Royal Academy of Arts to that drawn up by Cheere in 1755. It was Sir William Chambers, a prominent architect and head of the British government's architects' department, the Office of Works, who used his connections with George III to gain royal patronage and financial support for the Academy in 1768. The painter Joshua Reynolds was made its first president, and Francis Milner Newton was elected the first secretary, a post he held for two decades until his resignation in 1788. The instrument of foundation, signed by George III on 10 December 1768, named 34 founder members and allowed for a total membership of
HMS Liberty (1768) on the north end of Goat Island in Newport harbor as one of the first overt American acts of defiance against the British government. HMS Liberty (1768) Liberty was a sloop owned by John Hancock, an American merchant. Seized by customs officials in Boston in 1768, it was commissioned into the Royal Navy as HMS "Liberty", and was burned the next year by American colonists in Newport, Rhode Island in one of the first acts of open defiance against the British crown by American colonists. The ship was originally owned by John Hancock. In 1768, British officials alleged that Bostonians