the agents of Lord Granville. These agents industriously picked
flaws in the titles to the lands in Granville's proprietary upon
which the poorer settlers were seated; and compelled them to pay
for the land if they had not already done so, or else to pay the
fees twice over and take out a new patent as the only remedy of
the alleged defect in their titles. In Mecklenburg County the
spirit of backwoods revolt flamed out in protest against the
proprietary agents. Acting under instructions to survey and close
bargains for the lands or else to eject those who held them,
Henry Eustace McCulloh, in February, 1765, went into the county
to call a reckoning. The settlers, many of whom had located
without deeds, indignantly retorted by offering to buy only at
their own prices, and forbade the surveyors to lay out the
holdings when this smaller price was declined. They not only
terrorized into acquiescence those among them who were willing to
pay the amount charged for the lands, but also openly declared
that they would resist by force any sheriff in ejectment
proceedings. On May 7th an outbreak occurred; and a mob, led by
Thomas Polk, set upon John Frohock, Abraham Alexander, and
others, as they were about to survey a parcel of land, and gave
them a severe thrashing, even threatening the young McCulloh with
death.

The choleric backwoodsmen, instinctively in agreement with
Francis Bacon, considered revenge as a sort of wild justice.
Especial objects of their animosity were the brothers Frohock,
John and Thomas, the latter clerk of the court at Salisbury, and
Edmund Fanning, a cultured gentleman-adventurer, associate
justice of the superior court. So rapacious and extortionate were
these vultures of the courts who preyed upon the vitals of the