Tag Archives: Tories

February 10, 2025

The First Loyalist of Salem

By daseger

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.

4 Comments | tags: American Revolution, Colonial Newspapers, John Adams, Loyalists, Newspapers, Paul Revere, Portraits, Tories, William Browne | posted in Culture

August 19, 2024

Quick About Their Business

By daseger

So I’m going back to the revolutionary summer of 1774, when Salem served as provincial capital and (with Marblehead) port of entry, Boston’s punishment for its Tea Party. Salem had a strong Tory contingent, but I think the Whigs were stronger: they prevented the new royal governor, General Thomas Gage, from even residing in the new capital. He was compelled to find housing in nearby Danvers, from where he issued a succession of proclamations, including one which prohibited “illegal combinations”. Once the Massachusetts Government Act came into effect on August 1, his power was increased dramatically: councillors previously chosen by election were now appointed by him, and town meetings could only occur with his call. Bristling under this royal representative, the most illegal of combinations, the various committees of correspondence across Massachusetts, called for county conventions to be held in September, and (illegal) town meetings to elect representatives to said conventions. This is the background to an incredible meeting that was held in Salem on August 24, right under General Gage’s watch. This notice from the Essex Gazette of August 16 represents the tensions in town: the 59th regiment were camped out at Salem Neck ready to defend Gage and royal prerogatives, and Salem’s Patriots were referring to those men who accepted appointments to the new Royal Council as “Sworn Enemies to the Sacred Rights of the good People of this Province.”

As you see, the view of the Patriots was that Lord North’s new assemblies were “unconstitutional,” and thus they went about forming their own. Shortly after the “Sacred Rights” piece was published, handbills appeared in public places in Salem, published under the auspices of the town’s Committee of Correspondence, asking the “merchants, freemen, and other inhabitants of Salem” to meet at the Town House Chamber on August 24 for the purpose of appointing deputies to the upcoming Ipswich Convention “to consider of and determine on such as the late Acts of Parliament and our grievances render necessary.” Governor Gage issued a responsive proclamation on August 23. Thereby forbidden to meet, Salem’s Patriots met anyway, and were clearly ready to meet with any “ill consequences.”

On the next day, members of the Committee of Correspondence were summoned to a meeting with Governor Gage at 9:00 in the morning, but the town meeting had already assembled an hour before. Gage (whose office seems to have been literally two doors down from the Town House) ordered them to call it off, but it had already begun, and was essentially concluding while the conversation next door continued (despite Gage’s assertion that he was “not going to enter into a Conversation on the matter; I came to execute the Laws not dispute them”). The town meeting elected Richard Derby Jr., John Pickering, Jonathan Ropes, Timothy Pickering, Jonathan Gardner, and Richard Manning Jr. to represent the town at the Ipswich Convention in September and promptly adjourned. And thus a well-run meeting—and time management–had prevented a potential conflict, as two companies of the 59th Regiment of Foot encamped at Salem Neck were marching towards downtown Salem that very morning.

Gage ordered the 59th to return to camp, but on the following day the Governor had apparently resolved that this resistance required a response and so ordered Peter Frye, a well-known Loyalist and county Judge, to arrest the leaders of the Committee of Correspondence on charges of “unlawfully and seditiously causing the People to assemble without leave from the Governor, etc..” Two men posted bail upon their arrest, but the remaining five refused to recognize the legality of their arrests and threatened Gage with consequences of their own. This was no longer a local matter; given the rationale for the unprecedented town meeting, it really never was, but these particular proceedings brought forth “upwards of three thousand men” who converged on Salem from surrounding Essex County, “with full determination to rescue the Committee if they should be sent to prison, even if they were oblig’d to repel force with force, being sufficiently provided for such a purpose.” Both the Judge and the Governor backed down: “His Excellency has suspended the matter at Salem by dropping the prosecution. Seeing them resolute and the people so determinate, he was willing to give up a point rather than push matters to extremities” wrote Boston Merchant John Andrews to his brother-in-law in Philadelphia. The Governor could abandon rebellious Salem, and he did by the end of the month, but Peter Frye could not: his property and family were fully vested in a town that seemed to resent him fiercely. Despite his public apology and expressed “hope to be restored to that Friendship and Regard with my Fellow-Citizens and Countrymen which I heretofore enjoyed,” Andrews reported that “Colonel Frye, of Salem … has resigned all his posts of honor and profit. Indeed necessity obliged him to, as he and his family were in danger of starving; for the country people would not sell him any provisions, and the inhabitants……. dare not procure him any” in early September. And a month later, when another “illegal” assembly was convening in Salem, Frye’s Essex Street properties were torched, igniting the Great Salem Fire of 1774. Salem was a tinderbox, to be sure.