Thomas Hutchinson and the Boston Massacre

Thomas Hutchinson was a wealthy prominent Loyalist politician in Massachusetts, a royalist and one of the King's Men.

His Boston mansion had been ransacked in 1765 during protests against the Stamp Act, damaging his collection of materials on early Massachusetts history.

He was completely opposed to the Patriots believing that resistance to the Crown, the legitimate government, was morally wrong.

He advised Great Britain, often in secret, on the affairs of the colony and the port of Boston.

His recommendations to the British government had included altering the charters of the New England provinces, the dismemberment of Massachusetts, the establishment of the military stronghold in Boston and the the stationing of a British fleet in its harbor.