pointed out, and the
English Whigs acutely reasoned that he must have had a virtual agreement
with Washington to purchase the safety of the fleet and army at the
price of immunity to the town. Newspapers and pamphleteers took up the
subject, and Howe was eventually forced to ask for an inquiry into his
conduct of the siege. To his dying day he was severely criticised for
his generalship in America, and especially at Boston.

Of the other British military leaders, not one was successful. Gage was
never again given a command. Burgoyne returned to Boston only as a
prisoner. Clinton for a time commanded in America, but he was recalled.

As for the master whom these generals served, the king who was the cause
of the war, his failure was complete. George III lost not only his
revolted colonies, but also the dearer prize for which he fought,
personal government. When at last peace was signed, the Americans had
gained independence, and the English people had finally established the
supremacy of Parliament. The king might reign, but he could no longer
govern.

The fate of the Tories cannot detain us long, painful as it was. Some
few returned to America after the war, and made again places for
themselves. Among these was Judge Curwen. Some went to England, where
they were out of their element. Dependent for the most part on the
bounty of the crown, they lived in hope of a change of fortune. They
longed for their homes, and sickened for a sight of the New England
country, to them the most beautiful on earth. Many of them were too old
to begin life anew: by the end of the war it was recorded that, of the
Massachusetts Tory leaders, forty-five died in England. One of these was
Hutchinson, upon whose life the best comment is the concluding sentence
of Sabine's brief biography: "I forget, in his melancholy end, all
else."

But numbers of the Tories remained in Canada. Doubtless many were
discouraged from going to England by the reports of the condition of
those already there. "As to your coming here," wrote Governor Wentworth
from London to a friend in New Brunswick, "or any other Loyalist that
can get clams and potatoes in America, they would most certainly regret
making bad worse."[167] On such advice as this many, indeed most, of the
refugees remained in Canada, and after the war, in which many of them
fought, were of great service in building up that country. Nova Scotia
and New Brunswick received the larger number of them; th