On this day 250 years ago in London, Lord Dartmouth, British Secretary of State for the Colonies, wrote to Attorney General Thurlow and Solicitor General Wedderburn to demand that they provide a formal legal opinion in response to the questions he had previously submitted regarding Patriot resistance to the Tea Act in Boston including the Boston Tea Party:

“Do the acts and proceedings [in Boston] amount to the crime of high treason?” and “If they do, who are the persons chargeable with such crimes and what will be the proper and legal method of proceeding against them?”

Source: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23064102?read-now=1&seq=15#page_scan_tab_contents