HISTORY OF BROOKLYN. 303

come to take a billet in your house.” The officers usually appropriated one or more of the best rooms in the house to their own use, and kept a guard constantly parading to and fro before the door. The soldiers made themselves at home in the kitchen. These officers, too, required the utmost condescension from the inhabitants, who were expected, while addressing them, to hold their hats under their arms: and should a farmer, in passing, neglect to doff his hat, he ran a strong risk of, a good caning; although if he did it, the Briton rarely deigned to notice him or to return his civility. As a natural consequence, insubordination arose among the slaves, who either ran away from or became less respectful to their masters, whom they saw so humbled before the British officers. When we add to this the carousing, gambling, profanity, and the many other vices of the camp which were introduced into these hitherto quiet and orderly villages by the presence of large bodies of troops, who spread gold and dissipation with equal liberality around them, we cannot envy the condition of the people. It is true that all this afforded a ready market for such of the farmer’s produce as had not been previously pilfered by the numerous marauding gangs which prowled around the country, making equal booty from friend and foe. The farmers flourished on British gold; but as there were no banks for its safe-keeping, and few opportunities of investment, they were obliged to keep it by them, and were often robbed. The churches, also, except those of the established faith, were freely occupied as prisons, hospitals, storehouses, and barracks for troops: some were even wantonly destroyed.

In short, between the oppressions of their so-called “protectors,” the British, and the depredations of the American whale-boatmen, the good people of Kings County generally were in a most pitiable condition. These whale-boatmen were Americans (many of them refugees from Long Island), who lived along the Connecticut shore, and bore, commissions from the governors of that colony and of New York, authorizing them to cruise in the Sound against British vessels. It became, after a while, no unusual thing for them to land, and, under pretence of carrying off British goods, to plunder Whig and Tory alike, until at length the whale-boat warfare degenerated into downright piracy. The dwellers along the shore were in