THE LOYALISTS OF LANCASTER.
By HENRY S. NOURSE.
The outburst of patriotic rebellion in 1775 throughout Massachusetts was so universal, and the controversy so hot with the wrath of a people politically wronged, as well as embittered by the hereditary rage of puritanism against prelacy, that the term tory comes down to us in history loaded with a weight of opprobrium not legitimately its own. After the lapse of a hundred years the word is perhaps no longer synonymous with everything traitorous and vile, but when it is desirable to suggest possible respectability and moral rectitude in any member of the conservative party of Revolutionary days, it must be done under the less historically disgraced title,—loyalist. In fact, then, as always, two parties stood contending for principles to which honest convictions made adherents. If among the conservatives were timid office-holders and corrupt self-seekers, there were also of the Revolutionary party blatant demagogues and bigoted partisans. The logic of success, though a success made possible at last only by exterior aid, justified the appeal to arms begun in Massachusetts before revolt was prepared or thought imminent elsewhere. Now, to the careful student of the situation, it seems among the most premature and rash of all the rebellions in history. But for the precipitancy of the uprising, and the patriotic frenzy that fired the public heart at news of the first bloodshed, many ripe scholars, many soldiers of experience, might have been saved to aid and honor the republic, instead of being driven into ignominious exile by fear of mob violence and imprisonment, and scourged through the century as enemies of their country. In and about Lancaster, then the largest town in Worcester County, the royalist party was an eminently respectable minority. At first, indeed, not only those naturally [pg 378] conservative by reason of wealth, or pride of birthright, but nearly all the intellectual leaders, both ecclesiastic and civilian, deprecated revolt as downright suicide. They denounced the Stamp Act as earnestly, they loved their country in which their all was at stake as sincerely, as did their radical neighbors. Some of them, after the bloody nineteenth of April, acquiesced with such grace as they could in what they now saw to be inevitable, and tempered with prudent counsel the blind zeal of partisanship: thus ably serving their country in her need. Others would have awaited the issue of events as neutrals; but such the committees of safety, or a mob, not unnaturally treated as enemies.
On the highest rounds of the social ladder stood the great-grandsons of Major Simon Willard, the Puritan commander in the war of 1675. These three gentlemen had large possessions in land, were widely known throughout the Province, and were held in deserved esteem for their probity and ability. They were all royalists at heart, and all connected by marriage with royalist families. Abijah Willard, the eldest, had just passed his fiftieth year. He had won a captaincy before Louisburg when but twenty-one, and was promoted to a colonelcy in active service against the French; was a thorough soldier, a gentleman of stately presence and dignified manners, and a skilful manager of affairs. For his first wife, he married Elizabeth, sister of Colonel William Prescott; for his second, Mrs. Anna Prentice, but had recently married a third partner, Mrs. Mary McKown, of Boston. He was the wealthiest citizen of Lancaster, kept six horses in his stables, and dispensed liberal hospitality in the mansion inherited from his father Colonel Samuel Willard. By accepting the appointment of councillor in 1774, he became at once obnoxious to the dominant party, and in August, when visiting Connecticut on business connected with his large landed interests there, he was arrested by the citizens of the town of Union, and a mob of five hundred persons accompanied him over the state line intending to convey him to the nearest jail. Whether their wrath became somewhat cooled by the colonel's bearing, or by a six-mile march, they released him upon his signing a paper dictated to him, of which the following is a copy, printed at the time in the Boston Gazette:—
STURBRIDGE, August 25, 1774.
Whereas I Abijah Willard, of Lancaster, have been appointed by mandamus Counselor for this province, and have without due Consideration taken the Oath, do now freely and solemnly and in good faith promise and engage that I will not set or act in said Council, nor in any other that shall be appointed in such manner and form, but that I will, as much as in me lies, maintain the Charter Rights and Liberties of the Province, and do hereby ask forgiveness of all the honest, worthy Gentlemen that I have offended by taking the abovesaid Oath, and desire this may be inserted in the public Prints. Witness my Hand
ABIJAH WILLARD.
From that time forward Colonel Willard lived quietly at home until the nineteenth of April, 1775; when, setting out in the morning on horseback to visit his farm in Beverly, where he had planned to spend some days in superintending the planting, he was turned from his course by the swarming out of minute-men at the summons of the couriers bringing the alarm from Lexington, and we next find him with the British in Boston. He never saw Lancaster again. It is related that, on the [pg 379] morning of the seventeenth of June, standing with Governor Gage, in Boston, reconnoitring the busy scene upon Bunker's Hill, he recognized with the glass his brother-in-law Colonel William Prescott, and pointed him out to the governor, who asked if he would fight. The answer was: "Prescott will fight you to the gates of hell!" or, as another historian more mildly puts it: "Ay, to the last drop of his blood." Colonel Willard knew whereof he testified, for the two colonels had earned their commissions together in the expeditions against Canada. An officer of so well-known skill and experience as Abijah Willard was deemed a valuable acquisition, and he was offered a colonel's commission in the British army, but refused to serve against his countrymen, and at the evacuation of Boston went to Halifax, having been joined by his own and his brother's family. In 1778, he was proscribed and banished. Later in the war he joined the royal army, at Long Island, and was appointed commissary; in which service it was afterwards claimed by his friends that his management saved the crown thousands of pounds. A malicious pamphleteer of the day, however, accused him of being no better than others, and alleging that whatever saving he effected went to swell his own coffers. Willard's name stands prominent among the "Fifty-five" who, in 1783, asked for large grants of land in Nova Scotia as compensation for their losses by the war. He chose a residence on the coast of New Brunswick, which he named Lancaster in remembrance of his beloved birthplace, and there died in May, 1789, having been for several years an influential member of the provincial council. His family returned to Lancaster, recovered the old homestead, and, aided by a small pension from the British government, lived in comparative prosperity. The son Samuel died on January 1, 1856, aged ninety-six years and four months. His widowed sister, Mrs. Anna Goodhue, died on August 2, 1858, at the age of ninety-five. Memories of their wholly pleasant and beneficent lives, abounding in social amenities and Christian graces, still linger about the old mansion.
Levi Willard was three years the junior of Abijah. He had been collector of excise for the county, held the military rank of lieutenant-colonel, and was justice of the peace. With his brother-in-law Captain Samuel Ward he conducted the largest mercantile establishment in Worcester County at that date. He had even made the voyage to England to purchase goods. Although not so wealthy as his brother, he might have rivaled him in any field of success but for his broken health; and he was as widely esteemed for his character and capacity. At the outbreak of hostilities he was too ill to take active part on either side, but his sympathies were with his loyalist kindred. He died on July 11, 1775. His partner in business, Captain Samuel Ward, cast his lot with the patriot party, but his son, Levi Willard, Jr., graduated at Harvard College in 1775, joined his uncle Abijah, and went to England and there remained until 1785, when he returned and died five years later.
Abel Willard, though equally graced by nature with the physical gifts that distinguished his brothers, unlike them chose the arts of peace rather than those of war. He was born at Lancaster on January 12, 1731-2, and was graduated at Harvard College in 1752, ranking third in the class. His wife was Elizabeth [pg 380] Rogers, daughter of the loyalist minister of Littleton. His name was affixed to the address to Governor Gage, June 21, 1774, and he was forced to sign, with the other justices, a recantation of the aspersions cast upon the people in that address. He has the distinction of being recorded by the leading statesman of the Revolution—John Adams—as his personal friend. So popular was Abel Willard and so well known his character as a peacemaker and well-wisher to his country, that he might have remained unmolested and respected among his neighbors in spite of his royalist opinions; but, whether led by family ties or natural timidity, he sought refuge in Boston, and quick-coming events made it impossible for him to return. At the departure of the British forces for Halifax, he accompanied them. A letter from Edmund Quincy to his daughter Mrs. Hancock, dated Lancaster, March 26, 1776, contains a reference to him: ... "Im sorry for poor Mrs Abel Willard your Sisters near neighbour & Friend. Shes gone we hear with her husband and Bro and sons to Nova Scotia P'haps in such a situation and under such circumstances of Offense respecting their Worsr Neighbours as never to be in a political capacity of returning to their Houses unless wth power & inimical views wch God forbid should ever be ye Case."
In 1778, the act of proscription and banishment included Abel Willard's name. His health gave way under accumulated trouble, and he died in England in 1781.
The estates of Abijah and Abel Willard were confiscated. In the Massachusetts Archives (cliv, 10) is preserved the anxious inquiry of the town authorities respecting the proper disposal of the wealth they abandoned.
To the Honourable Provincial Congress now holden at Watertown in the Proviance of the Massachusetts Bay.
We the subscribers do request and desire that you would be pleased to direct or Inform this proviance in General or the town of Lancaster in Partickeler what is best to be done with the Estates of those men which are Gone from their Estates to General Gage and to whose use they shall Improve them whether for the proviance or the town where sd Estate is.
EBENEZER ALLEN,
CYRUS FAIRBANK,
SAMLL THURSTON,The Selectmen of Lancaster.
Lancaster June 7 day 1775.
The Provincial Congress placed the property in question in the hands of the selectmen and Committee of Safety to improve, and instructed them to report to future legislatures. Finally, Cyrus Fairbank is found acting as the local agent for confiscated estates of royalists in Lancaster, and his annual statements are among the archives of the State. His accounts embrace the estates of "Abijah Willard, Esq., Abel Willard, Esq., Solomon Houghton, Yeoman, and Joseph Moore Gent." The final settlement of Abel Willard's estate, October 26, 1785, netted his creditors but ten shillings, eleven pence to the pound. The claimants and improvers probably swallowed even the larger estate of Abijah Willard, leaving nothing to the Commonwealth.
Katherine, the wife of Levi Willard, was the sister, and Dorothy, wife of Captain Samuel Ward, the daughter, of Judge John Chandler, "the honest Refugee." These estimable and accomplished ladies lived but a stone's throw apart, and after the death of Levi Willard there came to reside with them an elder brother of Mrs. Ward, one of the most notable personages in Lancaster during the Revolution. Clark Chandler was a dapper little bachelor [pg 381] about thirty-two years of age, eccentric in person, habits, and dress. Among other oddities of apparel, he was partial to bright red small-clothes. His tory principles and singularities called down upon him the jibes of the patriots among whom his lot was temporarily cast, but his ready tongue and caustic wit were sufficient weapons of defence. In 1774, as town clerk of Worcester, he recorded a protest of forty-three royalist citizens against the resolutions of the patriotic majority. This record he was compelled in open town meeting to deface, and when he failed to render it sufficiently illegible with the pen, his tormentors dipped his fingers into the ink and used them to perfect the obliteration. He fled to Halifax, but after a few months returned, and was thrown into Worcester jail. The reply to his petition for release is in Massachusetts Archives (clxiv, 205).
Colony of the Massachusetts Bay. By the Major part of the Council of said Colony. Whereas Clark Chandler of Worcester has been Confined in the Common Prison at Worcester for holding Correspondence with the enemies of this Country and the said Clark having humbly petitioned for an enlargement and it having been made to appear that his health is greatly impaired & that the Publick will not be endangered by his having some enlargement, and Samuel Ward, John Sprague, & Ezekiel Hull having Given Bond to the Colony Treasurer in the penal sum of one thousand Pounds, for the said Clarks faithful performance of the order of Council for his said enlargement, the said Clark is hereby permitted to go to Lancaster when his health will permit, and there to continue and not go out of the Limits of that Town, he in all Respects Conforming himself to the Condition in said Bond contained, and the Sheriff of said County of Worcester and all others are hereby Directed to permit the said Clark to pass unmolested so long as he shall conform himself to the obligations aforementioned. Given under our Hands at ye Council Chambers in Watertown the 15 Day of Dec. Anno Domini 1775.
By their Honors Command,
James Prescott
Wm Severs
Cha Channey
B. Greenleaf
M. Farley
W. Spooner
Moses Gill
Caleb Cushing
J. Palmer
J. Winthrop
Eldad Taylor
John Whitcomb
B. White
Jedn Foster
B. Lincoln
Perez Morton
Dpt Secry.
The air of Lancaster, which proved so salubrious to the pensioners of the British government before named, grew oppressive to this tory bachelor, as we find by a lengthy petition in Massachusetts Archives (clxxiii, 546), wherein he begs for a wider range, and especially for leave to go to the sea-shore. A medical certificate accompanies it.
LANCASTER, OCT. 25. 1777
This is to inform whom it may Concern that Mr. Clark Chandler now residing in this Town is in such a Peculiar Bodily Indisposition as in my opinion renders it necessary for him to take a short Trip to the Salt Water in order to assist in recovering his Health.
JOSIAH WILDER Phn.
He was allowed to visit Boston, and to wander at will within the bounds of Worcester County. He returned to Worcester, and there died in 1804.
Joseph Wilder, Jr., colonel, and judge of the court of common pleas of Worcester County,—as his father had been before him,—was prominent among the signers of the address to General Gage. He apologized for this indiscretion, and seems to have received no further attention from the Committee of Safety. In the extent of his possessions [pg 382] he rivaled Abijah Willard, having increased a generous inheritance by the profits of very extensive manufacture and export of pearlash and potash: an industry which he and his brother Caleb were the first to introduce into America. He was now nearly seventy years of age, and died in the second year of the war.
Joseph House, at the evacuation of Boston, went with the army to Halifax. He was a householder, but possessed no considerable estate in Lancaster. In 1778, his name appears among the proscribed and banished.
The Lancaster committee of correspondence, July 17, 1775, published Nahum Houghton as "an unwearied pedlar of that baneful herb tea," and warned all patriots "to entirely shun his company and have no manner of dealings or connections with him except acts of common humanity." A special town meeting was called on June 30, 1777, chiefly "to act on a Resolve of the General Assembly Respecting and Securing this and the other United States against the Danger to which thay are Exposed by the Internal Enemies Thereof, and to Elect some proper person to Collect such evidence against such Persons as shall be demed by athority as Dangerous persons to this and the other United States of America." At this meeting Colonel Asa Whitcomb was chosen to collect evidence against suspected loyalists, and Moses Gerrish, Daniel Allen, Ezra Houghton, Joseph Moor, and Solomon Houghton, were voted "as Dangerous Persons and Internal Enemies to this State." On September 12 of the same year, apparently upon a report from Colonel Asa Whitcomb, it was voted that Thomas Grant, James Carter, and the Reverend Timothy Harrington, "Stand on the Black List." It was also ordered that the selectmen "Return a List of these Dangerous Persons to the Clerk, and he to the Justice of the Quorum as soon as may be." This action of the extremists seems to have aroused the more conservative citizens, and another meeting was called, on September 23, for the purpose of reconsidering this ill-advised and arbitrary proscription, at which meeting the clerk was instructed not to return the names of James Carter and the Reverend Timothy Harrington before the regular town meeting in November.
Thomas Grant was an old soldier, having served in the French and Indian War, and, if a loyalist, probably condoned the offence by enlisting in the patriot army; his name is on the muster-roll of the Rhode Island expedition in 1777, and in 1781 he was mustered into the service for three years. He was about fifty years of age, and a poor man, for the town paid bills presented "for providing for Tom Grant's Family."
Moses Gerrish was graduated at Harvard College in 1762, and reputed a man of considerable ability. Enoch Gerrish, perhaps a brother of Moses, was a farmer in Lancaster who left his home, was arrested and imprisoned in York County, and thence removed for trial to Worcester by order of the council, May 29, 1778. The following letter uncomplimentary to these two loyalists is found in Massachusetts Archives (cxcix, 278).
Sir. The two Gerrishes Moses & Enoch, that ware sometime since apprehended by warrant from the Council are now set at Libberty by reason of that Laws Expiring on which they were taken up. I would move to your Honrs a new warrant might Isue, Directed to Docr. Silas Hoges to apprehend & confine them as I look [pg 383] upon them to be Dangerous persons to go at large. I am with respect your Honrs. most obedient Hum. Sert.
JAMES PRESCOTT.
Groton 12 of July 1778.
To the Hone Jereh. Powel Esq.
An order for their rearrest was voted by the council. Moses Gerrish finally received some position in the commissary department of the British army, and, when peace was declared, obtained a grant of free tenancy of the island of Grand Menan for seven years. At the expiration of that time, if a settlement of forty families with schoolmaster and minister should be established, the whole island was to become the freehold of the colonists. Associated with Gerrish in this project was Thomas Ross, of Lancaster. They failed in obtaining the requisite number of settlers, but continued to reside upon the island, and there Moses Gerrish died at an advanced age.
Solomon Houghton, a Lancaster farmer in comfortable circumstances, fearing the inquisition of the patriot committee, fled from his home. In 1779, the judge of probate for Worcester County appointed commissioners to care for his confiscated estate.
Ezra Houghton, a prosperous farmer, and recently appointed justice of the peace, affixed his name to the address to General Gage in 1775, and to the recantation. In May, 1777, he was imprisoned, under charge of counterfeiting the bills of public credit and aiding the enemy. In November following he petitioned to be admitted to bail (see Massachusetts Archives, ccxvi, 129) and his request was favorably received, his bail bond being set at two thousand pounds.
Joseph Moore was one of the six slave-owners of Lancaster in 1771, possessed a farm and a mill, and was ranked a "gentleman." On September 20, 1777, being confined in Worcester jail, he petitioned for enlargement, claiming his innocence of the charges for which his name had been put upon Lancaster's black list. His petition met no favor, and his estate was duly confiscated. (See Massachusetts Archives, clxxxiii, 160.)
At the town meeting on the first Monday in November, 1777, the names of James Carter and Daniel Allen were stricken from the black list, apparently without opposition. That the Reverend Timothy Harrington, Lancaster's prudent and much-beloved minister, should be denounced as an enemy of his country, and his name even placed temporarily among those of "dangerous persons," exhibits the bitterness of partisanship at that date. This town-meeting prosecution was ostensibly based upon certain incautious expressions of opinion, but appears really to have been inspired by the spite of the Whitcombs and others, whose enmity had been aroused by his conservative action several years before in the church troubles, known as "the Goss and Walley war," in the neighboring town of Bolton. The Reverend Thomas Goss, of Bolton, Ebenezer Morse, of Boylston, and Andrew Whitney, of Petersham, were classmates of Mr. Harrington in the Harvard class of 1737, and all of them were opposed to the revolution of the colonies. The disaffection, which, ignoring the action of an ecclesiastical council, pushed Mr. Goss from his pulpit, arose more from the political ferment of the day than from any advanced views of his opponents respecting the abuse of alcoholic stimulants. For nearly forty years Mr. Harrington had perhaps never omitted from his fervent prayers in public assemblies the form of supplication for [pg 384] divine blessing upon the sovereign ruler of Great Britain. It is not strange, although he had yielded reluctant submission to the new order of things, and was anxiously striving to perform his clerical duties without offense to any of his flock, that his lips should sometimes lapse into the wonted formula, "bless our good King George." It is related that on occasions of such inadvertence, he, without embarrassing pause, added: "Thou knowest, O Lord! we mean George Washington." In the records of the town clerk, nothing is told of the nature of the charges against Mr. Harrington, or of the manner of his defence. Two deacons were sent as messengers "to inform the Revd Timoo Harrington that he has something in agitation Now to be Heard in this Meeting at which he has Liberty to attend." Joseph Willard, Esq., in 1826, recording probably the reminiscence of some one present at the dramatic scene, says that when the venerable clergyman confronted his accusers, baring his breast, he exclaimed with the language and feeling of outraged virtue: "Strike, strike here with your daggers! I am a true friend to my country!"
Among the manuscripts left by Mr. Harrington there is one prepared for, if not read at, this town meeting, containing the charges in detail, and his reply to each. It is headed: "Harrington's answers to ye Charges &c." It is a shrewd and eloquent defence, bearing evidence, so far as rhetoric can, that its author was in advance of his people and his times in respect of Christian charity, if not of political foresight. The charges were four in number: the first being that of the Bolton Walleyites alleging that his refusal to receive them as church members in regular standing brought him "under ye censure of shutting up ye Kingdom of Heaven against men." To this, calm answer is given by a review of the whole controversy in the Bolton Church, closing thus: "Mr. Moderator, as I esteemed the Proceedings of these Brethren at Bolton Disorderly and Schismatical, and as the Apostle hath given Direction to mark those who cause Divisions and Offences and avoid them, I thought it my Duty to bear Testimony against ye Conduct of both ye People at Bolton, and those who were active in settling a Pastor over them in the Manner Specified, and I still retain ye sentiment, and this not to shut the Kingdom of Heaven against them, but to recover them from their wanderings to the Order of the Gospel and to the direct way to the Kingdom of Heaven. And I still approve and think them just."
The second charge, in full, was as follows:—
"It appears to us that his conduct hath ye greatest Tendency to subvert our religious Constitution and ye Faith of these churches.—In his saying that the Quebeck Bill was just—and that he would have done the same had he been one of ye Parliament—and also saying that he was in charity with a professed Roman Catholick, whose Principles are so contrary to the Faith of these churches,—That for a man to be in charity with them we conceive that it is impossible that he should be in Charity with professed New England Churches. It therefore appears to us that it would be no better than mockery for him to pretend to stand as Pastor to one of these churches." To this Mr. Harrington first replies by the pointed question: "Is not Liberty of Conscience and ye right of judging for themselves in the matters of Religion, [pg 385] one grand professed Principle in ye New England Churches; and one Corner Stone in their Foundation?" He then explicitly states his abhorrence of "the anti-Christian tenets of Popery," adding: "However on the other hand they receive all the articles of the Athanasian Creed—and of consequence in their present Constitution they have some Gold, Silver, and precious stones as well as much wood, hay, and stubble." He characterizes the accusation in this pithy paragraph: "Too much Charity is the Charge here brought against me,—would to God I had still more of it in ye most important sense. Instead of a Disqualification, it would be a most enviable accomplishment in ye Pastor of a Protestant New England Church." A sharp argumentum ad hominem, for the benefit of the ultra-radical accuser closes this division of his defence. "But, Mr. Moderator, if my charity toward some Roman Catholicks disqualified me for a Protestant Minister, what, what must we think of ye honorable Congress attending Mass in a Body in ye Roman Catholic Chappel at Philadelphia? Must it not be equal mockery in them to pretend to represent and act for the United Protestant States?" ...
The third charge was that he had declared himself and one of the brethren to "be a major part of the Church." This, like the first charge, was a revival of an old personal grievance within the church, rehabilitated to give cumulative force to the political complaints. The accusation is summarily disposed of; the accused condemning the sentiment "as grossly Tyrannical, inconsistent with common sense and repugnant to good order"; and denying that he ever uttered it.
Lastly came the political charge pure and simple.
"His despising contemning and setting at naught and speaking Evil of all our Civil Rulers, Congress, Continental and Provincial, of all our Courts, Legislative and Executive, are not only subversive of good Order: But we apprehend come under Predicament of those spoken of in 2 Pet. II. 10, who despise government, presumptuous, selfwilled, they are not afraid to speak evil of Dignities &c."
Mr. Harrington acknowledges that he once uttered to a Mr. North this imprudent speech. "I disapprove abhor and detest the Results of Congress whether Continental or Provincial," but adds that he "took the first opportunity to inform Mr. North that I had respect only to two articles in said Results." He apologizes for the speech, but at the same time defends his criticism of the two articles as arbitrary measures. He also confesses saying that "General Court had no Business to direct Committees to seize on Estates before they had been Confiscated in a course of Law," and "that their Constituents never elected or sent them for that Purpose," but this sentiment he claimed that he had subsequently retracted as rash and improper to be spoken. These objectionable expressions of opinion, he asserts, were made "before ye 19th of April 1775."
It is needless to say that the Reverend Timothy Harrington's name was speedily erased from the black list, and, to the credit of his people be it said, he was treated with increased consideration and honor during the following eighteen years that he lived to serve them. In the deliberations of the Lancaster town meeting, as in those of the Continental Congress, broad views of [pg 386] National Independence based upon civil and religions liberty, finally prevailed over sectional prejudice and intolerance. The loyalist pastor was a far better republican than his radical inquisitors.
[Since the paper upon Lancaster and the Acadiens was published in The Bay State Monthly for April, I have been favored with the perusal of Captain Abijah Willard's "Orderly Book," through the courtesy of its possessor, Robert Willard, M.D., of Boston, who found it among the historical collections of his father, Joseph Willard, Esq. The volume contains, besides other interesting matter, a concise diary of experiences during the military expedition of 1755 in Nova Scotia; from which it appears that the Lancaster company was prominently engaged in the capture of Forts Lawrence and Beau Séjour. Captain Willard, though not at Grand Pré, was placed in command of a detachment which carried desolation through the villages to the westward of the Bay of Minas; and the diary affords evidence that this warfare against the defenceless peasantry was revolting to that gallant officer; and that, while obedient to his positive orders, he tempered the cruelty of military necessity with his own humanity.
The full names of his subalterns, not given in the list from General Winslow's Journal, are found to be
"Joshua Willard, Lieutenant,
Moses Haskell, Lieutenant,
Caleb Willard, Ensign."
Of the Lancaster men, Sergeant James Houghton died, and William Hudson was killed, in Nova Scotia.
The diary is well worthy of being printed complete.
H.S.M.]