Parties of Minute-Men met at Freetown

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Boston, Monday, April 17, 1775.

A, letter from Taunton, dated last Friday, mentions, "that on Monday, the 10th instant, parties of Minute-Men, &c˙, from every Town in that County, with arms and ammunition, met at Freetown early that morning, in order to take Colonel Gilbert; but he had fled on board the Man-of-War at Newport. They then divided into parties, and took twenty-nine Tories who bad signed enlistments and received arms in the Colonel' s Company, to join the King' s Troops; they also took thirty-five muskets, two case-bottles of powder, and a basket of bullets, all which they brought to Taunton the same afternoon, where the prisoners were separately examined, eighteen of whom made such humble acknowledgments of their past bad conduct, and solemn promises to behave better for the future, they were dismissed; but the other eleven, being obstinate and insulting, a party was ordered to carry them to Simsbury Mines; but they were sufficiently Humble before they had got fourteen miles on their way thither; upon which they were brought back the next day, and after signing proper articles to behave better for the future, were escorted to Freetown. There were upwards of two thousand men embodied there last Monday."