At the beginning of 1773, Governor Thomas Hutchinson was the dominant force in Massachusetts politics. By the end of that year he had failed in various ways to support the Royal prerogative in Massachusetts: his effort to clarify the British Constitution got him embroiled in a very public dispute with the Council and the House; his private correspondence with royal officials were published as part of a successful effort to undermine his authority; and, in December 1773, he failed, in spite of his most strenuous efforts, to land Boston's allocation of East Indian tea.

Clockwise from top left: the 1741 Edward Truman portrait of Thomas Hutchinson as a young man; the title page of a Boston edition of The History of the Province of Massachusetts-Bay; the Hutchinson country “seat” in Milton (which was transferred after the Revolution to the prominent Whigs James Warren and Mercy Otis Warren); and finally his Mansion on the North End, which was sacked by a mob opposed to the Stamp Act on 26 August 1765.