The provincial congress ordered depositions[521] to be taken of those who had participated in the events of the day, with a main purpose of establishing that the British fired first at Lexington. These were signed in several copies. One set of them, accompanied by a request from Warren to Franklin to have them printed and dispersed in England, was entrusted to Capt. John Derby, of Salem, who took also a copy of the _Essex Gazette_, in which an account of the fighting was printed, and sailed in a swift packet for England four days after Lieutenant Nunn, bearing Gage's despatches, had sailed from Boston (April 24). Derby reached Southampton on the 27th of May, and was in London the next day.[522] London had been stirred three weeks before with rumors of a bloody day with Gage's troops,[523] and now two days later the government felt called upon to announce they had no tidings; whereupon Arthur Lee, who, since Franklin had sailed for America, had succeeded to his place as agent of Massachusetts, and had received the papers, made a counter-announcement that the public could see the affidavits at the Mansion House.[524] The tidings spread. Hutchinson communicated the news to Gibbon, and he recorded it in a letter, May 31.[525] On the 5th of June Horace Walpole wrote it to Horace Mann. On the 7th, Dartmouth spoke of the "vague and uncertain accounts of a skirmish, made up for the purpose of conveying misrepresentation."[526] [Illustration: LEXINGTON DEPOSITION. Fac-simile of the original in the Arthur Lee Papers in Harvard College library. The fac-simile on the opposite page, relating to the action at Concord, is reproduced from an original in the same collection of papers.] [Illustration] On the same day the friends of America, forming the Constitutional Society, met at the King's Arms in Cornhill, and raised a subscription of £100, to be paid to the widows and families of the provincials who had been killed.[527] On the 8th another vessel reached Liverpool, confirming the news, but giving no particulars. Finally, on the 10th, the official report of Gage, with the statements of Percy and Smith, reached the government.[528] Meanwhile, both sides at home had been busy with circulating their pleas of vindications. The provincial congress at once despatched messengers south,[529] and the Rev. William Gordon, an Englishman settled in Jamaica Plain, drew up (May 17, 1775) for the patriots their authoritative _Account of the Commencement of hostilities_;[530] and various other contemporary accounts on the provincial side have come down to us,[531] and of importance among them are the narratives of the ministers of Lexington and Concord, the Reverends Jonas Clark and William Emerson.[532] [Illustration: LEXINGTON, 1775.