Province of Massachusetts-Bay. By the Governor. A Proclamation for the Encouragement of Piety and Virtue... Boston, Margaret Draper, 1774.
Margaret Draper, a Loyalist printer who enjoyed the support of Royal Governor Thomas Gage, printed this broadside. Gage was appointed in the spring of 1774 to implement the Intolerable (or Coercive) Acts and he immediately closed the port and enforced the Quartering Act, actions that angered local residents. Issued on July 23, 1774, this proclamation from Gage calls for calm and urges royal subjects “by every means in their Power to contribute what they can towards a general Reformation of Manners, Restitution of Peace, and Good Order.” Bostonians met the proclamation with scorn and Gage’s continued enforcement of the Acts energized revolutionary spirit throughout the colonies.
Elisha May, a justice of the peace and farmer who served in the Massachusetts militia from 1775 to 1781, owned this copy of the proclamation. In 1811, his family reused the sheet to tally up the holdings of May’s estate, listing more than 130 items from his gun and sheep shears to bundles of hops.