It was in accordance with the laws of 1742-43 that Mack, Shaw, and Pyrlæus, Moravian missionaries, on a visit in 1744 to their mission stations among the Indians in Connecticut, were seized as Papists and hustled from sheriff to sheriff for three days until "the Governor of Connecticut honorably dismissed them," though their accusers insisted upon their being bound over under a penalty of £100 to keep the law. "Being not fully acquainted with all the special laws of the country, they perceived a trap laid for them and thought it prudent to retire to Shekomeko" (Pine Plains, Dutchess County, N. Y.). Missionaries sent out from Nazareth and Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, had established this sub-centre for work in New York and Connecticut, and in the latter colony, in 1740-43, had made Indian converts at Sharon, Salisbury Indian Pond, near Newtown, and at Pachgatgoch, two miles southwest of Kent. Here was their principal station in Connecticut. They had made, in all, some twenty converts among the Indians, and had reclaimed several of their chief men from drunkenness and idleness. Moravian principles forbade these missionaries to take an oath. Consequently, the greed of traders, the rivalry of creeds, together with the belief that there was something wrong about men who would not swear allegiance to King George,--notwithstanding their willingness to affirm it, and notwithstanding their denial of the Pretender,--gave rise to the conviction that they must be Papists[d] in league with the French and their Indian allies. Accordingly both magistrates and ministers arrested the missionaries, and hurried them before the court at Poughkeepsie or at New Milford. Though the governors of both states recognized the value of the mission work, popular feeling ran so high that New York, in September, 1744, passed a law requiring them to take the oaths prescribed or to leave the country, and also commanding that "vagrant Teachers, Moravians, and disguised Papists should not preach or teach in public or private" without first obtaining a license. In Connecticut, as has been said, the laws of 1742-1743 were enforced against them; later, when during the Old French War groundless rumors of their intrigues with hostile Indians were circulated against them, a vain hunt was made for three thousand stands of arms that were said to be secreted in their missions. The severe persecution in New York had driven these missionaries into Pennsylvania and into Connecticut, but these rumors of intrigue broke up their work and caused the abandonment of their stations in the latter colony. Some of these, such as Kent, Sharon, and Salisbury, were revived in 1749-1762, at the request of the English settlers as well as of the Indian converts.[126]