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VERY
few old houses retain at the present time
so large a share of the dignity
and picturesqueness originally theirs, as does the homestead whose
chief interest
for us lies in the fact that it
was the Revolutionary prison of Doctor Benjamin Church, the
first-discovered traitor to the American cause. This house is on
Brattle Street, at the corner of Hawthorn. Built about 1700, it came
early into the possession of Jonathan Belcher, who afterward became Sir
Jonathan, and from 1730 till 1741 was governor of Massachusetts and New
Hampshire. Colonel John Vassall the elder was the next owner of the
house, acquiring it in 1736, and somewhat later conveying it, with its
adjoining estate of seven acres, to his brother, Major Henry, an
officer in the militia, who died under its roof in 1769.
Major
Henry Vassall had married Penelope, sister of Isaac Royall, the
proprietor of the beautiful place at Medford, but upon the beginning of
hostilities, this sprightly widow abandoned her spacious home in such
haste that she carried along with her, according to tradition, a young
companion whom she had not time to restore to her friends! Such of her
property as could be used by the colony forces
was given in charge of Colonel Stark, while the rest was allowed to
pass into Boston. The barns and roomy outbuildings were used for the
storage of the colony forage.
It
is highly probable that the Widow Vassall's house at once became the
American hospital, and that it was the residence, as it was certainly
the prison, of Doctor Benjamin Church. Church had been placed at the
head of an army hospital for the accommodation of twenty thousand men,
and till this time had seemed a brave and zealous compatriot of Warren
and the other leading men of the time. Soon after his appointment, he
was, however, detected in secret correspondence with Gage. He had
entrusted to a woman of his acquaintance a letter written in cipher to
be forwarded to the British commander. This letter was found upon the
girl, she was taken to headquarters, and there the contents of the
fatal message were deciphered and the defection of Doctor Church
established, When questioned by Washington he appeared utterly
confounded, and made no attempt to vindicate himself.
The
letter itself did not contain any intelligence of importance, but the
discovery that one, until then so high in the esteem of his countrymen,
was engaged in a clandestine correspondence with the enemy was deemed
sufficient evidence of guilt. Church was therefore arrested at once,
and confined in a chamber looking upon Brattle Street. Some of his
leisure, while here imprisoned, he employed in cutting on the door of a
closet:
"B
CHURCH, JR."
There
the marks still remain, their significance having after a half century
been interpreted by a lady of the house to whom they had long been
familiar, but who had lacked any clue to their origin until, in the
course of a private investigation, she determined beyond a doubt their
relation to Church. The chamber has two windows in the north front, and
two overlooking the area on the south.
Church's
fall was the more terrible because from a height. He was a member of a
very distinguished family, and he had been afforded in his youth all
the best opportunities of the day. In 1754 he was graduated at Harvard,
and after studying with Doctor Pvnchon
rase to considerable eminence as
a physician and particularly as a surgeon. Besides talents and genius
of a sort, he was endowed with a rare poetic fancy, many of his verses
being full of daintiness as well as of a very pretty wit. He was,
however, somewhat extravagant in his habits, and about 1768 had built
himself an elegant country house near Boston. It was to sustain this,
it is believed, that he sold himself to the king's cause.
To
all appearance, however, Church was up to the very hour of his
detection one of the leading patriots of the time. He had been chosen
to deliver the oration in the Old South Meeting-House on March 5, 1773,
and he there pronounced a stirring discourse, which has still power to
thrill the reader, upon the massacre the day celebrates, and the love
of liberty which inspired the patriots' revolt on that memorable
occasion. Yet two years earlier, as we have since discovered from a
letter of Governor Hutchinson, he had been anonymously employing his
venal pen in the service of the government!
In
1774, when he was a member of the Provincial Congress, he was first
suspected of communication with Gage, and of receiving a reward for his
treachery. Paul Revere has written concerning this: "In the fall of '74
and the winter of '75 I was one of upwards of thirty, chiefly
mechanics, who formed themselves into a committee for the purpose of
watching the movements of the British soldiers and gaining every
intelligence of the Tories. We held our meetings at the Green Dragon
Tavern. This committee were astonished to find all their secrets known
to General Gage, although every time they met every member swore not to
reveal any of their transactions except to Hancock, Adams, Warren,
Otis, Church, and one or two others."
The
traitor, of course, proved to be Doctor Church. One of his students who
kept his books and knew of his money embarrassment first mistrusted
him. Only treachery, he felt, could account for his master's sudden
acquisition of some hundreds of new British guineas.
The
doctor was called before a council of war consisting of all the
major-generals and brigadiers of the army, beside the adjutant-general,
Washington himself presiding. This tribunal decided that Church's acts
had been criminal, but remanded him for the decision of the General
Court, of which he was a member. He was taken in a chaise, escorted by
General Gates and a guard of twenty men, to the music of fife and drum,
to Watertown meeting-house, where the court sat. "The galleries," says
an old writer, "were thronged with people of all ranks. The bar was
placed in the middle of the broad aisle, and the doctor arraigned." His
defence at the trial was very ingenious and able: – that the
fatal letter was designed for his brother, but that since it was not
sent he had communicated no intelligence; that there was nothing in the
letter but
notorious facts; that his
exaggerations of the American force could only be designed to favour
the cause of his country; and that his object was purely patriotic. He
added, in a burst of sounding though unconvincing oratory: "The warmest
bosom here does not flame with a brighter zeal for the security,
happiness, and liberties of America than mine."
These
eloquent professions did not avail him, however. He was adjudged
guilty, and expelled from the House of Representatives of
Massachusetts. By order of the General Congress, he was condemned to
close confinement in Norwich jail in Connecticut, "and debarred from
the use of pen, ink, and paper," but his health failing, he was allowed
(in 1776) to leave the country. He sailed for the west Indies,
– and the vessel that bore him was never afterward heard from.
Some
people in Church's time, as well as our own, have been disposed to
doubt the man's treachery, but Paul Revere was firmly convinced that
the doctor was in the pay of General Gage. Revere's statement runs in
part as follows:
"The
same day I met Doctor Warren. He was president of the Committee of
Safety. He engaged me as a messenger to do the out-of-doors business
for that committee; which gave me an opportunity of being frequently
with them. The Friday evening after, about sunset, I was sitting with
some or near all that committee in their room, which was at Mr.
Hastings's house in Cambridge. Doctor Church all at once started up.
'Doctor Warren,' said he, 'I am determined to go into Boston
to-morrow.' (It set them all a-staring.) Doctor Warren replied, 'Are
you serious, Doctor Church? They will hang you if they catch you in
Boston.' He replied, 'I am serious, and am determined to go at all
adventures.' After a considerable conversation, Doctor Warren said, 'If
you are determined, let us make some business for you.' They agreed
that he should go to get medicine for their and our wounded officers."
Naturally,
Paul Revere, who was an ardent patriot as well as an exceedingly
straightforward man, had little sympathy with Church's weakness, but
to-day as one looks at the initials scratched by the prisoner on the
door of his cell, one's heart expands with pity for the man, and one
wonders long and long whether the vessel on which he sailed was really
lost, or whether he escaped on it to foreign shores, there to expiate
as best he could his sin against himself and his country.
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