Editing Gaspee affair (section)

==Incident==
{{Further|American Revolution}}
[[File:Gaspee Affair.jpg|thumb|An August 1883 ''[[Harper's Magazine]]'' illustration of the burning of HMS ''Gaspee'']]
On June 9, ''Gaspee'' gave chase to the [[Packet boat|packet ship]] ''Hannah'' but ran aground in shallow water on the northwestern side of the bay on what is now [[Gaspee Point]]. The crew were unable to free the ship, and Duddingston decided to wait for high tide to set the vessel afloat. Before that could happen, however, a band of Providence men led by [[John Brown I]] decided to act on the "opportunity offered of putting an end to the trouble and vexation she daily caused."<ref>Staples (1845), p. 8.</ref><ref>This version of the story is told by Ephraim Bowen and John Mawney in Staples (1845), pp. 14–16.  These men made these statements in 1826 relying on their memories from 67 years earlier.</ref><ref>Arthur M Schlesinger, Sr. "Political Mobs and the American Revolution, 1765–1776," ''Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society'', 90:4 (1955), 245.</ref> They rowed out to the ship and boarded it at the break of dawn on June 10.  The crew put up a feeble resistance in which they were attacked with handspikes, and Lieutenant Duddingston was shot and wounded in the groin. The boarding party casually read through the ship's papers before forcing the crew off the ship and setting it aflame.<ref name=":0" />

A few days after being forced off the ship, Duddingston was arrested by a sheriff for an earlier seizure of colonial cargo. His commanding officer Montagu freed him by paying his fine and then promptly sent him back to England to face a court-martial on the incident.<ref name=":0" />

Joseph Bucklin was the man who shot Duddingston;<ref>{{cite web|title=Joseph Bucklin V Biography|url=http://bucklinsociety.net/bucklin-family-history/joseph-bucklin-4th-family/joseph-bucklin-5th-bio/|website=Joseph Bucklin Society|access-date=3 December 2016}}</ref> other men who participated included Brown's brother Joseph of Providence, Simeon Potter of Bristol, and Robert Wickes of Warwick.<ref>Staples (1845)</ref>

===Charges and investigative commission===
Previous attacks by the Americans on British naval vessels had gone unpunished. In one case, a customs yacht had been destroyed by fire with no administrative response.<ref>Staples (1845), p. xxxii</ref>  

But in 1772, the Admiralty would not ignore the destruction of one of its military vessels on station. The [[Secretary of State for the Colonies|American Department]] consulted the solicitor and attorneys general, who investigated and advised the Privy Council on the legal and constitutional options available. This included charges of [[arson in royal dockyards]] but the idea was dismissed as not legally credible, as ''Gaspee'' was not in a dockyard when it was burned.<ref>{{multiref| {{cite journal |last1=Morgan |first1=Gwenda |last2=Rushton |first2=Peter |title=Arson, Treason and Plot: Britain, America and the Law, 1770–1777 |journal=History |date=2015 |volume=100 |issue=3 (341) |page=385 |doi=10.1111/1468-229X.12111 |jstor=24809702 |issn=0018-2648 |url=http://sure.sunderland.ac.uk/id/eprint/5773/1/Arson_Treason_and_Plot_2014d_%282%29.pdf |quote=But they also judged that the dockyards act might be difficult to implement, as it extended only to 'such ships as are burnt or otherwise destroyed in some Dockyard and not to Ships upon active Service'.}}| {{cite journal |last1=Leslie |first1=William R. |title=The Gaspee Affair: A Study of Its Constitutional Significance |journal=The Mississippi Valley Historical Review |date=1952 |volume=39 |issue=2 |page=239 |doi=10.2307/1892182 |jstor=1892182 |issn=0161-391X}} }}</ref>  
The Crown turned to a centuries-old institution of investigation: the [[Royal commission|Royal Commission]] of Inquiry, made up of the chiefs of the supreme courts of Massachusetts, New York, and New Jersey, the judge of the vice-admiralty of Boston, and Rhode Island Governor Wanton.{{cn|date=June 2022}}

The Dockyard Act passed in April demanded that anyone suspected of burning British ships should be extradited and tried in England; however, the ''Gaspee'' raiders were charged with treason.<ref>Edward Thurlow and Alexander Wedderburn (the attorney and solicitor general) wrote to the Earl of Hillsborough on August 10, 1772, dismissing the Dockyard Act and demanding the charge of high treason instead for levying war against the king.  National Archives (Public Record Office, United Kingdom) CO (Colonial Office Records) 5 159 folder 26.</ref> The task of the commission was to determine which colonists had sufficient evidence against them to warrant shipping them to England for trial.  The commission was unable to obtain sufficient evidence and declared their inability to deal with the case.{{cn|date=June 2022}}

===Whig response===
Colonial [[Patriot (American Revolution)|Whigs]] were alarmed at the prospect of Americans being sent to England for trial, and a [[Committees of correspondence|committee of correspondence]] was formed in Boston to consult on the crisis.  In Virginia, the [[House of Burgesses]] was so alarmed that they also formed an inter-colonial committee of correspondence to consult with similar committees throughout the Thirteen Colonies. 

The Reverend [[John Allen (minister)|John Allen]] preached a sermon at the Second Baptist Church in Boston which utilized the ''Gaspee'' affair to warn listeners about greedy monarchs, corrupt judges, and conspiracies in the London government.  This sermon was printed seven different times in four colonial cities, becoming one of the most popular pamphlets of Colonial America.<ref>G. Jack Gravelee and James R. Irvine, eds.'' Pamphlets and the American Revolution: Rhetoric, Politics, Literature, and the Popular Press'' (Delmare, NY: Scholars' Facsimiles & Reprints, 1976), viii.</ref>  This pamphlet and editorials by numerous colonial newspaper editors awoke colonial Whigs from a lull of inactivity in 1772, thus inaugurating a series of conflicts that culminated in the [[Battles of Lexington and Concord]].{{cn|date=June 2022}}