[riddell] times of ROBERT GOURLAY 71 



eccentric. We find him complaining to William Dummer Powell, 

 "Chief Justice in the Province of Upper Canada," of Thomas Markland 

 not putting in their proper place the monuments marking the limits 

 of the lots in that Township "to the Great Damage of the Inhabitants 

 and the Total Subversion of the King's Peace" — worse than that, "he 

 sanctioned the Act of a Rebellious Mob who had laid Violent hands 

 on the Body of Amos Ansley, the said Ansley Being in the Peace of 

 God and the King alone, and in Quiet on the Kings Highway in 1812 

 and Committed hirn to Prison without an oath and without a Trial. 

 No eye to pity No Hand to Save." 



The Judge not granting relief, Ansley had applied to the Church 

 and wrote to "the Reverend George Okil Stuart" in the name of God 

 requiring him to admonish Thomas Markland to order Mr. James 

 Nicol to set the monuments so as to "protect His Majesty's Subjects 

 in the Land that was allotted to them when this Country was a howling 

 wilderness," and if Ansley is not settled with "when the Grand Jury 

 is sworn it will Be to Late — there Has Been as Great Men as Him 

 Indicted for f. and H.T."i« 



Notwithstanding the adjuration, "Remove not the ancient Land 

 Marks which they fathers Have Set Proverbs cXX v 20 Deuteronomey 

 XIX, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, c XXXII, 17"— the appeal to the 

 clerg3^man seems to have been unsuccessful. Thereupon Ansley sent 

 it to Sir Peregrine Maitland, "Governour," for the attention of His 

 Majesty's Attorney General. As he endorsed the words "Sleepy 

 and Lazzy Priests that Nither Serve God Nor the King," it is not 

 wholly astonishing that the Attorney General endorsed the paper 

 "From Amos Ansley Transmitting some very ridiculous papers." 



Some wag seeing Ansley in York wrote and printed a travesty 

 of the proceedings of the Convention and a copy was handed to Ansley 

 by Ezekiel Benson at York, July 22, 1818. This "skit" endorsed by 

 Ansley, "We Never Ware Rebels and we Never will Be" — "This is a 

 Liebill published in the Town of York for which the Yorkers shall 

 Be Indicted for publishing the said Scandalous Libill," was also sent 

 in to the Governor for the Attorney General. And when one reads it, 

 one cannot think that Ansley is too emphatic when he calls it a Libill. 



It reads thus: — " 



"At a Meeting of the Representatives from the different Town- 

 ships, assembled in General Convention, for the redressing of all 

 public grievances in the Province, held at York, at Mr. Forest's Hotel, 

 on Monday, the 6th of July, 1818: 



