But it is necessary to go back to the year 1765, when the long, monotonous quiet of over a century was to be broken for Weymouth and all her sister towns by the deep though distant mutterings of an impending war. The first notes of the struggle then break sharply in on the peaceful sameness of the town records like the blast of a trumpet. The Stamp Act had been passed, and the August riots had taken place in Boston. Mr. Oliver had been forced to resign his office, and the house of the Lieutenant-Governor had been sacked. The odious act was to take effect on the 1st of November, and a special session of the General Court had been called to take into consideration the course it was incumbent on the colony to pursue. The representative of Weymouth in those days was James Humphrey, Esq. Under these circumstances a meeting of the freemen was held on the 16th of October, at which Dr. Cotton Tufts was chosen Moderator, and a ringing address of instructions to Master Humphrey, as he was called, was voted and entered at length upon the records. The spirit of the ancient town was up, and its voice emitted no uncertain sound. Cotton Tufts was at that time thirty-four years of age. He was fully imbued with the patriotic spirit of the day, and was, in his own vicinage, a leading man. It is to his pen that the papers now entered on the town records are in all probability to be credited.[91] Presently the government of the mother country somewhat receded from its position, and, during the loyal reaction which ensued, a draft of a measure indemnifying the sufferers in the August riots was submitted to the General Court. A special town meeting was held on September 1, 1766, and the town refused to give its assent to the payment of damages out of the public treasury. But another meeting was held on the 1st of December, when written instructions were entered at length on the records, again embodying the full rebel spirit of the day, but this time, and under strict conditions, authorizing Master Humphrey to vote for the proposed compensation. In 1768 came the news that the British regiments were ordered to Boston. A committee of the Boston town meeting, called in consequence of this announcement, waited on Governor Bernard with a request, among other things, that the General Court should be convened. Meeting with a refusal, the Boston people took the matter into their own hands, and instructed their selectmen to invite, by circular letter, all the towns in the colony to send representatives to assemble in convention, at Boston, on the 22d of September. Over one hundred towns complied with this bold invitation, thus overriding the royal governor, and convening an assembly which, though it sat but four days, and carefully avoided any claim to a legal existence, was, in everything but in name, a house of representatives. In this convention sat James Humphrey, under instructions to be there from the town of Weymouth.