From a recent book review of a biography of Samuel Adams, U.S. revolutionary leader:
He was … a man so reviled by the British that two months after the shots fired at Lexington and Concord the top British general in America offered a "gracious pardon" to all colonists willing to put down their arms "excepting only Samuel Adams and John Hancock, whose offenses are of too flagitious a nature to admit of any other consideration than that of condign punishment."
An earlier use is from 1768 in a circular letter from the Earl of Hillsborough to the governors in America (link).
quote:
As his Majesty considers this Measure to be of a most dangerous & factious tendency calculated to inflame the minds of his good Subjects in the Colonies to promote an unwarrantable Combination and excite and encourage an open opposition to and denial of the Authority of Parliament, & to subvert the true principles of the Constitution; It is his Majesty's pleasure that you should immediately upon the Receipt hereof exert your utmost influence to defeat this flagitious attempt to disturb the Public Peace by prevailing upon the Assembly of your Province to take no notice of it, which will be treating it with the contempt it deserves.
