These contentions heightened the animosities
of both parties. The soldiers wished for another
engagement to revenge themselves on the rope-
makers; and the towns-people seem to have re-
solved to make use of their vast superiority of
numbers, which had given them the advantage
in the former encounters, either to destroy the
soldiers intirely, or to drive both them and
the
commissioners of the customs out of the town.
With this view they seem to have intended to
draw the soldiers out of their barracks to a ge-
neral engagement of the same kind as the for-
mer, that is, with sticks and clubs, and to assem-
ble a large mob for that purpose, of which the
rope-makers should be the leaders, that it might
seem to be only a renewal of the quarrel that
had lately happened, and not a general design of
the inhabitants to rise upon them. This at least
appears to me to have been the plan formed by
the towns-people on this occasion, upon a care-
ful perusal of all the evidences relating to this
unhappy business, which are submitted to the
reader's consideration.
These animosities were considerably heightened
by the sudden absence of a serjeant of the
14th
regiment on the evening of Saturday the 3d of
March, which continued likewise on the follow-
ing day, Sunday the 4th of March, and gave
rise, in that time of jealousy, to a suspicion
among the soldiers that he had been murdered by
the rope-makers. This suspicion proved to be
ill-grounded: but, while it continued, it occa-