Apr 14, 2015 - Sale 2380

Sale 2380 - Lot 46

Price Realized: $ 4,250
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 2,000 - $ 3,000
(AMERICAN REVOLUTION--BROADSIDE.) New Hampshire, State of. An Act to Prevent the Return to this State of Certain Persons. Letterpress broadside, 16 3/4 x 13 1/4 inches; taped to mat board along top edge, worn at folds, moderate foxing, professionally restored. (MRS) Exeter, NH: Zechariah Fowle, 19 November 1778

Additional Details

A long list of New Hampshire Loyalists who were banned from returning to the state, for "not only basely deserting the Cause of Liberty, and depriving these States of their personal services at a Time when they ought to have afforded their utmost Assistance in defending the same against the Invasions of a cruel Enemy; but abetting the Cause of Tyranny . . . and a Design to aid the Enemies thereof in their wicked Purposes."
Noteworthy among the banned Loyalists were Governor John Wentworth, "Benjamin Thompson, Esq. of Concord" (later Count Rumford), and Major Robert Rogers of Rogers' Rangers fame. Any of these Loyalists who had not already fled were to be delivered immediately to British-held territory, and if "any Person or Persons so transported shall voluntarily return into this state . . . shall on conviction thereof . . . suffer the pains of DEATH." Provenance: Goodspeed catalogue 593 to Milton R. Slater circa 1981. Only 2 listed in ESTC, and none known at auction since 1978.