The Humble Petition of Your Majesty's loyal, faithful obedient subjects, whose only hope of Relief from immediate poverty distress and ruin, with there helpless' Wives and Children, depends entirely on your Majesty's lenient and paternal Interposition, which unless your Majesty shall be graciously pleased to vouchsafe, they must suffer an inevitable ruin, Therefore they Humbly pray, to represent their unhappy state Hopeing your Majesty will be pleased to lend an Ear while they briefly relate some few of the distressful circumstances of their present situation--That they are Inhabitants of a Tract of your Majesty's Land now by your Majestys order within the jurisdiction of your Majesty's Government of New York which at the time of the removal of the line of jurisdiction was unanimously esteemed to be in your Majestys Province of New Hampshire, except only by some Interested Persons in New York, who have made large Fortunes out of those Lands & whose pretences were Totally unknown, which said Tract is Situate between the West- ' ern Banks of Connecticut River and Northline drawn at Twenty

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NEW HAMPSHIRE GRANTS. 673

miles Eastern distance from Hudsons River 'till it intersects the Wood Creek Lake Champlain & That by virtue of Patents issued by Benning Wentworth Esgr late Governor of your Majestys said Province of New Hampshire, under the Seal thereof and granted to your Petitioners whose Names are Enter'd in a Schedule annexed to each respective Grant, and in full Faith of the said Governors authority to grant the said Lands, They have setled cultivated inhabited & improved and expended their whole Fortunes and all their labour to this day on the premises aforesaid, that it having pleased your Majesty to remove the line of Jurisdiction between the two provinces aforesaid your Petitioners were tlierefore included in the province of New York, which in due rightful obedience to your Majesty's Commands your Petitioners dutifully and unexceptionably obeyd--although their lying im the province of New York was & is and for ever will and must be highly detrimental & disagreeable. to them both in their property and good government, of all which they judged your Majesty and ministers of State had been egrigiously misinformed--and also that those circumstances had been erroneously Represented to your Majesty that since your Majesty's said order to annex the said District to New York their possessions have been unexceptionably granted to other people under the great Seal of New York--that writs of ejectments have been brought, their property wrested from them, their persons Imprisoned and their whole substance wasted in fruitless Law Suits merely to the enrichment. of a few Men in said Province of New York, whose great Influence is the distruction of our hard, honestly earned property, that we were greatly and. industriously cultivating the wilderness, orderly obeying every Law, rejoicing in our safety and your Majestys auspicious government untill by this invasion of our property by many who pretended your Majesty's authority therein, we are thrown in such evident distress confusion and dangerous disorder as would touch your Royal Breast with Compass" could our inexpressable Missery be Truly represented and that many of your petitioners were soldiers in your Majesty's army in the late war in North America & were aiding and assisting in the happy successes there whereby those Lands were recovered from the VoL.