Parliament Answers Boston with the Coercive Acts

Parliament's response to the destruction of the tea came in a series of acts in 1774 that Britain called the Coercive Acts and that colonists soon called the Intolerable Acts. The first was the Boston Port Act, which the Avalon Project dates March 31, 1774. Its preamble cited the commotions in Boston in which cargoes of East India Company tea were seized and destroyed, and from June 1, 1774, it barred the loading or unloading of goods anywhere in Boston harbour, with exceptions for the King's stores and for fuel and food brought coastwise under customs supervision. The port was not to reopen until the King was satisfied that the town had made full satisfaction to the East India Company for its losses, and that reasonable satisfaction had been made to customs officers and others who had suffered in the riots.

Two further acts, both dated May 20, 1774, by the Avalon Project, reached into the government of Massachusetts itself. The Massachusetts Government Act revoked, from August 1, 1774, the part of the province's charter under which its council was elected, and placed the choice of councillors with the King. It also forbade town meetings without the written leave of the governor, except the annual meetings for choosing town officers and representatives. The Administration of Justice Act let the governor, with his council's consent, send the trial of an official or soldier accused of a capital crime committed while enforcing the law or suppressing riots to another colony or to Great Britain, if he judged that a fair trial could not be had in Massachusetts. A Quartering Act, dated June 2, 1774, applied to all the colonies and allowed governors to take uninhabited houses, barns and other buildings to lodge soldiers who had been left without quarters.

The American Battlefield Trust notes that Britain meant the acts as a punishment for Massachusetts and a warning to the other colonies, but that they had the opposite effect. Other colonies sent aid and supplies to Boston, held days of fasting and prayer for its people in the summer of 1774, and began to question the source and limits of Parliament's authority over them. Fearing similar measures against themselves, they agreed to meet in a Continental Congress, which convened in Philadelphia on September 5, 1774, and is the next step in this record.