Pell, residing at Onkeneg in New England, his dared against the rights and usages of Christian countries to pretend that he bought these lands of the natives, (which long since were purchased of them and paid by your Honors as evidenlly appears from the transfers in your records,) and actually made a beginning of settling and cultivating these lands, without your Honors previous knowledge or consent, directly contrary to the limits and decisions of 1650, concluded with tlie United Colonies of New England at Hartford, »> against which usurpation your attorney general, in his quality and in the name of the Lords his masters, had in due form entered his protest, w-hich the Lieutenant Wheeler, who there commands, not at all respecting, continues to remain there with his associates in planting and building, luring and accommodating our run-away inhabitants, vagrants and thieves, and others who for their bad conduct find there a refuge. As it has pleased your Honors in conformity to the instructions and letters of the Lords majors, and in preservation of the convention made at Hartford, to keep it inviolated, to send thither a body of armed men to secure said Wheeler and his associates, who, as appears from their own declaration of the 14th

» Alb. Rec. vol. ii. 291.

b See negotiations between New England and Peter Stuyvesant concerning limits. Hazard's Hist. Coll. vol. ii. 156, 173, 549.

160 HISTORY OF THE '

of March had met there the Director General there present on the spot ivith an armed force, and declined to move from thence, saying that it was their land, on which said Englishmen were disarmed and twenty-three of them conducted as prisoners to the ship the Weigh-scales, leaving a few there to protect their wives, children and property. All which the attorney general demands that your Honors would send one or two of the oldest to Vreedlandt to inform the remainder of the English that they must leave that spot, taking with them all that they brought thither, under the penalty that if they acted otherwise, that then other measures shall be adopted according to law ; and further that the aforesaid Lieutenant Wheeler and his associates shall not be set at liberty before they have paid all the expenses which your Honors have been compelled to, through their conduct and disobedience, in that expedition in going thither with an armed force in boats.