On Monday, the twentieth of November, 1775, that cowardly ruffian, Isaac Sears, accompanied with sixteen others of the same class, all of them mounted, left New Haven, in Connecticut, for the purpose of regulating Westchester-county. 1 It had become a favorite pastime, among the rowdies on the borders of Connecticut, as it has been a favorite pastime among Texan rowdies of a later period, in their country, to make depredatory raids on those who lived on the opposite side of the river-boundary ; and those " border ruffians," in revolutionary Connecticut, had been encouraged to raid on the conservative farmers, in Westchester-county; to overpower those farmers with numbers and, especially after the disarming process had deprived the latter of the means for protecting themselves or their property, to rob them of whatever could be carried away ; to return to their own side of the Byram-river, well-laden with whatever had pleased them best, on the farms and in the farm-houses which they had visited ; and to enjoy, in their own " Christian New England," the stolen products of other men's honest and earnest toil, and to be cheered, as " patriots," by their " Christian New " England " neighbors.
The avowed purpose of that band of acknowledged "banditti"' 2 was "to disarm the principal tories " there," [at East and West Chester,] " and secure the "persons of Parson Seabury, Judge Fowler, and "Lord Underhill," three residents of Westchestercounty ; and it is said they were joined, on their way, by other parties of men, numbering about eighty, under the leadership of " Captains " Rich-