Sheriff of the County of Albany, as one of the Posse to assist him to dispossess, James Breakenage and Josiah Fuller from Farms and: Messuages which had been recovered against them by Due Course of Law, That pursuant to his summons he repaired to the Place appointed by the Sheriff for the Posse to meet, That from thence the Sheriff with about one hundred and thirty men proceeded to Breaknage's House, and by the way found a Bridge taken up where the Rioters gave the Sheriff to understand that they would not give up the possession, upon which the Sheriff ordered his posse to follow him to the House, That when the Sheriff came up to the House, he knocked at the Door and demanded entrance which the people from within refused That there were a very large Number of men assembled with arms to oppose the posse, & this Deponent further saith that when the sheriff called for an axe to force Entrance into the House a Number of men in a Field adjoining arose and if
742 CONTROVERSY RESPECTING THE
this Deponent remembers right one presented his Gun to the Sheriff, the posse seeing which tried to persuade the Sheriff to lay down the axe and leave the House, representing to him the Dangerous consequences that would attend, for, this Deponent believes that if the Sheriff had not desisted from breaking into the House, not only those from within but likewise the party from the Fields would have fired upon the Sheriff and his Posse, and probably the Death of Several of them would have been the result, That when the Sheriff left the House he ordered his Posse not to depart for he designed to go to Fullers House, but notwithstanding his orders more than one half of the posse departed, and he was at last obliged (seeing so few attended him) to discharge the whole and further this Deponent saith not.