The political Parson, therefore, was very offensive to those of the revolutionary faction who were not his neighbors -- " in justice to the rebels of East and West " Chester, I must ssty,".he wrote, in 1776, " that none " of them ever offered me any insult or attempted to do " me any injury that I know of" -- and it was evidently determined that he, also, like James Rivington, should be silenced, even at the expense of his personal liberty and of all which was dear to him, on earth.
There was one man, more than all others, who was qualified to enter on any adventure, no matter how lawless nor how atrocious, provided, and only provided, he could have an abundant force to support him and to overpower any opposition which might possibly arise to obstruct or to endanger him. He had been a privateer, in the War with France and Spain ; and in the only encounter which he had had with an enemy, he had shown the white feather of cowardice, his crew having become his accusers. He was known, subsequently, as one of those blustering, reckless, law-defying leaders of the floating denizens of the docks, in New York, ready to disregard all Rights, all of every thing excepttheir own wills, in acts of which only the traditional pirates and banditti were supposed to have been capable of performing, whenever, and only whenever, in his judgment, those acts could
be done without personal risk to the aggressors, and whenever, and at no other time, those acts of lawlessness promised that the plunder to be secured therefrom would afford a sufficient compensation.