USA > New York > Courts and lawyers of New York; a history, 1609-1925, Volume I > Part 42
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3a. Such an exciting scene was hardly called for, and those who risked their lives in that episode can hardly have been in the fullest confidence of the Connecticut Government. It seems that the purloined charter was merely a duplicate of the original. The latter had already disappeared and was not again brought to light, from its place of concealement in the hollow of an oak tree since known as the Charter Oak, until Andros had been ousted and James II was no longer King of England. At some time be- tween June and October, of 1787, a copy of the original seems to have been made on parchment, and when Andros appeared in October and de- manded surrender of the charter few Connecticut legislators knew that the seemingly precious document which lay in the mahogany box upon the council table was only a counterfeit of the original, which had been in- spected by the Connecticut governor and his Council three months or so earlier. In the Journal of the General Court of Connecticut under date of June 15, 1687, is the following entry :
"Sundry of the Court desiring that the Patent or Charter might be brought into the Court, the secretary sent for it, and informed the gov- ernor and Court that he had the charter, and shewed it to the Court, and the governor bid him put it into the box again, and lay it on the table, and leave the key in the box, which he did forthwith."
Whether this request by the Governor was prompted by plans already laid for the disposal of the charter, his action certainly made the docu- ment more accessible to those who had clerkly designs upon it; and Andros perhaps would not have known that he carried away only the duplicate in the charter box, had the dramatic incident of the blowing out of candles and
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These were some of the experiences of Captain-General and Governor-in-Chief Sir Edmund Andros, prior to his as- sumption of supreme place in the government of New York and New Jersey also. One does not wonder, therefore, why Dongan decided to stay on in New York for a while-as an unofficial observer, as it were. He had not long to wait for decisive happenings.
Andros did not remain many days in New York. On August 15, 1688, after certain pompous ceremonies in New York City, conspicuous among which was the formal breaking of the seal of the province of New York and the substitution of the seal of the Dominion of New England, Andros pro- ceeded in vice-regal state to act similarly in Elizabethtown, the capital of New Jersey. A tour of the southern territories, a journey in state to Albany, where he held impressive coun- cil with the Iroquois chieftains-and where he did not fail to take all advantage he could of the then recent abandonment by the French of a fort the latter had built a year earlier on the site of La Salle's old Fort de Conty-and a triumphal return down the Hudson River to New York, ended the osten- tatious part of Andros' mission. On October 9, 1688, with the appointment of Francis Nicholson as Lieutenant-Gover- nor, and perhaps a meeting together of his large Council4 the
the disappearance of the paper within the box never occurred. That it did occur, and that the paper extracted was the duplicate, not the original charter, are attested by later entries in the Connecticut records. In the Journal of Connecticut an entry in the year 1715 records the granting of the sum of "twenty shillings" to Captain Wadsworth "out of the Colonial treasury" as a token of their grateful remembrance of "such faithful and good service" as that he had given "in securing the duplicate charter of the colony in a very troublesome season."
4. The commission given to Andros made the following provision for his council :
"And you are accordingly forthwith to take upon you the execution of the place and trust Wee have reposed in you, and with all convenient speed to call together the Members of the Councill, by name Joseph Dudley, William Stoughton, Robert Mason, Anthony Brockhollz, Thomas Hinckley, Walter Clark, Robert Treat, John Fitz Winthrop, John Nicholson, Fred- erick Philipse, Jervis Baxter, John Pinchon, Peter Buckley, Wait Winthrop.
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organization of the "Territory and Dominion of New England in America" was completed. Andros returned to Boston, and Nicholson made New York his headquarters.
There is not much more to be recorded of the Andros ad- ministration in New York, although a direct outcome of its abrupt ending makes a dramatic chapter. Of Andros's Coun- cil the dominating New York members were Frederick Phillipse, Stephen van Cortlandt and Nicholas Bayard. The two first named were members of the Dongan Boundary Com- mission which disposed, temporarily at all events, of the dis- pute with Connecticut. All three were among the wealthiest of New York citizens. They had much influence with Nichol- son, who was then only about twenty-five years old, a "lieu- tenant in the army"; and as the months passed and it became clearer that the Andros scheme of government was fatal to New York, they exercised that influence positively. The winter of 1688-89 had not ended before rumors reached New York of the momentous happenings in England. In February, 1689, it was known to Nicholson and his councillors that William of Orange was at Torbay. They immediately trans- mitted the information to Andros, and ordered at the same time that the King's money should be placed in the Fort- an ominous precaution. However, Andros seems to have treated the rumor lightly, or deemed that no danger to his government lay in New York; he sent no instructions to the
Richard Wharton, Stephen Courtland, John Usher, Bartholomew Gidney, Jonathan Ting, John Hincks, Edward Ting, Barnaby Lathrop, John Sand- ford, William Bradford, Daniel Smith, Edward Randolph, John Spragg, John Walley, Nathaniel Clarke, John Coxhill, Walter Newberry, John Green, Richard Arnold, John Alborough, Samuel Shrimpton, John Young, Nicholas Bayard, John Palmer, William Brown, Junior, Simon Linds, Richard Smith and John Allen, Esquires: At which meeting after having published out said Commission or Letters Patents, constituting you our Captain-General and Governor in Chief of our said Territory and Do- minion, you shall (after first taken the like Oath yourself) administer to the members of our Councill, the Oath for the due execution of their places and trust."-See O'Callaghan's "Documents Relative to the Colonial His- tory of the State of New York," III, 543.
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Lieutenant-Governor and Council in New York until nearly three months later, when he was already a prisoner in the hands of the Boston Committee of Safety, and the revolution in New England had triumphed without the shedding of a drop of blood. The news seems to have been kept out of Boston until April. Then John Winslow, who had just come up from Virginia, spread the news of the success of William of Orange, and of the flight of James. Andros then acted im- mediately, but without avail. The unfortunate Winslow was imprisoned, but the news had passed beyond recall, had spread far and wide. Andros issued a proclamation against the Prince's cause, but this only fanned the flame of revolt. On all sides there was suspicion. The people watched Andros as closely as he watched their leaders. But threats by Andros and cautious movements by Boston leaders could not stop action by the people. Smoke was fast becoming flame. Soon the popular excitement in Boston was altogether beyond con- trol. The North End heard that the South End was in arms ; the South End heard that the North End was on the march. Tar barrels blazed up on Beacon Hill. Country people came in, by land and water, to Boston. Drums were beaten through the town, and on April 18, at noon, a company of Boston soldiery escorted a number of former magistrates to the Town House. From its balcony the magistrates fearlessly read to the expectant populace below the "Declaration of the Gentle- men, Merchants and Inhabitans of Boston and the Country adjacent." This declaration rehearsed the oppressive acts of the Andros administration; the illegal appointment of the Dudley Commission ; the wrongful suppression of the charter ; hailed the accession of William of Orange to the throne of England; and justified the arrest and imprisonment of "those few ill men which have been (next to our sins) the grand authors of all our miseries." Action had already been taken, many of the obnoxious citizens who had been of the Andros administration having been arrested. Aid sent to Andros
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from the frigate "Rose" had been overpowered; so Andros, finding escape impossible, went from the Fort to the Town House, and there gave himself up to the Boston Committee. The frigate "Rose" struck her topmasts next day, and a few days later Chief Justice Dudley, who had been out of town, was arrested. A "Council for the Safety of the People and Con- servation of the Peace" was organized with Simon Bradstreet as president; and this was the only governmental body rec- ognized. Thus the Andros government was overthrown in Boston. The revolution was accomplished with less risk and excitement elsewhere; and although Andros twice escaped from confinement-getting as far as Newport, on the second occasion before being recognized and again returned to Boston -his power had been completely swept from New England long before he was permitted to again sail from its shores.5
It is not surprising that Andros acted so promptly to sup- press the news Winslow brought to Boston in April, 1689, but altogether ignored for three months the urgent request from New York, in February, as to a like rumor. Boston was of one mind ; all were against Andros and his institutions, ecclesi- astical and judicial, whereas the people of New York were of so many minds that Andros probably calculated that any
5. In New Hampshire a convention was held to organize a govern- ment, and at its second session resolved to unite with Massachusetts, in ousting Andros. In Plymouth Colony Nathaniel Clark, the agent of Andros, was imprisoned, and Thomas Hinckley, former governor, resumed office on April 22nd; in Rhode Island the charter was revived, and all the officers who had been displaced by Andros resumed office, with the exception of Walter Clark, governor, who wavered. Hence that colony was without a governor for some time, from May Ist. The Connecticut legislators found the missing charter in a hollow oak, and under its author- ity Former Governor Treat convened the Assembly in May, Connecticut soon finding its territory voluntarily increased by Suffolk County, Long Island, which elected to join Connecticut. In New Jersey, the Andros gov- ernment merely collapsed, pending orders from the Crown, and no new governor was appointed until 1692. In Maryland, as Lord Baltimore's deputies hesitated to proclaim William and Mary, an armed association of Protestants was formed in April under John Coode. They assumed the government, and excluded all Papists from office.
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sectional action would spend itself upon an opposing faction within the province, without troubling the Governor. The English of New York were Protestant but not so keenly Puritan that they cared much whether Andros established an Episcopal or a Reformed church in New York, though they drew the line against a Catholic church; and if, as might be anticipated, the Dutch would open their arms to their own Prince of Orange in a new role, as King of England, the Eng- lish colonists might reasonably be expected to counter this by inclining to the cause of James. So, Andros may have thought. The New York authorities, however, were per- plexed. Lieutenant-Governor Nicholson and his Council hardly knew what action to take; and, as a matter of fact, no positive movement was made by either the inhabitants or the government in New York for almost three months after news reached them of the revolution and impending dynastic change in England. But on April 26, Lieutenant-Governor Nicholson called together his Council to read to them the formal decla- ration of the Boston Committee. The communication was to them a "great surprizall"; and withal so momentous that they deemed it prudent to call into consultation the Mayor and Common Council, and also the militia captains of New York City. As subsequent events showed, the future would have been easier for them had they not called the military heads to their council. Maybe, the Governor and his councillors would not even have thought it necessary to confer with the munic- ipal heads had they not received, on that very day, intimation that France had declared war upon both England and Holland. The news from Boston, as to Andros, was serious, but the news from England, that the powerful and Catholic France was at war with England, was of far more serious portent to New York. The deliberations, therefore, of the Governor and his Council with the local officials soon turned from con- cern for the Andros administration to measures of defence of the city and province against possible attack by France or
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Canada. The deliberators decided to fortify the town, and for that purpose to divert all revenue receipts for some time.
Other perplexities were before the Council. The inter- colonial situation was delicate. Massachusetts was strong, and would be glad to expand at the expense of northern New York. Connecticut was chronically dissatisfied with its Anglo- Dutch neighbor. So New York could not afford to ignore the Boston Committee. But Andros might come back to power. So, Nicholson and his Council adopted caution. On May I they craftily replied to the communication from Boston. One copy of their reply they addressed to Sir Edmund Andros, whom they asked to return the records of the province which he had taken to Boston in the previous October; the other copy they addressed to President Bradstreet and his associ- ates, but changed the wording so that it read as a request that Andros himself be forwarded to them. Bradstreet, in answer, declined to release the former Governor-in-Chief, thus leav- ing Nicholson and his Council with no alternative but to face their own difficulties as best they could.
The temporizing policy of the Council exasperated the people. No proclamation of William was made, but it did not fail to be noticed that the Episcopal chaplain at the Fort regularly prayed for the infant Prince of Wales whose birth to King James had prompted Councillor Stephen van Cort- landt, a few months before when news of the birth reached New York, to honor the event by sacrificing his own wig, which went up in smoke from the point of his sword while he made merry in public. This was remembered. It was also not forgotten that King James was a Catholic ; and Nicholson was also thought to be a Papist, though he professed to be Prot- estant. Moreover it had not passed unnoticed that Roman- ists had, during Dongan's time, been coming in, and that the province now harbored more Catholics than there were in all New England, a fact which now took on a sinister significance. All movements, trivial or serious, at a time like that, were
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apt to seem suspicious, and easily distorted into significant ominous portents. The militia captains began to lift their eyes and wrinkle their brows when they were called into con- sultation with the Council; and they gradually became con- vinced that Bayard, of the Council, who was also colonel of the six New York companies of militia, secretly planned to use that force to aid the deposed Catholic James when the oppor- tune moment arrived, which they surmised would be when a French force appeared off New York.
To be truthful, it must be stated that the Council in their actions proved to be more concerned in and more loyal to New York than to either Catholic or Protestant ruler of Eng- land. Their mental state was merely one of hesitant caution. For instance, they wrote to the secretary of state-they did not name him, and did not seem to mind whether he served James or William-and also to the Lords of the Board of Trade, in the hope that by the disruption of almost all things governmental in England and the colonies they might snatch an advantage for their own province, at the expense of Massa- chusetts. They pointed out "how fatall it hath been to this city and the Province of New York for to be annexed to that of Boston, which, if it had continued, would have occasioned the totall ruin of the Inhabitants of said Province."
But their public action was somewhat palsied, and their hesitancy was misconstrued, most of all by the militia cap- tains. Nicholson made matters worse by a somewhat indis- creet speech, which was made in the hope that he might strengthen his own authority, until the political situation became clearer. His words were taken as, or distorted into, a threat that he would burn the city if provoked. The effect upon the already suspicious soldiery was immediate. The captains resolved to override their colonel, take matters of de- fence into their own hands. One of the captains, Jacob Leisler, the most commanding personality among the train-bands, was not averse to taking the responsibility; in fact, the whole
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movement seems to have been initiated by him. The militia companies mounted guard at the Fort by turns ; it was there- fore planned that when the turn of Leisler's company should next come, all companies at a certain signal would gather and parade, urging the town to unite with them to defend the Protestant religion. According, on June 3, Leisler gave the signal which brought the six companies out. The occasion was improved by the spreading of a rumor that the French fleet was in the offing, Leisler being ultimately accused of originating and spreading the rumor himself. But the rumor was effective. The whole city rallied, and the military guard was swept into office, with Leisler at their head. Some of the captains hesitated, it is said, but the record shows that of six New York companies six captains and four hundred men, at Leisler's direction, signed a declaration that they would "hold the fort for his Royal Highness, the Prince of Orange, on be- half of such person as he had appointed Governor."
Under the circumstances Lieutenant-Governor Nicholson could hardly continue in office. Therefore, on June 6, he noti- fied his Council that he would leave for England. On June 10 he gave over the government to the Council, and at the end of the month sailed. Before he sailed, however, he knew that his resignation had not been called for by King William. At the same time, he probably recognized that to attempt to as- sert his authority would be futile. It was vital to at least one important section of the inhabitants that Catholicism be fought; and the Protestants in general were being stirred by Leisler and others. There were very many Huguenots in New York Province, poor Protestants who had escaped from France after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, in 1685. They, in particular, dreaded the possibility that the spectre then faintly before them might become real ; they shrank from the thought that, even so far away as they were, the merciless arm of Catholic France might yet reach them, and drag them back to France-for torture and death. So Nicholson, who
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was suspected of being a Catholic, though he professed to be a Protestant, probably would not have been permitted to resume office,6 under King William's general order which con- tinued in office, for the time being, all Protestant officials.
Sir Edmund Andros and Francis Nicholson thus finally passed out of New York history. Both were Governors of other American colonies in later years, and both received royal advancement with the passing years, but New York was never again to be in their hands. Briefly commenting on their careers, it appears that Sir Edmund Andros was born on the Island of Guernsey, December 6, 1637; was brought up as a page in the royal family, and went into exile with the Stuarts after the death of King Charles the First. Andros fought in the continental wars, in the army of Prince Henry of Nassau. After the Restoration he returned to England with the Stuarts, married well, and gained distinction in the war against the Dutch. In 1672 he became major of a regi- ment of dragoons. In 1674 he came to New York as Deputy Governor for the royal proprietor. In 1682 Dongan succeeded him, and in 1686 Andros was entrusted with wider authority
6. Had Nicholson dared to remain in New York, he would have re- ceived a commission from King William broad enough and strong enough to relieve him from all difficulty. For, all through these confusions William showed no fondness for any revolutions but such as he made himself. On the 30th of July, while Nicholson was yet on the ocean, an order issued at Whitehall to appoint him Lieutenant-Governor, enclosing instructions from the King and Queen. The letter was addressed to him, and, in his absence, "to such as for the time being take care for preserving the peace and administering the laws." It is said that Nicholson arrived in London before the letter was started, and it had been conjectured that no alteration was made in the address, because it was supposed that Phillipse, Cortlandt and Bayard would open it. But Nicholson must have told the authorities that a convention had been summoned, and that Leisler was in actual command. It is probable either that the despatches were beyond correction, or that the English authorities were willing to avail themselves of the doubt hidden under the address. In point of fact, at the moment they were written Bayard and Cortlandt had both fled from New York, and there was no government there but that of Leisler. Nor did the Council, which was thus reduced to Phillipse alone, make any pretence of exercising authority .- Bryant's "History of the United States," III, 18.
C.&L .- 29
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as Governor-in-Chief of New England, taking over New York government from Dongan in 1688, as has been stated in earlier pages. He had been knighted in England in 1677, and was thoroughly Royalist in all his thoughts and actions. On April 18, 1689, he was deposed, and was impeached on June 27 by a colonial Assembly. He was ordered home in Novem- ber following, for trial, but was never tried, "the American agents, singularly enough, declining to sign the statement of grievances which was prepared for them by their legal coun- sel." As a matter of fact, William of Orange was somewhat alarmed at the "daring spirit" shown by Massachusetts in the ousting of Andros. Andros was set free, and was soon again in royal favor. In 1692 he arrived in Virginia, as royal Gov- ernor. There he remained until 1698, when he was removed, after being involved in controversy with Commissary James Blain who was the first president of William and Mary Col- lege, and who charged Andros with being "an enemy to re- ligion, the church and the college." From 1704 to 1706 Andros was Governor of his native island, Guernsey. He died in London February 24, 1714. The career of Andros shows that disfavor in the colonies did not necessarily bring royal disfavor. In every colonial appointment his actions reached the point at which they could no longer be tolerated ; yet for each colonial failure he was rewarded, indicating that the interests of the Crown were directly opposite to those of the colonies.
Sir Francis Nicholson was born about 1664 and first came into American record on October 9, 1688, when appointed Lieutenant-Governor of New York, under Andros. He was probably too young for the stern realities he would have had to confront in New York, in 1689, with Leisler in command of the armed forces, and, possibly ambitious to usurp his place as Governor. At all events, suspicion as to his religious faith, made it impossible for Nicholson to remain. Like Andros, he was advanced in the royal service. He was sent as Governor
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to Virginia in 1690, Andros succeeding him two years later. From 1691 Nicholson was also Lieutenant-Governor of Bal- timore's province, Maryland, and became its Governor at Cop- lye's death in September, 1693. He again was Governor of Virginia 1699-1705, after which he reentered the British Army. He commanded the forces that captured Port Royal, Nova Scotia, in 1710, and was Governor of Nova Scotia, 1712-17. From 1721 to 1725, he was Governor of South Carolina. He was knighted in 1720, and in 1725, after returning from South Carolina, was given the military rank of lieutenant- general in the British Army. This was the climax of his career. He died in London two years or so later-March 5, 1728. The career of Sir Francis Nicholson was thus far more distinguished than those who knew him in New York in his young manhood thought he would gain ; and his service in the colonial wars was not without value to America. He was not of the arrogant type of Royalist, and many of his adminis- trative acts in Virginia, Maryland and South Carolina were of lasting constructive value.
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