Most Gracious Sovereign:

We, your Majesty’s most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Provost, Magistrates, Council, Burgesses, and Inhabitants of your ancient City of Elgin, beg leave, upon this occasion, to approach your throne, and humbly to assure your Majesty of our firm and inviolable attachment to your sacred person and Government.

Deeply impressed with a grateful sense of the many valuable blessings and privileges we enjoy, in common with the rest of our fellow-subjects, under your Majesty’s wise and mild administration, we should think ourselves greatly wanting in that respect, duty, and allegiance, we owe to the best of Kings, if we omitted this opportunity of testifying our utmost abhorrence and detestation of the unnatural and ungrateful rebellion that presently exists in some of your Majesty’s Colonies in America; and to assure your Majesty that we will, to the utmost of our power, support all such measures as shall be judged necessary, by your Majesty and Parliament, to put a speedy end to this unprovoked rebellion, which, we apprehend, has been greatly encouraged and abetted by the seditious practices of a turbulent and discontented faction at home. It is our sincere and ardent prayer, to the supreme disposer of all things, that the distractions amongst your misguided and deluded American subjects may subside; that peace, good order, and a just and constitutional dependance upon the Mother Country may again be restored, without the further effusion of human blood; and that your Majesty may have a long and prosperous reign, over a free, happy, and united people.

Signed in our name, presence, and by our appointment, by

JOHN DUFF, Provost.

ADDRESS OF THE NOBLEMEN, ETC., OF THE COUNTY OF ELGIN.

Address of the Noblemen, Freeholders, Justices of the Peace, and Commissioners of the Land Tax of the County of Elgin, presented to His Majesty by the Hon. Arthur Duff, their Representative in Parliament.

To the King’s Most Excellent Majesty.

The humble Address of the Noblemen, Freeholders, Justices of the Peace, and Commissioners of the Land Tax of the County of ELGIN.

Most Gracious Sovereign:

We, your Majesty’s dutiful and loyal subjects, the Noblemen, Freeholders, Justices of the Peace, and Commissioners of the Land Tax of the County of Elgin, sensible of the blessings we enjoy under your Majesty’s mild and constitutional government, beg leave to approach your royal person, to testify our abhorrence of that avowed rebellion which exists in the Colonies in America.

We humbly beg leave to assure your Majesty, that we will support your Majesty, to the utmost of our power, in maintaining the dignity of your crown, and the authority of the Legislature, over every part of the British Dominions.

We pray God to return the Colonies to a sense of their duty and allegiance, and that your Majesty may reign long, to diffuse the blessings of liberty and peace to a grateful, free, and united people.

Signed in our name, presence, and by our appointment, at Elgin, the 28th day of November, 1775, by our Præses.

FIFE.

ADDRESS OF THE BURGH OF INVERARY.

Address of the Magistrates and Town Council of the Burgh of Inverary, presented to His Majesty by Colonel Staates Long Morris, their Representative in Parliament.

To the King’s Most Excellent Majesty.

The humble Address of the Magistrates and Town Council of the Burgh of INVERARY.

Most Gracious Sovereign:

We, your Majesty’s most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Magistrates and Town Council of Inverary, think it our duty, at this time, to approach the throne, and humbly speak our sentiments on the present most alarming crisis of publick affairs.

While, under your Majesty, we enjoyed all the blessings of the best Government the wisdom of man ever devised, we have seen, with indignation, the malignant breath of disappointed faction, by prostituting the sacred sounds of liberty, too successful in blowing the sparks of a temporary discontent into the flames of a rebellion in your Majesty’s Colonies, that we from our souls abhor.

This is now grown to such a daring and dangerous height, that we doubt not the same paternal tenderness that directed the lenient measures, with which the first swellings of this distemper were treated, will apply such forcive remedies to the affected parts, as shall be necessary to restore that union and dependency of the whole on the legislative power, on which the health, strength, and happiness of the British Empire depends. In the prosecution of which, to the wisdom and firmness of your Majesty’s Councils, we doubt not, will be joined the hearts and hands of all that love their Country, and that Sovereign who is so truly the guardian of its Constitution and liberty.

May this best, this most abused of human blessings, be long dispensed by your Majesty, and late, very late, may you leave your reign, the rare example of a prince who loved, revered, and strengthened the rights of his people.

Signed by appointment.

GEORGE BURNETT, Provost.

Council-House of Inverary, November 28, 1775.

ADDRESS OF THE MINISTERS AND PRESBYTERY OF IRVINE.

Address of the Ministers and Presbytery of Irvine, presented to His Majesty by the Earl of Loudoun.

To the King’s Most Excellent Majesty.

The humble and dutiful Address of the Ministers and Elders of the Presbytery of IRVINE.

Most Gracious Sovereign:

We, your Majesty’s most loyal and dutiful subjects, the Ministers and Elders of the Presbytery of Irvine, met here this day, beg leave to approach your throne, deeply sensible of the many blessings, both of a sacred and civil nature, which we enjoy under your Majesty’s equitable and mild administration.

We think ourselves called upon, by the present circumstances of publick affairs, to declare unanimously our attachment to your Majesty’s person, family, and Government, and our abhorrence of that spirit of licentiousness and rebellion which prevails so extensively in your Majesty’s Colonies.

We are happy in being able to assure your Majesty that the numerous people under our care have the same sentiments of loyalty with ourselves, detest that ungrateful and unnatural rebellion, and are disposed to do every thing in their power to strengthen the hands of Government, in taking the most vigorous measures to put a speedy stop to it, and to re-establish peace and harmony upon a solid and lasting foundation.

That Almighty God may direct your Majesty’s Councils, and give success to the measures of Government for restoring peace and bringing the rebellious part of your American subjects to a just sense of the invaluable and peculiar blessings that accrue to them from the happy Constitution of the British Empire, is our most earnest prayer.

Signed in name, presence, and by appointment of the Presbytery of Irvine, this twenty-eighth day of November, 1775 by

HENRY GRAHAM, Moderator.

CHARLOTTE COUNTY (VIRGINIA) COMMITTEE.

At a Committee held for Charlotte County, the 28th of October, 1775:

The Rev. Mr. Thomas Johnson being summoned to this Committee, on the information of sundry witnesses, that the said Johnson, on Monday, the 16th of this month, at the Ordinary of Mr. John Tankersly, with a bowl of grog in his hand, drank success to the British arms, appeared, and, after due proof being made of the said charge, the said Johnson was pleased to make a full confession thereof, and, in the most equivocal and insulting manner, attempted to vindicate the said expressions. The Committee being desirous to reclaim Mr. Johnson from such sentiments, and receive him again into friendly communion, expostulated