BENJAMIN THOMPSON, COUNT RUMFORD 15 



Governor Wentworth. His wife introduced him to the governor, 

 and he made such a favorable impression by his readiness in 

 conversation and wide information that he was soon after ap- 

 pointed a major in the regiment. Nothing could have been more 

 suited to Thompson's ambitions, but it brought misfortune upon 

 him in two ways; it offended the other officers that a youth of 

 nineteen, without military experience, should have been thus 

 placed over them, and the marked favor shown him by the gover- 

 nor caused him to be suspected by the patriots as a tool of the 

 Royalists. It was in fact this spite and suspicion that drove him 

 from America. 



Young Thompson entered into his new role of landed proprietor 

 with his usual zeal and energy, introducing new seeds imported 

 from London, and taking an active part in the politics and develop- 

 ment of the colony. He broached a scheme for the survey of the 

 White Mountains to Governor Wentworth who not only approved 

 it, but offered to accompany the expedition in person. But it 

 was never carried out, for already more serious affairs were on 

 foot. Thompson's growing popularity with the governor, and his 

 own undeniably aristocratic tendencies combined to render him 

 a suspect by the ardent patriots of the vicinity. In the summer 

 of 1774 he was summoned before the patriotic committee to an- 

 swer to the charge of " being unfriendly to the cause of liberty," 

 the chief complaint being that he was in correspondence with 

 General Gage in Boston and had returned to him four deserters. 

 He made a satisfactory explanation of his conduct and sentiments 

 and was discharged, but the suspicions were not removed from 

 the minds of his enemies, and since formal and semi-legal pro- 

 ceedings had failed, they resorted to violence. One November 

 night a mob surrounded the Rolfe mansion and demanded Major 

 Thompson, but he, receiving an intimation of the attack and know- 

 ing the impossibility of proving his innocence to an impassioned 

 mob, had borrowed a horse and $20 from his brother-in-law and 

 escaped to Woburn. He wrote to the Rev. Walker, his father-in- 

 law, that he "never did, nor, let my treatment be what it will, 

 ever will do any action that may have the most distant tendency to 



