Unreconstructed Loyalists

— Mr. Richard Grant White’s incorrigible Tory grandfather, as set forth in Mr. Church’s paper in the March Atlantic, reminds me of those historic spinsters, daughters of Dr. Mather Byles, who kept their rushlight of loyalty to the king of England still burning in Boston long after the sun of independence had risen and was in full blaze. Dr. Byles and his two daughters were among the few Tories of social rank who were shut up in the town during the siege of 1775, and the girls — for girls they were once — walked arm in arm with General Howe and Lord Percy on Boston Common, and never forgot that walk to the end of their unrepentant days. They lived then and till the day of their death in the family house on Tremont Street, near Common Street, and when republican noises rose under their windows they banished them by the recollection of the fact that once Lord Percy’s band played before their house for their special delectation. Among the reasons reported by his daughter Catherine for dismissing Dr. Byles from his parish were “his friendly disposition to the British troops, particularly his entertaining them at his house, indulging them with his telescope,” etc.

These two uncompromising relics lived, the one till 1835, the other till 1837, and entertained their visitors with whatever savored of antiquity, themselves being the most ancient of all. The bellows two centuries old ; the chair which had been sent by the English government to their grandfather, the lieutenant-governor of the province ; the envelope of a letter from Pope to the same gentleman, with commissions for him signed successively by Queen Anne and three of the Georges, — all these were scarcely so venerable as the spirit of the maiden ladies. One of them wrote to William IV. on his accession to the throne. The sisters had known the sailor king, and now assured him that the family of Dr. Byles always had been, and would continue to be, loyal to their rightful sovereign of England.

In the course of time the town found it desirable to pull down a portion of their house. This was too much for the elder sister, who died shortly after. “It was one of the consequences,” said the survivor severely, “of living in a republic. Had we been living under a king, he would have cared nothing about our little property, and we could have enjoyed it in our own way as long as we lived. But there is one comfort, that not a creature in the States will be any better for what we shall leave behind us.” They had taken good care that their property should go to relatives living away from the hated republic.