Such was the situation of affairs when the sycophants of the foreign government in Boston undertook to enforce the Writs of Assistance. They soon found that they needed more assistance to do it. The banded merchants, and the patriots generally, said that the acts were illegal, and that they would not submit to the officers. The governor and his subordinates and the custom-house retinue in particular, said that the writs were legal, and that they should be enforced. The matter came to a clash and a trial. The case as made up presented this question: Shall the persons employed in enforcing the Acts of Trade have the power to invoke generally the assistance of all the executive officers of the colony? This issue was, in February of 1761, taken into court in the old Town House, afterwards the old State House, of Boston. There were sitting the five Judges of the Superior Court of the province. Chief Justice Hutchinson, still holding the office of Lieutenant-Governor, his membership in the Council, and his position of Judge of Probate, presided at the trial. Perhaps there was never in America an instance in which a high official so nearly fulfilled the part of "Pooh Bah." The trial evoked an attendance of all who could be admitted, and of many more. The officers of the crown were out in full force, and resolute patriotism completed the crowd. John Adams was one of the spectators. Another element in the dramatic situation was the fact that James Otis had, in the meantime, received the appointment to the crown office of Advocate General, to which an ample salary was attached. In this relation it would be his especial duty to support the petition of the custom-house officers in upholding the Writs of Assistance and in constraining the executive officers of the province to support them in doing so. This contingency brought out the mettle of the man. When the revenue officers came to him with the request that he defend their case, he at once resigned his office, and this being known the merchants immediately sought his services as counsel to uphold their protest against the Writs. For his assistant they selected Mr. Oxenbridge Thatcher. Otis accepted the invitation without a fee. His action involved the loss of his official position as well as his means of living. It chanced at this time that his old law preceptor, Jeremiah Gridley, was selected as King's Attorney, and it fell to his lot to take the place which Otis would not accept. Thus master and pupil were brought face to face at the bar in the hottest legal encounter which preceded our rupture with the mother country. The trial that ensued has been described by John Adams, an eye witness of the whole proceedings. He gives in his works a description of the conduct of the case as it was presented for and against the crown, and also notes of Otis's argument.