20 LET'l ERS OF JOHN ANDREWS.
the Powder house to Slyde again, with liberty to deliver ae usual, but nol in such enormous quantities as about a month Bince ; being inforni'd that he deliver'd near two thousand barrels in y' course of aboui a fortnight, which gave some alarm to the troops, together •with an Illjudged pun of Doctor Byles's, who intimated to some of tlic Corps thai "ii the 1 lih June, forty thousand men would rise up in opposition to them with the clergy at their head, and left them to suppose it a fact ; without explaining the matter, thai on thai day a genera] fasl was to be observ'd throughoul the province.
August 1st. — I wrote you a long letter, the 22nd ultimo, by one Mr. Marshal] of your place, which 1 wish sate to hand, a- it con- tains matters that I should he sorry tor you not to see. Ii I remem- ber right, one paragraph mention'd a waggon's being riffled of four firelocks by the Centinel on guard upon y\ Neck, which 1 have since been inform'd is a fact, and that the officer of the day return'd them and pleaded much with the party injur'd not to prosecute the matter. as it mighl lie consider'd as a military robbery: which leads me to think that notwithstanding their hostile preparations ami formidable appearance, they as yet esteem themselves as liable to the civil law : whether their dispositions when the two infernal acts arrive, with the royall assent, I can't say. From their long delay in coming, am in hopes they are suspended, as the latest accounts we have from England are of the 14th May. at which time they hail passed the two houses eighl days, when a man of war was under sailing orders waiting only lor their completion to bring 'em out, and its now eleven weeks since. GOD grant that may he tin; case! —
A few days since fifteen officers din'd at a house towards New Boston, improv'd by one of the Miss Erskines (a family noted for their hospitality and kindness to strangers, in admitting all comers to their b — d and hoard) where towards evening they committed all manner of enormous indecencies, by exposing their anterior-, as well as their posteriors, at the open windows and doors, to the full view of people, either men or women, that happened to pass by. with a greal deal of opprobrious language, which caused a number of boys t>> gather round the house, at whom they presented pistols, and threat- ened to lire among 'em, when at dusk they began to break up and go off, two or three at a time, insulting people as they pass'd the Streets. 1 happened to he going up that way (to Breck's) at the time, when I met two who had just come out of an apple shop, where they had been turning over all the old woman's things. They'd scarcely
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