Washington had charged Lee, in his instructions, to keep a stern eye upon the tories, who were active in New York. “You can seize upon the persons of the principals,” said he; “they must be so notoriously known, that there will be little danger of committing mistakes.” Lee acted up to the letter of these instructions, and weeded out with a vigorous hand, some of the rankest of the growth. This gave great offence to the peace-loving citizens, who insisted that he was arrogating a power vested solely in the civil authority. One of them, well-affected to the cause, writes: “To see the vast number of houses shut up, one would think the city almost evacuated. Women and children are scarcely to be seen in the streets. Troops are daily coming in; they break open and quarter themselves in any house they find shut.”[49] The enemy, too, regarded his measures with apprehension. “That arch rebel Lee,” writes a British officer, “has driven all the well-affected people from the town of New York. If something is not speedily done, his Britannic majesty’s American dominions will be confined within a very narrow compass.”[50] In the exercise of his military functions, Lee set Governor Tryon and the captain of the Asia at defiance. “They had threatened perdition to the town,” writes he to Washington, “if the cannon were removed from the batteries and wharves, but I ever considered their threats as a _brutum fulmen_, and even persuaded the town to be of the same way of thinking. We accordingly conveyed them to a place of safety in the middle of the day, and no cannonade ensued. Captain Parker publishes a pleasant reason for his passive conduct. He says that it was manifestly my intention, and that of the New England men under my command, to bring destruction on this town, so hated for their loyal principles, but that he was determined not to indulge us; so remained quiet out of spite. The people here laugh at his nonsense, and begin to despise the menaces which formerly used to throw them into convulsions.” Washington appears to have shared the merriment. In his reply to Lee, he writes, “I could not avoid laughing at Captain Parker’s reasons for not putting his repeated threats into execution,”—a proof, by the way, under his own hand, that he could laugh occasionally; and even when surrounded by perplexities.