There was a more serious business in the tarring and feathering of the Widow Nabby Freeman of which the towns-people were sufficiently ashamed, evidently, to charge it in turn to Whig and Tory. Freeman, in his history, says she was a Whig, the victim of Tory spite; Otis, with convincing detail, that she was a Tory. She kept a small grocery, and refused to surrender her tea to be destroyed by the Vigilance Committee. She was “a thorn in their sides—she could out-talk any of them, was fascinating in her manners, and had an influence which she exerted, openly and defiantly, against the patriotic men who were then hazarding their fortunes and their lives in the struggle for American independence.” Both narratives agree in the fact: she was taken from her bed to the village green, smeared with tar and feathers, set astride a rail and ridden about the town. We may fancy the tongue-lashing her persecutors received in the process. At last they exacted from her a promise that in the future she would keep clear of politics. The men who carried through this cruel comedy were not eager to be known; yet it is said feeling against the Tories ran so high that even in Sandwich, which had lamented the harsh treatment of Quakers, a strong party justified the act. But that public sentiment did not approve such rowdyism is proved by the fact that it stands out alone in unlovely prominence. It is probable that many a private grudge was worked off in this cry of “Tory, Tory.” When Joseph Otis, brother of the patriot, cited a prominent townsman for disaffection, the court held the accusation to proceed “rather from an old family quarrel and was the effect of envy rather than matter of truth and sobriety, or any view to the publick good.” And when as a deacon he had been haled before the church for his political opinions, the church decided that it had “no right to call its members to an account for actions of a civil and public nature,” that the protestants “did not charge the deacon with immorality” and that it “begged leave to refer them to a civil tribunal.” It is further recorded in a later month that the affair between the deacon and “the brethren, styled petitioners, was happily accommodated.”