he year of the settlement
of the boundaries of the Oblong it was granted to one company by the
British Crown, and to another by the Colony of New York. This brought
the title of all the lands on the Oblong into dispute. Moreover,
boundaries were carelessly indicated and loosely described, a pile of
stones or a conspicuous tree serving for a landmark. All this worked
great confusion, for the settlement of which in a crude community courts
were ineffective.

Finally the popular discontent broke out to the north in armed refusal
of settlers to pay the rents exacted. The movement spread from Dutchess
to Columbia County. William Prendergast, who is said to have lived in a
house standing on the ground now part of the golf links in Pawling, was
the leader of the insurgents in this county. He assembled a band on
Quaker Hill so formidable that the grenadiers at Poughkeepsie waited for
reinforcements of two hundred troopers and two field pieces from New
York before proceeding against him. The sight of the red coats was
enough. Prendergast surrendered. But so great was the local excitement
that, to forestall an attempt to rescue, he was taken a prisoner to New
York. In July he was brought back for trial; and on the same boat with
the King's counsel, judges, lawyers and prisoner came a company of
soldiers to put down the continued disturbance in Columbia County.[21]

The trial occurred the first fortnight of August. Prendergast was
assisted in his defense by his wife, who made a strong impression on the
jury, proving that her husband, before the acts of which he was accused,
was "esteemed a sober, honest and industrious farmer, much beloved by
his neighbors, but stirred up to act as he did by one Munro, who is
absconded." So ardent was this woman advocate that the State's attorney
forgot himself and moved that she be excluded from the court room. The
motion was denied, and the mover of it emphatically rebuked. But there
was not lacking proof of the fact of treason, and Prendergast was
convicted and sentenced to be hanged in six weeks. Then this valiant
woman's energy and perseverance rose to their highest. She set off for
an audience with the Governor, Sir Henry Moore, Bart., and returned
about the first of September with a reprieve. Just in time she arrived,
for a company of fifty mounted men had ridden the whole length of the
county to rescue her husband from the jail. She convinced them of the
folly of such action as they propo