Browsing: Legal Papers of John Adams, Volume 2

5. Temple, born in Boston, but raised in England, was appointed surveyor general in Dec. 1760, but did not arrive in Boston until Nov. 1761. Treasury Warrant, 1 Dec. 1760, PRO, Treas. 11:26, p. 5 (a reference furnished the editors by Thomas C. Barrow). See 1 Bowdoin-Temple Papers xv–xvii; Quincy, Reports (Appendix) 428 note; Temple to Commissioners, Jan. 1762, Temple Letter Book, 1762–1768, fols. 7–9, MHi; Temple's Memorial, undated, id. at fol. 187. His early zeal is commended in Thomas Whately to Temple, 18 June 1764, id. at fols. 19–21. For the Cockle-Bernard affair, see Barrow, Colonial Customs 406–408; Ubbelohde, Vice Admiralty Courts 58–60; Whately to Temple, 5 Nov. 1764, 1 Bowdoin-Temple Papers 36–39; Joseph Harrison to Temple, 12 June 1765, id. at 57–58; Commissioners to Temple, 9 March 1765, 1 Bowdoin-Temple MSS, fol. 60, MHi. The feud with Bernard and opposition to the customs service seem to have begun with Temple's sympathy toward Benjamin Barons, dismissed as Collector in 1761. See note 644 below; Barrow, Colonial Customs 358–359; No. 44, note 21. For Temple's adverse reactions to the American Act, 4 Geo. 3, c. 15 (1764), and the Stamp Act, 5 Geo. 3, c. 12 (1765), see Temple to Whately, 10 Sept. 1764, 1 Bowdoin-Temple Papers 24–28. Temple and Bernard also could not agree on procedures for clearing vessels without stamps. See Edmund S. and Helen M. Morgan, The Stamp Act Crisis: Prologue to Revolution 134–139 (Chapel Hill, 1953).