[Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)] chester. For inveterate devotion to the king and scorn of all rebels he certainly yielded to none in all our County of Westchester. He relates in one of his letters thai as early as the end of the year 1773 he began to strongly suspect that -the leaders of opposition to govern-ment in America " were aiming at independence; whereupon he un-dertook to do all that lay in his power, -by preaching, reading the Homilies against Rebellion," and the like, to persuade his people a<»'ainst countenancing such wicked tendencies. "And blessed be God," he exclaims, "I have the satisfaction that the Church people [Episcopalians] in all my parishes [Salem, Ridgefield, and Ridge-bury] have almost unanimously— there being three or four excep-tions—maintained their loyalty from the first." In.May, 1776, he says he was called before the " Rebel Committee of Cortlandt's Manor" and -invited " to join their association. This he indignantly declined to do. Next, he was ordered to furnish blankets for the " Rebel sol-diers," and, refusing, was sent under guard to the committee, which, failing to persuade him on the same point, gave orders to search his house^and appropriate the desired goods; but happily his wife had safely secreted all they possessed. Then he was directed to pay -up-wards of thirty shillings " to the mortified searching party, refused to obey, and was detained under guard until he produced the money.