Earl Percy's Dinner Table

Earl Percy's Dinner Table by Harold Murdock. This historical narrative reconstructs the social world and military events surrounding Earl Percy’s command in Boston in 1774–1776. Through portraits of officers at Percy’s table—from Lieutenant-Colonel John Gunning and Lord Rawdon to Major Pitcairn and the Reverend Mather Byles—the work blends diplomacy, dining-room discourse, and the unfolding war. It traces Percy’s initial reception in Boston, his dealings with local authorities, and his attempts to maintain order as regiments arrive, while also recording dramatic episodes: the Lexington and Concord news, the Battle of Bunker Hill, the burning of Charlestown, and the shifting loyalties of Loyalists and Patriots. The book surveys the town’s life during a crisis, and it concludes with the eventual evacuation of Boston and the fates of Percy’s companions, offering a human-scale chronicle of an era when military power and social ritual intersected in a colonial city.