that he was unable to discharge his official duties with propriety and accuracy ; * he and his family were subjected to constant annoyances and insults ; ' nis house was occupied, soon after, by a Company of Cavalry, who consumed or destroyed all the products of his Glebe, on which, to a considerable extent, his family was made dependent ; " he was thus made entirely dependent for support on his small stipend as a Missionary of the Venerable Society ; and, finally, like his friend and neighbor, Isaac Wilkins, he was compelled to seek shelter and safety in flight '--when a favorable opportunity was afforded, he gathered such of his effects as could be conveniently carried, and, with his wife and six children, he fled, first across the Sound, to Long Island and, subsequently, to the City of New York.^"
Need there be any surprise that, after such an experience of what, in practice, were " the Liberties of "America," Samuel Seabui-y's political opinions underwent a radical change -- that he ceased to be of the party of the Opposition to the Ministry then in place ; and that he became, decidedly and firmly, " a friend " of the Government," in other words, an unqualified and distinctive Tory? "
On the fourth of December, 1775, also during the period between the dissolution of the first and the organization of the second of the series of the Provincial Congresses, the Governor of the Colony, William Tryon, from his shelter, on board the ship Dutchess of Gordon, lying in the harbor of the City of New York, evidently and reasonably encouraged by the backwardness of the Deputies to the Provincial Congress ; by the known inclination to peace, of a large majority, if not of nearly all, the Colonists; and by the countenance and expected support of sundry of the leaders of the Rebellion, addressed a letter to the Mayor of that City, Whitehead Hicks,'^