offended by taking the abovesaid Oath, and desire this may be
inserted in the public Prints. Witness my Hand

ABIJAH WILLARD.

From that time forward Colonel Willard lived quietly at home until the
nineteenth of April, 1775; when, setting out in the morning on horseback
to visit his farm in Beverly, where he had planned to spend some days in
superintending the planting, he was turned from his course by the
swarming out of minute-men at the summons of the couriers bringing the
alarm from Lexington, and we next find him with the British in Boston.
He never saw Lancaster again. It is related that, on the morning of the
seventeenth of June, standing with Governor Gage, in Boston,
reconnoitring the busy scene upon Bunker's Hill, he recognized with the
glass his brother-in-law Colonel William Prescott, and pointed him out
to the governor, who asked if he would fight. The answer was: "Prescott
will fight you to the gates of hell!" or, as another historian more
mildly puts it: "Ay, to the last drop of his blood." Colonel Willard
knew whereof he testified, for the two colonels had earned their
commissions together in the expeditions against Canada. An officer of so
well-known skill and experience as Abijah Willard was deemed a valuable
acquisition, and he was offered a colonel's commission in the British
army, but refused to serve against his countrymen, and at the evacuation
of Boston went to Halifax, having been joined by his own and his
brother's family. In 1778, he was proscribed and banished. Later in the
war he joined the royal army, at Long Island, and was appointed
commissary; in which service it was afterwards claimed by his friends
that his management saved the crown thousands of pounds. A malicious
pamphleteer of the day, however, accused him of being no better than
others, and alleging that whatever saving he effected went to swell his