Quartering Act

Legislation passed by the British Parliament in 1765 that required colonial authorities in America to provide food, housing, fuel, and transportation to British troops stationed in their areas.

The act was initiated to help pay for increasing defence costs in the colonies. The Americans, especially New Yorkers who had the largest number of garrisoned forces, resented the act, seeing it as a further assertion of British control. A second quartering act in 1774 became one of the Intolerable Acts (the name given to the legislation passed by the British Parliament in 1774 that helped fuel the American Revolution).