An instance of that class of special doings may be seen in the Order which was made by the Provincial Congress, on the twenty-first of May, in these words : " Ordered, That Colonel '• Ritzema send such prudent Officer as he shall think 'proper, to Westchester-county, to apply to the '• Chairman of the County Committee and to the re- " spective Sub-committees, in that County, for such " good Arms, fit for soldiers' use, as they may have " collected by disarming disaffected persons, in that " County; and the respective Committees are hereby "rt quested to deliver such of those Arms as are fit " for the Army, to such Officer, taking and preserving " his receipts for the same : that the said Committees, " respectively, take care that all such Arms be " appraised, and an account of the value of each kept " agreeable to the directions heretofore given for that " purpose ; and such Officer as Colonel Eitzema shall " send to collect those Arms is hereby directed to de- " liver all such Arms as he shall so receive, to Colonel " Curtenius, that they may be repaired, where it may " be necessary." '

It is not now known how many Arms were thus transferred to the Provincial Storekeeper ; nor from whom they had been impressed ; nor what disposition was subsequently made of them. But, because the Third Regiment of the New York Line in the Continental Army, which was commanded by Colonel Ritzema, was one of those, under General Alexander McDougal, who were engaged with the Royal Army, on Chatterton's Hill, a few months afterwards, and because Colonel Ritzema's Regiment was undoubtedly supplied with Arms, as far as they went, from those which had been "impressed" in Westchester-county and were thus called in -- although the Provincial Congress had disallowed the Resolution of the Committee of Safety, under which these Arms had been forcibly taken from their respective owners, it will be seen that the Arms which had been thus seized were not returned to those from whom they had been taken -- there was evidently a master-hand so skilfully directing the progress of events that those Arms which had been thus violently and illegally and wrongly taken from the farmers of Westchester-county were taken back to that County, to be employed in the defense of it, against the assaults of the common enemy.