The Knowles Riot, also known as the Impressment Riot of 1747, was a three-day riot in Boston that began on 17 November 1747, in response to the impressment of 46 Bostonians by Admiral Charles Knowles into the navy. Hundreds of mostly working-class rioters rampaged through Boston, paralyzed the provincial government, and captured several naval officers and the sheriff's deputy. After Knowles threatened to bombard the town, the British governor of Boston, William Shirley, persuaded him to release the Bostonians in exchange for the hostages. The Knowles Riot was the largest impressment riot in North America, and the most serious uprising by the American colonists in Colonial America prior to the Stamp Act protests of 1765. A few days after the incident, an anonymous writer—probably Samuel Adams—published a pamphlet praising the rioters for defending their natural rights. This was the first time the ideas of John Locke were used to justify resistance to the authority of the Crown in the American colonies. History Background During the War of the Austrian Succession, the Royal Navy again expanded its domestic use of impressment: the practice of forcing men, usually merchant seamen, into naval service. A captain who found himself shorthanded would send a "press-gang," armed with cudgels and cutlasses, onto a merchant ship to capture sailors for his own crew, often with the cooperation of local authorities. Those who were impressed remained in the service for three years or until they escaped, died, or the current war ended. Naturally they resented this treatment, for the same reasons that made recruiting difficult in the first place: the work was hard and dangerous, and for skilled sailors especially, the wages were low. Sometimes they resisted, and several riot ensued in England over impressment. In the continental American colonies, British law governing impressment had been different and became subject to dispute; by the Trade to America Act 1707 (6 Ann. c. 64 s. 9) Parliament had exempted those in the American colonies from impressment, but it later claimed that the exemption had been a temporary measure during that war. During King George's War a similar ban on impressment in the West Indies was enacted by the Sugar Trade Act 1745 (19 Geo. 2 c. 30), but with exceptions in the last section it caused further confusion and controversy. As a result, American colonists who resisted impressment often believed that they were within their legal rights to