USA > New York > New York City > History of the city of New York in the seventeenth century Vol. II > Part 15
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President Eliot says, again, when writing of America's service to the world:
These five contributions to civilization - peace-keeping, religious tolerance, the development of manhood suffrage, the welcoming of new-comers, and the diffusion of well-being-I hold to have been eminently characteristic of our country.
VOL. II. - M
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Three of these characteristics were displayed by cosmopolitan New Netherland as they were not by its English neighbors when the American type of civilization was still in embryo. And it cannot be questioned that, while this type was gradu- ally developing, the descendants of the New Netherlanders, aided by the colonists who flocked from many lands into the province established by William Penn, exerted a modifying, moulding influence upon the descendants of the English Puritan at the north, of the English churchman at the south.
REFERENCE NOTES
UNDERHILL: Col. Docs., XIV (398) ; J. J. Latting, Robert Feake in N. Y. Genea. and Bio. Record, XI (199) ; and see Reference Notes, Chap. VII. - HIS LETTERS TO WINTHROP: in Winthrop Papers in Mass. Hist. Soc. Collections, 4th Series, VII. - GARDINER'S RELATION OF THE PEQUOT WARS (quoted) : see Reference Notes, Chap. V.
WILLETT: see Reference Notes, Chap. X. - His LETTERS: in Win- throp Papers in Mass. Hist. Soc. Collections, 5th Series, I. - CARTWRIGHT (quoted) : in Col. Docs., III.
GEORGE BAXTER: Records of New Amsterdam, V (360).
JOHN SCOTT: Col. Docs., XIV; (in West Indies) Cal. S. P. Col., 1661-1668 (485); H. B. Wheatley, Biography of Samuel Pepys in his ed. of Pepys' Diary (157); O. A. [Oswald Airy ?] Samuel Pepys in Encyclopædia Britannica, 9th ed. [with further references]; and see Reference Notes, Chap. XV. - UNDERHILL TO WINTHROP : in Winthrop Papers in Mass. Hist. Soc. Collections, 4th Series, VII. - NICOLLS (quoted) : in Col. Docs., III. - PALFREY (cited) : his Hist. of New England, II (363). - 'MAJOR SCOTT'S RELATION' and WILLOUGHBY to WILLIAMSON: in Cal. S. P. Col., 1661- 1668. - MAVERICK TO WINTHROP: in Winthrop Papers in Mass. Hist. Soc. Collections, 4th Series, VII. - SCOTT's DESCRIPTION OF GUIANA: Sloane MSS., 3662, British Museum. - PEPYS PAPERS : Rawlinson MSS., Bodleian Library, Oxford. - GOTHER- SON: G. D. Scull, Dorothea Scott, etc., quoted by Wheatley in Introduction to his Biography of Pepys as above. - LETTER OF SCOTT'S WIFE: in Cal. S. P. Col., 1669-1674. - VENEZUELA BOUNDARY : G. L. Burr, The Guiana Boundary in Amer. Historical Review, VI (52). - EDMUNDSON (cited) : his Dutch in Western Guiana (164) and Dutch on the Amazon and Negro (165).
DANIEL DENTON : his Brief Description of New York (389); Flint (287) and other histories of Long Island.
HEYLIN : his Cosmographie (139).
WOOD: his Sketch of the First Settlement of Long Island (290).
FURMAN : his Antiquities of Long Island (285).
MONTANUS : his De Nieuwe en Onbekende Weereld (426).
OGILBY : his America (48).
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JOSSELYN (quoted) : his Two Voyages to New England (529).
NICOLLS MAP : Original in British Museum; facsimiles in Valentine's Manual, 1864 (508).
DUKE'S PLAN : see Reference Notes, Chap. XIV.
DUTCH MAP, 1666: Reproduced in Report of State Historian, 1897 (454), and in Murphy's translation of Van der Donck's Vertoogh van Nieu Nederland (423).
VIEWS OF THE CITY: Critical Essay accompanying Fernow, New Netherland (383) ; Andrews, New Amsterdam, New Orange, New York (524).
DAVENPORT (quoted) : in Winthrop Papers in Mass. Hist. Soc. Col- lections, 3d Series, X.
PROPOSED AMENDMENT TO STATE CONSTITUTION, 1846 : Lincoln, Con- stitutional Hist. of New York, II (132).
THOMAS MUN (quoted) : his England's Treasure by Forraign Trade (179).
DOUGLASS (quoted) : his Summary . . . of the First Planting . . . of the British Settlements (78).
SURNAMES : Records of New Amsterdam, and other contemporaneous documents; Riker, Annals of Newtown (300) ; Schuyler, Colonial New York (395); and see Reference Notes, Chap. VII.
DUTCH CHURCH: see Reference Notes, Chap. III.
ST. NICHOLAS : Anon., Christmas and Santa Claus in New York Province in National Magazine, 1892; J. B. Beekman, The Founders of New York, New York, 1870; P. M. Hough, Dutch Life in Town and Country, London, 1901.
DUTCH LAWS IN NEW YORK: Brooks, Hist. of the Court of Common Pleas (144) ; Hoffman, Estate and Rights of the Corporation of New York (136) ; H. E. Howland, The Practice of the Law in New York in Century Magazine, 1901. - SPECIAL ASSESSMENTS : Minutes of the Common Council, I (409); and see Reference Notes, Chap. XIII.
TOWNSHIP-COUNTY SYSTEM : Howard (quoted), his Local Constitu- tional History of the United States (130); J. K. Hosmer, Short History of Anglo-Saxon Freedom, New York, 1890.
DE TOCQUEVILLE (quoted) : his Democracy in America. Many editions. GLADSTONE (quoted) : in Nineteenth Century (periodical), Nov., 1877. GOVERNOR TRYON (quoted) : his Report on the State of the Province of New York in Col. Docs., VIII, and in Doc. Hist., I (397).
COLDEN (quoted) : his Five Indian Nations (188).
ZENGER : Col. Docs., V, VI; L. Rutherfurd, John Peter Zenger, New York, 1904 [with further references].
ELIOT (quoted) : his American Contributions to Civilization, New York, 1897.
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REFERENCE NOTES
JAMES BRYCE (quoted) : his American Commonwealth, London, 1888. NEW YORK CONSTITUTION OF 1777: Lincoln, Constitutional Hist. of New York, I.
VALUE OF COSMOPOLITANISM: Horatio Seymour (quoted), his Influ- ence of New York on American Jurisprudence (257) ; R. S. Storrs, The Early American Spirit and the Genesis of It, New York, 1875.
CHAPTER XX
REORGANIZATION AND DISCONTENT
1674-1681
(GOVERNOR ANDROS)
Being possessed of New York ... you shall by all possible means satisfy the inhabitants, as well natives and strangers as English, that your intention is not to disturb them in their possessions but on the contrary that your coming is for their protection and benefit, for the encouragement of planters and plantations and the improvement of trade and commerce, and for the preservation of religion, justice, and equity amongst you. - The Duke of York's Instructions to Governor Andros. 1674.
IN 1667 by the Treaty of Breda the United Netherlands permitted England to keep American territories of which, saying that they were of right its own, it had forcibly taken possession. In 1674 the Republic, having reconquered these territories, ceded them to England by the Treaty of West- minster. All antecedent questions of ownership, of title, were thus obliterated. The rights of the English crown, said its legal advisers, now rested solely upon the Treaty of West- minster. Upon this they solidly reposed. France had agreed with Charles I not to interfere with his plantations in New England; in 1670 by the Treaty of Madrid Spain had recog- nized the right of Charles II to Jamaica and all his North American possessions; and always after 1674 England's title to New York seemed to all nations as valid as its title to its other colonies.
As the rights of the crown rested only upon the new treaty the Duke of York needed a new proprietary patent. This
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the king gave him at once, on June 24, 1674. It did not men- tion the first patent but reproduced it except at one point : the first authorized the duke to govern all British subjects within his borders, the second added 'or any other person or persons,' and thus did away with the theoretical need to de- mand an oath of allegiance from inhabitants of non-British birth.
According to the Treaty of Westminster all territorial pos- sessions and fortifications taken by the one party from the other during the war were to be restored in their antecedent condition ; and, in answer to a request from the States General, Charles had assured them that the New Yorkers should have full possession of their properties and rights 'in the same man- ner as before the rupture.' Thus, it was not unnaturally thought in New York, the Articles of Surrender of 1664 were formally ratified; and while the belief was soon emphatically expressed it seems to have had for generations a sort of sub- terranean influence upon the conduct of the people of the province. At least Cadwallader Colden wrote in 1759:
The Dutch in this province, it is probable, think the Articles of Surrender are still in force .. . and therefore they may in their own minds justify themselves in carrying on the illicit trade with Holland in opposition to the Laws of Trade.
On the day after James received his patent he signed the commission of Major Edmund Andros as his 'Lieutenant and Governor' for his province of New York. Neither document mentioned the former rights of Berkeley and Carteret. James, in fact, had hoped now to hold on to all parts of his wide grant. But Carteret had obtained from the king an acknowledgment of his proprietary rights in New Jersey ; Berkeley had sold his undivided half interest to certain Quakers who, not even trying to get any title from the duke, must have supposed that the fact of the Dutch reconquest need not be considered; and the duke, apparently persuaded that a division of New Jersey had thus been effected, gave Carteret a grant in severalty of all portions of it lying northeast of a line running westward
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[1674-
from Barnegat - more than half of the province. Again he neither conferred nor reserved rights of government; again Carteret assumed them. Lord Stirling, who had received none of the money promised him in 1664 for Long Island and the Pemaquid districts in Maine, once more surrendered his claim to them, this time for the promise of a life annuity of £300 to be paid by the duke, so he dreamed, from the surplus revenues of New York.
Early in 1675 the king transferred the duties of the Council of Trade and Plantations created three years before to the standing committee of the privy council which, through all the changes that advisory councils had undergone since 1660, had continued to supervise and control colonial affairs. Thus these affairs were brought more immediately under the author- ity of the crown, and the arrangement was not again altered until some years after the revolution of 1688. The committee, which was called the Lords of the Committee of Trade and Plantations or simply the Plantation Committee or the Lords of Trade, was, like the council it superseded, a diligent and conscientious body. The main task was still to enforce the Navigation Acts. Perplexities and troubles still centred chiefly in Massachusetts.
Much more actively than in earlier years the Duke of York was now to concern himself with his province, keeping a care- ful eye upon its commercial condition and prospects and writing frequently to the governor by the pen of his secretary, Sir John Werden, and sometimes with his own hand.
Major Edmund Andros, a member of a noted royalist family, Seigneur of Saumarez in Guernsey and bailiff of that island, was at this time about thirty-seven years of age. He had been brought up in the household of Charles I where his father held a minor post. While the Stuarts lived in exile he saw military service under Prince Henry of Nassau. After the Restoration he was attached to the suite of Elizabeth of the Palatinate, aunt to Charles II, served in the first of his wars against the Dutch, married a cousin of an influential courtier,
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1681]
Lord Craven, and through him obtained a large grant of land in Carolina. In 1669 he was commissioned a major in Prince Rupert's regiment of dragoons. In 1672 he was sent to Barba- does as commander of the English forces there. Thus he had gained a knowledge of the Dutch and French tongues and some colonial as well as much military experience.
His private character was never criticised. As a public figure he is too often remembered as he was painted, with a very black brush, by the New Englanders whom he was set to rule after he ceased to rule New York. In the history of New York he appears as the faithful executive of an arbitrary but by no means tyrannical prince, as a conscientious, very industrious administrator. He was not as quick as Nicolls to understand unfamiliar local conditions and never expressed the same desire to win the affections of his flock; but when he did understand he was careful not to exasperate a flock in which the prevailing mood was discontent. He was not un- kindly; if severe when opposed he was ready when obeyed to forgive and to forget. There is nothing to show that his people had any love for him; there is nothing to show that they hated him as, frankly and vociferously, they hated some of their later governors. In fact, it is more difficult to recon- struct, from his own writings or those of others, what may be called the private personality of this governor of New York than that of any who preceded or who followed him. The more one reads about him the more impersonal a face he presents. But he may well be remembered with respect as the first governor who suggested that New York might be given an assembly, as the first from England who recognized the value of the friendship of the Five Nations, and as one who had a broad-minded view of his responsibilities which induced him to consider the interests of the other colonies as well as of New York.
The duke had promised Andros £400 a year (at a time when the salary of the governor of Virginia was £1200) and had given him £1300 to equip his troops, to pay current ex- penses, and to buy a cargo of goods such, said James, 'as may
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be best turned to account in New York by trading there' - woollen and linen cloth, shoes and stockings, haberdashery, ironware, tinware, and gunpowder. With the governor had come his wife; Lieutenant Anthony Brockholls, his first coun- cillor, appointed to succeed him in case of his death; Philip Carteret, returning as governor of Sir George Carteret's part of New Jersey; Captain John Manning who had surrendered New York in the previous year; a chaplain; a collector of customs, the first sent from England to the province; a num- ber of new settlers; and a band of one hundred soldiers spe- cially recruited and in the pay of the duke, not of the king. As the governor's house in the fort which Lovelace had begun to rebuild was still uninhabitable Andros selected Stuyvesant's former residence on the waterfront.
Andros was an Anglican; Brockholls, like the duke himself but openly, was a Catholic. The Test Act of 1673, applying only to the kingdom proper, did not limit the rights and op- portunities of English Catholics elsewhere. The duke could appoint as many as he chose to office in New York, and him- self retained his rank as lord high admiral on colonial seas. The chaplain, an Anglican of course, was probably the Rev- erend John Gourdon to whom the duke had issued a warrant of appointment in August; but as there is no mention of his identity except in this warrant Charles Wolley, a chaplain sent out four years later, is usually cited as the first Anglican known by name who officiated in New York.
The collector of customs, who was also receiver of the duke's revenues from all other sources, was Captain William Dyre, or Dyer - 'an active and ingenious man,' the Council of Trade had said, who had 'followed a sea employment' in America for more than twenty years and had held commissions in the royal service both by sea and by land. His father was William Dyer, one of the first founders and long the secretary of Rhode Island Colony. His mother was Mary Dyer the Quakeress who, after being once condemned to death at Boston but reprieved in answer to her son's prayer, was hanged in 1660. Like John Underhill, Dyre had received in 1653 a com-
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1681]
mission from Rhode Island to make war upon New Nether- land. In 1673, being then in London, he drew up one of the most urgent of the petitions which showed how the duke's lost province might be regained and advised that 'all the people of the Dutch nation' should be expelled. Probably it was the zeal thus displayed that won him his responsible post on Manhattan where, seven years later, he figured as the scapegoat for what the people thought the illegal practices of the government.
In the formal instructions given the new governor with his commission the duke had directed that, unless Englishmen were accused, no one should be molested for having aided the Dutch invaders of New York; Andros was merely to observe sus- pected persons 'circumspectly' and to induce them 'by all law- ful means' to remove from places where they might be danger- ous to other places 'as beneficial to themselves.' Greater importance than before was now given to the governor's council. From among the 'most prudent inhabitants' Andros was to form a council of not more than ten members to serve during the duke's pleasure. To other offices he was to appoint, always for a single year only, such persons as by reason of their 'abilities and integrity' might be 'most acceptable' to the people. He was to keep his soldiers under strictest dis- cipline, to permit freedom in conscience and worship to peace- able men of any faith, and to administer justice (in the name of the king as had always been prescribed for New York) 'with all possible equality without regard to Dutch or English in their private concerns,' following the Duke's Laws except in cases of 'emergent necessities' or inconveniences when, with the advice of his councillors and other reputable inhabitants, he might make new laws subject to confirmation by the duke.
The courts and the internal taxes he was to continue as his predecessors had established them. But it seemed needful, said his instructions, to encourage residents and immigrants by making 'some abatement in the customs.' Therefore a new table of rates had been drawn up to be valid for three
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years. Only peltry and tobacco were now to pay export duties. Liquors and wines paid specific import duties, and all other goods paid two per cent ad valorem if brought from an English or English-colonial port but ten per cent if brought from a foreign port although this could be done only in Eng- lish ships which had touched in England and paid duties there. Goods of every kind, agricultural tools excepted, paid addi- tional duties if carried from Manhattan up Hudson's River.
All this was gentle treatment of a province which had shown itself so willing to be rid of its English proprietor. But no degree of gentleness could now reconcile the people to the thought of an arbitrary ruler, no reduction of their taxes to the thought that they were taxed without their own consent.
Immediately Andros formed his council; the minutes of its proceedings begin on October 31, the day when the Dutch evacuated the city. Matthias Nicolls, who, coming from Connecticut, had joined Andros on his ship before the evacua- tion, was restored to his old post as secretary of the province. With him at the council board sat Dyre, the collector of cus- toms; and from among the 'most prudent inhabitants' Andros selected as their colleagues William Dervall, John Lawrence, Frederick Philipse, and Stephanus Van Cortlandt.
Van Cortlandt and Philipse were to be for many years prominent figures in every important happening in New York. Van Cortlandt, born on Manhattan in 1643, the eldest son of the long-conspicuous Oloff Stevensen and of Annetje, a sister of Govert Lockermans, was a prosperous merchant who had held many minor official posts in Dutch and in English times. Philipse, who wrote his own name Vlypse while the Dutch wrote it also Flypzen, Flipsen, and Felypsen and the English Phillips as well as Philipse, was a native of Friesland and the son it is said, of a Bohemian Hussite refugee and an English- woman. When burgher-right was established in New Am- sterdam in 1657 he figured among the Small Burghers as a carpenter ; in 1658 he was employed as such to build a barrack at Esopus; in 1660, then described as 'late the Director's
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carpenter,' he was permitted to charter one of the West India Company's sloops for a voyage to Virginia. Starting thus as a trader he was soon profitably engaged in traffic with the Indians and, acting as skipper of his own vessels, in coastwise trade. He married a wealthy and energetic widow and rapidly grew into a merchant of such large affairs that Colve's list of the richer burghers of New Orange rated him as the richest of them all. In 1672 he bought a large part of the old Van der Donck patroonship north of the Harlem River; and in 1679 he paid 2250 guilders in real Holland money for a house on the north side of Stone Street, a site now covered by the Produce Exchange. His wife, Margaret Hardenbroek De Vries, was an Indian trader and merchant on her own ac- count who often acted as supercargo of her own ships and was one of the two women named among the New York merchants who in 1668 had petitioned King Charles from Holland.
Early in November Andros installed the collector, published the new customs rates, received the submission of the Hudson River settlements, appointed a few officials, and authorized others throughout the province who had served under Love- lace to resume their posts provisionally. On November 9 he issued in council a Proclamation Confirming Rights and Privileges which confirmed 'all former grants, privileges, and concessions' and all estates legally possessed 'under his Royal Highness before the late Dutch government,' thus tacitly pronouncing the recent confiscations void, and declared that the Duke's Laws should be 'observed and practised . .. as heretofore,' but, on the other hand, confirmed all 'legal judicial proceedings' during the time of the Dutch occupation. On November 16 a Second Proclamation Touching the Con- firming of Rights and Properties said that while the governor believed that the first had been generally understood as con- forming to the late 'Treaty and Articles of Peace' between the king of England and the States General of the Nether- lands, nevertheless, 'to prevent all misconstructions' that might be 'pretended,' he now declared that so the aforesaid
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proclamation was in fact to be understood in each and every particular. These proclamations, it will be noticed, made no reference to New Amsterdam's Articles of Surrender of 1664 - only to the recent Treaty of Westminster.
On November 10 Andros restored the city government to its English form, naming as mayor Secretary Nicolls and as deputy-mayor (a novel official) John Lawrence. The alder- men as well as the mayor were now counted among the mem- bers of the supreme court or court of assizes. The seal of the province had been recovered. The seal of the city was lost, and although Andros wrote to England for a new one there is no record that he received it.
From this time on the city records were kept wholly in the English tongue. The clerk of the city kept them all but in two sets, separating the minutes of the proceedings of the magistrates when they sat as a common council from those of their proceedings when they formed the mayor's court. The latter still remain unpublished. The Minutes of the Com- mon Council down to the month of May, 1776, have recently been printed in eight octavo volumes. They begin with the entries for October, 1675, a year after the arrival of Andros. The few gaps that occur in the records of subsequent years hardly lessen the value of their vivid picture of municipal activity. The accounts of the city were kept in Dutch as late as the year 1682.
Thus Governor Andros carried out his master's pacific policy, showing official favor even to an Englishman, John Lawrence, who had been on friendly terms with the Dutch invaders. If another Englishman, Captain John Manning, suffered because he had surrendered the fort to them, it was not by the governor's motion.
In England the king and the duke had dismissed Manning uncensured, Charles declaring, 'Brother, the ground could not be maintained by so few men.' When Manning returned with Andros to New York Andros selected him, with Governor Carteret and Matthias Nicolls, to conduct his negotiations
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1681]
with Colve. But as William Dervall, who had lost much by Colve's confiscations, soon formally charged the surrender to the 'negligence' of Lovelace and the 'treachery' of Manning, Andros was forced by the tenor of his instructions to order, in January, 1675, that Manning be tried by court-martial. The special court so called may be presumed impartial as, composed of the council and the city magistrates with three military officers, it embraced some of the Dutchmen who had gladly profited by Manning's haste to surrender. It acquitted him of treachery, found him guilty on other charges, including neglect of duty to which he humbly confessed, and decided that he deserved death but, as the king and the duke had not condemned him, merely sentenced him to be dis- missed from the service of the crown. His sword was broken over his head in 'the public place before the City Hall,' and he was deprived forever of the right to hold civil or military office. Charles Wolley, the later-coming chaplain, who pub- lished in 1701 a book relating to his stay in New York, says that Manning had also been 'condemned to an exile' on an island in the East River where Wolley paid him a visit. At all events Manning lived thereafter on this island, which had been given him when Governor Nicolls confiscated the West India Company's property. Passing at his death to his step- daughter it was then called by the name of her husband, Blackwell; and it remained in the hands of their descendants until 1828 when the city acquired it as a site for penal and charitable institutions.
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