Francis Bernard was the royal governor of the Massachusetts Bay colony from 1760 to 1769 and a protagonist in the growing dispute between colonial radicals and Great Britain. His correspondence was written to the Board of Trade and Commissioners in August 1765 as a result of one of the first major outbreaks of violent opposition to imperial taxation in the British colonies in North America. The Board of Trade was an agency that distributed information about the colonies to the Privy Council and Parliament in Great Britain. The purpose of the Board of Trade was to prepare royal instructions for colonial governors and to acquire and assess information on colonial affairs. Governor Bernard’s letter solicited the Board of Trade for advice and military assistance with the growing agitation in Boston, Massachusetts, over the Stamp Act. The act required the colonies to purchase expensive, specially stamped paper produced in England to use for their newspapers and official documents, effectively taxing them for the paper they used.