USA > New York > New York City > History of the city of New York in the seventeenth century Vol. II > Part 25
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Dongan wished to send these laws of 1684 to England by the hand of Secretary Spragge, but he wanted also to send the ac- counts of the collector of customs, Lucas Santen, with whose conduct he was by no means satisfied, and these he could not get. Not until late in the year 1685 were the laws transmitted. They were never confirmed. Probably they were not even considered, for great changes had come about in the mother- country. .
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At the opening of the year 1685 Charles II was in a fair way to make himself as absolute as, for a time, Charles I had been. On February 6, after a brief illness, he died. With- out opposition the Duke of York succeeded to the throne as James II. His delegated rights as proprietor of an American province then merged in the rights of the crown. New York became a royal province as had doubtless been intended when it was given to the heir-presumptive. Thus it came for the first time under the direct supervision of the Committee for Trade and Plantations. The records relating to it were or- dered sent to the Plantation Office, but many seem to have been retained by James with his private papers and were per- haps among those that were sent to France when he lost his throne and were destroyed during the French Revolution.
On the very day of the king's death the Lords of Trade in session with the new king prepared letters and a proclama- tion for the foreign plantations. On February 28 it was ordered that the Charter of Liberties of New York, now need- ing confirmation by the proprietor of the province in his new estate, be compared with the commissions under which the governments of the other colonies had been settled.
In a series of Observations then drawn up the advisers of the king of England displayed a much more critical spirit than those of the Duke of York had shown. They found more or less fault with each and all of the clauses of the Charter of Liberties except the one that secured religious freedom. Sometimes quoting the document incorrectly but not mis- interpreting its tenor they explained that the privilege of being governed 'according to the laws of England' was not granted to any of the colonies 'where the Act of Habeas Corpus and all other such bills do not take place.' In other colonies, they said, sheriffs and other officers of justice were not given 'like power as in England,' frequent sessions of the assembly were not prescribed, nor was the governor restrained from acting without a quorum of the council. The provision that all bills must be presented to the governor and council for their assent seemed to take away from them the power to orig-
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inate laws, which elsewhere they held. The securing of all legislative power to governor, council, and assembly seemed to 'abridge' the power of parliament to legislate for the prov- ince. And,
The words The People met in a General Assembly are not used in any other Constitution in America ; but only the words General Assembly.
In addition to these and other special faults in the Charter it had acquired a general technical defect: the proprietor whom it named was the Duke of York, the actual proprietor was now the king of England.
These Observations were dated March 3. On the same day the king, in session again with the Lords of Trade, pronounced that he did not 'think fit to confirm' the Charter but was pleased to direct that in due time the government of New York 'be assimilated to the constitution that shall be agreed upon for New England.' This did not mean that the Charter was vetoed, simply that it was left unratified. It remained 'good and binding' until further orders.
On March 5 the king in council wrote to Governor Dongan directing him to proclaim the accession, to make the people of New York certain gracious promises, which were very vaguely worded, and to correspond in future not with Sir John Werden but with the secretary to the Lords of Trade, the William Blathwayt who was also auditor-general for the foreign plantations of the crown. Like other governors of royal provinces Dongan also corresponded with the secretary of state for the southern department in which the colonies were included until, in 1768, a secretary for colonial affairs was appointed.
Whether by accident or by design James II was proclaimed in New York, the militia parading in honor of the event, on the day when he and his queen, Mary of Modena, were crowned at Westminster, April 23. On May 12 the governor in council drew up a loyal address to the king. With it Dongan sent a
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personal letter of congratulation in which he said that as his Majesty must have 'a whole crowd of importuners' he him- self would ask for nothing. On behalf of the city its mayor, Gabriel Minvielle, was less modest. Writing to Werden he urged that, as the city had lost one-third of its trade by the alienation of the Jerseys and the Delaware dependency, James would now reunite these territories to New York, would also 'enlarge' it to the eastward, and would grant the city such privileges as might 'make it flourish' as in earlier days. Very soon the people of New York were to learn how com- plaints and prayers like these worked not for but against the aggrandizement of their province. Meanwhile a proclamation sent to all the colonies informed them of another limitation set to colonial trade: only members of the East India Company and of the Royal African Company were henceforward to trade in the regions reserved to these associations.
Rebellion in arms in Scotland and in England forced James II to think for a while of nothing but the defence of his throne. Before the end of July it was secure. The Earl of Argyle had died on the scaffold at Edinburgh, the Duke of Monmouth at London. 'Kirke's lambs' had been quar- tered on the people of the western counties. Judge Jeffreys at his 'Bloody Assizes' had swept hundreds of Monmouth's actual or supposed adherents into their graves, hundreds into slavery beyond the seas; and James in his gratitude made him lord chancellor and a peer of the realm. Yet as late as September, Dongan wrote home, it was reported at Boston that Monmouth had triumphed. A governor, he added, should at once be sent out for Massachusetts. Since the cancelling of its charter, eleven months before, the Bay Col- ony had been theoretically in an inchoate condition. Actu- ally its old government had gone on but showed, to quote Hutchinson's words, 'symptoms of an expiring constitution': the legislature was indifferent, 'expecting every day to be superseded.' Naturally the people were restless and ex- cited. New York, in Dongan's belief, was in no such dan- gerous state. He once described his people as 'generally of
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a turbulent disposition,' but now he declared that his prov- ince was
. . . composed most of strangers, and there are few of ill principles. If any English be so they have the wit to conceal it.
It was soon after the accession of James II that the ques- tion whether the Delaware counties had belonged first to the Dutch, then to the Duke of York as their heir through con- quest, and by his cession to William Penn, or had always belonged to Maryland, was brought to an issue and Stuy- vesant's arguments spoken in 1659 by his envoy Augustine Herrman played a chief part in determining the result. Taking testimony with regard to this question in New York, Governor Dongan secured from old Catalina Trico the affi- davit regarding the arrival of the first settlers in New Nether- land which has already been cited. The Lords of Trade de- cided in Penn's favor, dividing by a north and south line the northern part of the peninsula and giving him the eastern half, Maryland the half that bordered on the Chesapeake. Only unpeopled lands, they said, had been granted to Balti- more, and those in dispute were then already occupied and planted by Christians. Maryland afterwards reopened the controversy but the decision of 1685 stood firm.
For ten years at least Charles II and his advisers had had it in mind to bring the American plantations into closer con- nection with the crown and, as a step in this direction, to consolidate all or some of the New England colonies under a single governor. They might not untruthfully have said that the New Englanders themselves, when they formed their confederacy in 1643, had indicated such a step as needful to ensure safety in case of war. And it was also looked upon in England as a necessary first step toward the establishment of a system of commercial administration which should en- force respect for the Navigation Acts and put an end to the intercolonial disputes that, as Sir Edmund Andros had once pointed out, were chiefly trade disputes. This scheme for
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consolidation lay at the root of the long-considered plans for annulling not only the charter of Massachusetts but also those of Connecticut and Rhode Island, colonies which had given the crown much less cause of offence. James adopted it when he no longer had a personal reason for wishing to en- large New York; as soon as his throne was safe he began to put it into execution; and, a much more industrious person than Charles when any business was in hand, he pushed it more energetically than, it may be believed, his brother would have done.
In the summer of 1685 writs of quo warranto were issued against Rhode Island and Connecticut, and also against the proprietors of the Jerseys and the Delaware counties for, said the Lords of Trade, it was to the 'great and growing preju- dice' of the plantations at large that such governments should exist without a 'nearer dependence on the crown.' This, there is evidence to show, was a direct first fruit of the peti- tion of the mayor of New York. No action immediately fol- lowed, for the writs did not reach Boston until the time within which they could legally be executed had arrived. Nevertheless Edward Randolph, who had brought them over, assured the colonies that the king would certainly unite all New England under one government.
Toward this end the king made the first move in September, establishing a provisional government to embrace Massachu- setts, New Hampshire, Maine, and the Narragansett country which in 1665 King Charles's commissioners had set apart from its covetous neighbors and called the King's Province. Full power, legislative and executive, over the domain thus consolidated was bestowed upon a president, a deputy-presi- dent, and a council of sixteen members, all appointees of the crown. The attorney-general of the crown had declared that the colonies were entitled to a voice in the making of laws and the laying of taxes, and even Randolph, who was named sec- retary of the new province, had pleaded for an assembly. But James had struck the words that provided for one out of the president's commission; and, another bitter blow for
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Massachusetts, this president was Joseph Dudley, a native of its own soil, a son of its old governor Thomas Dudley, a graduate of Harvard College, and one of the agents whom the colony had charged to fight for the life of its charter at West- minster. Randolph once described him as 'a man of base, servile, antimonarchical principle' but at another time as one who 'wind-miller-like' would turn 'to every gale'; and the gale now blew from the monarchical quarter. A traitor many people called him, a turncoat many more. He was not a traitor although he had gone over to the 'moderate party' which by the compulsion of events had grown strong in Massachusetts. He professed a great attachment to the interests of the colony, says Hutchinson, but the people 'were not so charitable as to believe him sincere.' He was soon to figure in the history of New York.
In New York Dongan had thought best to dissolve the assembly because in England a parliament expired with the demise of the sovereign. But at once he issued writs of elec- tion to the sheriffs of the counties in accordance with the act of assembly of 1683; and in October the second assembly met and chose as its speaker William Pinhorne, an English mer- chant who had been in the province ten years or more. Again no list of members survives. The governor approved a few laws relating to the courts and prescribing penalties for Sab- bath-breaking, drunkenness, and profanity. Three he ve- toed, including one about the collection of quit-rents. One which was passed by the council the house rejected - a bill declaring that in cases affecting the king's revenue the testi- mony of a single witness should suffice. Then the assembly adjourned. Its laws, like those passed during the second session of the first assembly, were never considered in Eng- land. It held no other session and it had no immediate suc- cessor, for very soon the new-born liberties of the province were altogether swept away.
In this month of October Nicholas Bayard took office as mayor of the city. December 30 the governor appointed as a day of thanksgiving for the triumphs of the king of Eng-
VOL. II. - U
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land over his rebellious subjects and for the success of the allied Christian armies against the Ottoman Turks. The bloodthirsty way in which the rebellion in England was suppressed, writes Burnet, had given 'a general horror to the body of the nation.' It must have tempered the spirit of thanksgiving in New York. Taken with the news of the arrangements made for New England it must have awakened a reasonable fear that James the king would prove a much less tolerable master than James the duke had been.
REFERENCE NOTES
PRINCIPAL PUBLISHED DOCUMENTS : Col. Docs., III (398) ; Colonial Laws of New York, I (272) ; Cal. of Council Minutes (142) ; Cal. Hist. MSS., English (390) ; Minutes of the Common Council, I (409) ; Cal. S. P. Col., 1681-1685, and 1685-1688 (485).
GENERAL AUTHORITIES: Brodhead, Hist. of New York, II (405) ; O'Callaghan, Origin of Legislative Assemblies in New York (60).
DONGAN: O'Callaghan, Origin of Legislative Assemblies in New York. - COLDEN (quoted) : his Hist. of the Five Indian Nations (188). - SMITH (quoted) : his Hist. of New York (420). - DONGAN'S COM- MISSION and INSTRUCTIONS : in Col. Docs., III. - His CORRE- SPONDENCE : chiefly in Col. Docs., III, IX.
DAILLE: Ecc. Records, II (167) ; Baird, The Huguenot Emigration to America (229) and Sketch of Pierre Daille, in Magazine of Amer. History, I (303).
SELYNS (quoted) : in Ecc. Records, II.
EASTHAMPTON ADDRESS : in Thompson, Hist. of Long Island, II, Ap- pendix (291).
ORDERS TO SUMMON ASSEMBLY : in Col. Docs., XIV.
SUFFRAGE QUALIFICATIONS : A. E. Mckinley, The Suffrage Franchise in the Thirteen English Colonies in America, Philadelphia, 1905. (University of Pennsylvania Publications.)
ADDRESS OF SHERIFFS : in Smith, Hist. of New York.
JOHN WEST TO PENN : in Vol. I of Pennsylvania Archives, 1664-1790, compiled by S. Hazard, Philadelphia, 1852-1856.
MEMBERS OF ASSEMBLY : for Ulster, Schoonmaker, Hist. of Kingston (260); for Pemaquid, Papers Relating to Pemaquid (435) ; for Suffolk, E. B. O'Callaghan, Journal of the Voyage of the Sloop Mary, Albany, 1866. - JOHN LAWRENCE : Minutes of the Common Council, I.
ASSEMBLY : its ENACTMENTS in Colonial Laws of New York, I. - O'CALLAGHAN ; Origin of Legislative Assemblies in New York; C. B. Moore, Laws of 1683, in N. Y. Genea. and Bio. Record, XVIII (199) ; Osgood, The American Colonies in the Seventeenth Century, II (116).
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- HOUSE OF COMMONS : Porritt, The Unreformed House of Com- mons (223) ; Redlich, Procedure of the House of Commons (222).
CHARTER OF LIBERTIES: in Colonial Laws of New York, I, in Brod- head, Hist. of New York, II, Appendix, in M. Hill, ed., Liberty Documents, New York, 1901, and in Werner, New York Civil List (129). - Lincoln, Constitutional Hist. of New York, I (131). - PETITION OF RIGHT, etc. : in Hill, Liberty Documents. - FREE- DOM IN RELIGION : Cobb, Rise of Religious Liberty in America (453).
BICAMERAL SYSTEM: T. F. Moran, The Rise and Development of the Bicameral System in America, Baltimore, 1895. (Johns Hopkins University Publications.)
NORTH (quoted) : his Constitutional Development of the Colony of New York (128).
LINCOLN (quoted) : his Constitutional Hist. of New York.
COUNTIES : Hoffman, Estate and Rights of the Corporation of New York (136) ; Howard, Local Constitutional Hist. of the United States (130) ; and see TOWNSHIP-COUNTY SYSTEM, in Reference Notes, Chap. XIX.
TAXATION : Schwab, The New York Property Tax (447).
COURTS : Colonial Laws of New York, I; Dongan, Report on the State of the Province in Col. Docs., III, and in Doc. Hist., I (397) ; and see CITY COURT in Reference Notes, Chap. X.
NATURALIZATION LAW : A. H. Carpenter, Naturalization in England and the American Colonies in Amer. Historical Review, IX (52); C. Start, Naturalization in the English Colonies of America, in Annual Report of the Amer. Historical Association, 1893; Chalmers, Political Annals of the . . . Colonies (114).
CITY MAGISTRATES' PETITIONS : in Col. Docs., III, in Minutes of the Common Council, I, and in Valentine's Manual, 1851 (508).
JAMES GRAHAM: Notes to O'Callaghan's ed. of Wolley, Two Years' Journal in New York (256). - BELLOMONT (quoted) : in Col. Docs., IV.
COURT OF QUARTER SESSIONS : A. O. Hall, Gossip about the New York Court of Quarter Sessions, in Historical Magazine, 1864 (213).
ESOPUS TROUBLES : Schoonmaker, Hist. of Kingston.
BOLTING ACTS: Minutes of the Common Council, I.
CONNECTICUT BOUNDARY : Baird, Hist. of Rye (541) ; A. P. Keys, Cadwallader Colden, New York, 1906; and see Reference Notes, Chap. XVI.
STATEN ISLAND: Col. Docs., III; New Jersey Archives, I (374) ; East- ern Boundary of New Jersey in N. J. Hist. Soc. Proceedings, X (376) ; Cornelis Melyn MSS., in N. Y. Hist. Soc. Library ; G. H. M [oore], Staten Island and the New Jersey Boundary in Historical
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REFERENCE NOTES
Magazine, 1866; J. Cochrane, The North-East Boundary of New Jersey, ibid., 1870.
CONFIRMATION OF ACTS OF ASSEMBLY : Col. Docs., III; Cal. S. P. Col., 1681-1685; Brodhead, in Historical Magazine, 1862.
RANDOLPH (quoted) : in Hutchinson, Original Papers (311).
BURNET (quoted) : his History of My Own Time (177).
LUTTRELL (quoted) : his Relation of State Affairs (483). CLARKE (quoted) : his Life of James II (243).
DONGAN ABOUT WILLIAM PENN : MSS. in N. Y. Public Library, Lenox Building. - Aspinwall Papers in Mass. Hist. Soc. Collections, 4th Series, IX.
GOVERNOR TRYON (quoted) : his Report on the Province of New York in Col. Docs., VIII, and in Doc. Hist., I.
OBSERVATIONS ON THE CHARTER OF LIBERTY: in Col. Docs., III. - HABEAS CORPUS : A. H. Carpenter, Habeas Corpus in the Colonies in Amer. Historical Review, VIII.
DONGAN TO JAMES II: in Cal. S. P. Col., 1685-1688.
MINVIELLE TO WERDEN : ibid., and in Col. Docs., III.
HUTCHINSON (quoted) : his Hist. of Massachusetts-Bay, I (313).
DELAWARE: Cal. S. P. Col., 1681-1685 and 1685-1688; and see Ref- erence Notes, Chap. XII. - CATALINA TRICO'S DEPOSITIONS : see Reference Notes, Chap. III.
RANDOLPH (quoted) : in Cal. S. P. Col., 1685-1688.
PINHORNE: O'Callaghan, Notes to Wolley as above.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE DONGAN CHARTER
1684-1687
(GOVERNOR DONGAN)
Know ye therefore, That I, the said Thomas Dongan, by virtue of the commission and authority unto me given, and power in me resid- ing, at the humble petition of the now Mayor, Aldermen, and Common- alty of the said city of New York, and for divers other good causes and considerations ... for and on behalf of his most sacred majesty aforesaid, his heirs, successors, and assigns, do give, grant, ratify, and confirm unto the said Mayor, Aldermen, and Commonalty of the said city, all and every such and the same liberties, privileges, franchises, rights, royalties, free customs, jurisdictions, and immunities, which they by the name of The Mayor and Commonalty, or otherwise, have anciently had, held, used, or enjoyed. . . - The Charter of the City of New York. 1686.
GOVERNOR DONGAN had been instructed to give especial attention to the matter of quit-rents and to call to account any owners of large tracts who had not begun to improve them. When he took office, he reported, scarcely any quit- rents were coming in, the existing grants being almost all renewals of older ones stipulating at the most for nominal rents. Therefore he ordered that all titles, including town patents and those for city lots, should be brought in again for renewal. This the people did, he said, without the least murmuring. They were convinced that for the sake of them- selves and their posterity it was wise to get clear titles lest they fall 'under the lash of succeeding governors.' Moreover, in townships where Dongan discovered that certain tracts of land, never having been bought of the Indians, lay at the royal proprietor's disposal the people preferred to pay larger
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quit-rents rather than have the tracts pass into other hands than their own. Nevertheless, there seems to have been some murmuring when towns and individuals found how hard it was to settle boundaries to every one's satisfaction. Espe- cially in eastern Long Island the episode was remembered as a great grievance against Governor Dongan. The work went slowly but was almost finished by the end of the year 1686. In this year New Harlem got a confirmation of its town patent upon which its rights rested until they melted away in the processes of modern municipal reorganization. As late as 1823 Harlem was recognized as a town in acts of legislature, for some years longer in real estate conveyances. A conten- tion that its water-front was never legally acquired by the city of New York but still belongs to the multitudinous heirs of the original patentees was ineffectually opened a few years ago.
Although the quit-rents imposed by Dongan would have been considerable in the aggregate had they all been regularly paid, none was individually burdensome. Breuckelen, for ex- ample, promised annually twenty bushels of ' good merchant- able wheat,' New Harlem the same, Newtown £3, 4s. in money 'at colonial rates.' The rents were paid to the king's collector until after the Revolutionary War when the State of New York, taking the place of the crown, provided by act of legislature for the extinguishing of past and future obliga- tions. Accordingly Brookland, as Brooklyn was then called, paid in 1786 £105, 10s., says the treasurer's receipt, 'in full for the arrears of quit-rent and commutation for the future quit-rent'; and, to give another example, in 1815 Newtown paid upon the same terms $347.18.
In 1686 Dongan found it needful to establish a 'court of judicature' (exchequer), with himself and his councillors as judges, to try questions arising between the king and his subjects concerning his lands, rights, and revenues. The ' country jurors' to whom they must otherwise be submitted, he explained, were 'ignorant enough,' swayed by their own 'humors and interests,' and 'linked together by affinity.'
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Very closely linked by affinity were the owners of most of those landed estates which were now beginning to assume importance in the way of size although in other ways few of them had appreciable value before the second quarter of the eighteenth century.
Frederick Philipse was so enlarging by successive purchases the estate he had acquired from the heirs of Adriaen Van der Donck that before the end of the seventeenth century it cov- ered a great triangular tract with the base line running along the Harlem River from the Hudson to the Bronx and the apex at the point where the Croton River enters the Hudson. North of his lands lay those of Stephanus Van Cortlandt, including almost all the northern part of Westchester County and stretching for ten miles along the Hudson and eastward for twenty miles to the Connecticut border with an additional tract west of the Hudson. Neither Philipse nor Van Cort- landt secured a manorial patent until after Dongan's day, but the house then known as the Van Cortlandt Manor House, which still stands at the mouth of the Croton River and is still owned by the family, was built most probably in 1683, a fort- like structure with thick stone walls pierced by loopholes. Philipse's two manor houses, one of which as altered and en- larged in 1745 now serves as the City Hall of Yonkers while the other, as solid as Van Cortlandt's and called Castle Phil- ipse, stands at Sleepy Hollow, are said to date from 1682. Probably they are not quite so old; but the Dutch church which Philipse built at Sleepy Hollow was begun, it is be- lieved, in 1684. This also is still standing.
Dongan renewed the manorial patents given by his prede- cessors and in 1685 erected into a manor the one old Dutch patroonship, Rensselaerswyck, which then embraced a good deal more than 700,000 acres or 1150 square miles, stretching back from the Hudson twenty-four miles toward the east and the west and covering virtually the whole of what are now Albany, Rensselaer, and Schenectady Counties, almost all of Columbia County, and part of Greene, an extent that it pre- served throughout the colonial period. By Dongan's time
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