ure out of Boston."[99] However,
things would, it was expected, soon wear a different face, for about
5,500 men were on their way to Boston, and three new generals had
embarked on April 21 to serve under Gage. They were Howe, a younger
brother of Lord Howe, the admiral, a fine gentleman and a gallant
soldier, reputed to be a left-handed cousin of the king through his
mother, a daughter of the Countess of Darlington, a mistress of George
I., kindly, careless, and frivolous, who had distinguished himself at
the taking of Quebec; Clinton, who had served in Germany; and Burgoyne,
who had made a successful campaign in Portugal under Lippe Buckeburg, a
man of fashion, a dramatist, a politician, and a keen soldier, eager for
employment and promotion. North and Dartmouth were vexed at the news of
the encounter, for they had entertained strong hopes, expressed by the
king in closing parliament on May 26, that the conciliation bill would
lead to a pacification. Gage's attempt at Concord was, Dartmouth said,
fatal.

The whigs were dismayed, for they did not share the confidence of the
nation at large. Though Burke expected that the Americans would suffer
"some heavy blows," he did not believe that a war with them would be
ended quickly; and Richmond thought it probable that America would be
lost and "with it our trade and opulence".[100] In England every war
gives an opportunity to some vain and foolish persons for condemning
their own country and showing sympathy with its enemies. So it was in
1775. Wilkes, then lord mayor, and the livery of the city tried to force
the king to receive on the throne a petition which declared that an
attempt was being made to establish arbitrary power in America. They
were foiled by the king and adopted an address expressed in more decent
terms, to which he returned answer that so long as constitutional
authority was resisted he would continue to maintain it by force. The
constitutional society, of which Horne was the leading spirit, sent
Franklin L100 for, as Horne wrote in the _Evening Post_, "the widows and
orphans of our beloved American fellow-subjects inhumanly murdered by
the king's troops at or near Lexington and Concord". Horne was indicted
for this libel in 1777, and was sentenced to a year's imprisonment and a
fine of L200.

In America the news of the affair at Lexington called forth in every
colony a spirit of union, a determination to stand by their New England
brethren. No answers w