1. The copy of his letter of Dec. 10 above.

2. For Hugh Williamson, the Philadelphia doctor and mathematician, see above, X, 266 n. He was “a reputed messenger from the people of Philadelphia,” according to Hutchinson, “to promote uniformity of measures” (Mass. Arch., XXVII, 602), and presumably for that reason detoured to Boston on his way to England. He witnessed the Tea Party while waiting to sail, and carried the earliest news of it to reach London. He left on Dec. 22 on the Hayley, the first ship out after the great event, and was at Dover some four weeks later. Mass. Gaz.; and the Boston Weekly News-Letter, Dec. 23, 1773; Public Advertiser, Jan. 21, 1774. The Hayley carried not only this letter but also, we assume, the following one and Cooper’s of Dec. 17; she arrived days before the Dolphin brought Hutchinson’s dispatches. Williamson had an interview with Dartmouth and was examined before the Privy Council. Above, p. 497 n; David Hosack, “A Biographical Memoir of Hugh Williamson …,” N.-Y. Hist. Soc. Coll., III (1821), 144 n. Williamson subsequently, so the story goes, was the intermediary who obtained the Hutchinson correspondence. Ibid., pp. 143–4, 151–3, [177–]9; DAB. Although the story is patently absurd, he may have been instrumental in obtaining the copies of two additional Hutchinson letters that BF sent Cushing with his note below, June 30, 1774.