PUBLICATIONS OF THE COLONIAL SOCIETY OF MASSACHUSETTS

volume lxxviii

OFFICERS OF THE SOCIETY

Donald R. Friary, President

Daniel R. Coquillette, Vice President

Celeste Walker, Vice President

Robert J. Allison, Vice President

Leslie A. Morris, Recording Secretary

Martha J. McNamara, Corresponding Secretary

William B. Perkins, Treasurer

COMMITTEE OF PUBLICATIONS

Pauline R. Maier, Chair

Robert Anderson

Donald R. Friary

Christopher Jedrey

Kenneth P. Minkema

Conrad Edick Wright

EDITOR OF PUBLICATIONS

John W. Tyler

PORTRAIT OF A PATRIOT

THE MAJOR POLITICAL AND LEGAL PAPERS OF JOSIAH QUINCY JUNIOR

PORTRAIT OF A PATRIOT

The Major Political and Legal Papers of Josiah Quincy Junior

EDITORS

DANIEL R. COQUILLETTE

J. Donald Monan, S.J. University Professor, Boston College

Charles Warren Visiting Professor of American Legal History, Harvard Law School

NEIL LONGLEY YORK

Karl G. Maeser Professor of General Education

Chair, History Department, Brigham Young University

1 volume five 3

The Law Reports, Part Two (1765–1772)

boston · 2009

The Colonial Society of Massachusetts

Distributed by the University of Virginia Press

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS FOR THE QUINCY PAPERS

This series of volumes represents the tireless and invaluable work of our research and administrative assistants: Brandon Bigelow, Kevin Cox, James Dimas, Jane Downing, Natalia Fekula, Michael Hayden, Elizabeth Kamali, Michael Morales, Thomas J. Murphy, Christina Nolan, Michael E. Pastore, Nicole Scimone, Brian Sheppard, Susannah Tobin, Elisa Underwood, and Mark A. Walsh, with special recognition to the Editorial Assistants to the Boston College Monan Chair, Brendan Farmer, Charles Riordan, and Patricia Tarabelsi, and to Inge Burgess and Thompson Potter at Harvard. Their intelligence and enthusiasm are visible on every page. Of course, we are deeply in debt to John W. Tyler, Editor of Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, as well as to the Committee of Publications, without whose guidance and support this project would have been impossible. Finally, special thanks are also due to the guardians of the Quincy heritage: the Massachusetts Historical Society with its enormously helpful Librarian, Peter Drummey, and his staff, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Quincy family itself.

frontispiece:

The Bloody Massacre perpetrated in King Street, Boston on March 5th, 1770 by a Party of the 29th Regiment, engraved by Paul Revere (1735–1818). The engraving, with hand coloring, was done shortly after the event in Boston in 1770. It is close, but not identical, to a drawing by Henry Pelham (1749–1806), John Copley’s half-brother, who ironically remained a loyalist. Pelham wrote to Revere on March 29, 1770, claiming the engraving was based on Pelham’s work. See Witness to America’s Past: Two Centuries of Collecting by the Massachusetts Historical Society (Boston, 1991), 82–83. In the background is the Old State House, where Quincy frequently attended the Superior Court of Judicature. In the subsequent trial of the British soldiers, Quincy and his cousin John Adams represented the soldiers and their Commander, Captain Preston. See also The Petition of the Jurors in the Trials of Captain Preston and the British Soldiers, Reports, infra, 382–386. It should be noted that, in the words of Hiller B. Zobel, “Action and errors fill this famous propaganda piece. From the fictitious ‘Butcher’s Hall’ sign to the inaccurate casualty list, hardly a detail is correct. Still it made for superb propaganda, which is why we all remember it.” Hiller B. Zobel, The Boston Massacre (New York, 1970), illustration note facing 100. To Quincy, it would have been a symbol of threatening tumult, leading to a new epoch.

According to the Bostonian Society, this copy of the engraving could have actually belonged to Quincy himself, having passed through the Quincy family. Image courtesy of the Bostonian Society and the Massachusetts Historical Society. Special thanks, as always, to Mark Sullivan, Reference Librarian beyond compare.

Copyright © 2009 by the Colonial Society of Massachusetts

isbn 978-0-9794662-6-7

Printed from the income of the Sarah Louise Edes Fund

JOSIAH QUINCY JR.

Political and Legal Works

VOLUME FIVE

THE FIRST LAW REPORTS OF THE SUPERIOR COURT OF JUDICATURE OF THE PROVINCE OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY 1765–1772, VOLUME TWO

CO-EDITORS:

Daniel R. Coquillette

Neil Longley York

VOLUME EDITOR:

Daniel R. Coquillette

To the Courts and the Bar of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Guardians of the Heritage of the Rule of Law and the Hope of Patriots for More than Three Centuries.