Episode 19: The Gambit

Worlds Turned Upside Down
Episode 19: The Gambit

Written by Jim Ambuske, Ph.D.
Published September 23, 2025

JIM AMBUSKE 
This episode of Worlds Turned Upside Down is made possible with support from a 2024 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

AMBUSKE 
Caroline Howe busied herself preparing her drawing room in her home at 12 Grafton Street in London. She was expecting the arrival of a new acquaintance, a scientist, printer, and politician, and they were to play a game of chess. It was December 2, 1774. 

AMBUSKE 
Howe was fifty-three years old as she set out the board and readied the pieces.  Her husband, John, had been dead now for five years, making her a widow by the time she moved into her fashionable and recently built townhome on Grafton Street. Her younger brother and her mother lived just nearby. 

AMBUSKE 
As the eldest daughter of Emanual Scrope Howe, 2nd Viscount Howe, and his wife, Charlotte, Caroline Howe had lived a comfortable life as a member of the British elite. As a young girl she displayed a competitive streak, one that would only become stronger with time.

AMBUSKE 
Yet, the Howe family’s life was not without tragedy. On any given day, Howe could visit the memorial erected by the colony of Massachusetts Bay in Westminster Abbey to honor her eldest brother, Lord George Augustus Howe, who had fallen in battle against French and Indigenous forces in northern New York in the summer of 1758. 

AMBUSKE 
To commemorate Lord Howe, the sculptor carved a crest-fallen woman in mourning out of white marble. She rests atop a tablet, inscribed with the colony’s tribute to the popular general, supported at the base by two menacing lions. Behind it, an obelisk bore the family’s coat of arms. British flags and regimental colors reminded visitors that Lord Howe had died for the empire. So did the inscription. As his sister would have read, Massachusetts Bay commissioned the memorial:

CAROLINE HOWE 
“In testimony of the sense they had of his services and military virtues, and of the affection their officers and soldiers bore to his command. He lived respected and beloved: The publick regretted his loss; to his family it is irreparable.”

AMBUSKE 
The memorial was a reminder of the most painful of the many ties that bound the Howe family to British America.

AMBUSKE 
From the bay windows of her Grafton Street home, Howe could see the comings and goings of London society, and from within her drawing room, good friends and family could often be found, whispering the latest political gossip, planning the next charitable venture, or discussing the latest troubling news from the colonies.

AMBUSKE 
Despite the fervent hopes of her friend, Lord Dartmouth, His Majesty’s Secretary of State for the Colonies for their acquiescence, many British Americans had risen up in protest against the Boston Port Act, condemned the rest of the Coercive Acts, and feared the restoration of New France in Quebec. 

AMBUSKE 
By the summer of 1774, colonists were organizing new protests and calling for a congress to meet in Philadelphia to debate a united response among some of the king’s aggrieved dominions. 

AMBUSKE 
Extra legal conventions elected extra legal delegates to a congress with no constitutional authority, no legal existence in British law, a congress some colonists worried had a pretension to power it did not have. 

AMBUSKE 
At this congress’s urging, committees in local communities began enforcing the Continental Association, a boycott of British goods and a ban on provincial exports. These extra legal committees demanded access to merchants’ ledgers, coerced the speech of reluctant colonists, and chided them for enjoying life’s pleasures, leaving many to question the loyalties of the king’s subjects. 

AMBUSKE 
And with Parliament seemingly unwilling to compromise unless colonists fully acknowledged its authority, of its right to legislate for the colonies “in all cases whatsoever”, and an unconstitutional Congress in Philadelphia issuing new demands for the Mother Country to retreat, the prospects for peace in the empire appeared grim.

AMBUSKE 
But there were Britons on both sides of the Atlantic who believed in charting a different course, in finding a middle ground that redressed all their grievances and restored the promise of Great Britain’s Empire of Liberty. 

AMBUSKE 
As a woman in the eighteenth century, Caroline Howe could play no part in the deliberations of the king’s privy council, nor debate politics in Parliament or command soldiers in the field, like her brothers did.

AMBUSKE 
But Howe could play games of chess. And she was an avid player, a determined, even ferocious, competitor, who delighted in winning, especially when the stakes were high and her opponents were formidable.

AMBUSKE 
And she could play games that everyone could see, and other games, most could not. 

AMBUSKE 
For when her guest, Benjamin Franklin, rapped on her door at 12 Grafton Street that December day, the aging Boston-born Philadelphian did not yet realize that Howe’s invitation was a clever ruse to bring the most well-known British American through her door. This was more than just an invitation for a simple game of chess and the promise of passing the day in polite company, it was an opening gambit, the first move, in the beginnings of secret talks to stave off the horrors of imperial civil war.

AMBUSKE 
I’m Jim Ambuske, and this is World Turned Upside Down, a podcast about the history of the American Revolution.

AMBUSKE 
Episode 19: The Gambit

AMBUSKE 
In late January 1774, nearly twelve months before calling on Caroline Howe for a game of chess, Benjamin Franklin walked into a trap.

AMBUSKE 
On January 29th, Franklin arrived at the palace of Whitehall for a meeting with the king’s privy council. Acting as an agent on behalf of the colony of Massachusetts Bay, Franklin expected to discuss a petition from the colony’s assembly requesting the removal of Governor Thomas Hutchinson, a man widely loathed by Bostonians.

AMBUSKE 
By now long accustomed to public notoriety, and with a reputation in Britain as a leading authority on colonial affairs, Franklin may not have thought much of the crowd gathering in the gallery, nor realized they had come to watch a spectacle.

AMBUSKE 
Dressed in a velvet suit, Franklin entered a chamber known as the cockpit, a room constructed by King Henry VIII to host fowl bloodsports.

AMBUSKE 
Nine days earlier, Londoners had learned that a mob of Boston men had dumped nearly 50 tons of East India Company tea into Boston Harbor, drowning goods worth nearly £1.2 million in our own time. The destruction appalled the king’s ministers, members of Parliament, and residents in the imperial capital, leaving them in no mood to hear Franklin defend the colony’s request to see its governor removed.

AMBUSKE 
Thirty-five privy councilors, including the prime minister, Lord North, awaited him. The Earl of Hillsborough was there as well. Once Secretary of State for the Colonies, Hillsborough believed firmly in Parliament’s supremacy and the uncompromising enforcement of its laws. His more pragmatic and conciliatory successor, the Earl of Dartmouth, appeared, as did  Edmund Burke, a member of Parliament and agent for the colony of New York. Major General Thomas Gage, soon to become governor of Massachusetts Bay took a seat as well. Even the Archbishop of Canterbury came to watch from the gallery, as an unsuspecting Franklin took his place in the corner of the cockpit, and the government’s solicitor general, Alexander Wedderburn, rose to begin.

JULIE FLAVELL 
Franklin was agent from Massachusetts at this time, and his remit was to appear before the Privy Council to defend a petition from Massachusetts calling for removal of Governor Thomas Hutchinson. It was, of course, very unpopular. Julie Flavell, independent scholar. Some of Hutchinson's letters to a British official in London had been sent to Boston, and they appeared to show the governor endorsing stricter control of Massachusetts by the British government, which made him more unpopular than ever. So the colony was now petitioning for his removal.

AMBUSKE 
Franklin had been the one who had leaked those letters. That was public knowledge, though he never revealed how he got hold of them. News of the tea’s destruction in Boston transformed Franklin’s meeting with the privy council from a simple hearing into a tribunal.

FLAVELL
The mood in London was that it was time to stop compromising with troublemakers in the colonies, especially trouble making Boston. Within the next few months, Boston Port was going to be closed as a punishment, and the Coercive Acts would be enacted. So Franklin's meeting with the Privy Council, which was meant to be a rather minor affair, was transformed into a showcase for Metropolitan anger at the Bostonians who'd gotten a reputation for themselves ever since the Stamp Act riot as particularly violent protesters and Frank. Franklin himself already had a bad reputation as someone who stirred up discontent in the colonies, in the minds of a lot of people in London.

AMBUSKE 
As Franklin stood in silence, his prosecutor directed more than 8,000 words at him.

FLAVELL 
In a tirade lasting an hour, the government Solicitor General Alexander Wedderburn publicly demolished Franklin's character. He called the American malignant, a man without honor, an incendiary who inflamed the innocent people of Massachusetts against British rule. Because the British retained this idea that there was a nest of conspiratorial troublemakers and that normal farmers and so forth weren't interested in these kinds of things. Onlookers actually audibly laughed as Franklin was humiliated, and he kept his face carefully neutral throughout the harangue. Somebody described him as his face was as if made of wood. And for about a week afterwards, the west end card parties buzzed with the American business, but it would be many months before the full implications of Franklin's ordeal before the Privy Council would become clear. Because, of course, a very serious crisis in America had emerged, and the most influential colonial spokesman ever to serve in London had been discredited right at the outset.

AMBUSKE 
The Privy Council dismissed the petition from Massachusetts Bay. Two days later, the government removed Franklin as deputy postmaster general of North America. He resigned as agent for his native New England colony, and contemplated sailing home to Pennsylvania.

AMBUSKE 
With Franklin’s encounter with Wedderburn in the cockpit, and the general clamour and uproar in the capital over what the Bostonians had done in their harbor, the empire was on the precipice of disaster.

AMBUSKE 
But even as the prime minister and Parliament began writing the first of the Coercive Acts, Britons wrote letters, drew up innovative imperial plans, and negotiated in secret to save the empire.

AMBUSKE 
So, how did Britons seek a way out of the imperial morasses? How did personal relationships shape prospects for peace? And why did those efforts fail to bring about their desired ends?

AMBUSKE 
To begin answering these questions, we’ll first sail back and forth across the Atlantic, to exchange letters between Britons struggling to find a middle ground, we’ll then head into the halls of Parliament and the Continental Congress, to rewrite the history of the empire’s past in order to save its future, before returning to 12 Grafton Street in London, to play games of chess on which the fate of the empire depended. 

AMBUSKE 
In the early 1760s, an aspiring lawyer from Pennsylvania named Joseph Reed ventured to London to study the law. Reed was in his mid-twenties when he arrived in the capital. Soon, he met seventeen-year-old Esther DeBerdt, and they quickly fell in love. Esther was the daughter of Dennys, a London merchant, who was then the agent for Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut, and Delaware. The elder DeBerdt did business with the Reed family firm, making it only natural that the younger Reed would call on him to renew those old Atlantic ties.

AMBUSKE 
Though impressed by the young colonist’s ambition, DeBerdt was not thrilled with his infatuation with Esther nor was he pleased that his daughter equally admired Reed. To the dismay of both, DeBerdt denied Reed’s proposal for Esther’s hand, though his objections had more to do with Esther’s age and the state of the Reed family finances than his own impressions of the law student.

AMBUSKE 
Nevertheless, Esther and Reed continued a secret correspondence, one that spanned the Atlantic after Reed sailed for New Jersey in the mid-1760s to help shore up his father’s ailing firm. With more than 3,000 miles now separating Reed and Esther, DeBerdt’s estimation of Reed once began to rise, especially as he proved adept at righting the family business and supplying him with information on the state of the colonies during the Stamp Act crisis.

AMBUSKE 
DeBerdt relayed some of Reed’s reflections to his own patron, William Legge, Earl of Dartmouth.

AMBUSKE 
In the mid-1760s, Lord Dartmouth was President of the Board of Trade, the government body entrusted with the management of colonial affairs. From this vantage point, Dartmouth read trade reports coming from the colonies, new laws passed by colonial assemblies, and letters from governors on the state of their provinces. They offered him a portrait of the empire that few could ever see.

AMBUSKE 
Although a member of the Anglican Church, Dartmouth had an intense interest in evangelical Methodism. He became a supporter of the itinerant preacher George Whitefield as well Eleazar Wheelock, who founded a school in New Hampshire to educate Indigenous people that would later bear Dartmouth’s name.

AMBUSKE 
Reed may have briefly met Dartmouth when he lived in London, although the evidence is unclear. Certainly, by May 1766, when DeBerdt passed on some of Reed’s “sensible accounts of American Affairs” Dartmouth knew of him.

AMBUSKE 
By the early 1770s, much had changed for both men. Reed returned to London to finally marry Esther, though the joy of their union was dampened by the sudden passing of her father. After settling Dennys DeBerdt’s affairs, Reed sailed home with his new wife and his mother-in-law to begin a new life in New Jersey.

AMBUSKE 
In 1772, two years after DeBerdt’s death, King George III appointed Dartmouth secretary of state for the colonies. Dartmouth replaced Lord Hillsborough, who was not well loved by British Americans. Hillsborough had ordered troops to Boston in 1768 after colonists rioted over the Townshend Acts, and commanded provincial governors to suspend or dissolve their assemblies if they made common cause with Massachusetts Bay. Even the king thought Hillsborough a little too rigid.

AMBUSKE 
British Americans welcomed Dartmouth’s appointment almost as much as they did Hillsborough’s demise. Some British Americans saw his lordship as a friend to the colonies.

AMBUSKE 
The West African-born Boston poet Phillis Wheatley congratulated Dartmouth on his new office, writing him in October 1772 that colonists were not:

PHILLIS WHEATLEY 
“insensible of the Friendship so much exemplified in your endeavours in their behalf, during the late unhappy disturbances. I sincerely wish your Lordship all Possible Success, in your undertakings for the Interest of North America.”

AMBUSKE 
The following year, Wheatley met with Dartmouth in London when she visited the capital. For Wheatley, who knew what it meant to be actually enslaved, Dartmouth’s tenure heralded new possibilities for the future. In a poem dedicated to him, Wheatley rhymed:

FLAVELL 
Dartmouth, in a way, an ambiguous character, he definitely supported the principle of parliamentary supremacy. Some of the moderate thinkers in Britain supported the principle of parliamentary supremacy, but at the same time, they were simply realistic. They didn't think that armed suppression of the colonies would work. Some believed that eventually America would become very wealthy and powerful and would gradually move away from control by Britain, and that the ideal thing to do was to keep avoiding conflicts, which, of course, had happened in the two previous crises, and let it occur naturally and keep America as an ally. And I think Dartmouth would belong in this camp.

PHILLIS WHEATLEY 
No more, America, in mournful strain Of wrongs, and grievance unredress’d complain, No longer shalt thou dread the iron chain, Which wanton Tyranny with lawless hand Had made, and with it meant t’ enslave the land

AMBUSKE 
Joseph Reed’s existing ties to Dartmouth and the belief that the secretary of state would welcome informed observations from the provinces convinced the common colonist to open lines of communication with the noble lord. Reed had other good reasons for attempting to influence the cabinet minister as well. Dartmouth was the stepbrother of Lord North, the prime minister.

MARY BETH NORTON 
Joseph Reed, who becomes a leader of the revolution in Pennsylvania, but is a moderate person. Was back channeling to Dartmouth who he knew, Mary Beth Norton, I'm the Mary Donlon Alger Professor Emeritus at Cornell University. He thought, if I can tell Dartmouth the truth about what's happening, because Dartmouth was thought to be an ally of the Americans, that he could convince Dartmouth not to adopt major coercive measures.

AMBUSKE 
Reed first wrote to Dartmouth on December 22, 1773, three days before the ship Polly arrived in the Delaware River with East India Company tea. The now thirty-two-year-old Reed repeated long-tried arguments that the Townshend Acts and the tea duties were:

JOSEPH REED 
“generally considered as a law imposing a tax without the consent of the Americans, and therefore to be resisted.”

AMBUSKE 
And he emphasized to Dartmouth that much had changed in recent years since the passage of the Stamp Act and its swift repeal. Discontent over the tea and Parliament’s persistence in passing such obnoxious and unconstitutional laws had reached dangerous heights:

JOSEPH REED 
“The opposition to the Stamp Act was not so general, and I cannot but think any attempt at present to crush it would be attended with dreadful effects.”

AMBUSKE 
But he counseled Dartmouth not to believe talk of disloyalty in Pennsylvania:

JOSEPH REED 
“Notwithstanding any contrary representations, I cannot but be firmly persuaded that the repeal of this whole act would ensure the future submission of the inhabitants of this part of America, to any other act of the British Parliament now in force.”

AMBUSKE 
Reed wrote again two days after the tea ship arrived in Philadelphia, warning Dartmouth that:

JOSEPH REED 
“how general and unanimous the opinion is, that no article subject to a duty, for the purpose of raising revenue, ought to be received in America. Nor is it confined to this city; your Lordship will see by the papers herewith, that the same opposition is made at New York, Charleston and Boston, and you may rely upon it, the same prevails throughout the country. Any further attempt to enforce this act, I am humbly of opinion, must end in blood.”

AMBUSKE 
Four months later, in April 1774, Reed put pen to paper again, as British Americans waited to learn of Parliament’s response to the tea insurrections. Sensing that the British government would react harshly, Reed counseled patience while offering Dartmouth flattery:

JOSEPH REED 
“I know of no Cloud rising in our political Hemisphere, unless our Conduct respecting the Tea should produce any. Of this your lordship is the best judge. We hope & trust we have not forfeited your Lordships Favour & Protection; this would be a loss which I am sure every judicious American would deplore, as I may say with great truth, that no minister ever stood better in the affection and esteem of America than your lordship.”

AMBUSKE 
The cloud Reed feared rose in response to the Coercive Acts. As he told Dartmouth in June, that cloud had become:

JOSEPH REED 
“a perfect and complete union between the Colonies to oppose the parliamentary claims of taxation, and relieve the distress of the town of Boston.”

AMBUSKE 
As concerning for a moderate like Reed, who imagined that more pragmatic colonists in Pennsylvania and New York could broker a resolution to the crisis:

JOSEPH REED 
“The severity of the administration, and the mode of condemnation, gain [the radicals] many advocates, even among those who acknowledge their conduct criminal.”

AMBUSKE 
And he noted with some exaggeration that:

JOSEPH REED 
“This union or confederacy, which will probably be the greatest ever seen in this country, will be cemented and fixed in a general congress of deputies from every province, and I am inclined to think that strong efforts will be made to perpetuate it by annual or triennial meetings, a thing which is entirely new.”

NORTON 
When I read these letters, I said, Oh, my God. If Samuel Adams had known someone was writing these things to England, he would have been in deep, deep trouble, because he tried to explain what the radicals were doing and why they were doing it. And I was just astonished. It was almost like a spy in the midst of the Americans

AMBUSKE 
Reed knew from his brother-in-law that Dartmouth had received his letters. That he was not advised to discontinue his correspondence meant that Dartmouth was happy to receive them. Dartmouth noted this when he replied to Reed in July 1774 with his own perspective on the crisis:

LORD DARTMOUTH 
“I will assure you, I hope [for] better things. I know that the complexion of some measures which have been taken of late in some of the Colonies, has induced a persuasion in the minds of many discreet and dispassionate people, that they have totally forgotten the nature of that connexion by which they are held to the Mother Country, and that they mean not to acknowledge a dependence upon her in any sense whatever: for my own part, I will not believe it till it is no longer to be denied.”

AMBUSKE 
The secretary of state appealed to moderates like Reed:

LORD DARTMOUTH 
“that a little time will convince you and all that can think with coolness and temper, that the liberties of America are not so much in danger from any thing that Parliament has done, or is likely to do here, as from the violence and misconduct itself. I am persuaded I need not take pains to convince you of the absurdity of the idea which as been held out to the common people in inflammatory papers on your side of the water, that the intention of Government is to enslave the people of America: we wish you to enjoy all the freedom and all the rights which belong to British subjects.”

AMBUSKE 
Prominent colonists like Benjamin Franklin weren’t helping matters either. Aware that Reed and others were angered by reports of Franklin’s treatment in the cockpit, and Dartmouth present for the verbal assault, the secretary of state regretted the distress it caused British Americans, but:

LORD DARTMOUTH 
“Whatever respect I may have for that gentleman on other accounts, I cannot applaud his conduct on the occasion of Mr. Hutchinson’s letters.”

AMBUSKE 
Dartmouth believed that many British Americans had been deluded from their proper duty to the king and all common sense by the ill designs of radical men. In his view, the Coercive Acts were not intolerable. Instead, they were proportional to the actions of a New England province bordering on rebellion. Like almost every Briton in the Mother Country, Dartmouth believed deeply in Parliament’s supreme authority, the protection it provided for the people’s liberties, and its right to legislate for the empire:

LORD DARTMOUTH 
“The question then is whether these laws are to be submitted to? If the people of America say no, they say in effect that they will no longer be a part of the British Empire; they change the whole ground of the controversy,--they no longer contend that Parliament has not a right to enact a particular provision,--they say that it has not right to consider them as at all within its jurisdiction.”

AMBUSKE 
Lord Dartmouth’s correspondence with Joseph Reed reflected hardening political ideas about the fundamental nature of the empire.

AMBUSKE 
Burke claimed that British Americans had hardly noticed and readily complied with these Navigation Acts, as the regulations were collectively known, conveniently ignoring the colonists’ penchant for smuggling and evasion. But, with Britain’s victory in the Seven Years’ War, successive Parliaments and prime ministers had ushered in a series of dramatic and jarring breaks with the past. As he argued in the House of Commons:

AMBUSKE 
Dartmouth championed the rights of an imperial Parliament to legislate for the colonies as it saw fit, though he believed that the firm application of that power ought to be tempered with prudence and wisdom. Reed shared the view of many British Americans that colonists wished to remain dependent on the Mother Country and the crown, but that Parliament’s power was not absolute. Parliament could regulate the empire’s trade, but only the provincial assemblies had the constitutional power to tax colonists.

AMBUSKE 
Each man labored to convince the other of the righteousness of their respective positions. The one that Parliament should relent, the other that the colonies should submit. Yet, neither had given up hope by the summer of 1774. They continued writing to each other. 

AMBUSKE 
But their sentiments embodied more than just debates about political philosophy and constitutional power, they were also deeply historical. By 1774, Britons on both sides of the Atlantic had begun writing and rewriting the history of the British Empire in North America to explain the origins of the present crisis, and in some cases, justify their resistance.  

AMBUSKE 
Edmund Burke hoped that by delivering a history lesson on the floor of the House of Commons, he might help bring about the “better things” that Dartmouth longed for.

AMBUSKE 
By 1774, the Dublin-born Burke was a well known orator and political philosopher, one who celebrated the measured use of government power and constitutional constraints on its excesses.

AMBUSKE 
Like Dartmouth, Burke had witnessed Benjamin Franklin’s trial in the cockpit. And like Franklin, Burke was also a colonial agent. The New York assembly hired him in 1770 to represent the colony's interests to Parliament and in meetings with the king’s ministers.

AMBUSKE 
In April, as Parliament debated a number of new coercive acts to compel the colonists’ obedience in the wake of the destruction of the tea in Boston, Burke and a few other members believed that tempering the government’s thirst for coercion with measures of conciliation would convince colonists to accept the more aggressive reforms.

AMBUSKE 
Burke rose in the House of Commons to support the repeal of the tea duty – the last surviving tax of the late Charles Townshend’s revenue measures — as a sign of Parliament’s good faith. Burke and others hoped that the tea duty’s repeal would lessen the sting of the Boston Port Act, and weaken colonists’ stomach for resistance.

AMBUSKE 
Like other Britons in the Mother Country, Burke believed that Parliament was the supreme legislature of the empire, and that it had the right to tax the colonies. Yet, as he argued in the Commons, using the full extent of those powers was unwise unless the empire faced a dire threat.

AMBUSKE 
In a long and extemporaneous speech, Burke traced the history of the British Empire in North America from its origins to the present day. In his reading of the past, Parliament had nurtured the growth and prosperity of the colonies through a system of regulated trade since the early seventeenth century. This commercial monopoly grew as the empire did, benefitting Britons on both sides of the Atlantic.

EDMUND BURKE 
“This nation never thought of departing from that choice until the period immediately on the close of the last war. Then a scheme of government new in many things seemed to have been adopted….At that period the necessity was established of keeping up no less than twenty new regiments, with twenty colonels capable of seats in this House. This scheme was adopted with very general applause from all sides, at the very time that, by your conquests in America, your danger from foreign attempts in that part of the world was much lessened, or indeed rather quite over.”

AMBUSKE 
In Burke’s view, the passage of the Stamp Act in 1765 had been an abrupt if not radical departure from the past, an unnecessary measure to pay for an unnecessary army in North America. Yet, the prospect of taxing British Americans to fund the costs of the military proved alluring, even to those members of Parliament who feared the dangers of standing armies among them.

EDMUND BURKE 
“When this huge encrease of military establishment was resolved on, a revenue was to be found to support so great a burthen. Country gentlemen, the great patrons of occonomy, and the great resisters of a standing armed force, would not have entered with much alacrity into the vote for so large and so expensive an army, if they had been very sure, that they were to continue to pay for it. But hopes of another kind were held out to them; and in particular, I well remember, that Mr. Townshend, in a brilliant harangue on this subject, did dazzle them, by playing before their eyes the image of a revenue to be raised in America."

AMBUSKE 
For Burke, the Stamp Act, the Townshend Acts, and more recent laws like the Tea Act were all part of a chaotic, incoherent imperial plan with no clear precedent in the empire’s history. Worse, it threatened the empire’s future. Was it any wonder, then, that British Americans resisted it?

EDMUND BURKE 
“Could anything be a subject of more just alarm to America, than to see you go out of the plain high road of finance, and give up your most certain revenues and your clearest interests, merely for the sake of insulting your Colonies? No man ever doubted that the commodity of Tea could bear an imposition of three-pence. But no commodity will bear three-pence, or will bear a penny, when the general feelings of men are irritated, and two millions of people are resolved not to pay.”

AMBUSKE 
In the immediate wake of the tea’s destruction in Boston, though, and with a growing belief in Britain that Massachusetts Bay was a province bordering on rebellion and a corrupting influence on the other colonies, Parliament was in no mood to hear Burke’s plea or his history lesson. The repeal of the tea duty failed, and Parliament pressed on with bringing Massachusetts Bay to heel.

AMBUSKE 
For all the blame that Edmund Burke placed on the king’s ministers for suddenly and irresponsibly redirecting the British Empire onto a different path, his reading of this history – and the empire’s future prosperity – relied on shared transatlantic past and a common British identity.

MICHAEL HATTEM 
These colonists used British history to reinforce their British identity comes largely through the history of England. And that's because colonists in the 18th century thought of themselves as British, proudly British, and they thought of the British past, or history of Britain, as their history. Michael Hattem, I'm the Associate Director of the Yale New Haven  Teachers Institute. Most importantly, they identified with the Glorious Revolution of 1688, because it ended the tyranny and absolutism of the Stuart monarchs, because it increased the power of Parliament at the expense of the crown. And that's a doctrine that we know as parliamentary supremacy. And that meant that Parliament now had essentially total legislative power, and that there was no other body to appeal to if anyone disagreed with something that Parliament did, because only Parliament could repeal a law passed by a previous parliament. British subjects, including the colonists, saw the Glorious Revolution as having laid the foundation and the principles that would allow Britain could ultimately emerge later as one of the most powerful empires in the world.

AMBUSKE 
Britons in the Mother Country including King George III venerated the history of the Glorious Revolution and the triumph of Parliament over the tyranny of absolutist kings. The memory of Stuart monarchs like Charles I and James II, and the civil wars that ravaged the British Isles in the seventeenth century, burned brightly in the British mind. Here’s Julie Flavell:

FLAVELL 
If you're looking for a British politician who is at all mainstream, who didn't believe in parliamentary supremacy, you'd look in vain, because in the 18th century, members of parliament were still faced with. The real possibility that a crown that could get revenue by means other than parliament, for example, through colonial contributions that went directly to the crown or so forth, could still become tyrannical.

AMBUSKE 
And even if some politicians like Edmund Burke argued against Parliament’s swift departure from the past, the demands of the present required different choices.

HATTEM 
After the Seven Years' War, the British are faced with this newly enlarged empire that they have to find a way to administer, and if it takes some unprecedented legislation to administer this unprecedentedly large empire, well then that makes sense to them. They're not going to be bound by precedents necessarily from the past that don't fit present circumstances.

AMBUSKE 
British Americans celebrated the Glorious Revolution, no less than their fellow subjects across the water.

HATTEM 
But of course, when the 1760s come and Parliament starts passing all of this unprecedented legislation, it signals to them, in a sense, that Parliament is no longer bound by the authority of the past or by precedent, and once they realized that, they also realized, well, that means that they can essentially do anything. You can't possibly predict what they can do, because they're not limited in any way. And when they try to appeal to Parliament against the Stamp Act, against the Townsend acts, Parliament refuses to receive their petitions because they question Parliament's authority, and parliament is supreme. Colonists start to realize that this glorious revolution that they had celebrated and had been the center of their British identity for three quarters of a century, that the defining feature of the Glorious Revolution was the creation of parliamentary supremacy, and in doing that, it had effectively meant that Parliament could act as arbitrarily and as absolute as any Stuart monarch in the 17th century, because there was nowhere to appeal to beyond parliament. And once they realize that, they start to think very differently about what the Glorious Revolution means and what it wrought, especially for the colonies, they're rethinking an event that has been central to their identity as British subjects, and so that brings their British identity into question.

AMBUSKE 
Questioning their identity as British subjects led some colonists to reconsider the historical origins of the colonies, and the English rights their ancestors brought with them to North America.

AMBUSKE 
In the summer of 1774, as Virginia’s delegates to the Continental Congress, including the planter and retired militia colonel George Washington, made arrangements to travel to Philadelphia, a young planter and lawyer named Thomas Jefferson wrote a lengthy overview of Virginia and British American history to guide the delegation in their work. Though not a delegate himself, Jefferson, like Washington was a member of the House of Burgesses, and both were deeply invested in the empire.

FRANK COGLIANO 
They are both imperial Virginians. They are proud of Virginia. They are men made by Virginia, but they're also cognizant of Virginia's place in a wider British Empire, which both of them are committed to in different ways. Frank Cogliano, Professor of American History at the University of Edinburgh. They were born members of that Virginia planting elite. If they're not at the very top of the society, they're not far off, and they'll both get there by marrying very wealthy widows from that elite. They represent the elite of their society, and they're men used to commanding wealth and authority, and they exercise authority, and they have political and social and economic power and capital. But they're also mindful that they are part of something larger, or Virginia is part of something larger, which is this British Empire. And at least early in their lives, they're both committed to that Washington, of course, sought and wished for a career in the British Army, and Jefferson, as a young planter, cum lawyer, was committed to the British imperial project as well.

AMBUSKE 
In his advice to Virginia’s delegation, Jefferson reimagined the British American past to explain Virginia’s place in the empire and why Parliament never had the right to legislate for it.

COGLIANO 
If you read the summary view of the rights of British America, it's published anonymously on his behalf in 1774 you get some insight into that question. Jefferson wrote what became the summary view as a series of instructions to Virginia's delegation to the Continental Congress. He wasn't attending the Continental Congress, but he wrote what became a lengthy pamphlet to situate themselves in that Imperial moment in 1774 and in it, he outlines the grievances of the colonists, or particularly Virginians. He also outlines the history of Virginia and the history of the rights of Virginians. And here I'm talking about free white Virginians. Of course, and in that he makes the argument. He says, basically, we are like the Saxons who in the early Middle Ages migrated from Europe to Britain and took with them their rights and liberties. We Virginians are Britons who emigrated in the 17th century, and we brought our rights and liberties with us, just as our Saxon forebears did, and we are British people, really English people. We have the rights of Englishmen that we have brought with us to North America and that we are Britons who live in a different place, but we are equal to and on a par with our fellow subjects back in the home islands. He lays all this out in the summary view. And when he writes the summary view, he's still trying to make the case that we're the real British subjects. We understand British liberties or the rights of Englishmen in a way that people in Britain have lost. It's not a call for independence in 1774 he lays out a theory of the case in making a case, legal and historical case for the Britishness of Virginians. So he's not cling to that. He believes it.

AMBUSKE 
In Jefferson’s re-reading of history, Virginia and the other colonies had never been subordinate to Parliament. They were just as British as their fellow subjects in Europe, united by a common king. And while Parliament was the legislature in Great Britain, the colonists were subject to the laws made by their own assemblies. Parliament and the king’s ministers claimed powers they never had, and worse, they were corrupting the king’s mind against his British American subjects. Jefferson entreated the king to intervene before it was too late:

THOMAS JEFFERSON 
“Open your breast Sire, to liberal and expanded thought. Let not the name of George the third be a blot in the page of history.”

AMBUSKE 
In the fall of 1774, these competing histories, these conflicting British identities, and these contradictory claims about Parliament’s power and authority seemed irreconcilable.

AMBUSKE 
When the Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia in September, radical, moderate, and conservative delegates argued over the origins of their rights. Did they come from the laws of nature or did they come from political society? Did their ancestors carry with them all the rights of English subjects across the ocean, or were they more limited? Were they British subjects like their brethren in Britain, or when their ancestors emigrated in the early seventeenth century, did they create a separate British people united under the crown?

AMBUSKE 
But how to secure their rights and satisfy Parliament’s demands were more difficult questions. One delegate believed he had the beginnings of an answer. Here’s Mary Beth Norton:

NORTON 
Joseph Galloway, who became the leading conservative at the First Continental Congress, presented what's known as the Galloway Plan of Union.

AMBUSKE 
Galloway was speaker of the Pennsylvania Assembly and a dominant force in local politics. Unlike his fellow Pennsylvania delegate, John Dickinson, Galloway believed that Parliament could tax the colonies, though their lack of representation in Westminster was a serious problem.

AMBUSKE 
He was suspicious of the seductive rhetoric of radical delegates like Patrick Henry, who boasted in early September: “I am not a Virginian, but an American” and that the colonies had returned to a state of nature now that “Government is at an end.” Galloway believed the imperial crisis could finally come to an end if the colonies united with Great Britain under a new constitution that harmonized the past with the present.

AMBUSKE 
In late September, Galloway proposed the creation of a Grand Council – a kind of American Parliament – with members elected by each of the colonial assemblies – and a crown-appointed President General. Together, the President General and the Grand Council would legislate for North America, providing the local control that British Americans desired, yet they were to “be an inferior and distinct branch of the British legislature,” maintaining Parliament’s supremacy. Both legislatures would have to assent to laws concerning British America before they took effect, giving colonial representatives significant say in imperial affairs, while preserving Parliament’s authority. 

NORTON 
It was still something that the Brits would never accept, because it provided for a governor general over all the colonies and a legislature elected by all the colonies legislatures, and that that body would have to agree to policies that Britain was adopting about the colonies and the British would never agree to that.

AMBUSKE 
The Continental Congress nearly did. On September 29, Galloway’s Plan of Union failed by one vote.

AMBUSKE 
By then, however, Congress had already adopted the more aggressive Suffolk Resolves that called for a boycott of British goods and regular militia drills. It was preparing a Declaration of Rights and Grievances, which endorsed the kind of British past that Thomas Jefferson had imagined, and it was drafting a petition to the king. Galloway signed onto the Continental Association, the framework for enforcing trade restrictions, though he later claimed he was coerced into doing so. When Congress closed in late October, Galloway’s Plan of Union was dead and the colonies seemed to be preparing for war.

AMBUSKE 
It would take weeks for ships crossing the ocean to bring news of congress’s proceedings to London. In the meantime, Lord Dartmouth was searching for a way to broker a compromise and avoid a civil war. His correspondence with Joseph Reed, provincial governors, and other colonial officials gave him a perspective on the colonial mood and mindset. As Julie Flavell explains, Dartmouth and other more moderate politicians:

FLAVELL 
Thought that there could be a way of having some kind of contact with a meeting like the Congress on a temporary basis in order to have some kind of discussion about measures that might mediate some kind of solution without actually having to have a power struggle. But the difficulty was, colonial governments weren't foreign governments, the British government wasn't going to negotiate with them on equal terms, and angry British politicians were very sensitive to the idea of treating upstart colony governments like they were equals. And an upstart Congress in Philadelphia was even worse as far as they were concerned. So some kind of arrangement was needed to defuse the fighting and start looking for some kind of compromise that didn't ruffle British feathers.

AMBUSKE 
Dartmouth knew that the government could have no formal contact with Congress, an extra legal body with no constitutional authority. He also knew that his stepbrother, the Prime Minister Lord North, could not openly negotiate with British Americans. To do so would give the colonists the appearance of legitimacy, weakening the idea of Parliament’s supremacy, and eroding the prime minister’s standing in the House of Commons.

AMBUSKE 
Dartmouth could not lead negotiations himself for the same reasons. As secretary of state for the colonies, he spoke for the government on colonial affairs. Any talks would have to be held at arm's length, out of public view, involving people who shared an affection for British America and believed in the promise of a united British Empire.

AMBUSKE 
Benjamin Franklin remained the obvious choice to speak on behalf of colonists, notwithstanding his humiliation before the king’s privy council in the cockpit at Whitehall nearly a year earlier. After mulling over his return to Pennsylvania, Franklin had decided to stay in London, enjoying the pleasures of the city, and occasionally corresponding with government officials.

FLAVELL 
He was the most prestigious American in London in the decade before independence, the best known in fact, some people have said he was the most prestigious American ever to serve as any sort of ambassador in Europe up to the present time, he had international recognition in Europe as a scientist because of his experiments in electricity. He was a fellow of the Royal Society. He belonged to numerous clubs and societies. He came closer than any other individual to being a spokesman for all the American colonies. He'd been interviewed before the House of Commons in February 1766, during the Stamp Act crisis, and at that point, he put forward in very powerful terms the image of the colonists as loyal Britons who wanted the Stamp Act repealed, but who would not quibble over constitutional issues, and his views on the controversy between Britain and America had been put forward in numerous pamphlets and newspapers, so a lot of people had read his views by the time of the Tea Party, he was colony agent for four colonies, which was unusual, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Georgia. And he's sometimes referred to by historians as an ambassador for America, which he certainly was not, but he came as close as anyone to filling that role.

AMBUSKE 
But drawing Franklin into negotiations without the public noticing would require a discreet circle of friends, and no small amount of subterfuge.

AMBUSKE 
Caroline Howe became the key to all of it. 

FLAVELL 
Caroline was quite a remarkable person throughout her life. She was described as having a mind like a man, which shows the mindset of those days. She was clever. She liked maths. She was self educated. She understood Latin, French, Greek. She read widely. She'd read anything, classics, novels, travel literature, but she was also athletic for the day she lived in and in fact, she was the only female member listed for the beaver fox hunting group that operated out of Rutland castle in the 18th century. And I don't think this was because she loved blood sports. I think it's because riding. Was a physical activity that was acceptable for ladies at that time. And she also loved to gamble, and that brought her into contact with some of the leading figures of the day.

AMBUSKE 
The Howe family had many ties to British America. Caroline’s eldest brother, Lord George Augustus Howe, had been killed in 1758 at the Battle of Fort Ticonderoga in northern New York. Her younger brother, Richard, served in the Royal Navy during the Seven Years’ War, commanding ships in battle off the French coast. He inherited George’s title after his death, becoming the 4th Viscount Howe. Their younger brother William had fought with Major General James Wolfe at the Battle of Quebec in September 1759.

AMBUSKE 
By 1774, Lord Richard Howe was an admiral and William was a major general. Both were members of Parliament. Neither wanted a civil war. And the memorial to their fallen brother in Westminster Abbey reminded all the Howe siblings of what their family had sacrificed for the empire. 

FLAVELL 
But historians have been unable to find any connection between Dartmouth and the house, but that's because they've limited their search to the men directly involved in the whole business, and widening the lens to look at the how men in the context of their families and their social circles, would have given the answer. 18th century Britain was governed by a small set of titled wealthy families whose women were very active in promoting all sorts of family interests behind the scenes. And in a day when there was no dedicated government buildings other than the Houses of Parliament, a lot of political business was conducted in private settings, at dinners, house parties, afternoon visits, even over cards and gambling and women were present at these events. And in fact, they often controlled the guest list, so hostesses of large salons like the famous Duchess of Devonshire were important connections for any man who wanted an enter politics. And it was Caroline Howe, who was the elder sister to Admiral Howe, who actually knew the Dartmouth. She was the connection.

AMBUSKE 
Two pregnancies in 1774 gave birth to a secret plot with Caroline Howe at its heart.

FLAVELL 
Her closest friend, Lady Georgiana Spencer in the early 1770s started an unusual charity called the ladies charitable society, and this was the first charity ever to use means testing to assess applicants for relief. And the reason for the means testing was because wealthy ladies in London were routinely sent begging letters, and because they had no local knowledge anymore, they weren't in their country setting, they were unable to distinguish genuine charity cases from basically swindlers. Lady Spencer's idea was to vet applications and send visitors to assess each case. And the charity was also unusual because it was organized almost entirely by women. A large number of aristocratic women were involved, and Caroline Howe undertook a lot of the administration, especially when Lady Spencer was pregnant and unable to be involved in autumn 1774 when the crisis was escalating and the First Continental Congress was meeting, Caroline was in charge of the charity and society business, took her to the home of Lord and Lady Dartmouth. And there, Lady Dartmouth had just given birth to her ninth child, a girl, the only girl that Dartmouth ever had. So when she was born, a courtier said Lord Dartmouth's over the moon, he's finally got a daughter. She was born on October the fourth, When Caroline called On November the first, the baby was desperately ill with scarlet fever, and Lord Dartmouth was in the family drawing room wringing his hands. Now, poor Dartmouth had had a very bad day, because earlier in that same day, he'd been in the government offices, and he'd received word that the Continental Congress in Philadelphia had endorsed the Suffolk Resolves. And of course, the Suffolk Resolves threatened armed resistance if Britain didn't repeal the Coercive Acts. So there was absolutely no room for any kind of peaceful compromise. A visitor to Dartmouth's office on that morning described him as thunderstruck. Then he went home to the sickness in the house and in his home on that afternoon, was Dr father Gill, who was called in as a physician to the baby Charlotte. And from this chance meeting, this chance bringing together of Dartmouth Fothergill and Caroline Howe. Can be dated the beginning of Caroline's overtures to Ben Franklin that went in in the secret talks with Admiral Howe.

AMBUSKE 
Dr. John Fothergill, the Dartmouths’ doctor, had known the family for years.

FLAVELL 
Dr. John Fothergill was a Quaker physician. He had a very successful practice in London, a lot of his clients were aristocrats. He had a lot of contacts with the Philadelphia Quaker Meeting too. He was an active member of the meeting in London. He was a fellow of the Royal Society. And he was a longtime friend of Benjamin Franklin,

AMBUSKE 
Like his friend, the merchant and banker David Barclay, Fothergill was sympathetic to British American complaints about taxation without representation.

AMBUSKE 
We have no record of what Lord Dartmouth, Dr. Fothergill, and Caroline Howe discussed in the Dartmouth home on November 1st, but they soon set their plans in motion. 

FLAVELL 
Because within days, Caroline enlisted her friend Matthew Rapier, who was also a fellow of the Royal Society and knew Franklin to invite Dr. Franklin to play chess with her. And Franklin recalled the invitation. There was a certain lady Mr. Rapier told him who had a desire of playing with me at chess, fancying she could beat me

AMBUSKE 
Matthew Rapier advised Franklin to call on Caroline Howe at 12 Grafton Street by himself.

FLAVELL 
And Franklin found that a bit awkward, so he put it off. And while he was putting it off, he was approached by John Fothergill and David Barclay, who asked him to set out a list of terms the colonists might accept to end the crisis. And they informed him that they were acting on behalf of Lord Dartmouth and Lord Hyde, who was a member of the Privy Council and was a friend of the house, actually, although Franklin wouldn't have been aware of that.

AMBUSKE 
Fothergill and Barclay asked Franklin to keep their discussions a secret.

AMBUSKE 
By then, matters made secret talks all the more urgent. At around 1 o’clock in the morning on November 18th, King George III wrote privately to Lord North. After reviewing recent dispatches from British officials in the colonies, it had become clear to the king that:

KING GEORGE III 
“the New England Governments are in a State of Rebellion, blows must decide whether they are to be subject to the Country or independant.”

AMBUSKE 
When the king opened Parliament on November 30th, he delivered a determined speech from the throne that left no doubt where he stood on “the unlawful combinations” and the “most daring spirit of resistance, and disobedience to the law.” He pledged his:

KING GEORGE III 
“Firm and stedfast resolutions to withstand every attempt to weaken or impair the supreme authority of this legislature over all the dominions of My crown.”

FLAVELL 
In early December, raper approached Franklin again and reminded him of his promise to play chess with Caroline, and this time, he took him personally to Caroline's front door. That was on December 2. And over the next few weeks, the two played chess regularly, frequently enough so the neighbors got used to seeing Franklin going in and out of Caroline's front door. He was an easy to recognize figure with his shoulder length hair and his glasses. And people watched who went in and out of people's houses quite closely in that period.

AMBUSKE 
Normalizing Franklin’s presence at Howe’s townhome concealed the fact that a game was afoot in her drawing room, one even Franklin did not know he was playing.

FLAVELL 
Caroline lived in a recent development on Grafton Street that was designed by the architect Robert Taylor. He designed houses for wealthy people in the elegant Palladian style of the period, the houses on Grafton Street didn't have much space to extend at the back, so Taylor designed storied bow windows, which are very common now, but were unusual at the time. So Caroline, standing in her drawing room, would have a view right down Albemarle Street, which came up and met with Grafton Street. She was at a T junction, and in either direction, she'd see Grafton Street on her right and her left. Her brother, the admiral, lived at number three, which was a larger building. All those houses along that development had luxury features. They had ornate plaster work, cornicing, decorative marble fireplaces and all the public rooms, and her drawing room was on the first floor. Her portrait shows a little bit of her drawing room. There was an extensive bookshelf in that room. In her portrait, she's seated at a large wooden writing desk with a fence border design that creates a defined workspace for her, and she has numerous little drawers with locks on them for privacy, and that's how people who dropped in on Caroline often found her at this very large desk, and behind the desk in the portrait is a card table that's folded out of the way until wanted now, both Franklin and Caroline loved chess, and they were both very competitive. According to his opponents, he was known to resort to tricks like drumming his fingers on the table to distract people because he wanted to win. And Caroline also loved to win, and she couldn't help bragging in her letters to Lady Spencer about her various victories over different people at chess. Unfortunately, Franklin, who wrote a very full account of his meetings with the house, didn't leave any record of who won. Makes me wonder whether Caroline won.

AMBUSKE 
Franklin found Howe charming and a worthy opponent. Howe played Franklin very carefully. 

FLAVELL 
Now, in these meetings, they barely discussed politics. There was one very brief reference to the American crisis in their second meeting, which had a flirty, toned to it, where Caroline told Franklin that she thought he was the best man qualified to settle the American dispute, and she followed up this flattery with, I hope we are not to have a civil war, to which Franklin answered, we should kiss and be friends. What can we do better? Looking closely at her letter, shortly after Franklin would visit her, she would have lady Dartmouth to her home on society business, there was a cover, basically. And these two women were the go betweens, between members of government and Franklin.

AMBUSKE 
Near the end of the year, Caroline Howe cornered her opponent.

FLAVELL 
On Christmas Day 1774 he came to Caroline for a game, and she suddenly said, Would you like to meet my brother, Lord Howe? She was sure we should like each other, she said. And Admiral Lord Howe obviously had been waiting right in the next room. He came quickly, and they were introduced, and then he got to the point. He said he and other men in government circles were alarmed at the situation in America. They wanted to avert an armed conflict, and they thought Franklin was the best man to reconcile the two sides. And again, he was asked to draw up a set of terms that would be acceptable to the colonies. He proposed meeting again in three days at Caroline's house. And it was at the second meeting that he told Franklin that Lord Dartmouth and Lord Norris, of course, the Prime Minister were the people he was working with, and he also showed that he was aware of Franklin's secret talks with Fothergill and Barclay, which Franklin said, as an aside, so much for the secret

AMBUSKE 
With her brother now engaged in talks with Franklin, Howe:

FLAVELL 
Offered to withdraw from the meetings, but Franklin requested her to say, because he said he had every confidence in her prudence, and thereafter, she was always there at every meeting that took place over the next few months. And she was also an intermediary in one other very important way, because this was a time when handwriting was a fairly sure way of detecting the author of an anonymous document. The British Post Office intercepted letters regularly, and they got to know handwritings of various people. So Caroline transcribed all of Franklin's correspondence in order to protect the secret of his involvement, and also, if she gave him a letter from Lord Howe, she'd then take it back again so he didn't have letters from Lord Howe saying anything about this business.

AMBUSKE 
After a few meetings, Franklin presented Lord Howe with several suggestions for resolving the crisis:

FLAVELL 
One of them was that Britain should agree not to intervene in the domestic matters of the colonies, and could raise American revenue, but only during wartime, and it would have to be limited to a percentage of what was raised from Britain itself. And of course, with agreement of Parliament, but he also agreed with Lord Howe that sending a commissioner to inquire into grievances might be a good way of stopping the slide to war, which at this point was the key thing. And it's important to realize that this group of people working in London behind the scenes at this time didn't necessarily think that some kind of final solution to the constitutional dispute would be hammered out in that year. They just wanted to end the crisis without fighting, even if it ended inconclusively, because that's how the last two crises had ended.

AMBUSKE 
As the secret negotiations continued, one of Lord Howe’s allies William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, presented a conciliatory proposal to Parliament in late January 1775. Chatham, the prime architect of Britain’s victory in the Seven Years’ War, wanted to stop the slide towards civil war.

FLAVELL 
He wanted to allow talks with the Continental Congress as a temporary body. The British didn't want an alternative Parliament on the other side of the Atlantic, but Chatham said, look, let's use that as a vehicle for discussing a solution. Chatham believed in parliamentary sovereignty, but he wanted parliament to concede on the issue of taxation. So it was to be a concession from a sovereign British Parliament. The colonies would be assured that they would not be taxed by Parliament, that it wouldn't interfere in their internal affairs, but that Parliament would regulate the Empire, regulate trade, and possibly the colonies might vote a permanent revenue to the support of the Empire.

AMBUSKE 
Parliament rejected Chatham’s plan overwhelmingly. Days later it declared that in light of Massachusetts Bay’s continued resistance to “the authority of the supreme legislature, that a rebellion at this time actually exists within the said province.”

AMBUSKE 
Prime Minister Lord North, who knew about the secret talks between Franklin and Lord Howe, and so forcefully championed the Coercive Acts months earlier, made one last effort to avoid a war. 

FLAVELL 
Franklin thought he detected the influence of some of his ideas on North's conciliatory proposal, which was February 20. He proposed that if a colony paid for its own civil government and defense, parle. Parliament would not tax it. That would have to be subject to parliamentary approval, which Franklin didn't particularly like, and any revenues raised through the regulation of trade would be returned to the colonies. So Parliament would still regulate trade, but it would have no motive to over tax the colonies. But North's proposal, by now, fell far short of colonial demands, and at the same time, it gave up a lot more than British members of parliament were willing to grant. And the fact is that at this point, the mood in the metropolis was that Britain had compromised too often in the past, that that had encouraged colonial unrest, and there was no doubt in the minds of most men in Britain that any contest of strength between Britain and her colonies would end in easy victory over the colonies. So North's conciliatory proposal, even as limited as it was, was greeted with cries that it was a show of weakness, and proposing any sort of Peace Commission or negotiation at this point was just not going to happen.

AMBUSKE 
Lord North’s proposal managed to pass in Parliament, but neither the government’s supporters nor members sympathetic to the colonies thought it would do much good.

AMBUSKE 
Nor would the plan proposed by Joseph Reed have found much support either. After learning of the King’s militant speech in Parliament, Reed wrote what became his final letter to Lord Dartmouth. As a compromise, he wrote, British Americans would pay for the destroyed tea in exchange for the repeal of the Coercive Acts. Parliament need not surrender its right to tax the colonies, only declare “the Inexpediency of Taxation.” He warned Dartmouth that the Continental Congress had more support than others had led him to believe, and:

JOSEPH REED 
“This Country will be deluged with Blood before it will submit to any other Taxation than by their own Assemblies.”

AMBUSKE 
By early spring, the Howe siblings knew that they might be among the families spent to spill it. The government was sending William Howe, Caroline and Richard’s younger brother, to the colonies to take command of an army. The major general had quietly let the government know he was willing to go if he could be of some service. Lord Howe expected to be given a naval command in the future.

AMBUSKE 
On March 7, 1775, Lord Howe, Benjamin Franklin, and Caroline Howe met for one last time.

FLAVELL 
I think there was a little bit of a sad feeling to that they all met at number 12 Grafton Street. Lord Howe told Franklin that his intentions had been good, that he regretted the failure to establish a commission, but he said things might yet take a more favorable term. And as he understood, ay, that is, Franklin was going soon to America, if he should chance to be sent thither on that important business, he hoped he might still expect my assistance. And so ended the negotiation with Lord Howe and Franklin left for America.

AMBUSKE 
Fifteen years after Caroline Howe welcomed her brother William home from a war in North America, she bid him goodbye once again. In all likelihood, he was sailing into another one. The British were sending William Howe along with Henry Clinton and John Burgoyne with additional regiments to British America to reinforce General Gage, who seemed to be rapidly losing control of the situation.

AMBUSKE 
Some members of Parliament and the British public remarked on the almost cruel irony of sending William Howe to Boston, to subdue a province that had raised a monument to Howe siblings’ late brother.

AMBUSKE 
Major General William Howe embarked for North America on April 15, 1775. He had barely put to sea when what they had all feared had finally come: war.

AMBUSKE 
Thanks for listening to Worlds Turned Upside Down. Worlds is a production of R2 Studios, part of the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University.

AMBUSKE 
I’m your host, Dr. Jim Ambuske.

AMBUSKE 
This episode of Worlds Turned Upside Down is made possible with support from a 2024 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

AMBUSKE 
Head to r2studios.org to find a complete transcript of today’s episode and suggestions for further reading. ​

AMBUSKE 
Worlds is researched and written by me with additional research, writing, and script editing by Jeanette Patrick. 

AMBUSKE 
Jeanette Patrick and I are the Executive Producers. Grace Mallon is our British Correspondent.

AMBUSKE 
Our lead audio editor for this episode is Curt Dahl of cd squared.

AMBUSKE 
Annabelle Spencer is our graduate assistant.

AMBUSKE 
Our thanks to Julie Flavell, Mary Beth Norton, Michael Hattem, and Frank Cogliano for sharing their expertise with us in this episode.

AMBUSKE 
Thanks also to our voice actors Grace Mallon, Amber Pelham, Evan McCormick, Adam Smith, Craig Gallagher, and John Terry.

AMBUSKE 
Special thanks to Chad Wollerton and Hannah Zimmerman at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello. 

AMBUSKE 
Subscribe to Worlds on your favorite podcast app. Thanks, and we’ll see you next time.