Colin Nicolson and Stuart Scott, “A ‘Great National Calamity’: Sir William Pepperrell and Isaac Royall, Reluctant Royalists” Historical Journal of Massachusetts Volume 28, No. 2 (Summer 2000). Published by: Institute for Massachusetts Studies and Westfield State University You may use content in this archive for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the Historical Journal of Massachusetts regarding any further use of this work:
[email protected] Funding for digitization of issues was provided through a generous grant from MassHumanities. Some digitized versions of the articles have been reformatted from their original, published appearance. When citing, please give the original print source (volume/ number/ date) but add "retrieved from HJM's online archive at http://www.westfield.ma.edu/mhj/.” Editor, Historical Journal of Massachusetts c/o Westfield State University 577 Western Ave. Westfield MA 01086 A ‘Great National Calamity’: Sir William Pepperrell and Isaac Royall, Reluctant Loyalists By Colin Nicolson and Stuart Scott The tranquillity of England’s most fashionable sea-side town could not alleviate the depression which gripped the thirty-five year-old American in the winter of 1781. Sir William Pepperrell of Kittery, Massachusetts, the only American baronet, had been a widower and refugee for six years. In his absence, he had been proscribed as a loyalist by his rebellious countrymen and deprived of his estates. Exile in Brighton had become nigh unbearable, despite the comfort afforded by his four young children -- his “dear little folks”-- and other distressed loyalists. Now, as Christmas beckoned, he was stunned by news of a “great national calamity distressing beyond measure” and which “filled [him] with horror.” General Cornwallis’s capitulation at Yorktown, Virginia, in late October, was the beginning of the end of Britain’s attempts to force the Americans into submission.