Of all the people shocked and mortified by the destruction of Thomas Hutchinson's house, few were more grieved than forty-five-year-old Jonathan Mayhew, a controversial and dynamic Congregationalist minister in Boston. Immediately upon hearing the dreadful news, he dashed off a letter to the Massachusetts lieutenant governor, expressing his grief and alarm over the "almost unparalell'd outrages" of the mob. He declared that as "God is my witness, that from the bottom of my heart I detest these proceedings; that I am sincerely grieved for them; and have a deep sympathy with you and your distressed family."
There was more to Mayhew's letter of condolence than genuine concern. The day before the riot that displaced Lieutenant Governor Hutchinson and his family, Mayhew used his Sunday morning sermon to condemn the Stamp Act as a direct assault on the rights of American colonists. Using Paul's letter to the Galatians as his text, Mayhew hammered home the theme: "I would they were even cut off which trouble you, for brethren ye have been called unto liberty." According to renowned historian Bernard Bailyn, many of Mayhew's parishioners and acquaintances believed he had "lent his dignity and the sanction of his office to approval" of the mob's actions. In fact, Hutchinson would later write of being told by a participant in the "outrages" that he (the participant) had been "excited to them by the sermon, and that he thought he was doing God's service." Mayhew had turned British tax policy into the devil, and influenced his devout congregants to see the debate over the Stamp Act in apocalyptic and uncompromising tones.
Mayhew's own recollections of the sermon were much more moderate than those of his critics. He claimed not to have endorsed any form of protest which might be associated with "anarchy and confusion." While he had expounded on the dangers of the usurpations of liberty, he claimed that he had even more so emphasized the meaning of liberty and the importance of civic and social responsibility.
Knowing that his critics were blaming him for the spirit of intolerance and rage prevalent in the streets of Boston, Mayhew felt compelled to assure Hutchinson that he believed in "civil and religious liberty" and that he had cautioned his listeners against the "abuses of liberty." Yet he gave tacit acknowledgment to the red-hot tension of Boston in August 1765 by asking Hutchinson not to divulge the contents of his letter lest they fall into the hands of "those enraged people...[who] might probably bring their heavy vengeance upon myself."
