6 THE KOYAL INSTITUTION. [CHAP. I. 



Governor Gage and to several of the British officers. 

 Among those who worked for him on his farm were 

 four deserters from the grenadiers at Boston. He 

 persuaded them to return to their regiment. He wrote 

 to General Gage to beg pardon for them. He asked 

 that his petition might be kept secret. He wished not 

 to excite more enmity among his neighbours. But the 

 use of his influence with the Governor got known. 

 The bitterest feeling was working in the country. 

 Civil war was about to begin. Major Thompson was 

 suspected by the people because he was in favour with 

 the royal Governors. The committees of corre- 

 spondence and of safety listened to the reports of any 

 of the ' sons of liberty.' Major Thompson was called 

 before a committee of the people in Concord for being 

 ' unfriendly to the cause of liberty.' He denied the 

 charge, and was acquitted. About this time (August 

 1774) he asks his friend, Mr. Loammi Baldwin, merchant 

 in Woburn, ' to favour him with an easy question, 

 arithmetical or algebraical, and he will give as good 

 an account of it as possible.' In October his only child, 

 Sarah, was born. In November the mob gathered 

 round his house, but by friendly warning he was able 

 to escape to his mother's at Woburn, fifty miles away. 

 Here he sought to busy himself by reading, and he 

 made some experiments on gunpowder; but ill-will 

 soon followed him, and he was driven for shelter to a 

 friend at Charleston. Thence he wrote to his father-in- 

 law at Concord : 



