RC (Adams Papers); addressed: “His Excelly. / John Adams Esqr. / minister plenipotentiary from the United / States of America &ca. / at Mr Stockdale’s Bookseller— / Piccadilly— / London”; internal address: “Mr Adams”; endorsed: “Bath 9. Dec 1783 / Mr Jay.”

In fact, JA and JQA did visit Jay at Bath. According to JQA the trip “was a pretty sudden Resolution of my Father’s.” The two left London on the morning of 22 Dec. and traveled to Oxford and then, on the 24th, went on to Bath. In his letters to Peter Jay Munro of 23 and 29 Dec. (NNMus), JQA describes in considerable detail the colleges at Oxford and the sights at Bath, including the Royal Crescent, which in 1787 AA would visit and describe in turn ( AFC , 7:xvi–xvii, 447–448, 449). JQA reported seeing John Jay, Munro’s uncle, “several times. he looks better, than he did while in London and thinks the waters have done him some good.” JA apparently intended to emulate Jay and take advantage of the waters, but on the 27th he hurriedly returned to London, arriving there on the evening of the 28th. Five days later, on 2 Jan. 1784, he set off for the Netherlands (JQA to Munro, 13 Jan. 1784, NNMus). For what spurred JA’s abrupt departure, see Benjamin Franklin’s letter of 10 Dec. 1783, and note 3, below.

RC (Adams Papers); internal address: “Honble John Adams Esqe.”

For the 1 Nov. letter from the president of Congress to the Burgomasters and Senate of Hamburg, see Smith, Letters of Delegates , 21:133. The letter proceeded from Congress’ resolution of 29 Oct. expressing its appreciation of the proposals made by the city’s representative, John Abraham de Boor, regarding the establishment of a commercial relationship between the United States and the city of Hamburg ( JCC , 25:757–758).

Rev. Thomas Wren of Portsmouth, England, had long been associated with Benjamin Franklin in efforts to assist American prisoners of war in England. In his 22 July letter to the president of Congress, Franklin said that “some public notice should be taken of this good man” and expressed the hope “that some of our universities would confer upon him the degree of Doctor” (Wharton, Dipl. Corr. Amer. Rev. , 6:588). Princeton acted at its commencement on 24 Sept., and Congress resolved on 29 Sept. to thank Wren “for his humane and benevolent attention to the citizens of these United States who were prisoners at Portsmouth.” The diploma and the resolution were enclosed with a letter from the president of Congress to Wren of 1 Nov. (Varnum Lansing Collins, The Continental Congress at Princeton, Princeton, N.J., 1908, p. 156–157; 417 JCC , 25:632; Smith, Letters of Delegates , 21:136–137).

For the consortium’s letter to Franklin, his meeting with Ferdinand Grand about it, and the 3 Dec. letters from Franklin and Grand to the consortium in reply, see the consortium’s 2 Dec. letter to JA, and note 5, above.

Although he never replied to or even acknowledged it, JA probably received this letter at Bath on 27 Dec. (from John Jay, 9 Dec., note 1, above). The crux of this paragraph is that if the financial crisis was to be resolved it was JA’s responsibility to do so. It was imperative, therefore, that JA immediately return to London and go on to the Netherlands, a decision that took on additional urgency when on the day after his arrival in London he received the consortium’s letter of 23 Dec., below, with its enclosed letters from Franklin and Grand. That this letter was responsible for JA’s decision to deal with the situation at Amsterdam himself seems at odds with his retrospective account first published in the Boston Patriot in 1812 and republished in JA, D&A , 3:151–152. There JA attributes his abrupt departure from Bath and subsequent Dutch journey to receiving “dispatches from America, from London, and from Amsterdam, informing me that the drafts of congress by Mr. Morris . . . had exhausted all my loan of the last summer . . . and that an immense flock of new bills had arrived.” But JA seems, from the distance of almost forty years, to have conflated all the dispatches, regardless of origin, received at London prior to visiting Bath (to Franklin, 5 Dec., above; to the president of Congress, 14 Dec., below). JA clearly had not received Franklin’s 10 Dec. letter when he wrote on 14 Dec. to him and the consortium, both below, indicating in each his need to know Franklin’s course of action so that he could determine his own. Nor does it seem likely that he received the 10 Dec. letter before, according to JQA, his “sudden Resolution” to visit Bath (JQA to Peter Jay Munro, 23 Dec., NNMus). Considering JA’s anxiety over the looming “Catastrophe to American Credit” (to Franklin, 14 Dec., below), it is inconceivable that he would have contemplated taking the waters if he had received the letter at London.