shall, on or before the 30th day of April next, voluntarily enter themselves to serve in our Royal Navy, either with the Captains or Lieutenants of our ships, or the chief officers on board such tenders as shall be employed for raising men for the service of our Navy, shall receive, as our Royal bounty, the sum of three pounds each man; and all such ordinary Seamen fit for our service, who shall so enter themselves as aforesaid, shall receive the sum of two pounds each man, as our Royal bounty, in lieu of all other bounties mentioned in our Proclamation dated the 3d of January, and our order in Council of the 28th day of February last; such respective sums to be paid them by the respective clerks of the Cheque, residing at the ports or places where the ships into which they shall be entered shall be, immediately after the third muster of such Seamen. And we do declare, that the qualifications of the Seamen so entering themselves as aforesaid, shall be certified by the Captain, Master, and Boatswain of the ship or vessel where they shall enter. And for prevention of any abuses by any persons leaving the vessels to which they shall belong, and entering themselves on board any other ships or vessels, in order to obtain the said bounty-money, we do hereby declare and command, that such Seamen belonging to any of our ships or vessels as shall absent themselves from any of the said ships or vessels to which they shall belong, and shall enter themselves on board any other of our said ships or vessels, in order to obtain the said bounty, shall not only lose the wages due to them in the ships or vessels they shall leave, but also be severely punished according to their demerits.

Given at our Court at St. James’s, the 22d day of March, one thousand seven hundred and seventy-six, in the sixteenth year of our reign.

GOD save the King.

ADDRESS OF THE PROVOST, ETC., OF FORRES (SCOTLAND) TO THE KING.

Address of the Provost, Magistrates, and Town Council of Forres, presented to His Majesty by Henry Dundas, Esq., Lord Advocate of Scotland.

Most Gracious Sovereign:

Deeply impressed with a just and grateful sense of the many invaluable blessings we enjoy under your Majesty’s mild and beneficent reign, the Provost, Magistrates, and Town Council of Forres, humbly beg leave to approach the Throne, to declare their firm attachment to your Majesty’s person and administration.

We beg leave to assure your Majesty that we will, with the greatest cheerfulness, to the utmost of our power, support the dignity of your Crown, and the honour of Great Britain, in reducing the rebellious Colonies in North America to a sense of the duty they owe to your Majesty and the Parent State.

Though we abhor the turbulent and seditious spirit that actuates the refractory Colonies, and applaud the spirited coercive measures that are now adopted by Administration to reduce them to a proper allegiance to their King, and dependance on the Mother Country; instigated by the feelings of humanity, we commiserate the fate of our unhappy deluded fellow-subjects, who, excited by a malevolent domestick faction, have heedlessly plunged themselves into all the horrours of a most unnatural civil war; and rejoice to think that when they return to their duty, they will be again received under the protection of the best Government that ever human wisdom framed, and into the favour of a Prince whose glory it is to be in every respect a constitutional and patriotick King.

We felicitate your Majesty and ourselves on having the prospect of a national and well-regulated Militia in North Britain, which we are convinced will answer every good purpose Government can expect.

That your Majesty may be speedily enabled to restore peace to your Colonies, and diffuse happiness over all the British Empire, is the fervent prayer of,

May it please your Majesty, your Majesty’s most loyal, and most dutiful subjects.

Signed by appointment, the seal of the Burgh being affixed,

JAMES GRANT, Provost.

PETITION OF THE CITY OF LONDON TO THE KING.

St. James’s, March 22, 1776.

This day the Right Honourable the Lord-Mayor, several of the Aldermen, the Sheriffs, and some of the Common Council of the City of London, waited upon his Majesty (being introduced by the Earl of Hertford, Lord Chamberlain of His Majesty’s household) with the following Address and Petition, which was read by the Recorder:

To the King’s Most Excellent Majesty.

The humble Address and Petition of the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Commons of the City of LONDON, in Common Council assembled.

Most Gracious Sovereign:

We, the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Commons, of the City of London, in Common Council assembled, beg leave to approach your Throne, and to entreat your Majesty’s royal attention, whilst, with the humility of dutiful subjects, we lay before your Majesty what at present most immediately affects us in the spirit and tendency of the publick measures now depending, and the anxiety we feel at the naked and exposed state in which this country will be left, by draining it of the national troops, as well as at the danger and disgrace attending the late treaties for foreign mercenaries, whose latitude is such as to provide the means of introducing a foreign Army even into this Realm.

We cannot, sir, without horrour, look forward to national debt and of burdensome taxes, that loss of our most valuable resources, those distresses of our merchants and manufacturers, those deficiencies of the revenue, that effusion of the blood of our countrymen and brethren, that failure of publick credit, and those dreadful calamities and convulsions, which must follow a civil war so begun and pursued, whose extent no wisdom can foresee.

We humbly conceive that no people can be bound to surrender their rights and liberties as a return for protection. The Colonies have fought our battles with us; and in the last war they so far exceeded, their abilities, that this nation thought it just and necessary to make them an annual compensation; and even now, driven to open hostilities in their own defence, they are willing (their Charters being inviolably secured) to continue to us all those advantages of a regulated and exclusive commerce, to which we have long owed our opulence and prosperity. And we have every assurance which men in their situation can safely give, that, if asked as freemen, they are willing to go further, and to afford to the exhausted state of the revenue of this country such reasonable voluntary aid as their abilities permit; provided that their contributions are unalienably applied to relieve that distress which is the only fair and politick foundation of requiring them; and that neither their aids nor our own sinking fund shall be any longer perverted from a publick benefit, and misapplied to the purpose of corruption, instead of redeeming the debts of the nation according to its first wise and just institution.

Indulge, most gracious Sovereign, the humanity and benignity of your own Royal disposition, and our prayers will be granted. We implore the extension of your Majesty’s justice and mercy towards that Continent which, when arbiter of the terms of peace, it was your Majesty’s own determination to prefer to every other compensation for all the expenses of the last war. We humbly and earnestly beseech your Majesty, that the most solemn, clear, distinct, and unambiguous specification of those just and honourable terms; which your Majesty, with both Houses of Parliament, means to grant to the Colonies, may precede the dreadful operations of your armament. Every colour and suspicion of injustice and oppression will then be removed from the proceedings of the Mother Country; and if those just and honourable terms are not submitted to, your Majesty will undoubtedly be enabled to meet, what will then be rebellion, with the zealous hearts and hands of. a determined, loyal, and united people.

Signed by order of Court:

WILLIAM RIX,

To which Address and Petition His Majesty was pleased to return the following Answer.

I deplore, with the deepest concern, the miseries which a great part of my subjects in North America have brought