USA > New York > New York City > History of the city of New York, 1609-1909 > Part 15
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It is believed that the first book printed in New York was one by Colonel Nicholas Bayard and Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Lodowick, entitled, "A Journal of the Late Actions of the French at Canada, with the Manner of their being Repulsed by His Excellency, Benjamin Fletcher, Their Majesties' Governor of New York." There is no copy of this original American edition, but of a London edition, printed later in the same year, two copies are extant. The second ( some authorities say the first) of the books printed by Bradford was a small volume of the laws of the province; and another early book was a 24mo volume of 51 pages, entitled "A Letter of Advice to a Young Gentleman leaving the University, concerning his Behavior and Conversation in the World, by R. L. Printed and sold by W. Bradford, Printer to His Majesty, King William, at the Bible in New York, 1696." Bradford not only did the first printing in New York, but also issued the first newspaper, a weekly, printed on a small foolscap sheet, under the title of New York Gazette, the first number of which appeared October 16, 1725.
During the administration of Governor Fletcher New York attained enviable notoriety for the harboring and encouragement of pirates. The prevalence of piracy began with the system of privateering, which all the
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HISTORY OF NEW YORK
maritime nations used as a method of effective warfare, which they regarded as perfectly legitimate. The business of privateering was attractive to the most adventurous, and in many cases the most unscrupulous class of mariners. The high seas were poorly policed in those days. The privateer with a king's commission to destroy or plunder the ships of an enemy, often found a richly laden vessel of a neutral power too much of a temptation; and from priva- teering graduated into actual piracy. Captain William Kidd, who was executed in London, May 24, 1701, for piracy and murder, was a commis- sioned and trusted privateer before he became one of the most famous pirates; and before being a privateer was one of the most prominent ship captains sailing out of New York.
Piracy especially flourished in the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, and much of the booty found a market in New York. Pirate captains, who called themselves privateers and were dressed with oriental magnificence, armed with gem-hilted swords and pistols, were frequent and prominent visitors in New York. Some of them were men of wide travel and attractive conversational powers, and became familiars of the governor. It was charged against Gov- ernor Fletcher that he was protecting piracy for his private gain; that he had granted commissions as privateers to Thomas Tew, John Hoare and other well-known pirates, for money for himself; and that he had taken as a present, the pirate ship Jacob, and had sold it for £800.
Jacob Leisler's son had been in London agitating for a reversal of the attainder against his father, and with equal zeal against Governor Fletcher, who gave all his support to the anti-Leislerite party. With him was Abraham Gouverneur, one of those who had been convicted with Leisler, and who, as has been stated, went to London via Boston after his release from jail. A still more powerful ally of these in opposition to Fletcher, was Robert Livingston, of Albany, who was in England with a claim against the gov- ernment for money advanced, and supplies furnished, during and after the War of 1688. His claim had been resisted by Fletcher, and Livingston turned his attention more particularly to efforts for the removal of Fletcher. The charges which he brought were of interfering with the freedom of elections by marching voters to the polls to intimidate electors; also of refusing to account for public moneys received, and of receiving bribes.
Charges from other sources were, that Governor Fletcher had granted large tracts of land for trifling considerations, and that he had drawn funds from England for full muster rolls for the forts, when they were not half full.
In London, the attorney-general and Robert Weaver represented the king, and Sir Thomas Powis was counsel for Governor Fletcher in an investigation before the Lords of Trade, in 1698; and the board reported to the king, that Fletcher's proceedings were a neglect of duty and an encouragement to
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piracy; that his grants of such large tracts of land to single persons was reprehensible; and recommended that these charges be referred to the attorney-general for further action. The king and the Bishop of London, however, were personally friendly to Fletcher, the king, because of the gov- ernor's military service in the Irish War, and the bishop, because of Fletcher's service in establishing the Church in New York.
Before the board had convened, however, requests for Fletcher's depo- sition had come from so many sources in New York, that the king had recalled Fletcher and had appointed the Earl of Bellomont as governor, to succeed him. Bellomont's commission was dated June 18, 1697, but delays in London, and storms on the voyage, prevented him from reaching his govern- ment until 1698.
Bellomont, before leaving England, had been in touch with Leisler, Gouverneur, and especially Robert Livingston; from whom he had received the belief that Fletcher was a corrupt man, who not only encouraged piracy, but was an embezzler of public moneys. It was urged upon him that Fletcher should not be permitted to depart until his accounts had been investigated by the Provincial Assembly; but the new governor contented himself with taking from Colonel Fletcher bonds in the sum of £10,000 to answer to the king for all public money irregularly disposed of by him.
There seems to be no record of Colonel Fletcher's later career or the date of his death.
HOME OF CAPTAIN WILLIAM KIDD, 1696
C
HAPTER FIF TEE
N
THE EARL OF BELLOMONT'S ADMINISTRATION LAND-GRABBERS AND SEA PIRATES-CAPTAIN KIDD LEISLERITES IN THE SADDLE
Richard Coote, Earl of Bellomont, was a man of commanding presence and genial disposition. His grandfather, Sir Charles Coote, had served with distinction against the Irish in the Rebellion of 1641. The family continued to reside in Ireland, and took an active part in the resto- ration of Charles II, who created the two sons of Sir Charles, in 1660, mem- bers of the Irish peerage under the respective titles of Earl of Montrath and Baron Coote of Colooney.
Richard, son of Baron Coote, was born in Ireland in 1636, and when, on the restoration of the monarchy, his father became occupied about the court, he also mingled with the younger members of the court circle. After the accession of James, he spent most of his time on his estates in Ireland and, being a Protestant, had no sympathy with the efforts made by that king to make the Roman Catholic Church the established church of England. He was elected to Parliament, and in 1688 was one of the first adherents of the Prince of Orange. In the Jacobite Parliament held by James II, in Dublin, in 1889, he was attainted of treason, but in the same year he was created Earl of Bellomont by William III and appointed treasurer and receiver-general to Queen Mary.
In November, 1697, William II appointed him governor of New York, and soon after made him also governor of Massachusetts and New Hamp- shire, but through various delays he did not arrive in New York until April 2, 1698. Before his coming he had become interested, in various ways, with questions of vital interest pertaining to New York and the other colonies. One of these was related to the execution and attainder of Leisler, which, although the death of Leisler occurred in 1691, had been kept alive by the untiring efforts of Leisler's son and others in London to have the attainder of high treason removed, and the land restored to Leisler's heirs. This was done through the action of Parliament and the approval of the king in 1695.
The Earl of Bellomont was a member of the parliamentary com- mittee which examined the subject and reported on it, and in Parliament made a speech on the bill, denouncing the execution as a murder. In a letter to Rev. Increase Mather, soon afterward, he expressed his views still more strongly, stating his opinion that Leisler and Milborne "were not only murdered, but barbarously murdered." When he came as governor
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LORD BELLOMONT AND THE PIRATES
he brought the same views with him. Curiously enough there had been published, just before Bellomont's arrival, several pamphlets of an anti- Leislerian tenor, one of which came from the press of William Bradford, in the early part of 1698, with the official approval of Governor Fletcher and his council. The Rev. Ashbel G. Vermilye, D.D., whose monograph on "The Earl of Bellomont and Suppression of Piracy" forms a part of Wilson's "Memorial History of the City of New York," very pertinently regards this reopening of the old story at this time as an evident attempt to create an opposition in the aristocratic party against the administration of the incoming governor.
But the principal reason for the appointment of Lord Bellomont by William was given in that monarch's letter of notification to him, in which he stated that he had appoined Bellomont to the place because he thought him a man of resolution and integrity, and with those qualifications more likely than any other he could think of to put a stop to the illegal trade and to the growth of piracy, New York being "remarkably infected with those two dangerous diseases." Bellomont was chosen for the task because he had shown particular interest in the suppression of piracy, which sub- ject had much troubled the lords of the Admiralty. In 1695 that body had determined to take vigorous measures against the pirates, some of the boldest of whom were known to be from New York and Rhode Island, and some from other colonies.
It was not practicable to employ men-of-war for the purpose, because they were all needed for active service in the French war; so the plan was to send out a privateer, with letters of marque, who could operate against French commerce and the pirates, as either of these enemies of the king might be encountered. The most important question was to secure the right man for the place.
In London, at that time, was Robert Livingston, a rich New Yorker whose Scotch family connections had procured him the entrée into the court circle in London. Livingston had, from the position of town clerk in Albany, through political influence, purchased from the Indians, grants from the government, and in other ways, secured an estate comprising one hundred and sixty thousand acres of the finest land on the Hudson. Livingston had been counted as against Leisler in the troubles which had followed the accession of William and Mary, but had afterward been an active helper of young Leisler in the successful endeavor to reverse the attainder against his father. Through this relation he had become acquainted with the Earl of Bellomont, who consulted with him as to the proposed plans for the suppression of piracy. Livingston was sure that he knew just the man that was needed to command the proposed
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operations against the pirates, one Captain William Kidd, master mariner who had done valiant service in the West Indies, and who had been compen- sated with a grant of f150 by the General Assembly of New York.
Livingston was fully justified by the reputation which Kidd bore in New York, in his recommendation of the captain to Lord Bellomont. Captain Kidd was regarded as a thoroughly reliable man, brave, well educated, widely traveled in Oriental as well as Western seas, and one of the most skillful mariners of his day. He had an estimable wife and little daughter, housed in a comfortable home on Liberty Street, in New York, and was looked upon as a good and patriotic citizen.
Bellomont joined Livingston in an agreement with Captain Kidd, backing the enterprise, and a company was organized which included in its membership Lord Shrewsbury, Lord Orford, first lord of the Admiralty, and Lord Somers, keeper of the Great Seal, as stockholders, while Bellomont and Livingston retained the largest interest in the company. The sum of f6000 was subscribed, and the galley Adventure, of 287 tons, with 30 guns, was purchased and fully equipped, with Captain Kidd in command. He was given letters of marque, and two additional special commissions, one empowering him to act against the French, and another investing him with authority to seize pirates and take them to some place where they might be dealt with according to law.
Captain Kidd could only find part of a suitable crew in England, so he sailed short-handed from Plymouth for New York, April 23, 1696, capturing a French ship on the way, and bringing her as a prize to New York, where he found plenty of adventurous spirits anxious to volunteer for his expedition. According to the plans laid down, one-tenth of the booty was to go to the king's treasury, and the remainder was to be divided among the shareholders, the captain, and the crew. After he had filled the complement of men, Kidd sailed for Madagascar, with the declared pur- pose to operate against the pirates.
Nothing had been heard from him after that, up to the time that Lord Bellomont came to New York, specially selected to suppress piracy and enforce the navigation laws. His instructions were to "inquire strictly into the connivances and protections that were given to pirates by Colonel Fletcher, late governor."
Lord Bellomont was accompanied by his wife, who was a well-known court beauty, only child and heiress of Bridges Nanfan, Esq., of Birts- Morton, Worcestershire, England. Upon his arrival the new governor published his commission and swore in his Council, which was the same as that of Governor Fletcher, its members being Frederick Philipse, Stephen van Cortlandt, Nicholas Bayard, Matthias Nicolls, Gabriel Minvielle, Wil-
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BELLOMONT FIGHTS ILLICIT TRADING
liam Pinhorne, John Lawrence, William Smith, Chidley Brooke, and Thomas Willet. For several days after their landing there were a series of entertainments given for the benefit of the earl and countess, beginning with a large corporation dinner, presided over by Mayor Johannes de Peyster, followed by several dinner parties at the houses of the leading families.
It was only about a week after his arrival that the new governor had an opportunity to indicate his attitude with reference to enforcement of the customs and navigation laws, when the ship Fortune, Captain Moston, arrived in the harbor with East India goods in an "unfree" bottom. The governor found that the goods were being landed in boats, without any attempt to collect customs duties. Lord Bellomont ordered Chidley Brooke, the collector, to seize the goods, but that functionary replied that it was none of his business to do so, as he had no boat to board the ship, and made other excuses; but after several days' delay the command of the governor became more imperative, and Brooke seized the last of the boats with goods worth £1000, out of £20,000 in all. Finding that other violations of customs laws were also permitted, the earl removed him from office.
The evident intention of the earl to enforce the law alarmed the mer- chants who, under Fletcher, had been permitted unchecked to deal with smugglers and to cheat the revenue, though the most prominent of these merchants were members of the Council or held other important posts under the provincial or city governments, and bound by oaths and ethics to uphold the law. The twenty-one merchants who owned the lading of the Fortune made a loud outcry. The governor's course would ruin the town and drive away trade, and his action with reference to the Fortune had already driven away £100,000 in trade, they said.
Lord Bellomont had discovered that while the trade of the city had more than doubled in the past ten years, there had been an actual decrease in customs revenue. Officials, supine or corrupt, had let abuses grow, and merchants had grown rich on illicit traffic. The vigorous course of the governor, by which the Fortune and another vessel had been condemned by the Court of Admiralty, while ships bound for Madagascar (where pirates disposed of their stealings) were asked by the governor to give security not to trade with pirates. The ships having failed to furnish the security, the governor delayed issue of the clearances, and called together the Council to take up the matter, but he found the Council unanimous against him, so that, with much reluctance, he permitted the vessels to clear without the suggested security. The Council was for the old policies and met suggestions of reforms with the argument that "they had not been practised before."
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HISTORY OF NEW YORK
By act of Parliament passed in 1695, the Leisler properties had been ordered restored, but such restoration had not been made, so the earl at once righted this wrong, bringing upon himself the charge that he had caused "innocent parties," who had bought them in good faith, to be turned out of houses and stores. Finding himself hampered by a Council not at all in sympathy with his plans, Lord Bellomont removed all of them except Van Cortlandt, William Smith and Peter Schuyler, selecting Abraham de Peyster, Robert Livingston, Dr. Samuel Staats and Robert Walters to make up the total of seven members.
In reforming the Council so as to bring it in harmony with his views he had incidentally turned out the leaders of the aristocratic, or anti- Leislerian party. Brooke, the dismissed collector, went to England to present a petition for the earl's recall, and was soon followed by Bayard, the leader of the party. The petition did not lack names of wealthy and prosperous merchants, and Brooke and Bayard were ardent representa- tives of these, whose gains Bellomont's honest course had crippled ; but the earl was not recalled.
Robert Walters, of the new council, Abraham Gouverneur who had been one of the condemned six and had married Milborne's widow, and others of the family, petitioned the governor for permission to disinter the bodies of Leisler and Milborne from the grave which had been dug for them at the foot of the gallows and give them Christian burial in the crypt of the old Dutch church. Anti-Leislerians filed objections to the plan, but the governor granted the petition, not only on the ground of "compassion for the family" as he said, but still more because Parliament had not only reversed the attain- der of the two men, but had legitimated Leisler's assumption of the govern- ment. Therefore he sent a hundred soldiers as a guard of honor to the dis- interment, and although it took place at midnight in a heavy storm, twelve hundred persons assembled to show their sympathy and give their aid. The procession marched with lighted torches to the City Hall to the sound of muf- fled drums, and after lying in state there for several days, the bodies were decently interred in the church crypt.
The Assembly which met March 21, 1699, was of greatly changed political complexion. There were twenty-one members in all, and sixteen were Leisler- ians, under the leadership of Gouverneur and Walters, the former representing the counties of Orange and Kings, and becoming speaker of the Assembly; one of the first acts of which was to pass a bill for the payment of the sum of £2700 expended by Leisler, out of his own funds, for the public service. A still more important measure was passed vacating several public grants made by Governor Fletcher. These grants were large, while the government quitrents were scandalously small, one grant covering 840 square miles at a rental of five
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BELLOMONT ANGERS RECTOR VESEY
beaver skins annually, and many others being as glaringly inadequate, while not one gave anything worth calling a return for their lands.
This bill, approved by Bellomont, angered all the great landowners, in- cluding among many others Domine Godfreidus Dellius, who had been given by Governor Fletcher a grant in what is now Washington County, on the east side of the Hudson, above Albany, extending to Vergennes, Vermont, seventy miles long by twelve miles in breadth. He had also, with William Pinhorne, Colonel Peter Schuyler, Evert Banker and Dirk Wessels, bought from the In- dians a tract fifty miles long and four miles wide in the Mohawk Valley (now in Herkimer County).
Another enemy aroused by the bill was Rev. William Vesey, the rector of Trinity. Fletcher, after the news had come to him that the Earl of Bellomont had been appointed to succeed him, had leased to his closest friend, Colonel Caleb Heathcote, what was described as "the pleasantest part of the King's Garden," and also leased, for a term of seven years, the King's Farm, which was a perquisite of the governor and adjoining his residence. These leases the bill nullified, further providing that the King's Garden and the King's Farm should not be leased by any governor for a longer period than his own term of office.
Domine Dellius was not only aggrieved by the rescinding of his grants, but because the Assembly had also passed a bill suspending him from his min- istry. On the charges made which led to his suspension the earl seems to have been misled, for the Domine went to Amsterdam and was thoroughly exoner- ated by the Classis there; but the contention in favor of the land grants, which the Domine took to England, was not successful. The earl and the Assem- bly were so palpably in the right there, that while the efforts of the land-grab- bers delayed, they did not prevent the approval of the bill.
The rector of Trinity, Rev. William Vesey, was very much wrought up by the action of the Assembly and the earl. He left the earl and his family out of their wonted place in the prayer "for all those in authority," and prayed every Sunday for Domine. Dellius by name, that God would give him a safe voyage and deliver him from his enemies. He wrote to the bishop of London, asking him to aid in securing the recall of the earl, but the bishop advised him to make his submission to the governor. He did as advised, and was told by the earl to behave himself decently and discreetly for the future and he would be his friend.
The Earl of Bellomont was governor of Massachusetts as well as of New York, and after proroguing the Assembly, May 16, 1699, he went to Boston, remaining fourteen months and giving an administration to Massachusetts which was so thoroughly satisfactory that he became one of the most popular of the colonial governors.
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Less than two months after his arrival in Boston the governor made a capture which was the culmination of the war against piracy he had from his first arrival carried on without faltering. The story of his connection with the commission of Captain William Kidd as a privateer has already been told. He and Robert Livingston were sureties on Kidd's bond as a privateer officer. After he left New York in October, 1696, for Madagascar, Kidd made no cap- ture for more than a year. Then news of him came from various sources which indicated that the man sent out as a pirate-catcher had himself turned pirate.
When this news came to New York, the merchants and others who had been hit by the earl's vigorous opposition to piracy and other illegal trading, did not hesitate about charging, or at least strongly hinting, that the governor was an accomplice of Kidd. Whether Kidd started out with piratical inten- tions when he sailed from New York is a question which has been much dis- cussed, but he probably did not. When he reached the Indian Ocean, how- ever, temptation overcome him. It was much easier to be a pirate than to catch one, and vastly more profitable, and after several small captures he took an Armenian vessel of 400 tons, the Quidagh Merchant, in May, 1698. This was a prize worth £64,000, of which his own share was £16,000. He after- ward plundered the Banian merchants, and in May, 1698, he took the Quidagh Merchant to Madagascar. The fact of piracy was so well authenticated that on November 23, 1698, orders were sent to the governors of all British colonies to apprehend him if he came within their jurisdiction. In April, 1699, he arrived in the West Indies in the Quidagh Merchant, which he made fast in a lagoon on the island of Saona, southeast of Hayti. From there he went north in a 55-ton sloop, the San Antonio, with forty men. At Oyster Bay, Long Island, he took aboard James Emott, a prominent New York lawyer, whom he landed on Rhode Island, sending him to the earl at Boston to request a safe conduct. Kidd's wife and little daughter went aboard the sloop at Block Island, and thence he went to Gardiner's Island, leaving part of his treasure with the owner of the island, who afterward turned it over to the authorities.
Mr. Emott, in his errand to the earl, could get from him no more than a message to Kidd that "if what Mr. Emott said was true" Captain Kidd might come ashore. Kidd arrived in Boston, July 1, 1699, and was taken before the council and interrogated. His replies were so unsatisfactory that he and sev- eral of his men were arrested and sent to England, where he was charged with piracy and the burning of houses, besides several murders and brutali- ties. The specific charge upon which he was found guilty was the murder of one of his men, William Moore, and he and nine of his accomplices were hanged at Execution Dock, London, May 24, 170I.
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