In accordance with the instructions received from Holland, the governor repaired to Boston to enter into a friendly conference with the authorities there.  Scarcely had he left New Amsterdam, when an English emissary, James Christie, visited Gravesend, Flushing, Hempstead and Jamaica, with the announcement that the inhabitants of those places were no longer under the Dutch government, but that their territory was annexed to the Connecticut colony.  This important movement took place on the sixth of September, 1663.

Only about six weeks before, the Connecticut council, on the 20th of July, had sent Captain John Talcott with an armed force of eighteen soldiers, to that portion of New Netherland now called West.  Chester, to declare that the inhabitants were absolved from their allegiance to the Dutch government, to dismiss the old magistrates and to appoint others in their stead.  These were high-handed measures, apparently inexcusable.

When John Christie reached Gravesend, he summoned the whole village together and read to them the dispatch.  The British element was there strongly in the ascendency, even the magistrates being mainly on that side.  As Christie was reading the treasonable document, one of the Dutch magistrates, sheriff Stillwell, faithful to his oath, arrested him.  The other magistrates ordered the arrest of Stillwell.  His life was in danger from the passions of the mob.  He succeeded in sending word to New Amsterdam of the peril of his condition.  A sergeant and eight soldiers were dispatched, who arrested Christie again and held him under their guard.

News of these agitations spread rapidly through the adjoining villages.  It was rumored that a large mob was gathering to rescue Christie from the soldiers.  Consequently, two hours after midnight, under protection of darkness and without the knowledge of the community, Christie was secretly removed from sheriff Stillwell’s house to New Amsterdam.  During the next day the tidings of his removal spread through the streets.  It created great exasperation.  At night a mob of one hundred and fifty men surrounded the house of sheriff Stillwell, shouting that they would have him, dead or alive.

He succeeded in the darkness, in escaping by the back door, and in finding his way to the house of his son-in-law.  The mob broke in, ransacked his house in every corner, poured down their own thirsty throats a large quantity of brandy which they found there, and dispersed without committing any further depredations.

Stillwell hastened to New Amsterdam, to enter his complaints there, and to seek protection.  The other magistrates wrote, throwing all the blame upon him, accusing him of having acted in a violent manner and of causing “a great hubbub in the town.”  “We are,” they wrote, “the loyal subjects of the Dutch government, but not of sheriff Stillwell, who is the greatest disturber of the peace who ever came among us.”