They have now had 'the hardiness to seize a justice of the Peace, to try him before a mock Tribunal of their own, formally to pass sentence upon him, and after inflicting a punishment of 200 Lashes on him, to banish him from that part of the Country, which they call their own Indeed the authority of Government is entirely Jost among them, and I am afraid can not be restored but by Force. They began with pretending only to hold possession of the Lands on which they had settled. but your Ldp may be assured they have extended their Designs much farther, and are dayly growing more and more formidable and dangerous to Government.

_ [have lately received accounts likewise, my Lord of a dangerous Insurrection in Cumberland County of this Province which

NEW HAMPSHIRE GRANTS. 915

is connected with Massachusetts Bay on one side and New Hampshire on the other. A number of People in Cumberland, worked up by the example and Influence of Massachusets Bay,

_ embraced the dangerous-resolution of shutting up the Courts of Justice. With this design they took Possession of the Court House immediately before the Courts of General Sessions of the Peace, and common Pleas, were to be opened there in March last. They persisted with so much obstinacy to resist the Sheriff and his Posse that he was obliged to have recourse to fire arms, by which one of the Rioters were killed and several were wounded upon which they quitted the House and the Courts were opened. But by the next day such numbers had joined the Rioters from New Hampshire and Massachusetts Bay, as made them too powerfull for the Magistrates. they took one of the Judges the Sheriffs clerk of the Court and several other persons prisoners and after confining them for several days in the Goal of their own County carried them into Massachusetts Bay, and put them into the Goal of North Hampton where~they remained when the last accounts came from them.