Bunker Hill

for was difficult to comprehend. In Philadelphia, John Adams responded, “Good God! What shall we say of human nature? What shall we say of American patriots?” Many tried to attribute Church’s betrayal to a personal failing. If a man had been unfaithful to his wife, it was natural then that he would be unfaithful to his country. At least that’s how Abigail Adams and Mercy Otis Warren saw it. But as became clear, most of Church’s male compatriots had long since known about his infidelities. And Church was by no means the first noted patriot to be guilty of moral turpitude. One of England’s most cherished friends of America, John Wilkes, an outspoken member of Parliament and the current mayor of London, made no secret of his sexual profligacy, and he was still looked to as an inspiration by almost all New Englanders.
    Church was at his audacious best before the House of Representatives on October 27. So far, he explained, he had been denied the benefit of counsel. He hadn’t learned that he was going to appear before the House until that morning. How could a people who claimed to be fighting for liberty and freedom deny him due process?
    It has been frequently objected to us by our adversaries, [he pointed out,] that we were struggling to establish a tyranny much more intolerable than that we meant to oppose. Shall we justify the prediction of our enemies . . . ? Am I impertinent in claiming the rights of Magna Carta, and bill of rights; have I no title to a trial by jurors, or the benefit of the Habeas Corpus act . . . ? Why are the rules and articles framed by the Continental Congress for the government of the army violated in every letter to accumulate distress on me?
    On November 11 the House voted that Church be “utterly expelled,” even though he had long since offered his resignation. Neither the Massachusetts General Court nor the Continental Congress wanted anything to do with the case, and Church was eventually transported to Norwich, Connecticut, where he was placed under the custody of Governor Trumbull, who had been a classmate of Church’s father at Harvard. There Church would remain for the rest of the siege, a troubling reminder that when it came to the question of loyalty all of them were, in a sense, guilty.
    —
    On September 26, Thomas Gage learned that he had been recalled to London. Margaret had preceded him by a month and a half, leaving Boston on August 21 in a ship loaded with 170 sick and wounded survivors of the Battle of Bunker Hill. When the
Charming Nancy
stopped briefly at Plymouth before continuing on to London, the locals were horrified by the handful of officers and men who came ashore, “some without legs and others without arms and their clothes hanging on them like a loose morning gown.” Back in Boston, Gage was no doubt relieved to learn that it was William Howe’s turn to, in words Gage had used to the ministry, “take the bull by the horns,” and on October 11 Gage departed on the
Pallas
,
accompanied by Lucy Knox’s father, Secretary Thomas Flucker.

    In November, Howe received orders to evacuate the troops from Boston before the arrival of winter. He regretted to inform the ministry that there were not enough ships in Boston Harbor to handle all his army, as well as the artillery and “stores of all denominations, [and] the well-disposed [i.e., loyalist] inhabitants with their effects and such merchandise as it may be thought prudent to remove.” They must wait until spring. But not to worry. “We are not under the least apprehension of an attack upon this place . . . ,” he assured Lord Dartmouth; “on the contrary it were to be wished that they would attempt so rash a step and quit those strong entrenchments to which alone they may attribute their present security.”
    A poisonous languor settled upon the British army in Boston. With no military objective left to achieve other than simple survival, the officers and their men settled in for a long, futile winter. Dysentery and smallpox ravaged soldiers and civilians alike, to the point that twenty to thirty people were reported to be dying a day. Howe’s confidence in his army’s security was apparently not shared by his own officers. “Boston . . . may very justly be termed the grave of England,” one of them wrote, “and the slaughterhouse of America. . . . If we hear a gun fired upon the Neck, we are all under arms in a moment and tremble least the provincials should force