present at the Liberty Tree. But no consign-
ees arrived, whereupon Molineux and Warren
headed a party who waited upon them. The
consignees, Clarke, a rich merchant, and his
sons, Benjamin Faneuil, Winslow, and the two
sons of Hutchinson, Thomas and Elisha, sat to-
gether in the counting-house of Clarke in King
Street. Admittance was refused the commit-
tee, and a conversation took place through a
window, during which the tone of the con-
signees was defiant. There was some talk of
violence, and when an attempt was made to
exclude the committee and the crowd attending
them from the building, into the first story of
which they had penetrated, the doors were
taken off their hinges and threats uttered.
Molineux, generally impetuous enough, but
now influenced probably by cooler heads, dis-
suaded the others from violence. A few days
later, a serious riot came near taking place be-
fore the house of Clarke in School Street; the
people outside broke some windows, while from
the inside a pistol was fired from the second
story. Judicious men among the patriots, how-
ever, exerted themselves successfully to prevent
a repetition of the excesses at the time of the
Stamp Act.

A town-meeting on November 5, in which
an effort of the Tories to make head against

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