Address from the Town of Lancaster

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Address of the Mayor, Recorder, Aldermen, Bailiffs, and Commonalty of the Town of Lancaster, in Common Council assembled: presented to His Majesty by Sir George Warren, Knight of the Bath, one of their Representatives in Parliament.

To the King' s Most Excellent Majesty:

The humble Addressof the Mayor, Recorder, Aldermen, Bailiffs, and Commonalty of the Town of LANCASTER, in Common Council assembled.

May it please your Majesty:

We, your Majesty' s most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Mayor, Recorder, Aldermen, Bailiffs, and Commonalty of the Town of Lancaster, in Common Council assembled, happy in the enjoyment of the same privileges, under various Charters granted by your royal predecessors, with the first City of this Kingdom, presume we have the same right to address the Throne upon every just occasion, and upon every true principle of the Constitution, unseduced by bad example, and uninfluenced by party.

We beg leave to assure your Majesty, it was with the deepest concern we saw the first troubles break out in North-America, and most sincerely lamented the infatuation of a misguided people, hoping they would soon have returned to a sense of themselves and their duty; but now, when the standard of rebellion is erected in that Country; when your Majesty' s Governours have been expelled or overawed, and every form of legal Government subverted and destroyed; when the supreme authority of the Mother Country is derided and denied, we think it incumbent on us to declare to your Majesty and the world, we look upon the authors and abetters of these violences with the utmost detestation and abhorrence.

At such a crisis, then, as the present, when, under the sacred name of liberty, (of late so vilely prostituted and abused,) every enormity is committed, and every dangerous tenet adopted and advanced; when rebellion abroad is cherished and fomented by traitorous correspondences, as well as furnished with means of offence from home; we flatter ourselves there is not a man to be found, who is worthy to be called a Briton, that dares to arraign the, wisdom of your Majesty' s Councils, or the exertion of your Majesty' s executive powers against subjects so unnatural, so ungrateful; but whatever may be the late of this deluded people, whatever mischiefs they may bring upon themselves, we absolutely rely on your Majesty, that the indubitable rights of this Kingdom will be inviolably preserved, and that no measures will be taken, in relation to America, but what are consistent with the dignity, honour, and safety of Great Britain.

Given under our hands, and the common seal of the Town of Lancaster, this fifth day of September, in the year of our Lord 1775.

JA˙ HINDE, Mayor.
J˙ FENTON, Recorder.

W˙ Butterfield,
Edward Suart,
James Barrow,
Robert Foxcroft,
John Bowes,
John Stout,
Thomas Hinde.

William Sudell,
John Housman,
James Dearden,
Anthony Atkinson,
Henry Fell,
John Tallon,

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