It covered the treatment of British officials in the Massachusetts Bay colony and became law on 20 May 1774.

The Act was created in the aftermath of the Boston Tea Party, when the British government was working to regain control of the colony.

The Act was seen by those in America as a final sign that there would be no further negotiations with the British government in London.

The First Continental Congress met four months later and the American Revolutionary War began less than a year after the Act was passed.

To ensure that legal trials were more favorable to the Crown than the potential prejudices of local juries, the Act granted a change of venue to another British colony (or to Great Britain) in trials of officials charged with a crime arising from their enforcement of the law or suppression of riots.