Immediate Descendants

John Gregory, the printer of the Leicester and Nottingham Journal, offered his readers the Declaration of Independence with a bit of commentary. In Leicester, northeast of Birmingham, England, the Declaration was printed—with key references to the king censored, as some London printers had done—on the front page of the issue dated August 24, 1776. The text was followed by this bracketed note:

[The present American Rebels are the immediate descendants of those persons who were engaged in the Petitions and Remonstrances to the unfortunate Charles the 1st. and of all the Murders, Treasons, Rapine and Bloodshed, that followed thereupon; — they held the language of Duty and Allegiance to their Prince, and detestation of his Popish and malignant Counsellers, until 1645, when the battle of Naseby gave a fatal turn to affairs; these men who would not eat an oyster—without a prayer and a psalm;—then laid aside as useless their Oaths, their Vowes, and their Protestations, and as soon as they got into Power, went greater lengths than any Tyrants who had ever gone before them.—They set up a High-Court of pretended Justice;—they executed their Sovereign before his own door;—they prosecuted and proscribed his family and friends; seized upon and sold their Estates for half the value, without any allowance to their helpless family’s; who were reduced to beg their bread in Foreign Countries;—they changed the Government,—altered the established Religion;—possessed themselves of the Lands of the Church,—brought in the Excise,—and in this manner for ten years lorded it over the Souls, Bodies, Lives and Properties of the People of England, to the Ruin, Terror, and Amazement of all good Men, and the astonishment of all Europe. — — Their American Successors have uniformly stuck to the same principle of which their own History furnishes us with too many lamentable Examples, of arbitrary, cruel and oppressive Measures, that disgrace every page, and to which we refer the doubtful.—What Ideas the present Rebels may entertain we know not;—but we know they are treading in the steps of their Ancestors.—Remove say the former from your presence & councils, your popish and ill affected Ministers.—Remove say the latter—your popishly affected and evil Ministers that surround your Throne, and let Men of Integrity advise, your Majesty, i.e. “These Wretches here whose interest or ambition has led them to prostitute their names and characters, so far as to be called Friends to American Resistance.”]

Leicester and Nottingham Journal, August 24, 1776, p. 1

In short, this note—written perhaps by Gregory, one of his correspondents, or first published elsewhere and copied in Leicester—described parallels between the current conflict and the English Civil War. The “American Rebels” were the direct descendants of Oliver Cromwell. There were parallels between “those persons who were engaged in the Petitions and Remonstrances to the unfortunate Charles the 1st” and the Continental Congress’s petitions to George III. In this author’s view, the Congress, like their predecessors, “held the language of Duty and Allegiance to their Prince” until they turned against him. The English Civil War had shown a dangerous precedent: “as soon as they got into Power,” the belligerents “went greater lengths than any Tyrants who had ever gone before them.” The regicide was only one aspect of this tyranny which caused the “Ruin, Terror and Amazement.”

Printed immediately after the Declaration of Independence, this note claimed not to know “what ideas the present Rebels may entertain.” The Declaration was about the past more than it was about the future. The final paragraph asserts that the independent United States can bring about war and peace, trade with foreign powers, and effect alliances. But, from the British perspective, it did not articulate a clear view of what independence would look like, and how the “Rebels” would pursue political leadership. The commentary in Leicester and Nottingham Journal reflected widespread questions, both in the United States and overseas, about new governments, and whether they would prove to be more tyrannical and dangerous than British rule.

Another article in this Leicester newspaper, copied from a London newspaper, reinforced this perception of both the political leaders and the people in the colonies-turned-states and the people: “It appears by the last advices from New England, that the people are as impatient of submission to the present usurped Powers, as to the constitutional authority of this Kingdom.” This fit with the perception in Britain that New England—and Massachusetts in particular—had pulled the rest of the colonies toward independence. 

There were a few select “Rebels” who were singled out as “treading in the steps of their Ancestors.” Some reports in British newspapers about John Hancock, including one printed in the Leicester and Nottingham Journal on August 24, described deep regret over his leadership of the Continental Congress. “A correspondent, who speaks from authenticated information” assured British readers “that the credulous and misguided President of the American Congress” lamented independence. This article blamed “the arch rebel and crafty pettifogger, Adams”—more specifically, Samuel Adams, as John Adams’s efforts were not as widely known in Britain as his cousin’s. Hancock’s association with Adams had “reduced him:—associated with plunderers and disappointed traitors!—ruined in his fortune, and in his fame, which once was immaculate.” Hancock had been duped by the “incendiary” Adams. 

This article concluded with a comparison not to the English Civil War, but to Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1, “as the best answer which can possibly be given to the reasons lately published by the Congress, for declaring the rebel Colonies independent:

‘These things indeed you have articulated,
Proclaim’d at market-crosses, read in churches,
To face the garment of rebellion
With some fine colour, that may please the eye
Of fickle changelings and poor discontents,
Which gape, and rub the elbow at the news
Of hurly-burly innovation:
And never yet did Insurrection want
Such water colours, to impaint his cause;
Nor moody beggars, starving for a time
Of pell mell havock and confusion.’”

The Continental Congress consisted of “beggars, starving for a time” of chaos like the English Civil War, where they could lord over the “Souls, Bodies, Lives and Properties of the People.” 

Every piece of speculation and commentary in this provincial newspaper informed how readers would have understood the Declaration of Independence, as well as the delegates who had chosen to issue it.