The Intolerable Acts
Britain's House of Lords, the upper house of Parliament, helped issue a series of acts in response to the Boston Tea Party and the American colonies' continual rebellion.
Someone was going to pay.
Parliament was utterly fed up with colonial antics. The British could tolerate strongly worded letters or trade boycotts. They could put up with defiant legislatures and harassed customs officials to an extent.
But they saw the destruction of 342 chests of tea belonging to the British East India Company as wanton destruction of property by Boston thugs who did not even have the courage to admit responsibility.
http://www.ushistory.org/us/9g.asp
