A proclamation was issued by the governor of New York for apprehending some of the principal actors, and in the January (1770) term of the court at Albany several of the inhabitants of Bennington were indicted as rioters, but none of them were arrested.
Each party in the quarrel accused the other of being incited by the greed of the land-jobber and speculator, and no doubt there was some foundation for the charge, even on the part of the New Hampshire grantees. But with them, as against an aristocracy of monopolists, were the sympathies of the yeomen of New York, who, when called upon to enforce the authority of their own officers against their brethren of the Grants, held aloof, or feebly rendered their perfunctory aid.
Sheriff Ten Eyck, being required to serve a writ of ejectment on James Breckenridge of Bennington, called to his aid, by order of the governor, a posse of 750 armed militia. About 300 of the settlers, being apprised of his coming, assembled to oppose him. Nineteen of them were posted in the house; the others, divided in two forces of about equal number, were concealed along the road by which the sheriff and his men were advancing, and behind a ridge within gunshot of the house. Unsuspicious of their presence, the sheriff and his men marched to the house and were within the ambuscade. On threatening to make forcible entry, the sheriff was answered by those within, "Attempt it and you are a dead man." The ambuscading forces now made their presence known, and, displaying their hats upon the muzzles of their guns, made a show of twice their actual strength. The sheriff and his posse became aware of their dangerous position, and as one of the first historians of Vermont, Ira Allen, quaintly remarks, "not being interested in the dispute," and Mr. Ten Eyck remembering that important business required his immediate presence in Albany,[38] they discreetly withdrew without a shot being fired on either side.[39]
The New York officers were not always so easily vanquished, nor so unsuccessful in their attempts. The doughty esquire John Munro, who held lands in the Grants under a New York title, and lived upon them among his tenants in Shaftsbury, was a justice of the peace for the county of Albany. He was a man of other metal than Sheriff Ten Eyck, whom he assisted to arrest Silas Robinson, of Bennington, at his own door; and though the house wherein they lodged with their prisoner the night thereafter was surrounded by forty armed men who demanded his release, they carried him to Albany. Robinson was there indicted as a rioter in January, 1771, and held in jail till the next October, when he was released on bail. Upon another occasion, Munro, accompanied by the deputy sheriff and twelve men whom he called to his aid, demanded entrance to the house of Isaiah Carpenter, to serve a writ of ejectment upon him. Carpenter threatened to blow out the brains of any one who should attempt to enter, whereupon the deputy and his men forced the door, and Munro, entering alone, seized Carpenter with his gun in his hand. Two other men were found in the house, and two guns in a corner, "one loaded with powder and Bullets and the other with Powder and kidney Beans."
The New York claimants now sought to draw some of the prominent persons of the Grants to their interest by offers of New York titles on favorable terms, and by the bestowal of offices upon them, and they induced people of their own province to settle upon unoccupied New Hampshire Grants. By such means they hoped to smother the unmanageable element which had so far thwarted their attempts to gain control of the coveted region, and insidiously overcome the turbulent faction termed by them the "Bennington Mob."
Committees of Safety were organized in several towns of the Grants, and a convention of the settlers decreed that no New York officer should be allowed to take any person out of the district without permission of the Committee of Safety, and that no surveys should be made there, nor lines run, nor settlements made, under the authority of New York. The punishment for violation of this decree was to be discretionary with a court formed by the Committee of Safety. Civil officers, however, were permitted to perform their proper functions in the collection of debts, and in other matters not connected with the controversy.[40] Thus the inhabitants of the Grants established a crude but efficient civil government of their own.
FOOTNOTES:
[27] Doc. Hist. N. Y. vol. iv. pp. 331, 332.
[28] Williams's Hist. of Vt. vol. ii. pp. 12, 13.
[29] Doc. Hist. N. Y. vol. iv. p. 332.