our party were obliged to retire. Colonel Allen and two or three of his men were taken prisoners, and about as many were wounded; the rest returned to their friends. By the best accounts, we learn that a considerable number of the enemy were killed and wounded.

COLONEL ETHAN ALLEN TO GENERAL PRESCOTT.

September 25, 1775.

HONOURABLE SIR: In the wheel of transitory events, I find myself prisoner, and in irons: probably your Honour has certain reasons, to me inconceivable, though I challenge an instance of this sort of economy of the Americans, during the late war, towards any officers of the Crown.

On my part, I have to assure your Honour, that when I had the command, and took Captain Delaplace and Lieutenant Felton, with the garrison of Ticonderoga, I treated them with every mark of friendship and generosity, the evidence of which is notorious, even in Canada. I have only to add, that I expect an honourable and humane treatment, as an officer of my rank and merit should have; and subscribe myself your Honour’s most obedient humble servant,

ETHAN ALLEN.

To General Prescott.

COMMITTEE OF ROCHESTER TO THE COUNCIL OF MASSACHUSETTS.

Rochester, September 25, 1775.

MAY IT PLEASE YOUR HONOURS: The Town beg leave to make the following objections against Enoch Hammond being appointed one of the Justices of the Peace for the County of Plymouth:

Objection 1st. He refusing to serve the Town as one of the Committee of Correspondence.

Objection 2d. He refusing to act in Town-Meeting for the space of about one year last past, and having received a Justice of the Peace’s place just before Hutchinson’s departure.

Objection 3d. He refusing to sign the league and covenant which the inhabitants of this Town signed, and having used his influence to the contrary.

Objection 4th. Said Hammond affirmed that America, from Nova-Scotia to West-Florida, was a manless mob.

All of which hath given great umbrage and uneasiness to the inhabitants of this Town. Therefore humbly pray your Honours not to appoint him, as it will be very disagreeable to the inhabitants of said Town, and have unhappy consequences to the community. These things we beg leave to offer and prove, if called upon. Furthermore, the Town humbly beg leave to recommend Major Ebenezer White and Mr. David Wing to be Justices of the Peace in said Town.

By order of the Committee appointed for that purpose:

JOHN DOTY, Chairman.

To the Honourable the President of the Council of the Colony of the Massachusetts-Bay.

ADDRESS OF THE MAYOR, ETC., OF GREAT YARMOUTH.

Address of the Mayor, Aldermen, Burgesses, and Commonalty of the Borough of Great Yarmouth, in Common Council assembled, presented to His Majesty by Charles Townshend, Esq., one of their Representatives in Parliament.

To the King’s Most Excellent Majesty.

We, your Majesty’s most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Mayor, Aldermen, Burgesses, and Commonalty of the Borough of Great Yarmouth, in Common Council assembled, beg leave, at this important juncture, to lay at your Majesty’s feet the strongest assurances of our faithful and zealous attachment to your Majesty’s royal person, and to the supreme Legislature of Great Britain.

We have observed the tender and humane reluctance with which your Majesty and the Parliament have entered upon measures of coercion against your Majesty’s disobedient subjects in America, and at the same time we cannot but have remarked, with the deepest concern, that the demands of those deluded men have risen in proportion to the unwillingness they have seen in the Parent State to have recourse to measures of force, till at length some of your Majesty’s Colonies have dared to enter into an open rebellion. Their Troops have taken the field, money has been raised to pay them, and an illegal assembly now sitting at Philadelphia has usurped, and is executing with a heavy hand, those powers which have been denied to the Legislature of Great Britain.

In this situation of affairs, we think it our duty to express our abhorrence of the rebellion now carrying on in America, and to make a tender of our lives and fortunes towards the suppression of it; beseeching your Majesty to take care that your Empire be not dismembered, nor the supreme authority of the British Legislature impaired. Exert, great Sir, your whole force, should it be necessary,

General Prescott, who asked me my name, which I told him. He then asked me whether I was that Colonel Allen who took Ticonderoga. I told him I. was the very man. Then he shook his cane over my head, calling many hard names, among which he frequently used the word rebel, and put himself in a great rage. I told him ho would do well not to cane me, for I was not accustomed to it, and shook my fist at him, telling him that was the beetle of mortality for him, if he offered to strike; upon which Captain McCloud, of the British, pulled him by the skirt, and whispered to him, as he afterwards told me, to this import: that it was inconsistent with his honour to strike a prisoner. He then ordered a Sergeant’s command, with fixed bayonets, to come forward and kill thirteen Canadians, which were included in the treaty aforesaid.

It cut me to the heart to see the Canadians in so hard a case, in consequence of their having been true to me; they were wringing their hands, saying their prayers, as I concluded, and expected immediate death. I therefore stepped between the executioners and the Canadians, opened my clothes, and told General Prescott to thrust his bayonet into my breast, for I was the sole cause of the Canadians taking up arms—the guard, in the mean time, rolling their eye-balls from the General to me, as though impatiently waiting his dread commands to sheath their bayonets in my heart; I could, however, plainly discern that he was in a suspense and quandary about the matter. This gave me additional hopes of succeeding; for my design was not to die, but save the Canadians by a finesse. The General stood a minute, when he made me the following reply: “I will not execute you now; but you shall grace a halter at Tyburn, God damn you.”

I remember I disdained his mentioning such a place; I was, notwithstanding, a little pleased with the expression, as it significantly conveyed to me the idea of postponing the present appearance of death; besides, his sentence was by no means final, as to gracing a halter, although I had anxiety about it after I landed in England, as the reader will find in the course of this history. General Prescott then ordered one of his officers to take me on board the Gaspee schooner of war, and confine me, hands and feet in irons, which was done the same afternoon I was taken.

The action continued an hour and three-quarters, by the watch, and I know not to this day how many of my men were killed, though I am certain there were but few. If I remember right, seven were wounded; one of them, William Stewart by name, was wounded by a savage with a tomahawk, after he was taken prisoner and disarmed, but was rescued by some of the generous enemy, and so far recovered of his wounds that he afterwards went with the other prisoners to England.

Of the enemy were killed, a Major Carden, who had been wounded in eleven different battles, and an eminent merchant, Patterson, of Montreal, and some others; but I never knew their whole loss, as their accounts were different. I am apprehensive that it is rare that so much ammunition was expended, and so little execution done by it; though such of my party as stood the ground behaved with great fortitude, much exceeding that of the enemy, but were not the best of marksmen, and, I am apprehensive, were all killed or taken; the wounded were all put into the hospital at Montreal, and those that were not were put on board of different vessels in the river, and shackled together by pairs, viz: two men fastened together by one handcuff, being closely fixed to one wrist of each of them, and treated with the greatest severity, nay, as criminals.

I now come to the description of the irons which were put on me. The handcuff was of a common size and form, but my leg irons, I should imagine, would weigh thirty pounds; the bar was eight feet long, and very substantial; the shackles, which encompassed my ancles, were very tight. I was told by the officer who put them on, that it was the King’s plate, and I heard other of their officers say that it would weigh forty weight. The irons were so close upon my ancles, that I could not lie down in any other manner than on my back. I was put into the lowest and most wretched part of the vessel, where I got the favour of a chest to sit on; the same answered for my bed at night; and having procured some little blocks of the guard, who day and night, with fixed bayonets, watched over me, to lie under each end of the large bar of my leg irons, to preserve my ancles from galling, while I sat on the chest, or lay back on the same, though most of the time, night and day, I sat on it; but at length, having a desire to lie down on my side, which the closeness of the irons forbid, I desired the Captain to loosen them for that purpose, but was denied the favour. The Captain’s name was Royal, who did not seem to be an ill-natured man, but oftentimes said that his express orders were to treat me with such severity, which was disagreeable to his own feelings; nor did he ever insult me, though many others who came on board did. One of the officers, by the name of Bradley, was very generous to me; he would often send me victuals from his own table; nor did a day fail but that he sent me a good drink of grog.

The reader is now invited back to the time I was put into irons. I requested the privilege to write to General Prescott, which was granted. I reminded him of the kind and generous manner of my treatment of the prisoners I took at Ticonderoga, the injustice and ungentleman-like usage which I had met with from him, and demanded gentleman-like usage, but received no answer from him. I soon after wrote to General Carleton, which met the same success. In the mean while, many of those who were permitted to see me were very insulting.— Allen’s Narrative.