2. This Scottish merchant had attended the recent Independence Day celebration.

3. Petrie planned to meet William Lee at Valenciennes, near the French border with the Austrian Netherlands, for an “affair of honour.” (The rendezvous apparently was selected so it would not be conducted on French soil.) Petrie and the Lees had accused each other of stockjobbing and leaking information to the British: e.g., Ford, Letters of William Lee, II, 625n, 627–8. Petrie did not arrive at the appointed time, however, and the duel did not take place: Lee Family Papers, reel 6, frames 268–9, 338–9; Arthur Lee to Edmund Jenings, Aug. 14, 1779 (National Archives). Insults continued to be exchanged between the parties, with a certain Dr. William Boush (whom Arthur Lee had sent to Valenciennes with Walter Pollard to act as his brother’s seconds) serving as courier. Arthur Lee threatened to have Petrie arrested: Lee to Petrie, Aug. 17, 1779 (National Archives). When the “bullying young Fellow” Boush showed up at Petrie’s door on Aug. 30 to demand satisfaction of his own, the alarmed merchant wrote to Vergennes and sent a copy to WTF, along with a lengthy explanation and copies of his correspondence with the Lees: Petrie to WTF, Aug. 30 (APS). Two brief undated notes from Boush are at the APS; they indicate that he met with BF at the latter’s invitation, and loaned him some newspapers and magazines.

4. This notation is in Wharton’s hand. On a separate slip of paper (APS) WTF reported, “Mr Wharton told B. F. the 5. August that Mr P. was gone to meet Mr W. Lee.” Arthur Lee described Petrie, Wharton, and the brothers William and Alexander John Alexander as recent additions to the “Council at Passy”: to JA, Sept. 24, 1779, Adams Papers, VIII, 168–70.