DAVID OWEN 23
not be taken off the land for militia duty," since if attempt were made to enforce such notice, or " fines should be imposed in consequence, it will be the signal," he wrote, for active defense against the very government (English) they have hitherto handsomely maintained."
Like private theatricals on a miniature stage, reads the rehearsal of Owen's grievances in his letters to the Admiralty, and to the Committee of Public Safety, on Moose Island. The " calamities of warfare " were not only to be '* repelled from the doors of his people," and they themselves " protected from indignities," but he had his own private rights to defend. For when the British colors were displayed at Fort Sullivan, they also floated in the air from Dudley and Frederick Islands (termed then St. Croix Islands), where he claimed rights, accruing from the original grant of Campobello, which rights were strengthened by the actual possession of a tenant of his, through purchase of a claim, duly recorded in Massachusetts. This possession was, moreover, at that time acknowledged by him to be under the Crown of Great Britain, he * having affixed his name to the buildings for that purpose, and as a memorial of the same."
A vacant house on Moose Island had also been seized by officers of the Crown, and a similar entry was thereby included, though the additional ceremony of a discharge of musketry at the hoisting of a British flag upon a small vacant hut was reserved for Mark Island.
Owen's daily life and his real estate were becoming a burden to him. In vain did he offer to the Crown his lands for cash on hand, his duty still compelling him to worry his superiors with bristling letters. Regardless of British authority, woodcutters came on Dudley Island " to get a number of sticks to repair a vessel." Such a bold and vagrant act forced Owen to proceed there (less than a mile away), in person and " to take action to secure the rights of the Crown." Then the harbors
