Colonial life under British rule was marked by more rigid laws as the communities grew. The careful protection of common-lands was strictly attended to, especially the town forests of Brooklyn against the encroachment of those who would surreptitiously cut away the timber. Trustees of the common woodlands were appointed; but in the year 1702 these lands were equitably divided and all allotted to each householder in Brooklyn to insure their better protection. Gradually the English language was spoken in the churches and upon ceremonious occasions. A waggish tale of Domine Schoonmaker of Flatbush relates his difficulties in a wedding service. Fluent and eloquent in his mother tongue, he essayed the ceremony in English, with the manner, gestures, and all the courteous dignity of the old school. His English failed him at the very close of the service. Conscious of the literalness of his extemporized translation of the formula, he finished with a bow, adding with solemnity and modulated emphasis, “I pronounce you two to be _one beef_.” English customs gradually came in vogue. More aristocratic usages superseded the democracy of the Dutch settlers. Slavery existed in Brooklyn as in New York. Brick and stone buildings arose along Fulton Street. Twice, in 1745 and 1752, the Colonial legislature of the Province met in Brooklyn, on account of the prevalence of smallpox in New York. The rural character of the town is well illustrated by an event in 1759. A large bear then passed along the farms in South Brooklyn, and being pursued took to the water near Red Hook, where he was shot from a boat. The ethics of 1774 approved the aid of lotteries to build an orthodox church in Brooklyn, which the public were assured should be of no doubtful laxity, but a church conformable to the discipline of the Church of England, and under the patronage of Trinity Church, New York. In the matter of amusements in 1774, New Yorkers came to Brooklyn for many of their sports. Here horse-races were run. In that year an ambitious innkeeper on “Tower Hill”—a site along the present Columbia Heights between Middagh and Cranberry Streets—announced that there would be a _bull baited_ there every Thursday afternoon. At the outbreak of the Revolution, Brooklyn numbered between three and four thousand persons grouped in four neighborhoods. There were then three ferries to New York. At the old (Fulton) ferry was a famous tavern which figured often in the times of British occupation. The two principal villages were then called Brooklyn-church and Brooklyn-ferry. At the first movements of the Patriot party in New England the people of Kings County were little stirred. Suffolk County, at the eastern end of Long Island, more readily responded to the first news from Massachusetts. After the battle of Lexington, Brooklynites assembled and passed resolutions and elected delegates to the Provincial Congress.