The members of one wealthy refugee's family were reduced in their housekeeping to broken chairs and teacups, and to dipping the water out of an iron skillet into a pot, which they did as cheerfully as if they were using a silver urn. The furniture had been removed, though the family picture still hung in the blue room, and the harpsichord stood in the passage way to be abused by the children who passed through. These two aristocratic ladies were obliged to use their coach-house as a dining-room, and the "fowl-house" as their bed chamber. The picture continues: "In character the old lady looks as majestic even there, and dresses with as much elegance as if she were in a palace."[86] This mansion was General Putnam's headquarters at the battle of Bunker Hill, and was afterward confiscated. [86] James Murray, Loyalist, p. 245, 253. When the treaty of peace was signed, the question of amnesty and compensation for the Loyalists was long and bitterly discussed. Even the French minister had urged it. John Adams, one of the commission, favored compensating "the wretches, how little soever they deserved it, nay, how much soever they deserve the contrary."[87] [87] John Adams' Works, Vol. IX., p. 516. The commission hesitated "to saddle" America with the Loyalists because they feared the opposition at home, especially by the individual states. The British demand had been finally met with the mere promise that Congress would recommend to the states a conciliatory policy with reference to the Loyalists. This solution neither satisfied the Loyalists nor the more chivalrous Englishmen. They declared that the provision concerning the Loyalists was "precipitate, impolitic," and cruelly neglectful of their American friends.[88] But all of this cavilling was unreasonable and hasty, for England had gotten for the Loyalists the utmost attainable in the treaty, and later proved honorable and generous in the highest degree by compensating the Loyalists out of her own treasury--an act only excelled in the next century by the purchase and emancipation of all the slaves in the British Empire, for which the people of Great Britain taxed only themselves--the most generous act ever performed by any nation in the history of mankind. [88] Stevens' "Facsimiles," 1054.