A second visit to Durham was made. Saturday, November 20, at 11 P.M., Ethan Allen, Remember Baker, and twenty to thirty others surrounded Spencer's house, took him prisoner, and carried him two miles to the house of one Green, where he was kept under a guard of four men until Monday morning, and then taken "to the house of Joseph Smith, of Durham, innkeeper." He was asked where he preferred to be tried; he replied that he was not guilty of any crime, but if he must be tried, he should choose his own door as the place of trial. The Green Mountain Boys had now increased in number to about one hundred and thirty, armed with guns, cutlasses, and other weapons. The people of Clarendon, Rutland, and Pittsford hearing of the trial, gathered to witness the proceedings. A rural lawsuit still has a wonderful fascination for a rural populace. Allen addressed the crowd, telling them that he, with Remember Baker, Seth Warner, and Robert Cochran, had been appointed to inspect and set things in order; that "Durham had become a hornets' nest" which must be broken up. A "judgment seat" was erected; Allen, Warner, Baker, and Cochran took seats thereon as judges, and Spencer was ordered to stand before this tribunal, take off his hat, and listen to the accusations. Allen accused him of joining with New York land jobbers against New Hampshire grantees and issuing a warrant as a justice. Warner accused him of accepting a New York commission as a magistrate, of acting under it, of writing a letter hostile to New Hampshire, of selling land bought of a New York grantee, and of trying to induce people to submit to New York. He was found guilty, his house declared a nuisance, and the sentence was pronounced that his house be burnt, and that he promise not to act again as a New York justice. Spencer declared that if his house were burned, his store of dry-goods and all his property would be destroyed and his wife and children would be great sufferers. Thereupon the sentence was reconsidered. Warner suggested that his house be not destroyed, but that the roof be taken off and put on again, provided Spencer should acknowledge that it was put on under a New Hampshire title and should purchase a New Hampshire title. The judges so decided. Spencer promised compliance, and "with great shouting" the roof was taken off and replaced, and this pioneer dry-goods store of 1773 was preserved.
At another time twenty or thirty of Allen's party visit the house of Coroner Jenny. The house was deserted; Jenny had fled, and they burned the house to the ground. The other Durhamites were visited and threatened, and they agreed to purchase New Hampshire titles. Some of the party returning from Clarendon met Jacob Marsh in Arlington, on his way from New York to Rutland. They seized him and put him on trial. Warner and Baker were the accusers. Baker wished to apply the "beech seal," but the judges declined. Warner read the sentence that he should encourage New Hampshire settlers, discourage New York settlers, and not act as a New York justice, "upon pain of having his house burnt and reduced to ashes and his person punished at their pleasure." He was then dismissed with the following certificate:
Arlington, Nov. 25, A.D. 1773. These may sertify that Jacob Marsh haith been examined, and had a fare trial, so that our mob shall not meadel farther with him as long as he behaves.
Sertified by us as his judges, to wit,
Nathaniel Spencer,
Saml. Tubs,
Philip Perry.
On reaching home, Marsh found that the roof of his house had been publicly taken off by the Green Mountain Boys.
Spencer in his letter to Duane, April 11, 1772, wrote: "One Ethan Allen hath brought from Connecticut twelve or fifteen of the most blackguard fellows he can get, double-armed, in order to protect him." This same Spencer, after acting as a Whig and one of the Council of Safety, deserted to Burgoyne in 1777, and died a few weeks after at Ticonderoga.