On October 7, 1775, the town was bombarded by a British fleet. The squadron consisted of three ships of war, one bomb brig, one schooner and some smaller vessels, fifteen sail in all. They had sailed up from Newport under the command of Sir James Wallace. A boat’s crew was sent on shore to demand sheep from the town. As they were not forthcoming, the boat returned to the ship and shortly afterward the whole fleet began “a most heavy cannonading, heaving also shells and ‘carcasses’ into the town.” (Carcasses were vessels bound together with hoops and filled with combustibles.) Singularly enough, no one was killed, though many buildings were struck by balls. The next morning the sheep demanded were furnished and the fleet sailed away. An epidemic of dysentery was raging at the time, seventeen persons having died within a fortnight; and the fact that at least one hundred sick persons would have to be removed if the cannonading was resumed influenced the town committee to provide the supply demanded. One life, however, went out because of the bombardment. The Rev. John Burt, the aged pastor of the Congregational Church, had for a long time been sick and feeble. When the air was filled with missiles he fled from his house, no one seeing him, and wandered away, weak and bewildered. The next morning, as he did not appear in the meeting house at the hour of service, his congregation went out to seek him. They found at last him lying dead upon his face in a field of ripened corn. About three years later, on Sunday, May 25, 1778, most of the houses in the center of the town were burned by the British. Five hundred British and Hessian soldiers landed on the “West Shore,” marched quickly through Warren to the Kickamuit River, and there burned seventy or more flat-boats that had been gathered together by the colonists for the purpose of making an expedition against the enemy. The raiders set fire to some buildings in Warren and then proceeded along the main road to Bristol, making prisoners of the men found in the farm houses standing near the highway. A force of perhaps three hundred militia had been hastily gathered at Bristol to oppose them. But, as is almost always the case, the number of the marauding troops was greatly exaggerated and the American commanding officer did not deem himself strong enough to oppose them. Withdrawing in the direction of Mount Hope he left the town to their mercy. The torch was first applied to Parson Burt’s house, which stood near the Congregational Meeting House.