"Brethren and Fellow Citizens!
You may depend that those odious miscreants and detestable tools to ministry and government, the Tea Consignees, (those traitors to their country—butchers—who have done and are doing everything to murder and destroy all that shall stand in the way of their private interest,) are determined to come (from the castle) and reside again in the town of Boston! I therefore give you this early notice that you may hold yourselves in readiness on the shortest warning, to give them such a reception as such vile ingrates deserve.
(Signed), Joyce, Junior,
Chairman of the Committee for Tarring and Feathering.
☞ If any person shall be so hardy as to tear this down, he may expect my severest resentment.
J., Jun."
[16] A merchant and a former selectman of Boston, member of the Provincial Congress, President of the Massachusetts Board of War during the Revolution, and from Nov. 2, 1775, till his death, a Judge of the Court of Common Pleas for Middlesex County. He died at Weston in December, 1797; aged 79.
[17] Quincy visited England in 1774, and died on the passage home, in sight of his native land, April 26, 1775. He was a lawyer, and in conjunction with John Adams, defended the perpetrators of the "Boston Massacre."
[18] Lord Mahon, a candid British historian, thinks this concession unwisely denied.
[19] John Rowe, a prominent merchant and patriotic citizen of Boston, died February 17, 1787; aged 72 years. He was many years a Selectman, Overseer of the Poor, and representative to the General Court, and was chairman of the committee chosen June 16, 1779, to fix the prices of merchandise, and to bring to punishment all offenders against the act against monopoly and forestalling. He was a member of the First Lodge of Freemasons, Boston, in 1740; master of the same Lodge in 1749, and fifth Provincial Grand Master in 1768. When, in 1766, Rowe was proposed for representative, Samuel Adams artfully suggested another, by asking—with his eyes on Mr. Hancock's house—"Is there not another John that may do better?" The hint took, and the wealth and influence of Hancock were secured on the side of liberty. Rowe's mansion,—subsequently that of Judge Prescott, father of the historian,—stood on the spot lately occupied by Dr. Robbins' church, in Bedford Street. A wharf and street once bore the name of this true friend of his country, but the wharf alone retains the title. Since 1856, Rowe Street has been absorbed in Chauncy Street.