rents. In several counties the greater part of the land was
occupied under such a tenure. The design was to compel the
landlords to sell to the existing tenants at a price fixed by
public appraisal, or else that the State should take the lands by
eminent domain and dispose of them to the same persons on
reasonable terms. Sheriffs were forcibly prevented from serving
writs in dispossession proceedings. One who took with him a
_posse comitatus_ of five hundred armed men, a hundred of
whom were mounted, was met and turned back by a larger band, who
were all mounted. The Governor was finally compelled to issue a
proclamation against the "up-renters," as they were called, and
to protect the sheriff by a large body of militia. Put down in
one county, the movement soon reappeared in others. Disguises
were assumed, the rioters figuring under Indian names and wearing
more or less of the Indian garb. Three hundred of them, with
twice that number not in disguise, prevented a sheriff from
levying an execution for rent on tenants upon the Livingston
manor. For six years the contest went on in several counties.
Several lives were lost on both sides. Sheriff's officers were
tarred and feathered and their writs destroyed. Of the rioters
many were arrested and prosecuted from time to time and some
convicted. Five were sent to the State's prison for life. Two
were sentenced to be hanged. The State used its militia freely
to defend the sheriffs, at a cost in one county of over $60,000,
and in 1845 a series of prosecutions and convictions, resulting
in over eighty sentences at one term of court, broke the back of
the insurrection. It died half-victorious, however, for an
"anti-rent" Governor and Lieutenant-Governor were elected the
next year, and several statutory changes in the law of leases
which the malcontents had desired were soon afterwards