The people of the New Hampshire Grants continued their defiance of the Yorkers. When a sheriff or surveyor from the other side of the line was caught by the people, he was, as Ethan Allen humorously put it, "severely chastised with twigs of the wilderness." The rods used, however, were the "blue beech" ones that the farmers used in driving stubborn oxen, and could hardly be considered twigs. This punishment the people of the Grants called "stamping the Yorkers with the beech seal," and many a sheriff who tried to carry out the orders of his province in the Green Mountain country went home with the "beech seal" on his back. The officers of New York protested and protested. They sent a request to General Gage at Boston for men to aid their sheriffs in the county of Charlotte, but General Gage declined to interfere in the border struggle. And while the Yorkers fumed and vowed vengeance, Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys, like Rob Roy and his Highland outlaws, did as they pleased in the debatable land. Peter Jones and Jack and Sam went back to their lake, ready to take the trail to Dutton's and Beaver Falls and Bennington whenever they should be needed. In early spring the boys left the hunter and joined their fathers on the farms, where there was plenty of work to be done at that time of year. There they spent the summer, planting and harvesting the crops. Meantime a flame was smouldering in the country that was soon to burst forth into fire. Some men were not satisfied with the way in which the British government was treating its colonies in America. Conventions were held in various parts of New York and the New Hampshire Grants. The people of Dummerston, in the eastern part of the Grants, freed Lieutenant Spaulding from their jail after he had been sent there on a charge of high treason for criticizing the king of England. Troubles grew more frequent between the more independent people, known as Whigs, and the strict Royalists, or Tories. It flamed out when the time came for holding the King's Court of Cumberland County at the town of Westminster on March 14, 1775. Forty citizens of the county called on the judge, Colonel Chandler, and asked him not to hold the court. The judge said the court must meet. The Whigs thereupon decided to lay their protests before the court when it was in session. Then word spread about that the court meant to have a strong guard to prevent the citizens from attending its meetings. About a hundred men, armed only with clubs that they picked up from a wood-pile, marched into the court-house at Westminster late in the afternoon of March 14th. They meant to make the judges listen to their complaints. Meantime down the main street came the sheriff, with a strong force of armed men and the court officers. He halted in front of the door, and demanded admission. He got no answer from the men inside the building. Then he read aloud the king's proclamation, commanding all persons unlawfully gathered there to