COUNT RUMFOED. 105 



could give evidence in the affair to appear at the meeting- 

 house on May 18. The committee met, but finding 

 nothing against the accused, they adjourned the meeting. 

 He then addressed a petition to the Committee of Safety 

 for the colony of Massachusetts Bay, in which he begged 

 for a full and searching trial, relying on an acquittal 

 commensurate with the thoroughness of the examination. 

 The petition was not attended to. On May 29, 1775, 

 he was examined at Woburn, where he conducted his 

 own defence. He was acquitted by the committee, who 

 recommended him to the ' protection of all good people 

 in this and the neighbouring provinces.' The com- 

 mittee, however, refused to make this acquittal a public 

 one, lest, it was alleged, it should offend those who were 

 opposed to Thompson. 



Despair and disgust took possession of him more and 

 more. In a long letter addressed to his father-in-law 

 from Woburn, he defends his entire course of conduct. 

 His principal offence was probably negative ; for silence 

 at the time was deemed tantamount to antagonism. 

 During his brief period of farming he had working for 

 him some deserters from the British army in Boston. 

 These he persuaded to go back, and this was urged as a 

 crime against him. He defended himself with spirit, 

 declaring after he had explained his motives that if his 

 action were a crime, he gloried in being a criminal. He 

 made up his mind to quit the country, expressing the 

 devout wish ' that the happy time may soon come when 

 I may return to my family in peace and safety, and 

 when every individual in America may sit down under 

 his own vine and under his own fig-tree, and have none 

 to make him afraid.' 



On this letter, and on the circumstances of the time, 

 Dr. Ellis makes the following wise and pertinent re- 

 marks : c Major Thompson was not the only person in 



