Aftermath of the Massacre: "This inhuman piece of barbarity"

Given that today is the 240th anniversary of the "Boston Massacre" that occupies such an evocative place in American history, I thought a particular letter in my research database might be of interest to the tens of readers of Transatlantic History. It was written by William Palfrey of Boston to his friend, the infamous John Wilkes, during the events of March 5, though sent a week later. I came across it one day while going through the Palfrey Papers at the Houghton Library of Harvard. This extraordinary passage is one of those rare windows into a major event that really brings it alive for readers. It also shows how one's political presumptions--Palfrey was a staunch Patriot Whig--clearly shape one's perceptions about such events. Nevertheless, Palfrey's account returns us to the very scene, the precise moment of one of the most famous events in the history of the American Revolution.

“I was oblig’d the break off the above by the alarm of ringing a Bell which I at first imagin’d to be for Fire...but sent my servant to see where it was. he very soon return’d & told me there was no fire by that some of the inhabitants & Soldiers were fighting near Kingstreet: I immediately ran out towards the Scene of action & had just got to the East End of the Courthouse which makes the front of Kingstreet when I head the discharge of six or seven Musquettes I ran with many others towards the place where I was witness to one of the most shocking scenes that ever was exhibited in a Christian Country. Three unhappy victims lay weltring in their Gore two others mortally wounded & Six other dangerously. This inhuman piece of barbarity was perpretated by a party of eight Men under the command of one Capt Thos Preston of the 29th Regiment, all the Bells in Town were immediately rang the Inhabitants gather’d some in attempting to remove the dead & wounded were threaten’d & wounded by the Soldiers."
William Palfrey to John Wilkes, 13 March 1770, in Palfrey Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University, MSS 1704.4(89).

The death of the divine right of kings

Working today in the bowels of the JCB, I came across the reflection in the Memoirs of the Reign of George the Second, by Lord John Hervey (1696-1743) on the state of politics in England in 1727. This brief selection is his remembrance of the depths to which notions of the divine right of kings had fallen in the British world by that time and should at least give pause to historians of Colonial America who continue to assume that it played any meaningful role in the debate over kings and constitutions in the eighteenth century.

By 1727, "...the notion of hereditary right at home had been so long ridiculed and exploded, that there were few people whose loyalty was so strong, or whose understanding was so weak, as to retain and act upon it. The conscientious attachment to the natural right of this or that king, and the religous reverence to God's anointed, was so far eradicated by the propagation of revolutionary principles, that mankind was become much more clear-sighted on that score than formerly, and so far comprehended and gave into the doctrine of a king being made for the people and not the people for the king, that in all their steps it was the interest of the nation or the interest of particular actors that was considered, and never the separate interest of one or the other king. And though one might be surprised (if any absurdity arising from the credulity and ignorance of mankind could surprise one) how the influence of power could ever have found means to establish the doctrine of Divine right of kings, yet no one can wonder that the opinion lost ground so fast when it became the interest even of the princes on the throne for three successive reigns to expel it. The clergy, who had been paid for preaching it up, were now paid for preaching it down; the Legislature had declared it of no force in the form of our government, and contrary to the fundamental laws and nature of our Constitution; and what was more prevailing than all the rest. it was no longer the interest of the majority of the kingdom either to propagate or act on this principle, and consequently those who were before wise enough from policy to teach it, were wise enough now from the same policy to explode it; and those who were weak enough to take it up only because they were told it, were easily brought to lay it down by the same influence."
John, Lord Hervey, Memoirs of the Reign of George the Second, from his Accession to the Death of Queen Catherine, vol. 1 (London, 1855), 6-7.