His average congregation at this place, was about 200 ; and he states, that one of the means which he adopted of communicating religious instruction to the people, was preaching at funerals in the more remote districts, whereby he had the opportunity of addiessing those who could not be brought together at any other time. In 1776 he was seized by a party of the disaffected in arms, and carried off to New Haven, all his papers being examined for proof against him. After describing this outrage, he says, " God's providence will, I hope, protect His church and clergy in this county, the disorder and confusion of which are beyond description." He says, in a letter dated New York, December 29th, 1776, " since my last letter, I have undergone more uneasiness than I can describe : more, I believe, than I

« Alb. Eec. Book of Patents, No. xiii. 490.

b Ttie Rev. Samuel Seabury was instituted rector of St. Peter's church, Westchester, by Sir Henry Moore, Baronet, on the 3d of Dec. 17G6.

COUNTY OF WESTCHESTER. 219

could well support again." He goes on to say, " I continued tolerably quiet at home for a few weeks, till after the king's troops evacuated Boston, when the rebel army passing from thence to New York, bodies of them, consisting of twenty or thirty men, would every day or two, sometimes two or three times a day, come through Westchester, though five miles out of their way, and never failed to stop at my house."