Note 266 — Chapter I · (continued 2)

The covenant was printed in the Mass. Gazette, June 23, 1774, and is reprinted in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc. (xii. 45), where is also (Ibid., xi. 392; also see xii. 46) the protest against the covenant, and the loyalist signers of the protest (given in Mass. Gazette, July 7, 1774). This drew out a proclamation from Gage, pointing out the error of illegal combinations (Mass. Gazette, June 30, 1774, and Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., xii. 47). It was turned into verse in ridicule (Moore's Songs and Ballads of the Rev., p. 65). Dr. Belknap gave his reasons for not entering such a combination (Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., 2nd ser., ii. 484). Cf. Frothingham's Rise of the Republic, 336. Timothy Ruggles soon organized a counter-association of loyalists.