A majority of the company and a score more inhabitants of Yonkers sent down a petition in his favor, stating that he had been chosen " for his well-known skill and ability in the military discipline," and that the complaints were made out of " spite and malice." But further affidavits by Isaac Green and George Hadley, that Cock " had damned the Continental Congress," satisfied the Committee of Safety that it was improper to give Cock a commission. The local committee was ordered to hold a new election, " taking care to give public notice that John Cock cannot be admitted to any ofiice whatsoever." *

The twenty-one nine-pounders carried off from the Battery by the Sons of Liberty, August 23d, were hauled up to King's Bridge and left with the rest in care of the minute men. In the night of January 17r 1776, more than fifty guns near Williams', and as many in the fields near Isaac Valentine's, were spiked or " loaded and stopped with stones and other rubbish." Search was made for the perpetrators. John Fowler was brought before the Committee of Safety on the 23d, charged with a recent purchase of rat-tail files in New York. He implicated William Lounsbery, of Mamaroneck, as the real purchaser. They were imprisoned. Jacamiah Allen was employed to unspike the guns at twenty shillings each. He raised them on fires of several cords of wood, tended day and night to soften the spikes, and by March 16th he had unspiked eighty-two and expected to soon complete the work. These guns were afterwards mounted