RC (Adams Papers); addressed: “To Mrs. Abigail Adams Braintree To be left at Mr. Adams's Office in Queen Street Boston”; endorsed: “No 7.”

Two broadside editions of this List of Addressers were issued, both of them probably by Edes & Gill, publishers of the Boston Gazette (Ford, Mass. Broadsides , Nos. 1699, 1700). One of them is reproduced in this volume from an original in MHi; see the Descriptive List of Illustrations. The other, preceded by a text of the Address and brief editorial comment, was reproduced in Boston Public Library, Bulletin, 12:217–218 and insert (Oct. 1893).

Francis Waldo, Harvard 1747, was one of the leading citizens and the first collector of the port of Falmouth, later Portland; he later fled to England as a loyalist exile (Sibley-Shipton, Harvard Graduates , vol. 12 [in press]). The signification of “Betty” is not apparent.

Though perhaps once “famous” (as JA says), and certainly illustrative of the feelings aroused by the Revolutionary struggle in its early stages, this “Cause” seems to have been almost entirely overlooked by historians and biographers.

The principal in it was Richard King (1718–1775), a well-to-do farmer, storekeeper, and timber exporter who had settled in Scarborough, Maine, in the 1740's. He took the ministerial side in the Stamp Act, and this, in addition to his being both the largest creditor and the treasurer of the parish, made him obnoxious to a certain class of his neighbors. After a good deal of talk among themselves about his getting “his Estate by robbing the Poor” and his deserving “a good Whipping and to have his Ears cutt off because he had treated them ill,” twenty or thirty men, including some who owed him money, gathered at his house late in the night of 19 March 1766. With much “Thumping, Yelling, Hooping,” they threw hatchets through windows, came in after them, terrorized King, his servants, his five children, and his wife (who was “far gone in her Pregnancy”), smashed furniture and dishes, hacked walls and staircase, and scattered and burned all the papers they could lay their hands on. One of King's children (by a former wife) was Rufus King, later a leading Federalist politician and diplomat and a friend of two generations of the Adamses. He was then eleven years old and was probably at home during that night of violence, though no mention of it is made in the six-volume Life and Correspondence of Rufus King compiled by his grandson, Charles R. King, N.Y., 1894–1900. A faint and misleading echo of it may appear in the note on Richard King's papers at vol. 1:2, but a considerable mass of documents bearing on the mobbing and trials actually remains among the Rufus King Papers in the New-York Historical Society.

Other, if lesser, acts of vandalism against King's property occurred in the following months, and King, despite threats of personal injury if he went to law, sued his persecutors for trespass, claiming damages of £2,000. The case and its sequels continued in the courts until long after King's death. They can only be summarized here. Fuller documentation will appear when JA's legal papers are edited and published.

The trial of Richard King v. John Stewart et al. (Jonathan Andrews Jr., Amos Andrews, John Timothy, and Samuel Stewart) came on in Falmouth Inferior Court in March 1773. King was allowed no damages and appealed to the Superior Court in its July term. Here he won a judgment for £200. Both sides requested writs of review, King because he considered the judgment insufficient and the defendants because they thought the verdict wrong. This necessitated a trial de novo in July 1774.

It was at this point that JA entered the case, which had now, however, become two—King v. John Stewart et al., and Jonathan Andrews et al. v. King. JA and Theophilus Bradbury acted for King in both cases; James and John Sullivan were their opponents in both. JA's emotional harangue to the jury in the first case was written out more or less in full and is preserved among his legal papers. He concentrated on the physical damage to King's property, the intangible damage to his “Credit in Trade” (through the destruction of his papers), and the anguish suffered by 133the whole family from the malice and cruelty of the mob. For example:

“The Cruelty, the Terror, the Horror of the whole dismal scene. It would be affectation to attempt to exaggerate, it is almost impossible to exagerate, the distresses of this innocent Family at that Time.—The Excellency of a Tryal by Jury is that they are the Partys Peers, his equalls, men of like Passions, feelings, Imaginations and Understandings with him. If your Passions are not affected upon this Occasion, you will not be the Plaintiffs Peers. It is right and fit, it is reasonable and just that you should feel as he did, that you should put yourselves in his Place, and be moved with his Passions.

“Be pleased then to imagine yourselves each one for himself—in Bed with his pregnant Wife, in the dead of Midnight, five Children also asleep, and all the servants. 3 Children in the same Chamber, two above. The Doors and Windows all barrd, bolted and locked—all asleep, suspecting nothing—harbouring no Malice, Envy or Revenge in your own Bosoms nor dreaming of any in your Neighbors, In the Darkness, the stillness, the silence of Midnight.

“All of a sudden, in an Instant, in a twinkling of an Eye, an Armed Banditti of Felons, Thieves, Robbers, and Burglars, rush upon the House.—Like Savages from the Wilderness, or like Legions from the Blackness of Darkness, they yell and Houl, they dash in all the Windows and enter—enterd they Roar, they stamp, they yell, they houl, they cutt, break, tear and burn all before them.

“Do you see a tender and affectionate Husband, an amiable deserving Wife near her Time, 3 young Children, all in one Chamber, awakened all at once—ignorant what was the Cause—terrifyd—inquisitive to know it. The Husband attempting to run down stairs, his Wife, laying hold of his Arm, to stay him and sinking, fainting, dying away in his Arms. The Children crying and clinging round their Parents—father will they kill me— father save me! The other Children and servants in other Parts of the House, joining in the Cries of Distress.

“What Sum of Money Mr. Foreman would tempt you, to be Mr. King, and to let your Wife undergo what Mrs. King underwent, and your Children what theirs did for one Night?

“I freely confess that the whole sum sued for would be no temptation to me, if there was no other Damage than this.

“But how can the Impression of it be erased out of his Mind and hers and the Childrens. It will lessen and frequently interrupt his Happiness as long as he lives, it will be a continual Sourse of Grief to him.”

But JA's eloquence had limited effects. King obtained additional damages of £60 in this case, but in the other Jonathan Andrews was found not guilty and recovered £40 from the previous award to King.

JA's minutes of the testimony, of the opposing arguments, and of his own plea are in Adams Papers, M/JA/6 (Microfilms, Reel No. 185). See also Superior Court of Judicature, Minute Book 99; Records, 1773, fol. 92; 1774, fol. 229–231; Suffolk County Court House, Early Court Files, &c., Nos. 139590, 139642, 139645. Richard King's papers (in Rufus King MSS, NHi) include drafts, originals, and copies of depositions of witnesses in his favor (some of whom had originally been defendants but were excused when they agreed to testify for King); lists of the rioters and of King's losses; King's petitions and remonstrances to the Governor, General Court, and Superior Court; some correspondence; and even a doggerel poem by King about his adversaries, which is revealing enough to be quoted in part:

Richard King died early in 1775, and his widow had difficulty collecting the small judgments her husband had won at law. She was still trying to collect some part of the damages as late as 1790 (Records, 1790, fol. 140–141; Early Court Files, &c., Nos. 139893, 139894, 140140).

A drawing of “The King Mansion” 134in Scarborough appears as an insert on a detailed map of the region preceding the titlepage in Maine Hist. Soc., Colls., 1st ser., vol. 3 (1853). This volume has a garbled account of the “King Riot” of 1766 at p. 182–186, and some information on Richard King, p. 163, 172; see also same, 3d ser., 2 (1906):370–373.

Edmund Burke published in 1766 “A Short Account of a Late Short Administration,” a manifesto of the Rockingham whigs. “Junius Americanus” was a pen name used by Arthur Lee in contributing political pieces to the London papers.

RC (Adams Papers); addressed: “To Mrs. Abigail Adams Braintree To be left at Mr. Adams's Office Queen Street Boston”; endorsed: “No 8.”

Deacon Richard Codman, a merchant who in 1762 had built “one of the best houses in town on the corner of Middle and Temple streets” (William Willis, History of Portland, from 1632 to 1864, Portland, 1865, p. 795).

Brig. Gen. Jedediah Preble, who had served in Canada under Wolfe and was frequently a representative to the General Court; one of his daughters married a son of Richard Codman, and his son Edward became famous in American naval annals (same, p. 835–836).

William Tyng (1737–1807), sheriff of Cumberland co., had just been commissioned colonel by Gage; a loyalist, he later fled to New York City and afterwards to New Brunswick in Canada (MHS, Colls. , 1st ser., 10 [1809]:183–186).

On the Otis-Robinson quarrel and suit, in which JA had acted for Otis, see JA, Diary and Autobiography , 1:342; 2:47–48.

Presumably on one of the remaining days that he spent at Falmouth Court 136(for if it had happened earlier he would surely have mentioned it in a letter), JA took his painful leave of his colleague and oldest friend, Attorney General Jonathan Sewall, on Munjoy's Hill overlooking Casco Bay. In 1819 JA gave the following account of this incident:

JA was mistaken in dating this meeting with Sewall in London in 1788, for Sewall (who now spelled his name “Sewell”) on 21 Sept. 1787 addressed a long autobiographical letter to Judge Joseph Lee in Cambridge from St. John's, New Brunswick, which described the meeting and furnished a memorable characterization of JA: