“Great Mars with me, come now and view, this more than Hellish crew!
Great Vulcan send your thunder forth, and all their fields bestrew!
Rain on their heads perpetual fire in one eternal flame:
Let black destruction be their doom, dishonor’d be their name:
Send mighty bolts to strike the traitors, North and Mansfield, dead:
And liquid fires to scald the crown from Royal George’s head:
Strike all their young posterity, with one eternal curse.
Nor pity them, no more than they, have ever pitied us!
One hundred and thirty years ago William Russell was earning a humdrum livelihood as an usher in a “public school” of Boston taught by one Master Griffith. Whatever else he may have drilled into the laggard minds of his scholars, it is certain that the young usher did not try, by ferrule or precept, to inspire loyalty for their gracious sovereign, King George and his flag. It is recorded that “he was of an ardent temperament and entered with great zeal into the political movement of the Colonies,” and was early enrolled among the “Sons of Liberty,” which organization preached rebellion and resistance to England long before the first clash of arms. At the age of twenty-three this undignified school teacher was one of the band of lawless patriots who, painted and garbed as red Indians, dumped a certain famous cargo of tea into Boston Harbor.
When a British fleet and army took possession of seething Boston, Master Griffith had to look for another usher, for William Russell had “made himself obnoxious to the ‘authorities,’” and found it advisable to betake himself with his family to places not so populous with red coats.