July 4, 1783 .

Whereas it appears to this Court, that Zebedee Sprout, Agent on the estates of Peter Oliver and Peter Oliver, jun., 1 Absentees, unreasonably neglects to pay into the Treasury of this Commonwealth, the proceeds of the sales of the personal estates of the said Peter Oliver and Peter Oliver, jun:

Therefore Resolved, That the Attorney General be, and he is, hereby directed to commence an action on the bond given by him, the said Zebedee Sprout, for the faithful discharge of his said agency, and to pursue the same to final judgment and execution.

Printed as Chapter 71 [May 1783] in Acts and Laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts [1782–1783] (Boston, 1890), 713.

1.

Peter Oliver, Jr. (1741–1822), graduated from Harvard in 1761 and began training as a physician. As the son of Chief Justice Peter Oliver and son-in-law of Gov. Thomas Hutchinson, he was deeply entrenched in the loyalist oligarchy and followed them into English exile in 1776. He finished his medical studies with an M.D. from Marischal College, Aberdeen, and established a practice in England (Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, 15:82–87).