Public notice had been given of a meeting of persons from different districts of the county to consider the most proper method of taking the sense of the freeholders of the county upon the expediency of choosing deputies to meet the deputies from other counties for the purpose of electing delegates to represent this colony in the General C'lnjrress to be held in Philadelphia on the 10th day of May then next. At this meeting it was recom-

1 5 Bancroft, "7.

- Sabiue's " Loyalists," ii. page 53*.

mended that a convention be held at White Plains oo the 11th day of April then next, at ten o'clock in the forenoon, at the court-house. On the day appointed, a numerous body of freeholders of the county assembled at the court-house, chose Lewis Morris for their chairman, and appointed eight persons, or a majority of them, to act as the deputies of this county for the purpose aforesaid.

A few days after this meeting, a protest, bearing date the 13th of April, 1775, signed with over thi'ee hundred names, appeared in Eivingion's Xerv York Gazette, in which it was stated that on the 11th of April the friends of government met at the house of Captain Hatfield, and at about twelve o'clock walked to the court-house, where they found the other company collected in a body ; that the friends of the government then declared that they had been called together for an unlawful purpose, and they would not contest the matter with the others by a poll, but that they came only with a design to protest against all such disorderly proceedings, and to show their detestation of all unlawful Committees and Congresses ; that then, giving three huzzas, they returned to Captain Hatfield's, singing as they went, " God save great George, our King ;" after which, the following protest was drawn up and signed :