[354] It was printed as given "at the request of a number of the inhabitants of the town of Boston." Haven in Thomas, ii. 654.
[355] Mem. Hist. Boston, iii. 64.
[356] Niles's Principles and Acts of the Revolution (ed. of 1876), p. 277.
[357] "Much art and pains have been employed to dismay us", wrote Samuel Cooper to Franklin, Apr. 1, 1775, "or provoke us to some rash action, but hitherto the people have behaved with astonishing calmness and resolution." Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., viii. 124.
[358] Moore's Diary of Amer. Rev., i. 57.
[359] On this same day, Percy, in Boston, was writing "Things now every day begin to grow more and more serious. The [rebels] are every day in great numbers evacuating this town, and have proposed in congress either to set it on fire and attack the troops before a reinforcement comes, or to endeavor to starve us. Which they mean to adopt time only can show." Percy MSS. in Boston Public Library.
[360] P. O. Hutchinson, pp. 428, 433.
[361] Ibid., 434, 475.
[362] Thomas's letter in the Worcester Centennial Anniversary, p. 116.
[363] They lodged in the house of the Rev. Jonas Clark, half a mile away from Lexington Common. Loring's Orators, 81. The house was built in 1698. See Hudson's Lexington. A painting of the house was owned by the late H. G. Clark, of Boston.