During the military campaign of 1776 he was obliged to give accommodation in his house to a company of

FROM

JANUARY,

1775,

JULY

9, 1776

Revolutionary cavalry, who, says Dawson, consumed or destroyed all the products of his glebe. The poor Tory clergyman finally, in desperation, fled with his wife and six children to the British lines. Like Isaac Wilkins, also of the Borough of Westchester, Seabury continued a British sympathizer throughout the war; but after the Revolution he returned to America and became bishop of the (Episcopalian) diocese of Connecticut. Wilkins, after a more protracted absence, came back to Westchester Town, and, taking holy orders, was made rector of the same parish of Saint Peter's which his compatriot Seabury vacated in 1776. The question of the authorship of the A. W. Farmer tracts has puzzled many minds; but there is no reasonable doubt that the}' were written either by Seabury or by Wilkins. They were almost as noted in the polemic literature of their times as was Tom Paine's " Common Sense." Whatever the doubts respecting their authorship, it is certain that the apparent pseudonym "A. W. Farmer"' stood for k' A Westchester Farmer"; and both Seabury and Wilkins, though persons of polite character, were gentlemen farmers. The detestation in which these tracts were held by the patriotic people is well instanced by a resolution adopted by the committee of safety of Suffolk County, X. Y., February, 1775, in which it was declared "That all those publications which have a tendency to divide us, and thereby weaken our opposition to measures taken to enslave us, ought to be treated with the utmost eontempt by every friend to his country; in particular the pamphlet entitled A Friendly Address, &c, and those under the signature of A. W. Farmer, and many others to the same purpose, which are replete with i he most impudent falsehoods and the grossest misrepresentations; and that the authors, printers, and abettors of the above and such like publications ought to be esteemed and treated as traitors to their country, and enemies to the liberties of America." A writer in Dawson's Historical Magazine (January, L868) says: "When copies <d' these pamphlets tell into the hands of the Whigs they were disposed of in such a manner as most emphatically to express detestation of the anonymous authors and their sentiments.