THE WARNICR HOME AT PORTSMOUTH.
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��senior. But though the youngest member of that honorable body, in wealth, in social position, in his indi- vidual (jualiiies, Jonathan Warner was not inferior to any.
Jonathan Warner remained in the council until the breaking out of the Revolutionary contest, when the royal authority was overthrown. It is cus- tomary to call him a tory, and his name is indeed among those who re- fused to sign the Association Test of 1776. Nearly all those who held office under the crown refused to sign the test. Councillor Peter Oilman was one, and yet he would not have been regarded as a dangerous foe to liberty, for his fellow citizens chose him moderator that very year at their annual town-meeting. While some of those who refused to sign were Eng- lish in sentiment and too strongly at- tached to the mother country to rebel, there were others who were willing that a revolution should take place, but would not risk the chance of their offices or business by taking a part in the rebellion, fearing the consequences should it prove a failure. The case of Jonathan Warner may be that of some others. Warner was a commis- sary under the crown, and in his keep- ing were some of the munitions of war, which were needed by the patri- ots. He was waited on by the Sons of Liberty, who demanded the keys of the storehouse of him. With all the sternness of an official Warner answered : " What right have you to make such a demand ? The keys are my private property, I will not give them up to anybody ; but if >"ou break in my door, what can I do?"
The patriots took the hint and acted upon it. The door was broken open that night, and the munitions of war removed. The commissary could not have regretted the proceeding, by op- posing which his reputation as an of- ficer did not suffer with his sovereign. Meeting one of the patriots the follow- ing day, the honorable councillor ob- served : " What do you think ! Those fellows broke open my store last night,
��and / should not be surprised if they do it again to-night."
If Hon. Jonathan Warner was a Tory, he was at least an inoffensive one. But we believe that his sym- paties were with the colonists. He accepted gracefully the result of the war, and we find him in several impor- tant positions during subsequent years. With John Langdon, Joshua Went- worih, James Sheafe, and other leading citizens, he was one of the committee appointed to receive President Wash- ington, at the time of his visit to Ports- mouth in 1789. He filled municipal offices of trust, and went down hon- ored to his grave.
Lady Warner died in 1 780. She left no children. Colonel Warner mar- ried again in i 783, his third wife being Elizabeth, daughter of Hon. Jonas Pitts, of Boston, whose mother was sister to Governor James Bowdoin of Massachusetts. She died in October, 1810. The councillor lived until May 14, 1 8 14, when he too passed the river, at the good old age of eighty-eight years. He dressed in the continental style to the day of his death, and with him disappeared the queues, the knee buckles, and the scarlet colored broad- cloth cloaks worn by the noblesse of colonial times. " We well recollect Mr. Warner," says Mr. Brewster, " as one of the last of the cocked hats. As in a vision of early childhood he is still before us, in all the dignity of the aristocratic crown officers. That broad- backed, long-skirted brown coat, those small clothes and silk stockings, those silver buckles, and that cane — we see them still, although the life that filled and moved them ceased half a centurv ago."
How many times he had passed be- tween those pillared posts going and coming from his stately mansion house ; how had that doorway been thronged with servants escorting him to his coach in which he rode in state to the levees of the governor or to meet him in his council chamber ! And through this gateway he was borne the last time to sleep his long sleep under the sculp-
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