9. Thomas Whately (c. 1728–1772) was secretary to George Grenville and then to the Treasury, October 1763 to July 10, 1765, when he lost his office at the fall of the Grenville ministry. He was M.P., 1761–72; a member of the Board of Trade, 1771–72; and under secretary of state, 1771–72. DNB; Namier and Brooke, House of Commons, III, 627–8. Whately was the recipient of the letters from Thomas Hutchinson and Andrew Oliver that BF somehow procured after Whately’s death and sent to Massachusetts, thereby precipitating the great affair of the “Hutchinson Letters.” This note, the only evidence among BF’s papers of personal contact between the two men, must have been written during the first half of 1765 while Whately was still at the Treasury. It almost certainly related to some matter connected with the Stamp Act, perhaps to BF’s suggestion of John Hughes as an appropriate appointee for the distributorship in Pennsylvania.