The Hudson Valley Land Riots of 1766 Taking advantage of the favorable Council ruling, Robinson and Sheriff James Livingston wasted no time in evicting tenants unwilling to sign one to three year leases and pay rents in cash (traditionally rents were paid in agricultural products). 26 Resistant tenants were harshly dealt with, some even being burned out of their homes. A Connecticut lawyer, who anonymously wrote a firsthand account of the situation made this observation:**

"The said Mr. Robinson without any manner of legal warrant, or authority for so doing, thereupon having collected a body of upwards of 200 soldiers, consisting partly of regular troops and partly of militia of the said province, all well armed, and supplied with ammunition, and other warlike apparatus besides wagons and wagoneers; in a warlike posture march'd up against the poor, defenceless people, under a pretence of subduing the rebels, giving out, that they had acted in open rebellion to the Crown of Great Britain, that were a pack of Rebels! Damned Rebels! And Traitors! And upon a Sabbath day, long to be remembered, arrived among the inhabitants aforesaid, and in a hostile manner, drove them out before them, burnt and destroyed some of their houses pillaged and plundered others, stove their cyder barrels, turned their provisions out into the open streets, ript open their feather beds, laid open their meadows and fields of grain, and either took, or destroyed the greater part of the effects of this poor, but loyal people." 27

Henry Noble MacCracken, Old Dutchess Forever! The Story of An American County (New York: Hastings House), 283. Oscar Handlin and Irving Mark, "Chief Daniel Nimham v. Roger Morris, Beverly Robinson, and Philip Philipse - An Indian Land Case in Colonial New York, 1765-1767", Ethnohistory, Vol. 11, No. 3 (Summer 1964), Published by Duke University Press: 205.