[465] Burgoyne had suggested the occupation of these heights by the British very soon after the battle of Bunker Hill. Fonblanque, p. 150. Clinton says (Notes on Stedman) that he had told Gage and Howe, in June, 1775, that if ever the royal army was forced to evacuate Boston, it would be owing to the rebels getting possession of Dorchester Heights. What is given in T. C. Simond's South Boston, p. 31, as "a plan of Dorchester Neck for the use of the British army", seems to be but an extract from Pelham's Map.
[466] Heath's Papers (MSS.), i. 180.
[467] See Washington's letters on the occupation of Dorchester Heights and its effect, in Sparks, iii. 302, 311. Cf. N. H. State Papers, viii. 86; Mary Cone's Life of Rufus Putnam (Cleveland, 1886) p. 45.
[468] Hutchinson says the list which reached England showed 938 souls. (P. O. Hutchinson, ii. 61.) On Nov. 20, 1775, Lieut.-Gov. Oliver wrote that there were 2,000 loyalists in Boston, men, women, and children, and that Boston had then 3,500 inhabitants, instead of the 15,000 properly belonging to it.
[469] Mem. of Josiah Quincy, Jr., 416.
[470] These before long were gone. Jones (N. Y. during the Rev., i. 54), referring to the captures after the British left Boston harbor, says: "One or two frigates stationed in the bay would have prevented all this mischief. But a fatality, a kind of absurdity, or rather stupidity, marked every action of the British commanders-in-chief during the whole of the American war."
[471] Nearly eighty armed vessels and transports were necessary to carry the army and its followers, but a large number of other vessels loaded with merchandise accompanied the fleet. Abigail Adams counted 170 sail in all, from her home in Braintree. Washington had supposed they would steer for New York, and so had warned the New York authorities as early as March 9. (N. Y. Archives, in Sparks MSS., no. xxix.) Cf. his letter to Stirling of March 14. (Duer's Stirling, p. 143.)
[472] A small number of General Ward's papers, given by Mrs. Barrell, a granddaughter, are in the cabinet of the Mass. Hist. Society. Ward resigned April 12, 1776, and Hancock's reply to him of April 26 is among these, as are also sundry papers pertaining to his retention of the command of the Eastern department after Washington went to New York. Cf. a paper on Ward in Scribner's Monthly, xi. p. 712. A letter of Ward's, April 16, 1776, describing the army's condition, is in the Mass. Archives, and is copied in the Sparks MSS., vol. lx. There is an engraving of Ward, after an original picture in Irving's Washington, illus. ed., ii. Cf. also picture in A. H. Ward's Hist. of Shrewsbury, Mass.; and Memorial Hist. of Boston, vol. iii.
[473] Mem. of Josiah Quincy, Jr., p. 417.
[474] Edmund Quincy's letter in N. E. Hist. and Gen. Reg., 1859, p. 233.