advised to move, with their furniture, to the interior, and livestock was driven off from the larger islands. Rhode Island had about 700 troops on the island when the enemy landed at Middletown. After a night of pillaging, the British troops marched into Newport on December 8 under the command of General Clinton. The Rhode Island troops left the island, moving to Tiverton and Bristol. Assistance poured in from neighboring states, and the Americans assumed defensible positions on each side of the bay. Providence had been given up to military occupation as well, and the college exercises were suspended, with the building being occupied as a barracks, and then later as a military hospital. General Benedict Arnold was sent by Washington to Providence in January 1777 to assist with the defense of Rhode Island, and the Marquis de Lafayette entered service at the same time, greatly facilitating the American cause. Cooke, desperate for additional troops, ordered a new brigade be raised in Rhode Island. Washington disapproved of the move, fearing it would interfere with the enlistment of the two battalions already assigned to the state. The general wrote two earnest letters on the subject, but when Cooke presented the situation to him, Washington ultimately approved of the plan, and thanked the State for its exertions. Late tenure In May 1777 the same State officers were elected except William Channing replaced Henry Marchant as Attorney General, and Marchant then became Rhode Island's third delegate to the Congress along with Hopkins and Ellery. For the next year Cooke dealt with the issues, often dire, brought about by the war. Weary of his responsibilities after serving for nearly three years as a wartime governor, Cooke retired from office in May 1778, and was replaced by William Greene, the son of former colonial Governor William Greene. In addition to Cooke, his deputy governor, William Bradford, also declined re-election in 1778, and both men were publicly thanked by the General Assembly for "their patriotic zeal, firmness, and intrepidity." Cooke's service and public record, said historian Thomas W. Bicknell, "give a high conception of the excellent good sense and wise judgment of the Governor." Cooke died on November 14, 1782, and was buried in the North Burial Ground in Providence. Family In 1740 Cooke married Hannah, the daughter of Hezekiah Sabin, with whom he had 12 children. One of his descendants was the Honorable George L.