Destruction of Rivington's Printing Materials.—Capture of Seabury.—Rivington and Sears.
his Royal Gazetteer, his influence was still great, and and in active propagation.
In total disregard of truth and common fairness, Rivington abused the Republicans with unsparing severity, and none more bitterly than Captain Sears. *
That patriot, fired by personal insult and political zeal, came from Connecticut, where he had gone to plan schemes for the future with ardent Whigs, and at noonday entered the cityNov. 23, 1775 at the head of seventy-five light-horsemen, proceeded to the printing establishment of Seabury ** and two other obnoxious Tories, and managed to keep disaffection alive Rivington, at the foot of Wall Street, placed a guard with fixed bayonets around it, put all of his types into bags, destroyed his press and other apparatus, and then in the same order, amid the shouts of the populace, and to the tune of Yankee Doodle, left the city. They carried off the types and made bullets of them. On their way back to Connecticut they disarmed all the Tories in their route, and at West Chester seized and took with them the Reverend Samuel in triumph to New Haven.
* Isaac Sears was born at Norwalk, Connecticut, in 1729. His ancestors, who were among the earliest emigrants to Massachusetts, were from Colchester, England, and came to Plymouth in 1630. Mr. Sears was a successful merchant in the city of New York, engaged in the European and West India trade, when political matters attracted his attention. When the Stamp Act aroused the colonists, Sears stood forth as the champion of right, and, as we have seen in preceding pages, was one of the most active and zealous members of the association of the Sons of Liberty. He was an active Whig during the whole war, and when it ended, his business and his fortune had disappeared. Before the war he had commanded a vessel engaged in the West India trade. In 1785, we find him on the ocean as supercargo, bound for Canton, with others engaged in the venture. When they arrived at Canton. Captain Sears was very ill with fever, and on the twenty-eighth of October, 1785, he died at the age of nearly fifty-seven years. He was buried upon French Island, and his fellow-voyagers placed a slab, with a suitable inscription, over his grave.
** This was Bishop Seabury of a later day, whose grave we have noticed on page 50. He was born at New London in 1728, graduated at Yale in 1751, took orders in the church, in London, in 1753, and then settled in New Brunswick, New Jersey. He was at Jamaica, Long Island, for ten years, and then removed to West Chester, in the county of West Chester. He took sides with the Loyalists, and was one of those who signed a protest at White Plains against the measures of the Whigs. Sears and his party carried him to New Haven, where he was kept for some time, and then paroled to Long Island. His school at West Chester was broken up, his church was converted into a hospital, and he went to New York, and served as chaplain, at one time, in Colonel Fanning's corps of Loyalists. At the close of the war he settled in his native town. He was consecrated a bishop (the first in the United States) in 1784, and for the remainder of his life he presided over the diocese of Connecticut and Rhode Island. He died on the twenty-fifth of February, 1796.
Disaffection.—Disarming of the Tories.—Troops under Lee in New York.—His Head-quarters.—Sir Henry Clinton.