[328] Lee, in Sept., 1774, was writing of Gage: "He is now actually shut up at Boston ... and has perhaps the most able and determined men of the whole world to deal with." Chas. Lee Papers, N. Y. Hist. Soc. Coll., 1871, p. 136. Various letters of this period written from Boston are in the Evelyns in America (Oxford, 1881).
[329] This is the house still standing, belonging to James Russell Lowell. Mem. Hist. Boston, iii. 114.
[330] Loring's Hundred Orators, p. 89; Mem. Hist. Boston, iii. 62; Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., vi. 261.
For an account of Preble, see N. E. Hist. and Gen. Reg., 1868, pp. 404, 421. He, as well as Ward and Pomeroy, had been in the French wars.
[332] P. O. Hutchinson, 293, 297. Percy was writing, October 27, 1774, from the camp in Boston: "Our affairs here are in the most critical situation imaginable. Nothing less than the total loss or conquest of the colonies must be the end of it.... We have got together a clever little army here." Percy MSS. in Boston Public Library.
[333] Percy MSS., Nov. 25, 1774: "I really begin now to think that it will come to blows at last, for they are most amazingly encouraged by our having done nothing as yet. The people here are the most artful, designing villains in the world."
[334] Mem. of Quincy, p. 216.
[335] Letters, Dec. 12 and 28, 1774. The census or estimate by congress in 1775 gave New England 800,000 souls.