HISTORY OF BROOKLYN. 331

and conveyed $2,000 in gold to Governor Clinton, a simple receipt being given. In this manner, before 1782, large sums had been loaned to the State. In 1780, Major H. Wyckoff was hid for two days in the upper room of Rem A. Remsen's house, in the Wallabout, while the lieutenant of the guard of the “Old Jersey” British prison-ship was quartered in the house. Remsen loaned him as much as he could carry, and conveyed him in a sleigh, at night, to Cow Neck, from whence he crossed to Poughkeepsie.1

The patriotism of many of New York’s bravest soldiers was poorly rewarded by the passage of a legislative act, May 6th, 1784, levying a tax of £100,000 upon the Southern District of the State. This odious and well-named “partial” tax, or a moiety of it, could be paid in State scrip, which the soldier had received for his services, and had sold to speculators for from two to six pence per pound. The scrip, it is almost needless to say, immediately rose to the value of ten shillings on the pound, leaving a very handsome profit to the speculators, who had invested it largely in the purchase of confiscated estates.

PART III.

THE BRITISH PRISON-SHIPS.*

The Battle of Brooklyn, in August, and the capture of Fort Washington, in November, 1776, placed in possession of the British nearly four thousand prisoners; and this number was increased, by the

1 See General Johnson’s MSS., and Onderdonk’s Queens County, p. 316.

* In the preparation of this chapter, we have drawn freely upon the narratives of Captain Thomas DringR (Of which two editions were published, in 1829 and ’31, and a privately printed edition, with annotations, by H. B. Dawson, in 1865); of the Rev. Thomas Andros, published in 1883; of Captain Alexander Coffin, jr., in his letter to Dr. Samuel Mitchell, in Hist. Account of Am. Martyrs, published in 1808; The Adventures of Christopher Hawkins, privately printed, with copious notes, by Charles I. Bushnell, Esq., in 1864; the Reminiscences, in print and MS., of General Jeremiah Johnson, of Brooklyn; and the incidental descriptions in Memoirs of Rev. Andrew Sherburne, of Ebenszer Fox, Com. Silas Talbot, etc., all of which have become Beam books, and, to some extent, inaccessible to the general reader