Murdered by the Tools of Tyranny

The inscription on William French's gravestone is one of the most explicit political statements of the early Revolutionary era: shot "by the Hands of Cruel Ministerial Tools of Tyranny, In the Courthouse at 11 o'clock at Night." Gravestones are public documents. Whoever composed that inscription knew future visitors would read it. "Ministerial tools of tyranny" was not the language of grief — it was a political verdict, placed in stone within weeks of the event.

French was twenty-one. He had gone to the courthouse to prevent the New York–appointed court from sitting; settlers had argued for a decade that New York had no legitimate authority over their lands. When the sheriff's posse cleared the building, French was shot.

Westminster happened five weeks before Lexington, in a community already organized and already angry. The county convention that convened afterward was not spontaneous. It was a prepared political movement finding its occasion. The gravestone is still there.