On this day 250 years ago in Philadelphia, Delegate Thomas Willing of Pennsylvania read a letter to the Continental Congress written by a British government official supposedly on behalf of Prime Minister Lord North. The letter asserted that the British would make no further concessions to American demands and threatened “to use the whole force of the Kingdom . . . to reduce the rebellions and refractory provinces and colonies.”

Sources: https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/contcong_05-30-75.asp; https://americanfounding.org/entries/second-continental-congress-may-30-1775/.

On that same day in London, British newspapers published the accounts of the Battles of Lexington and Concord that the Massachusetts Provincial Congress had gathered and dispatched to London on board the fast schooner Quero. In response to the American reports, Lord Dartmouth published in the Government’s official newspaper Gazette that

A report having been spread, and an account having been printed and published, of a skirmish between some of the people in the Province of Massachusetts Bay and a detachment of His Majesty’s troops, it is proper to inform the publick that no advices have as yet been received in the American Department of any such event. There is reason to believe that there are dispatches from General Gage on board the Sukey, Captain Brown, which, though she sailed four days before the vessel that brought the printed accounts, is not arrived.

Sources: https://www.historynet.com/the-pr-battle-after-lexington-and-concord/;

A Fast Ship from Salem: Carrying News of War

And on this day 250 years ago in New Hampshire, 30 to 40 British sailors and marines from the HMS Scarborough landed on Great Island and dismantled breastworks and other defenses at Fort William and Mary.

Source: https://www.northamericanforts.com/East/New_Hampshire/Fort_Constitution/history.html