It was particularly feared that British vessels of war would appear on the Westchester shore of the Sound and land marines to carry out concerted local Tory plans. Strong feelinghad been excited in this county by an order of the committee of safety for the general impressment of arms -- that is, the seizure of all fire-pieces belonging to private persons -- on the ground that they were needed for the equipment of the troops. The complaints against this order were so bitter that it had to be rescinded after a few sporadic attempts at its enforcement, none of which appear to have been ventured upon in Westchester County. Unfavorable comment was also caused by the bringing of some four hundred militiamen from Connecticut, who were quartered at the northern end of Manhattan Island under the command of General Wooster. There was at the time no enemy in the vicinity of New York, and none expected, and the necessity of employing troops from another colony in the absence of any such emergency could not be explained to the satisfaction of the people. There is no evidence that there was fear of an armed rising in Westchester County, and yet many circumstances of the local situation in the fall of 1775 indicate a well-founded distrust of the Tory faction. In this position of affairs occurred the celebrated Westchester raid of Captain Isaac Scars, resulting in the apprehension and removal to Connecticut of three of the leading men of the Loyalist party -- the Rev. Samuel Seabury, Mayor Nathaniel Underbill, of Westchester Borough, and Judge Jonathan Fowler. Seabury and Underbill were men of undisguised and strong Tory sentiments. Fowler, although he had signed <i recantation of expressed views of a similar character, was still regarded with a good deal of suspicion. The three men were leading representatives of the disaffected classes who wTere giving so much trouble to the Revolutionary committee in Westchester County, and Sears conceived the idea that their simultaneous arrest by means of a dashing expedition would exert a wholesome influence toward the proper regulation of that much Tory-ridden region.