Samuel Drowne declares, that about nine of
the clock of the evening of
the fifth of March
current, standing at his own door in
Cornhill,
he saw about 14 or 15 soldiers of the 29th re-
giment, who came from Murray's barracks arm’d
with naked cutlasses, swords, &c. and came upon
the inhabitants of the town, then standing or
walking in
Cornhill, and abused some, and vio-
lently assaulted others as they met them ; most
of whom were without so much as a stick in
their hand to defend themselves, as he very clear-
ly could discern, it being moon light, and him-
self being one of the assaulted persons. All or
most of the said soldiers he saw go into
King-
street, (some of them through
Royal Exchange
lane) and there followed them, and soon dis-
covered them to be quarrelling and fighting with
the people whom they saw there, which he
thinks were not more than a dozen, when the
soldiers came there first, armed as aforesaid. Of
those dozen people, the most of them were gen-
tlemen, standing together a little below the
Town-House, upon the exchange. At the ap-
pearance of those soldiers so arm’d, the most
of
the twelve persons went off, some of them being
first assaulted.
The violent proceedings of this party, and
their going into
King-street, " quarrelling and
fighting with the people whom they saw there"
(mentioned in Mr. Drowne's
deposition), was im-
mediately introductory to the grand catastrophe.
These assailants, who issued from Murray's