As this "Council of Trade" embraced the leading public men in England at that day, with the noble at its head who four years later drew the King's Patent to his brother James for New York, it is almost certain that John Richbell had some prior intimation, from his brother, a member of the same Council, of the expedition intended for the capture of that Province from the Dutch, and the persons who were to be at the head of it. Hence, his presence in Boston before its arrival, and if neither Carr nor Mavericke, the latter of whom had been in America before, knew John Richbell personally, they undoubtedly had been informed beforehand where he was to be addressed and what his sentiments were, or they could not have written him the above letter.

It is apparent that Richbell was a man of a better position than the ordinaiy class of Englishmen then in America, at the time he made his purchase of lands at Mamaroneck in 1661. His purchase of Lloyd's Neck was in September 1660. A year later on September 23d 1661 he bought his lands at Mamaroneck, and received from its Siwanoy Indian jiroprietors Wappaquewam and Mahatahan, their "Indian Deed" for them dated on that day.

An attempt by another Englishman, also a merchant of Barbadoes, and resident of Oyster Bay, who seems to have been either a business rival, or a personal opponent of Richbell, to outwit him and the Indians has singularly enough been the means of preserving for us a perfect history of the original purchase of Mamaroneck in all its details. This man was one Thomas Revell " merchant of Oyster Bay." Finding that Richbell had obtained the Mamaroneck lands in September 1661 Revell undertook in October of the same year to buy the same lands or a part of them, from some other Indians, including Wappaquewam however, for an increased price.