Letter from Thaddeus Burr, in Boston, to Governour Trumbull

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Boston, October 13, 1774.

MAY IT PLEASE YOUR HONOUR: As an inhabitant of the Colony of Connecticut, and a real friend to its invaluable rights and privileges, I look upon myself in duty bound to give your Honour this early notice of some secret machinations forming in this town, which may eventually, if not guarded against, bring our Charter into question, and be a means of curtailing, if not destroying it. Without saying any more to apologize for my troubling your Honour with this, I shall go on to give you an account of the matter in as clear and concise a manner as I am able.

In a few days after I came to town, which was the first of this month, I was informed that Mr˙ Peters, a Church of England clergymen from Hebron, was come to town with a design to go to England to make a representation of the treatment he had met with in Connecticut. As I knew the general character of the man, I had but little to fear from any representations he could make of himself; but when I found he was countenanced by the Governour, and his Mandamus Counsellors, the Commissioners, the body of the Church Clergy, and, in short, by all those who style themselves friends to Government, I thought he might, in conjunction with them, form some scheme that would be detrimental to the Colony. I therefore made it my business to find out as far as I possibly could what their designs were; and from the best authority, I am warranted to say that the whole body as represented before, are setting the treatment which Mr˙ Peters met with in its most glaring colours, so exaggerated as to exceed all bounds of truth; and are now preparing to represent to Administration that the Colony of Connecticut, as such, is determined to persecute and drive out all the Church of England Clergymen from among them.

Who is to go home with this false and malicious plan, I cannot yet find out; am rather inclined to think Mr˙ Peters himself. From the character of the gentlemen who have been so kind as to assist me in detecting this wicked and secret scheme, and from what I myself, as a stranger, have collected from that party, I make no doubt of the truth of it.

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Thus, may it please your Honour, you have an exact account of the scheme in agitation, as far as I am able at present to collect. I shall be in town till the first of November, and should be glad of a line from your Honour that I may be informed whether it would be advisable, should I make any further discoveries, to communicate them. If I can in any way be of service to the Colony it will give me great pleasure. I have the honour to subscribe myself, your Honour' s most obedient and humble servant,

THADDEUS BURR.