Rumors came that the farmers meant to rescue Christie, so he was taken at night to the fort on Manhattan Island. Sheriff Stillwell had to fly from his own house to escape the neighbors, and hurried to New Amsterdam, where he complained of the illegal acts of the Gravesend settlers. Excitement ran high. People on Long Island demanded that Christie be set free; but the Dutch council insisted on keeping him a prisoner. The council sent an express messenger to Peter Stuyvesant in Boston, asking him to settle the Long Island difficulties with the English governor there. But the officers of New England would not agree to the sturdy Dutchman's terms. And other English colonists went through the land that belonged to the Dutch, rousing the farmers against the West India Company. Richard Panton, armed with sword and pistol, threatened the men of Flatbush and other villages near by with the pillage of their property unless they would swear allegiance to the government at Hartford and fight against the Dutch. Such was the news that greeted Stuyvesant when he came back to his capital from Boston. He knew that there were not enough of the Dutch to resist an attack from the English, who had come swarming in great numbers recently into Massachusetts and Connecticut. His only hope lay in argument, and so he sent four of his leading men to Hartford to try to arrange a peaceful settlement. The four Dutchmen sailed from New Amsterdam, and after two days on the water landed at Milford. There they took horses and rode to New Haven, where they spent the night. Next day they went on to Hartford over the rough roads of the wilderness. They were well received, and John Winthrop, who was governor of Connecticut and a son of Governor Winthrop of Massachusetts, admitted that some of the claims of the Dutch were just. But the rest of the officers at Hartford stoutly insisted that all that part of the Atlantic seacoast belonged to the king of England, by right of first discovery and claim. "The opinion of the governor," said these men, "is but the opinion of one man. The grant of the king of England includes all the land south of the Boston line to Virginia and to the Pacific Ocean. We do not know any New Netherland, unless you can show a patent for it from the king of England." Apparently the Dutch had no rights there at all; the whole tract between Massachusetts and Virginia belonged to Connecticut. Still the Dutchmen tried to reach some sort of friendly agreement. They proposed that what was known as Westchester, the land lying north of Manhattan Island, should be considered part of Connecticut, but that the towns on Long Island should remain under the government of New Netherland. "We do not know of any province of New Netherland," the Hartford officers replied. "There is a Dutch governor over a Dutch plantation on the island of Manhattan. Long Island is included in our patent, and we shall possess and maintain it."