Sir, Portsmo. N. Hampshire Novr. 17th /77

I have the misfortune to request Council in a Cause,1 which nearly affects my interest, (if not Character). Hearing of yr. ingagement for some prosecutors against some Money makers to be tryed at Exeter in this State,2 I requested my friend Whipple 3 to mention me to you, with what circumstances he had gathered, but thot. best yesterday to dispatch a Messenger to you (Mr. Amory) who returned with Answer, that it was not in yr. power to attend there Tryall, which is notified the 8th of Decr. next.

I hope Sir upon Recollection you will find that you are under no previous engagement at the time appointed, Especially, where your attendance is so necessary. If Sir you are previously engaged I Can say no more. If you are under a Retaining fee I can only say I am unfortunate; if you are at liberty, & so engaged that you cannot attend me & Mr. Doane, at the first Tryal, & it so happens, that an appeal is claimed by either party, I must beg yr. assistance to support Mr. Whipple & Mr. Lowell, the first of which I have engaged, & the last, I this day dispatched an agent to engage; my attempting to give you perticulars at present will be to no purpose. Mr. Whipple can inform you of some circumstances relative to my proceedings, & his Assertitions can, & will, be supported.

I beg Sir, for the same of the friendship which once subsisted between us, that if you will not engage for us, that you will not agt. us, & I hereby Declare upon my honr. that the Expence of the tryal I regard not, as I will 419satisfy my Council to their full content. The Interest cannot be overvalued; and I have it in my power to Shew forth in Evidence such matters as will inevitably carry the Cause in Mr. Doanes favr.

We have determined not to sacrifice our Interest for the good of the Captors, when we need it as much as them. To morrow morning I set off for Boston, & on yr. Return I beg you will call on Mr. Doane & me, at Mr. Isaiah Doanes House at the Back of Jarvis’s Store in King Street. This in confidence from Sir yr. most Obedt. Hble. Servt.

Shearja. Bourne

RC ; addressed: “Honble. Robert T. Paine Esqr. Dover”4; endorsed.

1.

The case of Penhallow vs. The Lusanna was a lengthy and complicated litigation. The brigantine Lusanna was owned by Col. Elisha Doane of Wellfleet, although sometimes registered under the name of Doane’s son-in-law Shearjashub Bourne. Despite the embargo on trade with England, they ran cargo between Halifax and London until the Lusanna was taken as a prize of war by the New Hampshire privateer McClary and libeled at Portsmouth, Nov. 11, 1777. Doane and Bourne attempted to assemble a legal team to reclaim the ship and its contents. RTP was solicited but unable to assist at this time. Later in the month John Adams was added to their counsel, and RTP became his replacement for the appeals (March and September 1778) after Adams left for France. A detailed discussion of this case appears in The Legal Papers of John Adams, 2:352–395. See also, Bourne to RTP, Sept. 10, 1778.

2.

State of New Hampshire vs. Stephen Holland (see above, November 1777).

3.

Oliver Whipple (1743/4–1813), 1766 Harvard graduate, had been a lawyer in Portsmouth, N.H., since 1771. He was arrested as a Loyalist sympathizer in the summer of 1776 and only released in January 1777. Whipple continued to practice law in New Hampshire, largely representing the absentee Gardiner family, until 1802 when he moved to Maine. From there he returned to his native Rhode Island in 1805 ( Sibley’s Harvard Graduates , 16:430–434).

4.

After the Holland counterfeiting case RTP proceeded from Exeter to Dover, N.H., for a session of the Superior Court and the “tryal of James Richardson for uttering false money in Quaker meeting house” (RTP Diary, Nov. 19, 1777).