, all the way up to the beginning of the Revolution. Browne was clearly respected and even liked, but he would not be able to survive the coming of General Thomas Gage in the early summer of 1774. As a customs official, Colonel of the militia, and one of the richest men in town with the grandest house, he was probably expected to welcome the new royal governor to the new provincial capital, but by all accounts he went above and beyond. Browne was too much in Gage’s company, and the contemporary accounts—and even the histories well into the nineteenth century—report that he “took offices from Gage” as the latter consolidated royal power over the Massachusetts government. The two offices in question were a permanent judgeship on the Superior Court as well as a seat on the new mandamus council, for which Browne took the oath of office from Gage in Salem in early August. The Patriots called for county conventions that same month, and the Ipswich Convention met on September 6 with 67 delegates representing each Essex County town in attendance. It called for the resignation of royal officeholders, and a delegation of Salem men delivered this demand to Browne in Boston shortly thereafter. He refused.  Salem’s (or the county’s) response was the resignation of the entire contingent of officers of the First Essex Regiment, rendering it impossible for Browne to continue as their colonel. There was further commentary: Browne was now “politically deceased of a pestilent and mortal disorder, and now buried in the ignominious ruins at Boston.” Clearly there was no going back for Browne: he was dead to Salem where his family had lived for five centuries. But I don’t think he wanted to go back: for him, service to his “country” meant service to his King.

P.S.William Browne has been dancing around several of my posts and I really wanted to be done with him, but I am not. There’s more to learn and write. The confiscation of his properties in 1779 has shed some light on his slaveholding in the Salem, Connecticut region, but several enslaved persons lived in his Salem, Massachusetts house as well. How did his New England past, especially this part of his past, affect his policies as the Governor of Bermuda, for which he generally receives high marks? That’s just one (more) question I have about William Browne.