Whitehall 4th December 1771.
I have not failed to lay before the King your dispatch No 1. which was received at my Office a few Days before my return to London and I beg leave to congratulate you on your safe arrival in your govert and to express to you my sincere wishes that your administration may be happy and prosperous.
The Advice and opinion of Govr Tryon would have been alone sufficient to have justified your declining upon your Arrival to convene a new Assembly but the Inconveniences which you state would have attended a General Election in the Month of August and the other reasons you assign are additional Arguments against it & your conduct on that occasion is approved by the King.
The Tranquillity which you say now reigns in that Country which has of late exhibited scenes of so disagreeable a nature is most pleasing to the King, and it is His Majestys Command that you should pursue every lenient measure that may conduce to quiet Peoples minds, to extinguish the remembrance of such unfortunate events and to obviate all just ground of future uneasiness & discontent. The Heavy Burthen brought upon the whole Colony by the Measures which the madness of a few desperate Men, compelled the late Governor to pursue, is not one of the least of the Evils, flowing from the late disorders and tho' as I have repeatedly observed to Mr Tryon, the King cannot concur in any Act for creating a Paper Currency upon conditions inconsistent with the Law of England, yet His Majesty commands me to say, that any plan for that purpose which shall not contradict the Provisions of the Act of Parliament for restraining Paper Bills of Credit in the Colonies will be considered in the most favorable light, and every facility given to it that His Majesty's faithful subjects in North Carolina can wish. But I am more particularly called upon on this Occasion to direct your Attention to the Act of Parliament, as some other Colonies have by framing their Acts for establishing a Paper Credit in such a manner as to make those Bills a Legal Tender at the Treasury of the Colony, laid the Privy Council under the necessity of advising the King to disallow them. I observe, Sir, that in one part of your Letter you seem to apprehend that the creating a Paper Credit for defraying the expence of the late Measures will meet with difficulties that cannot be removed without Instructions from His Majesty, but as you do not explain yourself as to what those difficulties are likely to be, it is impossible for me to foresee them and consequently to propose any Instructions on that Head.
In the last letter I received from Mr Tryon relative to the Affairs of North Carolina and which is dated from New York, he expresses a wish that the Plantation and estate of Benjamin Merrill, a Captain of the Militia & who was one of the six Rebels executed on the 19th of June may be granted to a Wife and eight Children he left behind
him, and I have it in command from the King to signify to you His Majesty's Pleasure, that you do accordingly take the proper measures that whatever property belonging to that unhappy person became forfeited to the Crown by his conviction should be regranted to his Widow and Children