USA > New York > New York City > History of the city of New York in the seventeenth century Vol. II > Part 16
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Captain John Carr, who had been accused of running away while acting as Manning's envoy to Colve, wrote from Mary- land when he heard of Manning's trial, protesting 'by Almighty God' that he had done nothing except by Manning's command. The last order, he said, was to delay the enemy as long as possible :
. . . but they was at the turnpike when I went out of the gate and pressing forward to the gate I was in the middle of them, and I thought it my best way to get from them than to enter with them. This is the greatest crime that God and my own conscience knows I am guilty of.
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On the other side of the ocean Colonel Lovelace soon died, under a cloud if not in actual disgrace. Committed to the Tower 'for not having defended' the fort at New York he induced the king to appoint a special board to examine into the facts. Falling 'very ill of a dropsy' he was released under bonds to appear when required. Meanwhile Thomas Delavall was petitioning for his promised salary of £200 a year, not one penny of which he had received although he had served under Nicolls and Lovelace as the duke's auditor for ten years and had paid £1400 out of his own pocket toward the support of the soldiers in Fort James. He affirmed that Lovelace was in the duke's debt to the amount of £7000, and by the duke's order Andros attached Lovelace's property in New York. Lovelace died before the time appointed for exhibiting his accounts in London - January, 1679. It is possible that if he had lived he would have cleared his name. Without further process of law, apparently, such portions of his prop- erty as Andros had recovered escheated to the duke. A part of his Staten Island estate his brother Thomas managed to retain or to regain.
More valuable than this was the Domine's Bouwerie beyond the city wall on Manhattan which Stuyvesant had confirmed to Bogardus's widow, Annetje Jans, and Lovelace had bought from her heirs. Now it was joined to the Duke's Farm (orig- inally the West India Company's) which adjoined it on the south. As thus extended the tract was afterwards called the King's Farm, or in the time of Queen Anne the Queen's Farm, and was reserved for the use of the governor in office until, early in the eighteenth century, Trinity Church obtained it. It stretched from a line which is now Fulton Street up along the North River shore to the foot of the modern Christopher Street and along Broadway to Reade Street, an irregular line between these two points forming its northern boundary. The fact that in the sale to Lovelace the rights of one of Anne- tje's immediate heirs were not recognized formed the basis of a claim which, sixty-eight years later, her descendants put forth against Trinity Church, starting a contention of
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which the echoes have not yet died out. In 1677 Andros leased this tract, to-day so extremely valuable, to one Dirck Seicken for twenty years for a yearly rent of sixty bushels of 'good winter wheat.'
The second change from Dutch to English rule had been as quietly accepted in the Delaware as in the Hudson River settlements. Without much trouble Andros brought back under the duke's hand Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket which the Dutch invaders had not claimed but Massachusetts wanted. Less easily he pacified those perennial centres of disturbance, the towns of eastern Long Island. Connecticut had formally annexed them when the Treaty of Westminster was published, and not until Andros himself went to deal with them toward the close of the year 1674 did they unwillingly submit. At the west end of the island Jamaica petitioned for the establishment of a representative form of government, citing the promises made by Nicolls at the time of the surrender of 1664; and Newtown, presenting a 'seditious' address, drew down punishment upon the head of the town clerk who had drafted it.
Otherwise there seem to have been no disturbances until the spring of 1675 when the governor and council announced by ordinance that, as there had been a recent change of gov- ernment 'and other oaths imposed upon the inhabitants,' all persons intending to remain in New York must take 'oaths of allegiance and fidelity' to the king of England and the Duke of York at such time and place as the magistrates of the re- spective localities in the province should appoint. No letter or document exists to prove just why Andros thus demanded of every one the oath which, from the political point of view, the duke's new patent had made needless except, of course, in the case of office-holders. It is certain, however, that the Dutchmen of Manhattan were showing more discontented faces to Andros than they had shown to Nicolls ten years before. They were now well aware of what English rule implied politically and commercially ; during the Dutch re- VOL. II. - N
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occupation, when they were free from the bonds of the West India Company, they had hoped for a liberal government under the States General only ; and by the annulling of Colve's confiscations many of them had lost property to which they thought themselves entitled.
At once eight of the leading Dutchmen of the city - Cornelis Steenwyck, Johannes De Peyster, Johannes Van Brugh, William Beekman, Jacobus Kip, Anthony De Milt, Egidius Luyck, and Nicholas Bayard - declared that they would willingly take the oath if Andros would assure them, as Nicolls had done, that it would not invalidate the Articles of Surrender of 1664. Andros refused, thinking doubtless that his pledge to respect the Treaty of Westminster sufficed. After the eight, summoned before the governor and coun- cil, had again declined to take the oath unconditionally, they explained in petition to the governor that they had wished him to reiterate Governor Nicolls's declaration 'prin- cipally in the point of freedom of religion and pressing in time of war,' but that he had refused to meet their 'hope and ex- pectation' and moreover, had looked upon them 'as mutinous' merely because they had 'the misfortune to have been the first summoned to the council' - thus implying that their fellow- citizens felt as they did. Again they asked particularly that they might be assured against the need to take up arms against any of the Dutch nation 'acting under the State in case of war,' or else be allowed sufficient time to dispose as far as possible of their estates and to remove with their 'substance and fam- ilies ... free and unmolested' whithersoever might seem good to them, offering to swear to be faithful meanwhile to the government. All their prayers were denied; and the governor issued to the sheriff a warrant for their apprehension as 'eight factious persons' who, having 'endeavored a dis- turbance and rebellion,' were to be brought to the fort and all their books and papers seized. Trouble was looked for : the sheriff was told to take with him a guard of soldiers as well as a constable. After their arrest the eight petitioned the mayor and aldermen to intercede with the governor that
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they might be relieved from the need to take the oath and to bear arms against Dutchmen. The mayor's court merely advised that they be released under bonds of £200 each to appear for trial before the next session of the court of assizes ; and so the governor decreed.
Then they addressed the States General of the United Netherlands by the hand of Steenwyck, who seems to have been their leader, and in the name of 'The Dutch Nation in New York heretofore called New Netherland.' When, said their petition, Governor Colve surrendered the province to Governor Andros pursuant to Article 6 of the Treaty of West- minster, which promised that all captured places 'in Europe or elsewhere' should be restored 'in the same state and con- dition' as before the war, the petitioners believed that they would retain all the rights and privileges they had formerly enjoyed 'principally' by virtue of the capitulation of 1664 'which was also accorded them . .. by the aforesaid 6th Article of the Treaty of Peace' of 1674. But they had been disappointed, Governor Andros laying before them an oath which he had drawn up 'according to his opinion and not ac- cording to the aforesaid capitulation.' Furthermore, he had 'not only illy received but peremptorily rejected' their humble prayers, denounced them as disturbers of the king's peace, put them under arrest, and ordered them to appear for trial, and, as they were 'for a certainty' informed, had sent one of his officers to England 'to denigrate the petitioners . . . to his Royal Majesty.' Wherefore they begged the States General to inform King Charles through their ambassador of the true state of the case, and to urge that the eight under arrest should not be punished for their petitions and that the Dutch nation in New York might be continued in the privileges that were their due. With the petition they enclosed a copy of the Articles of Surrender of 1664 and of Article 6 of the Treaty of Westminster.
Thus the reasons of the burghers for refusing to take the oath appear more clearly than the reasons of Andros for exact- ing it. So far as we can read, Andros had not threatened
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them with 'pressing in time of war' but, wittingly or unwit- tingly, he had menaced the other right upon which they laid especial stress - their 'freedom in religion.' There had come from England at the time when Andros himself arrived the Reverend Nicolaus Van Rensselaer, youngest son of the first patroon of Rensselaerswyck, and brother of the second patroon, who like his father had remained in Holland, and of Jan Baptist and Jeremias who had successively administered the patroonship. A protégé of the Stuarts, he had followed them from Holland to England at the time of the Restoration. In Holland he had been merely licensed according to the rites of the Reformed church. In England he had been ordained by an Anglican bishop and then had ministered to a Dutch congregation at Westminster and served as lecturer in another church. He brought with him to America a letter from the Duke of York recommending him to Andros for the first 'benefice' that might fall vacant at New York or Albany. Without waiting for a vacancy and without consulting the Dutch clergy Andros directed Domine Schaats at Albany to receive Van Rensselaer as a colleague. His only desire, be- yond a doubt, was to please the duke. What his Dutch sub- jects saw was a violation of the Article which in 1664 had secured to them their liberties 'in divine worship and church discipline.'
The Dutch ambassador brought the petition of the eight New Yorkers to the notice of the duke. James merely dis- claimed all knowledge that any earlier governor had made any declaration about the Articles of Surrender; but his secretary, Sir John Werden, took the occasion to remind Andros that the duke desired that all persons in New York be treated 'with all humanity and gentleness' consistent with 'the honor and safety of his government.' It appears from Werden's comments that Andros had written him about 'tumultuous meetings of some of the chief of the Dutch in New York,' and probably the governor believed that plans for a revolt underlay the expressed desire to make former rights and privileges secure.
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When the eight burghers were arraigned before the court of assizes in October De Peyster at once submitted and took the oath. His associates were then charged with a breach of his Majesty's laws in refusing to swear allegiance and also with a breach of the Navigation Acts - which not only ex- cluded foreigners from commerce with the colonies but forbade them to live there as merchants or factors. Perhaps Andros devised this new charge because he feared to arouse the people by prosecuting solely upon political grounds. Or it may give the key to his insistence upon the oath: perhaps he had thought from the beginning, although he had not so explained himself, that, in spite of the fact that the duke's patent au- thorized him to govern foreigners as well as British subjects, the Dutchmen of New York must take the oath of allegiance if they wished to enjoy the privileges secured by the Naviga- tion Acts to British subjects. At all events neither charge could be refuted. It was proved by the collector of customs, Captain Dyre, that all the accused except De Milt had traded since their commitment; and the jury, composed wholly of Englishmen, found them all
. . . guilty of the cause of their commitment. And also of a breach of a statute of the 13th September, 1670, in the 12th year of the reign of King Charles the 2d, wherein no aliens are to trade in any of his Majesty's plantations under the penalty of forfeiture of all their goods and chattels, } to the king, } to the government, and } to the informer. The governor to put the act in execution or to be removed from his government.
Thereupon the court adjudged that as it had been proved that, before the mayor's court and on other occasions, the ac- cused had not only declined to take the oath legally tendered them but also 'did contradict the taking' thereof 'to the dis- quiet and disturbance of his Majesty's subjects tending to faction or rebellion,' and that, 'being aliens,' they had 'pre- sumed to use divers trades and occupations' contrary to va- rious laws enacted to cover such cases, they should 'forfeit their goods and chattels to his Majesty accordingly.' They
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petitioned that the penalty might be mitigated but were curtly ordered to take the oath. Their property was attached; at last they yielded; their fellow-citizens followed their example ; and they were relieved from all punishment. Even Nicholas Bayard was pardoned although he had been ordered under arrest because, said the warrant, 'since his trial and judgment' at the recent court of assizes he had disquieted the minds of his Majesty's subjects and disturbed the peace 'by his evil comport and practices.'
Meanwhile the court of assizes had so far concerned itself with church affairs as to order that, for the maintenance of the ministry a double rate, 'besides the country rate,' should be levied in towns which had not already a 'sufficient main- tenance for a minister.' It had also fined and bound over to good behavior Thomas Case and his wife, the leaders of a band of Quakers called 'Case's Crew,' who were making much trouble in the western part of Long Island, interfering with church services, pretending to be able to raise the dead and to have the gift of tongues, and exciting their hearers so that some fell into convulsions. More important, however, than these disturbances was a quarrel provoked within the Dutch church by Andros's appointment of Domine Van Rensselaer.
While the trial of the seven burghers was in progress Domine Van Nieuwenhuysen had refused to permit Van Rensselaer, who was temporarily in the city, to perform the rite of baptism in his church, saying that he did not look upon him as a law- ful minister or consider lawful his admittance at Albany. When Van Rensselaer asked leave to present his credentials Van Nieuwenhuysen said that no one ordained in the Church of England had the right to administer the sacraments in a Dutch church without the sanction of the classis of Amsterdam. Ordered by the government upon complaint of Van Rensse- laer to put his opinions upon this point in writing, he and his consistory defended themselves in a long debate before the governor in council. Given time to amend his opinion, he explained that he had no wish to cast a slight upon the Angli- can church but that no one could lawfully officiate in a church
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of the Dutch communion who had not promised to conform to its practices. This Van Rensselaer then pledged himself in writing to do.
Van Rensselaer had come to Manhattan to urge Andros to appoint him director of Rensselaerswyck in the stead of his brother Jeremias who had recently died. The widow of Jeremias and her brother, Stephanus Van Cortlandt, opposed this plan but compromised by retaining part of the authority themselves. Domine Schaats soon accused his colleague of 'false preaching'; the church authorities found him guilty of heresy; and when he failed to clear himself of a similar charge brought by Jacob Leisler, who was a deacon of the church at New York, and Jacob Milborne, an Englishman then at Albany, the magistrates imprisoned him. Upon his petition the governor ordered his release, directing Leisler and Milborne to give bonds to show good cause for his arrest. Leisler, refusing, was then imprisoned in his turn. A court composed of the governor, the council, and the Dutch ministers of the city heard the case and referred it back to the Albany authorities. These made peace between Schaats and Van Rensselaer; and the court then ordered Leisler and Milborne to pay all costs as having given 'the first occasion of a differ- ence.' A year later Andros felt obliged to depose Van Rens- selaer for evil conduct - for his 'bad and offensive life,' as Domine Van Zueren of Breuckelen wrote to Holland.
Probably Van Rensselaer's character had from the first excited antagonism; but the mainspring of the attacks upon him was the same fear that seems to have prompted the refusal of the eight burghers to take the oath. The corre- spondence of the church authorities shows that in Holland as well as in New York they read danger in the fact that Englishmen now bore control over the Reformed communion in the old Dutch province. Van Nieuwenhuysen wrote home that he refused Van Rensselaer the use of his church because he could not acknowledge any 'episcopal government,' and also that the people could not tolerate Van Rensselaer be- cause he had been 'palmed off' upon the church at Albany
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'rather than called to it in a legal way.' And at a later time William Smith bore witness to the deep indignation provoked by the interference of Governor Andros in ecclesiastical affairs. When recording in his history of the province the incidents of days long antecedent to his own, Smith often went astray; but he may be accepted as a credible witness with regard to that trend of popular sentiment which tradi- tion is apt to transmit more faithfully than specific facts. And he says that the 'greater part of the people' resented the usage Van Nieuwenhuysen met with at the hands of the governor when he shut Van Rensselaer out of his pulpit, and that the governor referred Van Rensselaer's case back to the Albany authorities because 'he was fearful that a great party would rise up against him.' When, however, Smith adds that Andros was thus 'compelled to discontinue his ecclesiastical jurisdiction' he implies intentions on the governor's part which, undoubtedly, the governor had never conceived.
Of course ecclesiastical rights in danger meant to the appre- hensive New Yorkers danger for all their other rights and privileges. This fact explains the part played in the Van Rensselaer affair by Jacob Milborne, an Englishman who can have had little direct interest in a Dutch church quarrel. The quarrel, however, was all the longer remembered because it brought for the first time into prominence in public affairs both Milborne and Leisler, two men who sixteen years later ended their lives in tragic partnership after figuring as leaders of the popular party during the most troublous times that the province yet had seen.
Jacob Leisler, one of the many Protestant Germans who drifted from the Rhine countries into Holland during the middle years of the seventeenth century, was the son of a clergyman driven by persecution from the Palatinate to Frankfort-on-the-Main. A note attached to his name on a list of the West India Company's soldiers, as one of whom he came to New Amsterdam in 1660, shows that he was then in debt even for his musket. But, like Frederick Philipse who in later years was one of his bitter enemies, he soon turned
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trader and in 1663 married a woman with money - Altye (Elsie) Tymans, a stepdaughter of Govert Lockermans, a niece of Annetje Jans, and the widow of Pieter Van der Veen whose business she carried on after his death. By the year 1669 Leisler was living in one of the best houses in the city, near the one that Governor Stuyvesant had built for himself, and owned several others on the principal streets. He was frequently employed in some minor or transient official capacity; and he stood seventh on Colve's list of the wealthier burghers.
Jacob Milborne, according to the testimony of the many enemies he made in after years, had as a boy been convicted in England of coin-clipping, sent to Barbadoes, and then sold as a bond-servant to a resident of Hartford. Stubborn and disobedient, he had been transferred from master to master until his term expired in 1668 when, at twenty years of age, he came to New York. Here he was employed until 1672 by Thomas Delavall as bookkeeper and business agent, his honesty seeming not to have been called in question. He had a brother who was a conspicuous Anabaptist preacher in Boston, and he himself was a radical in politics if not in re- ligion. He left New York in 1677 some two years after the trouble about Domine Van Rensselaer. Returning in 1678 he was arrested by order of Governor Andros upon a warrant which said that he had 'presumed to clamor' and to write 'scurrilously' against the government of the province and the magistracy of the city, 'particularly at his going off in Novem- ber, 1677, and afore and since,' and had not explained him- self when examined with regard to his reasons for returning - a thing that every new-comer was required to do. Although he was kept in confinement only a single day and soon after- wards betook himself to London, he did not forget. When Andros, relieved of the governorship, also found himself in London in 1681, Milborne sued him for false imprisonment and obtained damages to the amount of £45. This incident is forgotten when it is sometimes said that of all the many governors of the Thirteen Colonies only two, Bellomont of
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New York and Phips of Massachusetts, were ever sued in England for acts committed in America.
No other serious disturbance occurred during the adminis- tration of Governor Andros, but from time to time individuals at New York and elsewhere and town officials on Long Island provoked arrest by so-called seditious or riotous acts or words. Andros understood the cause of the general discontent that thus revealed itself. It was not the sovereignty of the king of England; it was the arbitrary government of the Duke of York. Twice in autograph letters - dated in April, 1675, when the eight burghers had just refused to take the oath, and in the following January - the duke referred to certain things which Andros had written him about the establishment of an assembly. In the first letter he said that the governor had done well to discourage talk of such an innovation 'which the people there seem desirous of in imitation of their neighbor colonies'; it was inconsistent with the existing form of govern- ment, and it was needless for the redress of grievances as the court of assizes contained 'the same persons as justices' whom the people would probably choose had they the power. In the second letter, which implied that Andros had actually advised the change, James said that it seemed to him a danger- ous idea, assemblies being apt to assume privileges which disturbed or destroyed the governments that permitted them; nevertheless he would be 'ready to consider' the governor's proposals should he persist in his opinions.
While New York had every reason to think itself entitled to an assembly, each of its mainland neighbors already enjoy- ing the privilege and likewise Jamaica, Bermuda, and the Leeward Islands, the duke had some reason to fear its estab- lishment. He felt that he was governing his people gently; he knew of the defiant attitude of Massachusetts; he knew of the disorders that had distracted New Jersey before the Dutch reoccupation; and he knew of those which at the moment were rending Virginia, culminating during the summer of 1676 in the revolt, called Bacon's Rebellion, which was pro-
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voked not by antagonism to the mother-country but partly by a discouraging industrial outlook, partly by dissensions between the governor and the assembly which imminent danger from the Indians brought to the exploding point. Moreover, the right to an elected assembly was not recognized in England as one of the indisputable rights that Englishmen carried abroad with them. It was not thought that the existence of a parliament in England, in Scotland, or even in Ireland where nevertheless the power of the English parlia- ment was paramount, gave legal warrant for the establish- ment of colonial legislatures. This is shown by the fact that the charters of most of the colonies specially provided for their erection. That men, however gently governed, might insist upon having an assembly for the sake of assuring their future or simply for the sake of feeling themselves free, was a fact imperceptible to James Stuart.
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