On that day all the people who had come assembled, and voted to choose a large committee to act for the whole, to be composed in part of citizens of Cumberland County, and in part of those residing outside its limits. After an examination of the evidence, this committee voted to commit those most implicated in the killing of French to the jail at Northampton, Mass., there to await a fair trial, while those who seemed less guilty should be put under bonds to appear at the next court. The bonds of those admitted to bail were taken next day, and the others were conducted under a strong guard to Northampton jail, but it does not appear that any of them were ever brought to trial, these cases being lost sight of in the thickening whirl of Revolutionary events. Such is substantially the account of the affair as given by the committee chosen by the people. The accounts given by the officers of the court in their "State of the Facts," and by members of the sheriff's posse in their deposition, make it appear that the so-called rioters were the first violent aggressors, beating the sheriff with clubs when he first attempted to force his way in; that three shots were then fired by his order above the heads of those who held the court-house, who at once returned the fire by a discharge of guns and pistols, one pistol-shot being fired at such close quarters that the powder burned a large hole in the breast of his coat, and yet the wearer was not hurt; that only four or five shots were fired into the court-house by the sheriff's party, and yet by this volley French was struck by five bullets, Houghton received a fatal wound, and several others were hurt. According to these accounts, Robert Cockran and others proposed such atrocities as burning the court-house and all within it, or firing volleys through it, and were only restrained by the New Hampshire men from doing so.[58] But there is nothing of this in the relation of the committee, which is quite as likely to impress the unbiased inquirer with its truthfulness. Governor Colden, in his report to Lord Dartmouth of what he calls this "dangerous insurrection," does not attribute it to any dispute concerning land titles, but only to the example of Massachusetts; nor does he charge the Bennington rioters with being implicated in it, though he foresaw that it would draw to the common cause of resistance to New York the people of the eastern Grants with their brethren of the western. He wrote to General Gage of this affair in Cumberland, and hoped that by his assistance he might soon be able to hold a court of oyer and terminer in that county; but the British general had weightier affairs upon his hands at Boston, and could give him no help.