To superior power the Quakers of this place have always submitted. Their forefathers were loyalists in England, and they in America, till far into the Revolution. But see the resolutions passed in April, 1778: "The answering of the 14th Query Respecting the Defrauding of the King of his dues is omitted by reason of the Difficulty of the times therefore this meeting desires the Quarterly meeting to Consider whether it would not be well to omit the answering that part of the Query in future until the way may appear more Clear." This action was taken by the meeting five months before the coming of Washington to the Hill, immediately after the heroic winter of Valley Forge and just before the British retreated from Philadelphia. An official body which could speak of dues to the king at that time, after their country had been separated from him for three years, surely represented a community in which the great majority were Loyalists, and the disorderly and violent were Tories. But the non-resistant character of the neighborhood, perched between the Connecticut Yankees, who took ardent interest in the Revolution, and the aggressive settlements of Pawling, Fredericksburgh and Beekman, rendered the Hill at times an asylum, strange to say, of the most adventurous forces. Whenever in Colonial days an adventurer or soldier sought a peaceful region in which to recruit his forces, he thought upon Quaker Hill; and in four memorable instances used the Hill as a place of safe refuge. There no one would by force resist his enjoyment of a time for recruiting. The first instance of this is the so-called "Anti-Rent War," which in 1766 excited the inhabitants of Dutchess and Columbia Counties. Its sources were in the land grants made by the Crown, and in the independent character of the settlers in this state. The series of disturbances so caused continued until well into the years of the nineteenth century. They concern the local history only in one year, 1766. The Anti-Rent War of 1766 is a forgotten event. But in that time it aroused the Indians and the white settlers to revolt. Bodies of armed men assembled, British troopers marched from Poughkeepsie to Quaker Hill, to seize a leader of rebellion; and at the time of his trial at Poughkeepsie in August, 1766, a company of regulars with three field-pieces was brought up from New York.[19]