on of the Dutch, whom he denounced as
"cruel and rapacious neighbors who were enslaving the English
settlers."

He visited most of the villages, where large numbers of the English
resided, but found that there was strong opposition to being annexed
to Connecticut. Many of them, particularly the Baptists and the
Quakers, were very unwilling to come under the rule of the Puritan
government.

Consequently, six of the towns, Hempstead, Gravesend, Flushing,
Middlebury, Jamaica and Oyster Bay, formed a combination to govern
themselves independently of Connecticut, and empowered Scott to act as
their President, until the king of England should establish a
permanent government among them. Scott in his pride now unfurled an
almost imperial banner. Placing himself at the head of one hundred and
seventy armed men, horse and foot, he set out to compel the
neighboring Dutch villages to renounce their allegiance to Holland and
to subject themselves to his sway.

He first marched upon Brooklyn. Summoning the citizens, he told them
that the soil they occupied belonged to the king of England, and that
he now claimed it as his own, and that they were consequently absolved
from all further allegiance to the Dutch government and were required
to take the oath of submission to the new government, now about to be
established over them.

Scott was accompanied by so powerful an armed force that the
magistrates could not arrest him. One of them, however, Secretary Van
Ruyven, invited him to cross the river to New Amsterdam and confer
with the governor there. Scott replied, "Let Stuyvesant come here with
a hundred men; I will wait for him and run my sword through his body."

There was no disposition manifested whatever, on the part of the
people, to renounce the government of their fathers and accept of that
of Scott in its stead. There was a little boy standing by, whose proud
and defiant bearing arrested the attention of Scott. He was a son of
the heroic Crygier, of whom we have before spoken. Scott ordered him
to take off his hat and bow to the flag of England. The boy refused.
Scott struck him. A bystander scornfully said, "If you have blows to
give, you should strike men, not boys."

Four of Scott's soldiers fiercely assailed the man, and though for a
moment he defended himself with an axe, he was soon compelled to fly.
Scott demanded his surrender and threatened to lay the town in ashes
unless he were given up. He was not surrender