St. Leger was sorry that Sergeant Tupper was killed." Allen said he could not tell, but observed "that good men were sorry when good men were killed or met with misfortune, which might be the case with General St. Leger." This enraged Runnals. Allen then requested Runnals, "to go at the head of his regiment, and demand the reason of his sorrow, and not stay there asking impertinent questions, eating up the country's provisions, doing nothing when the frontiers were invaded." Other high words passed between them that drew the attention from the letters and message sent the Governor and Colonel Allen from General Enos and other officers. The Governor immediately summoned the Board of War to meet in secret session at his chambers where new letters were made out purporting to come from General Enos and other officers of his army, to be used for the information and satisfaction of the public and read in Council and the Assembly for the originals and then returned to the Governor. These letters contained everything that was in the originals except the negotiations had with the British which prudence dictated to be separared from the other part, that the public might not thwart the object of the negotiation that the Board of War and some leading Vermonters had in view. Soon after the news came of the surrender of Lord Cornwallis and his army. When this surrender was made known to General St. Leger he and his army, returned to Canada. Thus ended the campaign of 1781. It has been seen that the object of the Haldimand correspondence on the part of Ver

mont was to make the British believe, that if they let the northern campaign of 1781, go by without forcing Vermont to defensive measures, Vermont could be induced to cast in their fortunes with them. While the Vermonters in fact never intended to carry out that purpose. It was simply a ruse to get rid of the horrors of a bloody campaign. Chief Justice Samuel Church of Litchfield, Connecticut, in an address at Salisbury in that State in 1841, declared that the policy of Vermont, in the Haldimand Correspondence and the eastern and western unions was shaped and her designs accomplished, by the advice of a confidential Council and friends of Vermont, assembled at the house of Governor Wolcott in the village of Litchfield, Connecticut.

In May 1782, seventeen British prisoners were taken to Canada and exchanged for forty citizens of Vermont and neighboring States who had been captured by the British.

John Murry, 4th Earl of Dunmore, who was born in 1732, and descended in the female line from the house of Stuart, and who succeeded to the peerage in 1756, was made Governor of New York, in January 1770. While Governor of New York, in a period of less than five months between February 28th and July 8th, 1771, he granted lands in Vermont to the amount of 511,900 acres, all of which had been previously granted by Gov. Benning Wentworth of New Hampshire; of this quantity of land, 51,000 acres were granted, in the name of other persons, for himself. His fees for these grants amounted to $14,248.44.

The titles of land under the New Hampshire grants were incidentally confirmed, at least, by the British board, which had jurisdiction of land ti tles in America, eighteen years after the King and Council on the 24th day of July, 1767, commanded that the Governor of New York was not to make any grant of any part of the land known as the New Hampshire Grants. On December 24, 1786, John Munro of Shaftsbury wrote to James Duane that he had been to England to get compensation for loss of his property; that in September 1785, the Commissioners awarded him a pitiful sum, having made large deductions from his claim; and he declared that "we discovered that the deduction was owing to the New Hampshire claims covering the most part of my property."

Joel Bigelow, Elijah Prouty and William Shattuck were returned by the Cumberland County Committee of Safety to the session of January 21, 1784, of the New York Convention; they were the last representatives of Cumberland County in New York.

In 1791, an act was passed that every possessor of improved land should cut the thistles in the month of July or August in each year and a penalty not exceeding thirty shillings for each neglect, with costs of prosecution.

The first reward offered by the Assembly for the detection of crime was in 1791. On the night of October 6th, 1791, the Windham County court house was burned, and on the 24th of October following that of the County of Windsor was also burned. The Assembly advised Governor Thomas

Chittenden to offer a reward of five hundred dollars for detection of the incendiaries, and the Governor, accordingly, issued his proclamation.

An act in 1791, was passed to meet the conscientious scruples of the Quakers. It was enacted that "Whereas the people called the Quakcrs, living in this State, have petitioned the Legislature, informing them that they feel a tenderness in their conscience with respect to paying taxes in the expenditure of which, sums of money are paid to the Chaplains of the General Assembly; and whereas this Legislature are ever willing to show their readiness to comply with the seasonable request of all such people as may think their rights of conscience infringed on." Therefore it was enacted that such sum as may be necessary for that purpose, shall be paid out of the avails of fines and penalties laid by the Supreme Court.

CHAPTER VIII.

INTERNAL AFFAIRS OF VERMONT AND THE CONTROVERSY WITH NEW YORK.

CONTINUED.

In the year 1774, to get rid of the Colony of New York, a plan was formed by Colonel Ethan Allen, Amos Bird, Colonel Philip Skene and other principal characters among the people, to establish a new royal colony, which was to contain the Grants of New Hampshire west of the Connecticut River and the country north of the Mohawk River to latitude 45° north, and to be bounded west by Iroquois River and Lake Ontario. Skene had been an officer in his Majesty's service, and had retired on a large patent of land lying at the south end of Lake Champlain, which was called Skenesboro (now Whitehall) which was regarded as a proper site for the capital of the new colony of which Skene was proposed to be Governor. With this in view he went to London, at his own expense, to accomplish that object. Had he succeeded, important results would have come to individuals and to the public. If that event had taken place the people who settled under the royal grants of New Hampshire would have been quiet, and relieved from the oppressive conduct of the Governor and Council of the Colony of New York.