Nevertheless it was thought expedient, before issuing the letters, to print and circulate such a series of "Resolves" as might prepare the public mind for what was to come later. This was accordingly done. The "Resolves," bearing date of June 16, 1773, indicated clearly and at length the precise significance of the letters; declared it to be the humble opinion of the House that it was not to the interest of the Crown to continue in high places persons "who are known to have, with great industry, though secretly, endeavored to undermine, alter, and overthrow the Constitution of the province"; and concluded by praying "that his Majesty would be pleased to remove ... forever from the government thereof" the Honorable Andrew Oliver and his Excellency Thomas Hutchinson. His Majesty did not remove Mr. Hutchinson; but the Governor's usefulness, from every point of view, was at an end. When the notorious letters were finally printed, it appeared that there were seventeen in all, of which six were written by Mr. Hutchinson in the years 1768 and 1769. These latter documents did not in fact add anything to the world's stock of knowledge; but they had been so heralded, ushered in with so much portentous explication that they scarcely needed to be read to be understood. "Had they been Chevy Chase," the Governor said, the people would have believed them "full of evil and treason." It was indeed the perfect fruit of Samuel Adams's labors that the significance of Mr. Hutchinson's letters had in some manner become independent of their contents. So awake were the people to the danger of being deceived, that whatever the Governor now said or ever had written was taken to be but the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Meanwhile, the attention of all patriots was diverted from the letters to a far more serious matter; and when, on December 16, 1773, a cargo of the East India Company's tea, consigned among others to Thomas and Elisha Hutchinson, was thrown into Boston harbor, the great crisis, which Samuel Adams had done so much to make inevitable by virtue of thinking it so, was at last a reality. It was a limitation of Thomas Hutchinson's excellent administrative mind that he was wholly unaware of this crisis. In February of the next year, finding that "a little discreet conduct," or indeed any conduct on his part, was altogether without good effect, the Governor announced that he had "obtained leave from the King to go to England." On the 1st of June, driving from his home to the foot of Dorchester Heights, he embarked on the Minerva and arrived in London one month later. It was his expectation that after a brief absence, when General Gage by a show of military force should have brought the province to a reasonable frame of mind, he would return and assume again the responsibilities of his office. He never returned, but died in England on June 3, 1780, an unhappy and a homesick exile from the country which he loved.