Ethan Allen, the Robin Hood of Vermont

Preface

i At the time of the death of Mr. Henry Hall, } in 1889, the manuscript for this volume con- ■" sisted of finished fragments and many notes, was left in the hands of his daughters to ^:lete. The purpose of the author was to make a fuller life of Allen than has been written, and singling him from that cluster of I sturdy patriots in the New Hampshire Grants, to make plain the vivid personality of a Vermont hero to the younger generations. Mn Hall's well-known habit of accuracy and painstaking investigation must be the guaranty that this " Life" is worthy of a place among the volumes of the history of our nation.

Henrietta Hall Boardman.

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Chapter I. Page

An Account of Allen's Family, , . . i

CHAPTER H.

Early Life, Habits of Thought, and Religious Tendencies, 12

CHAPTER HI.

Removal to Vermont. — The New Hampshire Grants, ♦ 22

CHAPTER IV.

Allen and the Green Mountain Boys.— Negotiations Between New York and the New Hampshire Grants, 32

CHAPTER V.

The Raid upon Colonel Reid's Settlers.— Allen's Outlawry. — Crean Brush. — Philip Skene, 46 vi Contents,

CHAPTER VI.

PAGE

Preparations to Capture Ticonderoga. — Diary of Edward Mott. — Expeditions Planned, — Benedict Arnold. — Gershom Beach, .»...,». 6i

CHAPTER VH.

Capture of Ticonderoga, 73

CHAPTER Vni.

Allen's Letters to the Continental Congress, TO THE New York Provincial Congress, AND TO THE MASSACHUSETTS CON- GRESS, ........ 81

CHAPTER IX.

Allen's "^.e ~^.rs to the Montreal Merchants, TO the Indians in Canada, and to the Canadians. — ^John Brown, . . . .89

CHAPTER X.

Warner Elected Colonel of the Green Mountain Boys. — Allen's Letter to Governor Trumbull. — Correspondence in Regard to THE Invasion of Canada. — Attack on Montreal. — Defeat and Capture. — Warner's Report 98

Contents, vii

CHAPTER XL

PAGE

Allen's Narrative. — Attack on Montreal.— Defeat and Surrender. — Brutal Treatment. — Arrival in England. — Debates in Parliament, no

CHAPTER Xn.

Life in Pendennis Castle. — Lord North. — On Board the " Solebay." — Attentions Received in Ireland and Madeira, . .128

CHAPTER XHL

Rendezvous at. Cape Fear.— Sickness.— Halifax Jail. — Letter to General Massey. — Voyage to New York. — On Parole, . . 144

CHAPTER XIV.

Release from Prison,— With Washington at Valley Forge. — The Haldimand Correspondence 162

CHAPTER XV.

Vermont's Treatment by Congress. — Allen's Letters to Colonel Webster and to Congress.— Reasons for Believing Allen a Patriot, ... * ... 173 viii Contents.

CHAPTER XVI.

PAGE

Allen with Gates.— At Bennington. — David Redding. — Reply to Clinton. — Embassies TO Congress. — Complaint against Brother Levi. — Allen in Court, . . . .183

CHAPTER XVII.

Allen at Guilford. — " Oracles of Reason." — John Stark. — St. John de CrI:vecceur. — Honors to Allen. — Shay's Rebellion.^ Second Marriage 191

CHAPTER XVIII.

Death. — Civilization in Allen's Time. — Estimates OF Allen.— Religious P^eeling in Vermont. —Monuments, . . . .198

CHAPTER I.

AN ACCOUNT OF HIS FAMILY.

Ethan Allen is the Robin Hood of Vermont. As Robin Hood's life was an Anglo- Saxon protest against Norman despotism, so Allen's life was a protest against domestic robbery and foreign tyranny. As Sherwood Forest was the rendezvous of the gallant and chivalrous Robin Hood, so the Green Mountains were the home of the dauntless and highminded Ethan Allen. As Robin Hood, in Scott's "Ivanhoe," so does Allen, in Thompson's "Green Mountain Boys," win our admiration. Although never a citizen of the United States, he is one of the heroes of the state and the nation; one of those whose names the people will not willingly let die. History and tradition, song and story, sculpture, engraving, and photography alike blazon his memory from ocean to ocean. The librarian of the great library at Worcester, Massachusetts, told Colonel Higginson that the book most read was Daniel P. Thompson's "Green Mountain Boys." Already one centennial celebration of the capture of Ticonderoga has been celebrated. Who can tell how many future anniversaries of that capture our nation will live to see ! Another reason for refreshing our memories with the history of Allen is the bitterness with which he is attacked. He has been accused of ignorance, weakness of mind, cowardice, infidelity, and atheism. Among his assailants have been the presi' dent of a college, a clergyman^ editors, contributors to magazines and newspapers, and even a local historian among a variety of writers of greater or less prominence. If Vermont is careful of her own fame, well does it become the people to know whether Ethan Allen was a hero or a humbug.

Arnold calls history the vast Mississippi of falsehood. The untruths that have been published about Allen during the last hundred and fifteen years might not fill and overflow the Ohio branch of such a Mississippi, but

An Account of His Family, 3

they would make a lively rivulet run until it was dammed by its own silt. The late Benjamin Disraeli, Lord Beaconsfield, fought a duel with Daniel O'Connell, because O'Connell declared it to be his belief that Disraeli was a lineal descendant of the impenitent thief on the Cross. Perhaps the libellers of Allen are descended from the Yorkers whom he stamped so ignominiously with the beech seal. The fierce light of publicity perhaps never beat upon a throne more sharply than for more than a hundred years it has beat upon Ethan Allen. His patriotism, courage, religious belief, and general character have been travestied and caricatured until now the real man has to be dug up from heaps of untruthful rubbish, as the peerless Apollo Belvidere was dug in the days of Columbus from the ruins of classic Antium.

Discrepancies exist even in regard to his age. On the stone tablet over his grave his age is given as fifty years. Thompson said his age was fifty-two. At the unveiling of his statue, he was called thirty-eight years old when Ticonderoga was taken. These three statements are erroneous, and, strange to say, Burlington is responsible for them all. Burlington, the Athens of Vermont, the town wherein rest his ashes, the town wherein most of the last two years of his life were passed, and the town that has done most to honor his memory.

However humiliating it may be to state pride, it is probable that the Aliens, centuries ago, were no more respectable than the ancestors of Queen Victoria and the oldest British peers. The different ways of spelling the name, Alleyn, Alain, Allein, and Allen, seem to indicate a Norman origin. George Allen, professor in the University of Pennsylvania, says that Alain had command of the rear of William the Conqueror's army at the battle of Hastings in 1066.

Joseph Allen, the father of Ethan, comes to the surface of history about the year 1720, one year after the death of Addison and the first publication of " Robinson Crusoe," in the town of Coventry, in Eastern Connecticut, twenty miles east of Hartford. When he first appears to us he is a minor and an . orphan. His widowed mother, Mercy, has several children, one of them of age. Their first recorded act is emigration fifty miles westward to Litchfield, famous for its scenery and ancient elms.

An Account of His Family. 5

located between the Naugatuck and the Shepaug rivers, on the Green and Taconic mountain ranges; famous also as the place where the first American ladies* seminary was located, and most famous of all for its renowned law-school, begun over a century ago by Judge Tapping Reeve and continued by Judge James Gould. Chief Justice John Pierpoint and United States Senator S. S. Phelps were among its notable pupils. The widow, Mercy Allen, died in Litchfield, February 5, 1728. Her son Joseph bought one-third of her real estate. Within five years he sold two tracts, of 100 acres each, and fourteen years after his mother's death he sold the residue as wild land. On March 11, 1737, Joseph Allen was married to Mary Baker, daughter of John Baker, of Woodbury, sister of Remember Baker, who was father of the Remember Baker that came to Vermont. Thus Ethan Allen and Remember Baker were cousins.

Ethan Allen was born January 10, 1737, and died February 21,1 789, and consequently he has been said to have been fifty-two years, one month and two days old. In fact, he was fifty-one years, one month and two days old. The year 1737 terminated March 24. Had it closed December 31, Allen would have been born in 1738. The first day of the year was March 25 until 1752 in England and her colonies. In 175 1 the British Parliament changed New Year's Day from March 25 to January i. The year 175 1 had no January, no February, and only seven days of March. Allen was thirteen years old in 1750, and was fourteen years old in 1752.

The year 1738 gave birth to three honest men — Ethan Allen, George III., and Benjamin West. In 1738 George Washington was six years old, John Adams three years old, John Stark ten years old, Israel Putnam twenty years old. Seth Warner and Jefferson were born five years later. In that year no claim had ever been made to Vermont by New York or New Hampshire. No one had ever questioned the right of Massachusetts to the English part of Vermont. New Hampshire was bounded on the west by the Merrimac. Colden, the surveyor-general of New York, in an official report bounded New York on the east by Connecticut and Massachusetts, on the north by Lake Ontario and Canada; Canada occupying Crown Point and Chimney Point.

An Account of His Family, 7

If by waving a magician's wand the Englisli- American colonies on the Atlantic slope, as they existed in 1738, could pass before us, wherein would the tableau differ from that of to-day? West of the Alleghanies there were the Indians and the French. On the north were 50,000 prosperous French, farmers chiefly along the valley of the St. Lawrence from Montreal to Quebec. On the east, Acadie, including Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and a part of Maine, was Scotch. Florida was Spanish. From Georgia to Maine were 1,500,- 000 English-Americans and 400,000 African- Americans. The colony of New York had a population of 60,100. New Hampshire, consisting of a few thousand settlers, was located north and east of the Merrimac, and had a legislature of its own, but no governor. Massachusetts, with its charters from James* I. and Charles I., claimed the country to the Pacific Ocean, and exercised ownership between the Merrimac and Connecticut and west of the Connecticut, without a breath of opposition from any mortal. Massachusetts had sold land as her own which she found to be in Connecticut, and she paid that state for it by granting her many thousand acres in three of the southeastern townships of Vermont. She built and sustained a fort in Brattleboro', kept a garrison there with a salaried chaplain, salaried resident Indian commissioner, and she established a store supplied with provisions, groceries, and goods suitable for trade with frontiersmen and the Indians of Canada. Bartering was actively carried on along the Connecticut River, Black River, Otter Creek, and Lake Champlain. In 1737 a solemn ratification of the old treaty occurred there; speeches were made, presents given, and the healths of George II. and Governor Belcher, of Massachusetts, were duly drunk. There was no Anglo-Saxon settlement in Vermont outside of Brattleboro'. In Pownal were a few families of Dutch squatters. The Indian village of St. Francis, midway between Montreal and Quebec, peopled partly by New England refugees from King Philip's war of 1676, exercised supreme control over northeastern Vermont.

In all the land were only three colleges: Harvard, one hundred and two years old, Yale, thirty-seven, and William and Mary, forty-five.

Ethan Allen had five brothers, Heman, Heber, Levi, Zimri, and Ira, and two sisters,

Alt Account of His Family. 9

Lydia and Lucy. Of all our early heroes, few glide before us with a statelier step or more beneficent mien than Heman Allen, the oldest brother of Ethan. Born in Cornwall, Connecticut, October 15, 1740, dying in Salisbury, Connecticut, May 18, 1778, his life of thirty-seven and a half years was like that of the Chevalier Bayard, without fear and without reproach. A man of affairs, a merchant and a soldier, a politician and a land-owner, a diplomat and a statesman, he was capable, intelligent, honest, earnest, and true. But fifteen years old when his father died, he was early engaged in trade at Salisbury. His home became the home of his widowed mother and her large family. Salisbury was his home and probably his legal residence, although he represented Rutland and Colchester in the Vermont Conventions, and was sent to Congress by Dorset.

Heber was the first town clerk of Poultney.

Ira was able, shrewd, and gentlemanly; a land surveyor and speculator, a lieutenant in Warner's regiment, a member of all the conventions of 1776 and 1777, of the Councils of Safety and of the State Council; state treasurer, surveyor-general, author of a " History of " Vermont, and of various official papers and lo Ethan Allen.

political pamphlets. In 1796 he bought, in France," twenty-four brass cannon and twenty thousand muskets, ostensibly for the Vermont militia, which were seized by the English. After a lawsuit of seven or eight years he regained them, but the expense beggared him. He died in Philadelphia, January 7, 1814, aged sixty- three years.

Levi Allen joined in the expedition to capture Ticonderoga, became Tory, and was complained of by his brother Ethan as follows :

Bennington County, j-i-..-

Arlington, 9 January, 1779. • To the Hon. the Court of Confiscation, comes Col. Ethan Allen, in the name of the freemen of the state, and complaint makes that Levi Allen, late of Salisbury in Connecticut, is of Tory principles and holds in fee sundry tracts and parcels of land in this State. The said Levi, has been detected in endeavoring to supply the enemy on Long Island; and in attempting to circulate counterfeit continental money, and is guilty of holding treasonable correspondence with the enemy tinder cover of doing favors to me when a prisoner at New York and Long Island; and in talking and using influence in favor of the enemy, associating with inimical persons to this country, and with them monopolizing the necessaries of

A7t Account of His Family. ii

fife; in endeavoring to lessen the credit of the continental currency, and in particular hath exerted himself in the most fallacious manner to injure the property and character of some of the most zealous friends to the independence of the U. S. and of this State likewise : all which inimical conduct is against the peace and dignity of the freemen of this State. I therefore pray the Hon. Court to take the matter under their consideration and make confiscation of the estate of said Levi before mentioned, according to the laws and customs of this State, in such case made and provided.

Ethan Allen.

Levi died while in jail, for debt, at Burlington, Vermont, in 1801.

Zimri lived and died in Sheffield.

Lydia married a Mr. Finch, and lived and died in Goshen, Connecticut.

Lucy married a Dr. Beebee, and lived and died in Sheffield.

CHAPTER IL

TENDENCIES.

The life of Allen may be divided into four periods: the first thirty-one years before he came to Vermont (i 738-1 769), the six years in Vermont before his captivity (i 769-1 775), the two years and eight months of captivity (1775- 1778), and the eleven years in Vermont after his captivity (i 778-1 789).

When he was two years old the family moved into Cornwall. There his brothers and sisters wxre born, there his father died, there Ethan lived until he was twenty-four years old. When seventeen he was fitting for college with the Rev. Mr. Lee, of Salisbury. His father's death put an end to his studies. This was in 1755, when the French and Indian war was raging along Lakes George and Champlain, a war which lasted until Allen's twenty-third year. Some of the early settlers of Vermont, Samuel Robinson, Joseph Bowker, and others,

Early Life and Habits » 13

took part in this war. Not so Allen. There is no intimation that he hungered for a soldier's life in his youth. His usual means of earning a livelihood for himself and his widowed mother's family is supposed to have been agriculture.

William Cothrens, in his " History of Ancient Woodbury," tells us that in January, 1762, Allen, with three others, entered into the iron business in Salisbury, Connecticut, and built a furnace. In June of that year he returned to Roxbury, and married Mar)^ Brownson, a maiden five years older than himself. The marriage fee was four shillings, or sixty-seven cents. By this wife he had five children: one son, who died at the age of eleven, while Ethan was a captive, and four daughters. Two died unmarried ; one married Eleazer W. Keyes, of Burlington; the other married the Hon. Samuel Hitchcock, of Burlington, and was the mother of General Ethan Allen Hitchcock, U. S. A.

Allen resided with his family first at Salisbury and afterward at ShefSeld, the southwest corner town of Massachusetts. For six miles the boundary line of the two states is the boundary line of the two towns. In these towns the families of Ethan Allen and his brothers and sisters lived many years. Two years after moving to Salisbury he bought two and a half acres, or one-sixteenth part of a tract of land on Mine Hill, an elevation of 350 feet in Roxbury, containing, it is said, the most remarkable deposit of spathic iron ore in the United States. Immense sums of money were expended in vain attempts to work it as a silver mine. Two years after Allen began his Vermont life he still owned land in Judea Society, a part of the present town of Washington. The details and financial results of these business undertakings are not furnished us. They indicate enterprise, if nothing more. Carrying on a farm, casting iron ware, and working a mine, not military affairs, seem to have been the avenues wherein Allen developed his executive ability during his early manhood.

What were his educational facilities, his social privileges, and his religious view^s during this formative period of his life? Ira Allen, in 1795, writes to Dr. S. Williams, the early historian of Vermont, that when his father, Joseph Allen, died, his brother Ethan was preparing for college, and that the death of his

father obliged Ethan to discontinue his classical studies. Mr. Jehial Johns, of Huntington, told the Rev. Zadock Thompson that he knew Ethan Allen in Connecticut, and was very certain that Allen spent some time studying with, the Rev. Mr. Lee, of Salisbury, with the view of fitting himself for college. The widow of Judge Samuel Hitchcock, of Burlington, told Mr. Thompson that Ethan's attendance at school did not exceed three months. Ira Allen writes General Haldimand in July, 1 78 1, that his brother Ethan has resigned his Brigadier-Generalship in the Vermont militia, and "returned to his old studies, philosophy." To what period in Ethan's life does the phrase *'old studies" refer? It could not be his life after the captivity, during his five years' collisions with the Yorkers, but the period we are now considering. Heman Allen's widow, when Mrs. Wadhams, told Zadock Thompson that one summer when he was residing in her house he passed almost all the time in writing. She did not know what was the subject of his study, but on one occasion she called him to dinner, and he said he was very sorry she had called him so soon, for he had "got clear up into the upper regions." Allen himself says:

1 6 Ethan Alie?i,

In my youth I was much disposed to contemplation, and at my commencement in manhood I committed to manuscript such sentiments or arguments as appeared most consonant to reason, lest through the debility of memory, my improvement should have been less gradual. This method of scribbling I practised for many years, from which I experienced great advantages in the progression of learning and knowledge ; the more so as I was deficient in education and had to acquire the knowledge of grammar and language, as well as the art of reasoning, principally from a studious application to it; which after all, I am sensible, lays me under disadvantages, particularly in matters of composition ; however, to remedy this defect I have substituted the most unwearied pains. . . . Ever since I arrived at the state of manhood and acquainted myself with the general history of mankind, I have felt a sincere passion for liberty. The history of nations doomed to perpetual slavery in consequence of yielding up to tyrants their natural-born liberties, I read with a sort of philosophical horror.

In Allen's youth great revivals were inaugurated, organized, and continued mainly by the preaching of Whitefield, who roused and electrified audiences of several thousands, as men have rarely been moved since the days of Peter the Hermit. Even Franklin, Bolingbroke, and Chesterfield were fascinated by him.

Early Life and Habits, \*j

As for Allen, baptized in his infancy, in the days when no Sabbath-school blessed the race, when the Westminster Catechism and Watts' Hymns were in use throughout New England (Isaac Watts died when Allen was eleven years old) , living in and near northwest Connecticut in as democratic and religious community as the world had ever seen, reading none of the books of the Deists, he was fond of discussion and delighted in writing out his arguments. Having been brought up an Armenian Christian, in contradistinction to a Calvinistic Christian, his views in early manhood began to change. One picture of this gradual evolution he gives us in the following description :

The doctrine of imputation according to the Christian scheme consists of two parts. First, of imputation of the apostasy of Adam and Eve to their posterity, commonly called original sin; and secondly, of the imputation of the merits or righteousness of Christ, who in Scripture is called the second Adam to mankind or to the elect. This is a concise definition of the doctrine, and which will undoubtedly be admitted to be a just one by every denomination of men who are acquainted with Christianity, whether they adhere to it or not.

I therefore proceed to illustrate and explain the doctrine by transcribing a short but very pertinent conversation which in the early days of my manhood I had with a Calvinistic divine; but previously remark that I was educated in what are commonly called the Armenian principles; and among other tenets to reject the doctrine of original sin ; this was the point at issue between the clergyman and me. In my turn I opposed the doctrine of original sin with philosophical reasonings, and as I thought had confuted the doctrine. The Reverend gentleman heard me through patiently: and with candor replied:

" Your metaphysical reasonings are not to the purpose, inasmuch as you are a Christian and hope and expect to be saved by the imputed righteousness of Christ to you ; for you may as well be imputedly sinful as imputedly righteous. Nay, " said he, " if you hold to the doctrine of satisfaction and atonement by Christ, by so doing you presuppose the doctrine of apostasy or original sin to be in fact true;" for, said he, " if mankind were not in a ruined and condemned state by nature, there could have been no need of a Redeemer ; but each individual of them would have been accountable to his Creator and Judge, upon the basis cf his own moral agency. Further observing that upon philosophical principles it was difficult to account for the doctrine of original sin, or of original righteousness; yet as they were plain, fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith we ought to assent to the truth of them ; and that from the divine authority of revelation. Notwithstanding," said he,

Early Life and Habits. 19

" if you will give me a philosophical explanation of origial imputed righteousness, which you profess to believe and expect salvation by, then I will return you a philosophical explanation of original sin; for it is plain," said he, *' that your objections lie with equal weight against original imputed righteousness, as against original imputed sin."

Upon which I had the candor to acknowledge to the worthy ecclesiastic, that upon the Christian plan I perceived the argument had clearly terminated against me. For at that time I dared not to distrust the infallibility of revelation; much more to dispute it. However, this conversation was uppermost in my mind for several months after; and after many painful searches and researches after the truth, respecting the doctrine of imputation, resolved at all events to abide the decision of rational argument in the premises; and on a full examination of both parts of the doctrine, rejected the whole; for on a fair scrutiny, I found that I must concede to it entirely or not at all; or else believe inconsistently as the clergyman had argued.

He relates also a change from his juvenile views of biblical history :

When I was a boy, by one means or other, I had conceived a very bad opinion of Pharaoh; he seemed to me to be a cruel, despotic prince; he would not give the Israelites straw, but nevertheless, demanded of them the full tale of brick ; for a time he opposed God Almighty; but was at last luckily drowned in the Red Sea; at which event, with other good Christians, I rejoiced, and even exulted at the overthrow of the base and wicked tyrant. But after a few years of maturity and examination of the history of that monarch given by Moses, with the before recited remarks of the apostle, I conceived a more favorable opinion of him; inasmuch as we are told that God raised him up and hardened his heart, and predestinated his reign, his wickedness, and his overthrow.

In 1782 he says:

In the circle of my acquaintance (which has not been small) , I have generally been denominated a Deist, the reality of which I never disputed; being conscious I am no Christian, except mere infant baptism makes me one ; and as to being a Deist, I know not, strictly speaking, whether I am one or not, for I have never read their writings.

We are told that Allen in his early life was very intimate with Dr. Thomas Young, the man who supplied the state with its name, " Vermont, " in April, i jjj^ and who so strongly encouraged it to assert its independence. One of the most noted characteristics of Ethan, his fondness for the society of able men, is illustrated in his association with Young.

Dr.Young,who wasa distinguished citizen of

Early Life and Habits. 21

Philadelphia, was on most of the Whig committees in Boston, before the Revolution, with James Otis, Samuel Adams, Joseph Warren, and others. He and Adams addressed the great public meeting on the day " when Boston harbor was black with unexpected tea." He was a neighbor of Allen, living in the Oblong, in Dutchess County, while Allen lived in Salisbury. Afterward he lived in Albany, and died in Philadelphia in the third year of Allen's captivity. He was influential in causing Vermont to adopt the constitution of Pennsylvania. The Oblong, Salisbury and vicinity, abounded in freethinkers. Young and Allen opposed President Edwards* famous theological tenets, the latter spending much time in Young's house, and it was generally understood that they were preparing for publication a book in support of sceptical principles ; the two agreeing that the one that outlived the other should publish it. Allen, on going to Vermont, left his manuscripts with Young, and on his release from captivity after Young's death obtained from the latter 's family, who had gone back to Dutchess County, both his own and Young's manuscripts, and these were the originals of his "Oracles of Reason."

Chapter III. Removal To Vermont. — The New Hampshire Grants

Allen came to Vermont, probably, in 1769, a year memorable for the founding of Dartmouth College and for the birth of four of earth's renowned men: two soldiers, Wellington and Napoleon; two scholars, Cuvier and Humboldt.

In the early history of Vermont, one of its prominent judges speculated extensively in Green Mountain wild lands. The aggregate result of these speculations was disastrous. Attending a session of the legislature, the judge was called upon by a committee for his advice in reference to suitable penalties for some crime. He replied, advising for the first offence a fine; for the second, imprisonment; and if the criminal should prove such a hardened offender, such a veteran in vice as to be guilty the third time, he recommended that

the scoundrel should be compelled to receive

Removal to Vermont. 23

a deed of a mile square of wild Vermont lands. Speculation in wild lands is a feature of pioneer society. Vermont was once the agricultural Eldorado of New England. Emigration first rolled northward. Since that time a certain star, erroneously supposed to belong to Bishop Berkeley, has been travelling westward.

In 1749 Benning Wentworth, Governor of New Hampshire, issued a patent of a township, six miles square, near the northwest angle of Massachusetts and corresponding with its line northward, and in this township of Bennington the Aliens bought lands and made their home. This grant caused a remonstrance from the governor and council of New York. Similar remonstrances had been made in the cases of Connecticut and Massachusetts, each of whom claimed that their territory extended to the Connecticut River. But that question had been settled in the former cases between New York and New England by agreeing upon aline from the southwest corner of Connecticut northerly to Lake Champlain as the boundary between the provinces. Wentworth urged in justification of his course that the boundary line was well known, and that New Hampshire had the same right as the other colonies of New