under the circumstances, there was small likelihood that his exertions would be effectual.  Two young English merchants, Thomas Kellond and Thomas Kirk, received from him a commission to prosecute the search in Massachusetts, and were also furnished with letters of recommendation to the Governors of the other Colonies.  That they were zealous Royalists, direct from England, would be some evidence to the home government that the quest would be pursued in good faith.  That they were foreigners, unacquainted with the roads and with the habits of the country, and betraying themselves by their deportment wherever they should go in New England, would afford comfortable assurance to the Governor that they would pursue their quest in vain.

From Boston, the pursuivants, early in May, went to Hartford, where they were informed by Winthrop, Governor of Connecticut, that “the Colonels,” as they were called, had passed thence immediately before, on their way to New Haven.  Thither the messengers proceeded, stopping on the way at Guilford, the residence of Deputy-Governor Leete.  Since the recent death of Governor Newman, Leete had been Chief Magistrate of the Colony of New Haven, which was now, and for a few years later, distinct from Connecticut.

The Deputy-Governor received them in the presence of several other persons.  He looked over their papers, and then “began to read them audibly; whereupon we told him,” say the messengers, “it was convenient to be more private in such concernments as that was.”  They desired to be furnished “with horses, &c.,” for their further journey, “which was prepared with some delays.”  They were accosted, on coming out, by a person who told them that the Colonels were secreted at Mr. Davenport’s, “and that, without all question, Deputy Leete knew as much”; and that “in the head of a company in the field a-training,” it had lately been “openly spoken by them, that, if they had but two hundred friends that would stand by them, they would not care for Old or New England.”

The messengers returned to Leete, and made an application for “aid and a power to search and apprehend” the fugitives.  “He refused to give any power to apprehend them, nor order any other, and said he could do nothing until he had spoken with one Mr. Gilbert and the rest of his magistrates.”  New Haven, the seat of government of the Colony, was twenty miles distant from Guilford.  It was now Saturday afternoon, and for a New-England Governor to break the Sabbath by setting off on a journey, or by procuring horses for any other traveller, was impossible.  An Indian was observed to have left Guilford while the parley was going on, and was supposed to have gone on an errand to New Haven.