sh interpreted his
commission very freely, and it was suspected that he was plundering on
his own account. Every soldier or sailor who could give his officer the
slip was doing the same, in spite of Howe's honest efforts to stop the
plundering.

There was a little genteel thievery as well. Some of the Tories had
unfairly secured more than their share of room on shipboard, and found
this the chance to take their pick of the furniture of their Whig
relatives. "Wat," wrote John Andrews to his brother-in-law in
Philadelphia, "has stripped your uncle's house of everything he could
conveniently carry off.... He has left all the looking glasses and
window curtains, with some tables and most of the chairs; only two
bedsteads and one bed, without any bedding or sheets, or even a rag of
linnen of any kind. Some of the china and the principal part of the
pewter is the sum of what he has left, save the Library, which was
packed up corded to ship, but your uncle Jerry and Mr. Austin went to
him and absolutely forbid it, upon his peril."

Another library did not fare so well. At this time disappeared that part
of the Prince collection which had not been used for kindling the fires
in the Old South. With it vanished the Bradford manuscript history of
the Plymouth plantation, which a later generation freely returned.

While the Tories were so carefully looking to the future, the Whigs were
obliged to guard what they could. Newell covers too many incidents with
etceteras, but John Andrews who, as soon as the siege was lifted, was
free to begin again his correspondence, speaks clearly of his
difficulties. Through the siege he had had the care of six houses with
their furniture, and as many stores filled with goods; but now he
underwent more fatigue and perplexity than for the past eleven months,
for "I was obliged," he says, "to take my rounds all day, without any
cessation, and scarce ever fail'd of finding depredations made upon some
one or other of them, that I was finally necessitated to procure men at
the extravagant rate of two dollars a day to sleep in the several houses
and stores for a fortnight[163] before the military plunderers went
off--for so sure as they were left alone one night, so sure they were
plundered." Later he was obliged to pay at the rate of a dollar an hour
for hands to assist him in moving; but "such was the demand for
laborers, that they were taken from me, even at that, by the tories who
bid over me."