ticut and other colonies, the stamp officers were induced by the threats and violence of the people to give up their stamps, and they had then been placed where they were secure against being used. The first day of November 1765 was the time appointed for the act to go into operation. In New York the first day of November came and went, and the stamps were still withheld from the control of the people. On their arrival from England, the stamp distributor, following the example of those in the other provinces, had resigned, refusing to receive them, but Lieut. Gov. Colden had taken them into Fort George, and had obtained a detachment of marines from a ship of war in the harbor, resolving to preserve them by force if necessary, and cause them to be distributed. In the evening of that day a vast torch light procession carrying a scaffold and two images, one of the governor and the other of the devil whispering in his ear, came from the fields, now the park, down Broadway to within eight or ten feet of the fort, knocked at its gate, broke open the governor's coach house, took out his chariot, carried the images upon it round town and returned to burn them with his carriages and sleighs, before his eyes, on the Bowling Green, under the gaze of the garrison on the ramparts, and of all New York gathered about. The next day, it becoming evident that the people were too strong to be successfully

fascinating anticipations were not destined to be realized. The people who were rushing to settle on the lands in that region, she says, were "fierce republicans," who refused to become tenants to any one, and insisted on owning the lands they should occupy, whose "whole conversation was tainted with politics-Cromwellian politics," who talked about "slaves to arbitrary power,” and whose “indifference to the mother country, and illiberal opinions and manners were extremely offensive to all loyal subjects of the king. Her father becoming disgusted with the surroundings of his property, unable to obtain a suitable tenantry and alarmed at the spread of republicanism and disloyalty, embarked in the summer of 1770, with his daughter, then about fifteen years old, for his native Scotland. Mrs. Grant carried with her the most embittered feelings towards " the drawling New England republicans" who had blotted out her " paradise of Clarendon,” and she vents her indignation against the subsequently formed state of Vermont and its inhabitants, in no measured terms. Lieut. McVicar, his daughter says, "entrusted his lands to the care of John Munro, Esq., then residing near Clarendon, and chief magistrate of that newly peopled district, a very worthy friend and countryman of his own, who was then "in high triumph on account of a fancied conquest over the supporters of the twenty mile line." This triumph, which was probably the decision of the Albany courts against the New Hampshire title, as will appear in the sequel, was but fancied not real.

Albany Records, Land Papers, vol. 18, p. 111, 139; vol. 19, p. 97. Mrs. Grant's American Lady, Appleton's edition, 1846, p. 3, 232–3, 235-7, 239, 241, 247, 255-7, 267, 274, 275, 276.

resisted, Colden gave way, and the stamps were deposited in the City Hall, in the custody of the mayor and corporation.1

As all land patents were to be void unless stamped, and as no stamps could be obtained, their issue was necessarily suspended. Up to this time the patents issued by Colden, of lands within the disputed territory, now Vermont, covered over one hundred and seventy-four thousand acres, nearly all of which had been previously granted by New Hampshire. Of this quantity, it is worthy of special notice, that only four thousand acres were lands on the east side of the Green mountain, the remaining one hundred and seventy thousand acres being on the west side. This quantity of four thousand acres comprised the rights of Gov. Benning Wentworth of five hundred acres each in the eight townships of Barnard, Bridgewater, Hartford, Hartland, Pomfret, Springfield, Weathersfield and Woodstock, and was all of it unoccupied.

A sufficient reason for this difference in the location of New York patents on the two sides of the mountain may perhaps be found in the fact that the lands on the east side were at a greater distance from New York, and were much less familiarly known to the city speculators than those on the west side, and were therefore rarely sought for. But there appears also to have been another reason for this difference, of a somewhat peculiar character, which is not undeserving attention.

In 1764, a daughter of the Earl of Ilchester, a British nobleman closely connected with the ministry, to the great disgust of her family, made a clandestine match with one O'Brien, a play actor. To rid themselves as far as possible of the continued mortification of this unfortunate affair, it was deemed advisable by the bride's aristocratic friends, to send the happy couple to America, and to provide for them at the public expense. Orders of the king in council were therefore obtained directing the governor of New York to grant to Lord Ilchester, Lord Holland and a Mr. Upton, sixty thousand acres of land for O'Brien's benefit, and he was also recommended for an important appointment in the New York customs. The place in the customs appears to have been too strongly held by the incumbent to be made available, and O'Brien seems to have been further disappointed in not being permitted to locate his land in the rich valley of the Mohawk, and to have complained of the conduct of Lieut. Gov. Colden in that respect to the lords of trade. In answer to the letter of the board on that subject, Colden wrote to Lord Hillsborough, under date of June 7, 1765, averring that

1 Col. His. N. Y., vol. 7, p. 771. Bancroft, vol. 5, p. 355.

there were no unpatented lands on the Mohawk that could be granted; and after stating that there were large tracts of good and valuable lands on and near Connecticut river subject to grant, added as follows: "I have put off the granting of land in that part of the country until October that I may know my Lord Ilchester and Lord Holland's pleasure as to the location of the king's grant to them." He did accordingly postpone the granting of any of those lands until the close of October, the patents of the four thousand acres, before mentioned, bearing date the 30th of that month. History furnishes numerous instances in which great and important events appear to flow from remote and trifling causes, and perhaps it is not possible to aver with absolute certainty that the settlers under New Hampshire on Connecticut river might not, like those on the Batten kill, have waked up some morning and found the lands they occupied had been granted to others by Gov. Colden, but for the lucky union of a female sprig of the British aristocracy with a vagabond play actor.1

It will at all events be perceived that, while the New York government was rapidly disposing of the property of the settlers and grantees of lands on the west side of the Green mountain, those on the other side of the mountain were as yet unmolested; up to this time the injury to them was only prospective.

in

On the 12th of November, ten days after Colden had surrendered the stamps to the mayor of New York, Sir Henry Moore arrived from England and superseded him in the government of the province. Sir Henry had been lieutenant governor of the Island of Jamaica, where he had shown considerable skill and energy suppressing a dangerous slave insurrection; in reward for which the order of knighthood and the office of governor of New York had been conferred upon him. Mrs. Grant, who at the time was an inmate of the Schuyler family at Albany, where Governor Moore visited, says of him in her American Lady that "like many of his predecessors he was a mere show governor," that "he had never thought of business in his life, but was honorable so far as a man could be who always spent more than he had, was gay, good natured, and well bred, affable and courteous in a very high degree, and if the business of a governor was merely to keep the governed in good humor none was fitter for that office than he."

It may justly be said of him that though well meaning he was indolent and frivolous and addicted to social pleasures and amuse

1 Col. Hist. N. Y., vol. 7, pp. 741-745. Calendar of N. Y. Land Papers, p. 344.

ments, and was consequently in the ordinary affairs of his government influenced and led by those about him.

On learning of the arrival of a new governor, the settlers in the townships of Pownal, Bennington, Shaftsbury, Arlington, Sunderland, Manchester and Danby, resolved to apply to him for relief against the New York claimants. They accordingly appointed Samuel Robinson of Bennington, and Jeremiah French of Manchester, their agents for that purpose, who repaired to New York in the month of December and laid their case before him. He gave them pleasant language, but offered them no protection against the patents of their lands which had already been issued by Colden, nor any effectual security against future grants.

On a change of ministry in England, the stamp act had been repealed in the month of March 1766, information of which reached New York the ensuing May. So much complaint had been made to Sir Henry Moore by the settlers under New Hampshire, of the conduct of his predecessor in granting their lands to others, and so much difficulty seemed likely to arise in consequence, that he thought it advisable to have an order of his council made and published, allowing three months from the 6th of June, for persons claiming under such grants to appear and produce evidence of their titles, in which order it was declared that on their failure to do so their claims were to be rejected, "and the petitions already preferred for said lands forthwith proceeded on." 1

In consequence of this order, petitions were presented to Gov. Moore by the proprietors of a considerable number of the townships granted by New Hampshire, for a confirmation of their charters, and verbal negotiations were entered into in relation to many more. But the expense of obtaining the confirmation of a township charter, which included not only enormous patent fees but also the cost of a new survey which was always required, was found to be so great as to render it impossible for most of them to comply. This was the more difficult and oppressive on the west side of the Green mountain, where there was scarcely a township in which grants of more or less extent had not already been made by Colden and generally of the best lands, leaving only the poorer and less valuable subject to confirmation. The settlers had in general, been farmers and mechanics at their former homes, in moderate circumstances, or the sons of such persons. They had expended their small fortunes in acquiring the New Hampshire title, in preparing for the settlement, and in improvement of their lands, and they were absolutely unable to meet this additional demand.

1N. Y. Doc. Hist., vol. 4, p. 584, 587. N. Y. Land Papers, vol. 19, p. 28.

CHAPTER IX.

APPLICATION OF THE SETTLERS TO THE CROWN FOR RELIEF, AND ORDER IN COUNCIL IN THEIR FAVOR.

1766-1767.

Samuel Robinson agent of the settlers to present their petition to the kingCopy of their petition - Their case stated more in detail by one from Samuel Robinson prepared in England - Another presented by the society for the propagation of the gospel-Letter of censure from Lord Shelburne to Gov. Moore, enclosing the two petitions - Gov. Moore's reply - Order of the king in council of July 24, 1767, forbidding further grants by New York of the controverted lands - Mr. Robinson's death in London-End of Gov. Moore's administration.

THERE being no longer any hope of relief from the government

of New York, the claimants under New Hampshire resolved to appeal for redress of their grievances to the conscience of the king. A petition was accordingly prepared and signed by over one thousand of the settlers and grantees, and Samuel Robinson, Esq., was appointed their agent to repair to England and lay it before his majesty. Mr. Robinson had emigrated from Hardwick, Mass., to Bennington, in 1761, and had held the office of justice of the peace under New Hampshire from February, 1762. He had served as captain in the troops of Massachusetts in the French war during several campaigns, and was at the head of his company in the battle of lake George, in September, 1755, when the French were defeated by Generals Johnson and Lyman. Although about sixty years of age, he was active, intelligent, enterprising and energetic, and of an unblemished moral and religious character, and he could not be considered as wholly unsuited to the responsible position to which he had been assigned.

William Samuel Johnson, an eminent lawyer and statesman of Connecticut, was then preparing to leave for England, as agent for that colony to the home government, and the petitioners employed him to assist Mr. Robinson in his mission. They sailed in the same vessel from New York, the 25th of December, 1766, and landed at Falmouth, England, the 30th of January following, and reached London a few days afterwards.1

1 Mr. Johnson's Manuscript Diary, in possession of his grandson and namesake at Stratford, Conn.