Lancaster, then the largest town in
Worcester County, the royalist party was an eminently respectable
minority. At first, indeed, not only those naturally conservative by
reason of wealth, or pride of birthright, but nearly all the
intellectual leaders, both ecclesiastic and civilian, deprecated revolt
as downright suicide. They denounced the Stamp Act as earnestly, they
loved their country in which their all was at stake as sincerely, as did
their radical neighbors. Some of them, after the bloody nineteenth of
April, acquiesced with such grace as they could in what they now saw to
be inevitable, and tempered with prudent counsel the blind zeal of
partisanship: thus ably serving their country in her need. Others would
have awaited the issue of events as neutrals; but such the committees of
safety, or a mob, not unnaturally treated as enemies.

On the highest rounds of the social ladder stood the great-grandsons of
Major Simon Willard, the Puritan commander in the war of 1675. These
three gentlemen had large possessions in land, were widely known
throughout the Province, and were held in deserved esteem for their
probity and ability. They were all royalists at heart, and all connected
by marriage with royalist families. Abijah Willard, the eldest, had just
passed his fiftieth year. He had won a captaincy before Louisburg when
but twenty-one, and was promoted to a colonelcy in active service
against the French; was a thorough soldier, a gentleman of stately
presence and dignified manners, and a skilful manager of affairs. For
his first wife, he married Elizabeth, sister of Colonel William
Prescott; for his second, Mrs. Anna Prentice, but had recently married a
third partner, Mrs. Mary McKown, of Boston. He was the wealthiest
citizen of Lancaster, kept six horses in his stables, and dispensed
liberal hospitality in the mansion inherited from his father Colonel
Samuel Willard. By accepting the appointment of councillor in 1774, he
became at once obnoxious to the dominant party, and in August, when
visiting Connecticut on business connected with his large landed
interests there, he was arrested by the citizens of the town of Union,
and a mob of five hundred persons accompanied him over the state line
intending to convey him to the nearest jail. Whether their wrath became
somewhat cooled by the colonel's bearing, or by a six-mile march, they
released him upon his signing a paper dictated to him, of which the
following is a co