ABSTRACT
Fortunately Belknap had the periodic letters of John Eliot to make him smile and think. Eliot wrote to Belknap in January, 1777, that word had arrived in Boston on the wings of rumour from the south ‘that the whole British army was cut o in a late general action at Princeton’. Eliot wrote that he was becoming as incredulous as Doubting omas about such rumours, which rarely had a legitimate source, being carried by word of mouth.
