rning the patriots quietly began cutting down the post
which supported the obnoxious emblem. Mr. Stavers, who seems not to have
been belligerent himself, but the cause of belligerence in others, sent
out his black slave with orders to stop proceedings. The negro, who was
armed with an axe, struck but a single blow and disappeared. This blow
fell upon the head of Mark Noble; it did not kill him, but left him an
insane man till the day of his death, forty years afterward. A furious
mob at once collected, and made an attack on the tavern, bursting in
the doors and shattering every pane of glass in the windows. It was only
through the intervention of Captain John Langdon, a warm and popular
patriot, that the hotel was saved from destruction.

In the mean while Master Stavers had escaped through the stables in
the rear. He fled to Stratham, where he was given refuge by his friend
William Pottle, a most appropriately named gentleman, who had supplied
the hotel with ale. The excitement blew over after a time, and Stavers
was induced to return to Portsmouth. He was seized by the Committee of
Safety, and lodged in Exeter jail, when his loyalty, which had really
never been very high, went down below zero; he took the oath of
allegiance, and shortly after his released reopened the hotel. The
honest face of William Pitt appeared on the repentant sign, vice Earl
of Halifax, ignominiously removed, and Stavers was himself again. In the
state records is the following letter from poor Noble begging for the
enlargement of John Stavers:--

PORTSMOUTH, February 3, 1777. To the Committee of Safety of the Town of
Exeter: GENTLEMEN,--As I am informed that Mr. Stivers is in confinement
in gaol upon my account contrary to my desire, for when I was at Mr.
Stivers a fast day I had no ill nor ment none against the Gentleman but
by bad luck or misfortune I have received a bad Blow but it is so well
that I hope to go out in a day or two. So by this gentlemen of the
Committee I hope you will release the gentleman upon my account. I am
yours to serve. MARK NOBLE, A friend to my country.

From that period until I know not what year the Stavers House prospered.
It was at the sign of the William Pitt that the officers of the French
fleet boarded in 1782, and hither came the Marquis Lafayette, all
the way from Providence, to visit them. John Hancock, Elbridge Gerry,
Rutledge, and other signers of the Declaration sojourned here at various
times. It was h