Very Rare Major Colonial Appointment, Signed by America’s Last King George III

In a Letter to the Governor of New York, King George III Appoints a Merchant to the Governor’s Council During the Townshend Acts Controversy, a Move Cheered by the Acts’ Opponents.

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The appointee was serving in 1776 the last year of the body’s existence, was a founding member of the New York Chamber of Commerce, and famously served as agent of the East India Company to import tea but refused to receive it while it was taxed; This very letter was read aloud...

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Very Rare Major Colonial Appointment, Signed by America’s Last King George III

In a Letter to the Governor of New York, King George III Appoints a Merchant to the Governor’s Council During the Townshend Acts Controversy, a Move Cheered by the Acts’ Opponents.

The appointee was serving in 1776 the last year of the body’s existence, was a founding member of the New York Chamber of Commerce, and famously served as agent of the East India Company to import tea but refused to receive it while it was taxed; This very letter was read aloud in the New York Council as a mandate from the King

In 1768, Henry Moore was the colonial Governor of New York under the Crown.  The governorship was a royally appointed position, and the Governor selected the Executive Council which served as the upper house of the colony’s legislature. The Governor and King had veto power over the lower assembly’s bills. However, all bills were effective until royal disapproval had occurred which could take up to a year.  On rare occasion, the King himself would name a Councilor.

Until 1767, the East India Company paid a tax of about 25% on tea that it imported into Great Britain.  Parliament laid additional taxes on tea sold for consumption in Britain. These high taxes, combined with the fact that tea imported into the Dutch Republic was not taxed by the Dutch government, meant that Britons and British Americans could buy smuggled Dutch tea at much cheaper prices.  The biggest market for illicit tea was England—by the 1760s the East India Company was losing £400,000 per year to smugglers in Great Britain, but Dutch tea was also smuggled into British America in significant quantities.

In 1767, to help the East India Company compete with smuggled Dutch tea, Parliament passed the Indemnity Act, which lowered the tax on tea consumed in Great Britain, and gave the East India Company a refund of the 25% duty on tea that was re-exported to the colonies. To help offset this loss of government revenue, Parliament also passed the Townshend Revenue Act, which levied new taxes, including one on tea, in the colonies. Instead of solving the smuggling problem, however, the Townshend duties renewed a controversy about Parliament’s right to tax the colonies. This would, of course, end in revolution.

Colonists responded with protests and boycotts. Merchants organized a non-importation agreement, and many colonists pledged to abstain from drinking British tea. After vowing to suspend trade with non-participating colonies, Boston merchants finally persuaded traders in New York, Philadelphia, and other ports to join the boycott.

Letter signed by George III and Lord Hillsborough, the Secretary of State and opponent of concessions to the Colonists, the Court at St. James, December 19, 1768, to Sir Henry Moore, Governor of New York, and “Captain General and Governor in Chief in and over our Province of New York.”  “…We being well satisfied of the loyalty, integrity and ability of our trusted and well beloved Henry White, Esquire, have thought fit to signify our will and pleasure to you, that forthwith, upon receipt hereof, you swear and admit him the said Henry White to be of our Council in our Province of New York….”  The recipient, perhaps Governor Moore himself, has noted on the docket that it was read in Council and therefore formalized on March 8, 1769.

It was a special measure for the intervention of the King into the appointment of the Council.  Merchants were cheered by the appointment of White to the upper chamber, as he was a fellow merchant.  The very day after this was read in New York Council, a committee was created to examine the efficacy of measures in the trade boycott.

White’s role was even broader.  He was one of a handful of founders of the New York Chamber of Commerce the very next year, and served as its President from 1772-1773.

In 1773, the East India Company retained the exclusive right to import tea into the colonies.  Contracts were awarded to merchants in each state to receive the tea, and three went to New York.  Henry White was one of those three.  When he learned that the tea being imported would be subject to the tax on colonists, he refused to receive it.  In Boston, protesters threw some of the tea into the bay, an event we call the Boston Tea Party.  White was still a councilor in 1776, the last year of the body’s existence.

This is among the most senior colonial appointments of George III to reach the market, and is the only appointment of a American Colonial Councilor we can find anywhere.

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