Redcoats of Revolutionary times had Bucks County citizens pay for army of occupation
You can imagine the audible groan in 1757 when 200 British Redcoat soldiers came tramping down Old Route 13 in Lower Bucks County to billet in Bristol. Borough citizens knew they’d have to put on a happy face and foot the bill for the stay. That meant lodging in the ferry house and other buildings in town. Debt-ridden King George II in London was unlikely to cover the expense. Mind you this was nearly 20 years before the American Revolution.
The story comes from Doron Green’s local history published in 1911. The Brits regularly passed through Bucks and Bristol on the King’s Highway (today’s Old Route 13). You can still find marble mileposts from that time on North Radcliffe Street between Edgely and Bristol.
In that ante-bellum period British infantry and cavalry were always on the move from one billet to another to preserve order. Local folks fed them and provided living quarters. Too often the occupiers would leave without paying for victuals, grog, and good night’s sleep in cozy feather beds. Grumbling took root in towns like Bristol and in big cities like New York. After all, the Redcoats were supposed to vamoose as warfare with the French and Native Americans on the western frontier ended. But they didn’t go home.
King George with the British parliament’s support imposed onerous taxes on American colonies to help pay down the mother country’s war debt. Part of the solution was having local governments finance the occupation. Afterall, the king reasoned, the army was there to defend the colonies from Indians and French provocateurs.
In Bristol the town made the troops comfy while property owners kept a careful tally of costs. “The bill for their expenses was presented to the county commissioners for payment,” historian Doron noted.
By 1765, the British parliament passed the Quartering Act to compel colonists to care for the troops though making it illegal to seize private homes. “But the act allowed the military to take over practically everything else,” according to the Library of Congress. “The Colonies were required to build barracks for soldiers, and if there wasn’t enough room in the barracks, the housing was extended to “inns, livery stables, ale houses, victualling houses, and the houses of sellers of wine.” The Colonies also were required to provide lodging “in uninhabited houses, out-houses, barns, or other buildings.”
The situation became so egregious by 1776 that “quartering large bodies of armed troops among us” was cited in the Declaration of Independence. It also led to the Third Amendment in the U.S. Constitution: “No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.”
As to that quartering bill from Bristol presented to the county commissioners in Newtown, Doran Green was blunt about it: “They refused to pay, and the borough had to meet the expense.”
More war and remembrance
A reader asked whatever happened to the white artillery cannon that once stood at the intersection of Bustleton Pike and Bristol Road in Northampton to honor World War I soldiers. Richard Noe, local historian and filmmaker, provided me with a good guess: A scrap yard in the 1970s when the intersection was widened.
Rich sent me his postcard of the memorial produced in the 1930s. “Originally, the North and Southampton Reformed Church had purchased the corner from the owner of the residence behind it for $1 in 1919,” he told me. “The church located the canon, a boulder and bronze plaque at the site to honor those from Upper Southampton and Northampton who served in the war. At age 12 in 1953, we Churchville-area kids parked our bikes and played on the canon after church.”
This year the memorial plaque was relocated to a new memorial plaza in Richboro so modifications of the dangerous intersection could be completed.
Sources include “History of Bristol Pennsylvania” by Doron Green; “British Reforms and Colonial Resistance, 1763-1766” published by the Library of Congress, and “Redcoats in the house?” by the National Constitution Center on the web at https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/redcoats-in-the-out-house-some-myths-behind-the-third-amendment.’
Carl LaVO can be reached at carllavo0@gmail.com
This article originally appeared on Bucks County Courier Times: Footing the bill: Redcoats had Bucks citizens pay for army's billeting
