The Assembly resolved to ask the crown to remove both Hutchinson and Oliver, and prepared a petition to that effect, basing the request on the ground that these two men had plotted to encourage and intensify the quarrel of the colonies with the mother country. By their false representations they had caused a fleet and an army to be brought to Massachusetts, and were therefore the cause of the confusion and bloodshed which had resulted. This petition reached the king in the summer of 1773. Franklin thought that the whole affair would have a good effect. The resentment of the colonies against the mother country would be transferred to Hutchinson and the other individuals who had caused it; the ministry would see that the colonists were sincerely desirous of a good understanding with the British government and that Hutchinson and Oliver were evil persons bent on fomenting trouble and responsible for all the recent difficulties in Massachusetts. This was a pleasant theory, but it turned out to be utterly unsound and useless. The effect of the letters was just the opposite of what was expected. Instead of modifying the feelings of the colonists and the ministry, they increased the resentment of both. The king and his Privy Council were not inclined to pay any attention to the petition, and it might have slept harmlessly like other petitions from America at that time. But when the letters were printed in London, people began to wonder how they had reached the colonists. They were in a sense secret information, and had been intrusted to persons who were supposed to understand that they were for government circles alone. William Whately, to whom they had been written, was dead, and as it began to be suspected that his brother and executor, Thomas Whately, might have put them into circulation, he felt bound to defend himself. As a matter of fact, they seem to have passed out of William Whately’s hands before his death, and were never in the possession of the executor. But the executor had given permission to John Temple to look over the deceased Whately’s papers and to take from them certain letters which Temple and his brother had written to him. Accordingly, Thomas Whately went to see Temple, who gave the most positive assurances that he had taken only his own and his brother’s letters, and he repeated these assurances twice afterwards. But the suspicion against him getting into the newspapers, he demanded from Whately a public statement exonerating him. Whately published a statement which merely gave the facts and exonerated him no more than to say that Temple had assured him he did not take the Hutchinson letters. Such a statement left an unpleasant implication against Temple, for the executor seemed studiously to avoid saying that he believed Temple’s assurances.