USA > New York > New York City > History of the city of New York in the seventeenth century Vol. II > Part 26
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the last of the heirs of the co-partners of the first patroon had sold out their rights. After the death of Domine Van Rens- selaer there was question again as to who should have control of the property. Dongan bestowed it in common and in trust for the 'right heirs' of the first patroon upon two cousins who were both named Kiliaen, one the son of Jan Baptist Van Rensselaer, the other the son of Jeremias. The first-named, as son of the elder brother, ranked as the third patroon of Rensselaerswyck and the first lord of the manor until his death in 1687; then his cousin became the fourth patroon, the second lord of the manor. Kiliaen the third patroon was the first who came to America. Through Kiliaen the fourth patroon and his brother Hendrick all the American Van Rensselaers trace back to Jeremias and the daughter of Oloff Stevensen Van Cortlandt.
In Dutchess County, below the present site of Hudson, Robert Livingston had acquired from the Indians more than 160,000 acres which stretched twelve miles along the river and, widening out toward the east, some twenty miles along the Massachusetts border. In July, 1686, Dongan erected this great tract of untouched wilderness into the Manor of Living- ston upon the promise of an annual quit-rent of twenty-eight shillings. Like his other manorial patents this one conferred on the 'lord' the power to erect courts but ordered that his tenants should elect assessors and pay taxes to the general government as did the freemen of other parts of the province.
Robert Livingston was the son of a prominent Scotch min- ister who after the Restoration was banished for non-conform- ity and retired to Rotterdam where he had charge of a Pres- byterian church. Born at Ancram in Scotland in 1654 but brought up and educated in Holland, Robert spoke Dutch and French as fluently as English. He came to New York in 1674 and settled at Albany. Marrying Alida Schuyler, the widow of Domine Van Rensselaer, he allied himself to two families which, with the one he himself founded, so grew in wealth and influence that they dominated for a long period of time the northern parts of the province. After vainly urg-
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ing Governor Andros to order a division of the patroonship so that he might obtain the share which, he said, was his wife's by virtue of her first marriage, Robert agreed to take instead an allowance in money from the Van Rensselaers. It was many years before his own estate, so magnificent in size and dignified in name, had any inhabitants. But Andros had made Livingston secretary to the board of Indian commis- sioners which he established at Albany as well as clerk of the local court, and these offices opened a profitable career to a man who was able, industrious, thrifty, unscrupulous within the limits of the law, and eager above all things to amass money and lands. All through his life he was prominent in public events and undertakings, never holding high office but always exerting great influence as a patient, time-serving politician who made his wealth useful to the government in ways which eventually increased it for himself.
Most important of all the patents defining new grants or confirming old ones that Governor Dongan bestowed was the charter which, in April, 1686, he gave to the city of New York - the first true charter it secured although it had been a city for thirty-three years.
On the copy of the city magistrates' petition for a charter which Dongan had forwarded to the Duke of York in 1683 are certain indorsements indicating that the duke's advisers were considering whether a new charter should be given 'with the desired additions' to one which, they believed, the city already possessed and which, they said, it must surrender lest in getting new privileges it should claim old ones that might prevent the governor from exercising proper control over 'the regulating, confirming, or discharging of officers.' But there are no other proofs that the matter was then con- sidered; and there are none to show that, as king, James authorized the governor to bestow the charter, always called the Dongan Charter, which New York still regards as its most precious documentary possession. In 1684, however, the duke had again instructed Dongan to be strict in keeping the
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benefits of trade for the inhabitants of the city ; and presum- ably the governor thought that the capital was well entitled to a charter at a time when he was renewing those that many lesser towns had possessed for many years.
Drafted by the mayor and recorder, Bayard and Graham, the charter was carefully considered by the higher authorities. The minutes of the governor's council show that it was under examination in the latter part of February but was not 'read and allowed' until April 26. On the 27th it was completed by the addition of Dongan's bold signature. A copy of it was sent of course to the king. Another was incorporated in the minutes of the common council in the year 1693. The original, long confided from year to year to the keeping of the mayor in office, the Public Library now guards for the city. Beautifully engrossed on five very large and thick sheets of parchment, it is so massive, so imposing to the eye, that it seems to have been prepared as a guaranty of the liberties not of a little colonial capital of some four thousand inhabit- ants but of a city like the New York of to-day. Once pen- dant from it but long ago detached by the hand of time is an impression of the large provincial seal bestowed when Love- lace was governor in 1669, protected by a silver box bearing on its cover the inscription : 'N. Bayard Esq" Mayor, 1686.' Three indorsements may be read on the charter itself. One notes that it was duly recorded in the Book of Patents in the office of the secretary of the province; another, signed by Queen Anne's collector in 1713, says that he had received from the city treasurer 'twenty-seven beaver skins in full for twenty-seven years' quit-rent of the within charter to the 27th of April last'; and the third, dated in 1729, bears similar witness to the payment of sixteen skins.
The charter explains that as New York was an 'ancient city' having many privileges, emoluments, and immunities secured to it 'as well by prescription as by charter, letters patent, grants, and confirmations' from the governors of the province of New York and from those of 'the Nether Dutch
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nation' while the province was 'under their power and sub- jection,' and as it owned much property in lands and buildings including a 'City Hall or Stathouse,' for these and other reasons and upon petition of the magistrates Governor Don- gan was pleased to confirm, in the name of the king and his heirs, all the existing rights of the city and all prior grants of property to individuals. In addition the charter gave the city all existing and future ferries, docks, and wharves, all streets with the power to lay out new ones provided it would not take any man's property except with his consent or by 'some known law' of the province, and - what Dongan had previously denied to it - all the 'waste, vacant, unpatented, and unappropriated' lands on the island of Manhattan 'ex- tending and reaching to the low-water mark,' with all coves, ponds, rivers, and lesser water-courses. For these rights and privileges old and new the city was to pay to the king and his heirs and successors a 'quit-rent or acknowl- edgment' of one beaver skin or the value thereof in current money of the province on the twenty-fifth day of March 'yearly forever.'
As the property of the crown the charter reserved Fort James and a house adjoining it; a house next to the City Hall, undoubtedly the one that Governor Lovelace had built for an inn; the 'governor's garden' by the gate in the wall, once Governor Stuyvesant's; and 'the land without the gate called the King's Farm' with the swamp between it and the Fresh Water or Kalck Hoek Pond. The King's Farm was of course the tract, previously called the Duke's Farm, which included the West India Company's Farm and the Domine's Bowerie sold to Lovelace by the heirs of Annetje Jans.
Adopting with some alterations the arrangements made in 1683, the charter established a municipal corporation consisting of a mayor, recorder, and town clerk, six alder- men, and six assistants. The other city officials it named were a treasurer or chamberlain, a sheriff, a coroner, a clerk of the market, a marshal or sergeant-at-mace, a high con- stable, and seven petty or sub-constables - seven because
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one of the six wards, the Out Ward, was now divided into two parts, the Bowery Division and the Harlem Division.
Continuing the actual incumbents in their offices, the charter shows that the mayor, three of the aldermen, and five of the assistants chanced just then to be Dutch while the recorder, the clerk, three aldermen, and one assistant were English or Scotch. For the future, it prescribed, annually on Michaelmas Day (September 29) the governor in council should appoint the mayor and sheriff, and the freemen of each ward should elect an alderman, an assistant, and a petty constable. October 14, the birthday of the Duke of York, had usually been chosen for the installation of the city officials. Now the birthday of the king, it was named in the charter as the day when, annually, mayor and sheriff were to take their oaths before the governor in council.
The corporation was to appoint its own treasurer, the mayor to appoint the high constable. The governor, representing the king, was to appoint the recorder, town clerk, and clerk of the market who were all to serve during his pleasure but to take their oaths before the mayor and aldermen.
The term 'common council,' as the charter shows, meant the municipal corporation as a whole in its legislative capacity. But in ordinary parlance the assistant aldermen were called specifically 'common councilmen,' or sometimes even 'the common council,' because they shared in the legislative duties of their associates but not in their judicial duties; they had no place on the bench of the mayor's court. The charter also calls the common councilmen 'the commonalty'; in fact, it decrees that the style and title of the corporation shall be 'The Mayor, Aldermen, and Commonalty of the City of New York.' To the mayor's court it gives its modern name, a 'court of common pleas.' Both these names were currently used, sometimes in the same document. The mayor, the recorder, and not less than three nor more than five aldermen were to be sworn as justices of the peace to form the court of sessions of the county. The town clerk was also the clerk of the courts.
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The provisions of the Bolting Acts were not incorporated in the charter although the magistrates had asked that they should be. The mayor was given the power, which Dongan had recently said belonged to the governor, to grant licenses to liquor sellers. They were not to cost more than thirty shillings each. And the mayor, recorder, and aldermen were empowered to make 'free citizens' or 'freemen of the city,' as holders of burgher-right were called in English, at a price not to exceed £5. Only those persons could become freemen of the city who were natural-born subjects of his Majesty, who had been naturalized by act of assembly, or who held letters of denization from a governor - denization being a kind of semi-naturalization well known in England and also in New York from its earliest English days. It conferred the right to trade and to hold real property but might at any time be revoked. In having no trade guilds, it may be remarked, New York escaped an influence which for generations restricted the admission of freemen in London and in many other Eng- lish cities and boroughs.
Thus the Dongan Charter assimilated the government of New York to that of an English city with some appointed and some elected officials. It did not grant the request, preferred three years before, that the mayor should be chosen from among the elected aldermen. It tacitly abolished the office of deputy-mayor, and, as it failed to provide for the filling of any office that might fall vacant during the year, this was soon felt as a serious defect. A technical defect was the fact that the charter was sealed with the ducal seal of the province, rendered obsolete by the duke's accession to the throne.
At the time, the charter was especially prized as confirming property rights. The liberties it granted were not as great as those that New Amsterdam had enjoyed during its latter years. No longer, as in these years and during many of the years since the English had come in, did the magistrates nominate candidates from whom the governor chose the
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mayor. They were permitted to lay no taxes except by special authority of the assembly. And their independence was limited furthermore by the provision that a municipal law or ordinance should remain in force for only three months unless confirmed by the governor in council. Yet the elected municipal officers had more power in certain directions, especially over the number and functions of subordinate officials, than they have to-day.
Taken as a whole, wrote the great New York jurist Chan- cellor Kent in 1836, the Dongan Charter 'may be said to have laid the basis of a plan of government for a great city,' a plan the 'broad foundations' of which were in after years 'built upon, enlarged, and improved'; and, he added:
When we consider the time when, and the power from whom, this charter emanated, we cannot but admire the enlightened sense which it displays of the sanctity of corporate and private rights, the cautious manner with which they are treated, and the provident guards enacted for their security.
Until modern times this city charter of 1686 remained al- most unchanged. Two others were given in colonial days but each of them reiterated the whole of the Dongan Charter and then proceeded to enlarge rather than to modify it. The second of them, bestowed in 1730, withstood, says Kent, 'the shock of the American Revolution, which suspended its func- tions'; it was confirmed by the State constitution of 1777 and again by that of 1821; in Kent's own time it preserved 'much of its original form' as well as substance and spirit; and it has been the foundation upon which more recent and elaborate municipal charters have been constructed.
Until the Revolution all the mayors of New York except one who was elected during the Leisler period were appointed by the governor of the province, thereafter and until 1821 by the governor of the State and the council of appointment, and then by the common council until 1834, when the power passed into the hands of the people. Executive power was not transferred from the common council to an independent
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department until 1849. Assistant aldermen existed until 1870. Throughout colonial times the mayor and sheriff took their oaths on October 14, the birthday of the first English proprietor of New York, and until 1800 September 29 remained the date for municipal elections.
The corporation of the city, said the Dongan Charter, should have a 'common seal.' It is sometimes said that the city seal thereupon put in service was bestowed by James II, but very certainly the city bestowed it upon itself. There is no mention of it in the documents of the period preserved in England and none in the minutes of Dongan's council. On the other hand, the minutes of the common council say that at the session of July 24, 1686, 'the mayor presented the new seal of the city' which was 'agreed upon and ordered to be the common seal of this city' and to remain, like the charter, 'in the custody of the mayor for the time being.' The sup- position that it was ordered, designed, and made in New York is borne out by the fact that a few months later the governor in council directed that seals should be made for the courts of exchequer and oyer and terminer, and that the courts of sessions in the several counties should likewise provide them- selves with seals. Moreover, the rude drawing and cutting revealed by early impressions of the city seal help to prove that it must have been of local origin. It has been thus described:
Sable, mill-sails in saltire, a beaver in chief and base, and a flour- barrel, proper, on each side, surmounted by a coronet; supporters, two Indian chiefs proper; the one on the dexter side holds a war club in his right hand; the one on the sinister holds in his left hand a bow. In the dexter corner over the Indian's head is a cross patriarchal, as emblematic of the gospel to which he is subject. On the scroll, SIGILL. CIVITAT : NOV. EBORAC. The whole is surrounded by a wreath of laurel.
The charter gave the corporation power to 'break, change, alter, and remake' its seal when and as often as might seem convenient - a further proof that the seal was not the gift
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of the king. Despite this permission the seal of 1686 has never been broken and remade. It is still the seal of the city, and in its design it has been little changed. One of the Indian supporters and the cross that arched over him were replaced at a later colonial day by the figure of a sailor. After the Revolution the shape of the shield was changed, the legend was differently disposed, and the surmounting royal crown (not a 'coronet' as is said in the technical description) was superseded by an eagle rising from a demi-globe, a device taken from the State arms adopted in 1777. The arms themselves have not been altered. They still show the beaver, chosen by the Dutch as the main emblem for the seal of New Netherland and as the crest for the seal of New Amsterdam, grouped with the windmill sails and flour barrels that typified the commercial development of the city under its English rulers. There was never any motto.
The seal in its later colonial form, with a sailor as one of the supporters, may be seen, printed in its proper colors, in the first volume of the published Minutes of the Common Council. But so generally has its history been forgotten that the accompanying text calls it the seal in its original form and says that it was bestowed by King James.
Albany, inspired by the success of New York, also asked for incorporation as a city and, largely through the efforts of Robert Livingston, obtained a charter similar to that of the capital. Signed by the governor on July 26, 1686, a few days after he signed the patent for the Manor of Livingston, it remained the constitution of Albany until after the Revolu- tion. From the Van Rensselaers Dongan had secured a re- lease of their claim to Albany itself, which some years before the legal advisers of the Duke of York had pronounced valid, and to an adjacent strip of territory which he gave the city, making its area as defined by its charter thirteen miles in length along the river and one mile in width. The city was organized and was to be administered in the same way as New York except that it was divided into three wards instead
VOL. II. - X
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of six. It was given the same right to make 'freemen of the city'; these freemen were entitled, of course, to the suffrage rights that had been secured by the assembly to 'freemen in all corporations'; and to them was strictly reserved that right to traffic with the Indians 'living within and to the eastward, northward, and westward' of Albany County which Andros had thought a fair offset to the rights conferred upon Man- hattan by the Bolting Acts and which, said the charter, the men of Albany had anciently possessed, even since the days of the Dutch governors.
As the first mayor of Albany Dongan appointed Peter Schuyler, a son of the immigrant Philip Pietersen, and as town clerk, which meant clerk of the mayor's court too, Schuyler's brother-in-law Robert Livingston. He also con- tinued Livingston in office as deputy-collector and receiver of the king's revenues for the northern parts of the province. These posts, Dongan hoped, might afford Livingston a 'com- petent maintenance.' The hope was more than fulfilled. Combined with the secretaryship of the board of Indian commissioners they gave their incumbent not only much power in public affairs but also many chances to profit per- sonally by the Indian traffic and the purchase of Indian lands.
In 1691, it may be noted, Philadelphia obtained a municipal charter which seems to have been inoperative as it was re- newed in 1701. More numerous in the colonies were incorpo- rated boroughs, like Annapolis in Maryland which was gov- erned by 'commissioners and trustees.' But, cities and boroughs together, only nineteen were created in the colonies, most of them during the eighteenth century and, excepting one or two which existed only on paper, all of them in the cen- tral provinces - New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia. Although New York's little satel- lite Brooklyn grew rapidly after the Revolution, it was not incorporated as a city until 1834.
After the granting of the Dongan Charter the sources of the revenue of the city of New York appear more plainly than
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before, and the approximate amount they yielded can better be estimated. As the higher officials received no salaries, the main regular outlays were for the city watch (about £150 a year), for the pay of the clerk, sergeant-at-mace, and public whipper, and for repairs to municipal property. They were usually defrayed by the receipts from licenses, freedoms, and the dock and ferry, and from local taxes authorized by act of assembly. To meet special outlays not thus provided for, the city sold portions of its lands; and this practice it began at once. On May 11 the mayor reported to the common council that he had paid Governor Dongan £300 and Secretary Spragge £24 in return for the charter and had 'taken the same up at ten per cent interest to be paid in a year.' With- out delay the common council discharged the debt by selling fourteen lots on the water-front between the docks and the City Hall for £470, a rate of more than £1 per front foot, and sixteen acres on the North River shore near the present Gansevoort Street for £15.
The fact that the city gave and the governor took money for such a service as the grant of a charter has sometimes been dwelt upon to show that the officials of New York were as corrupt in 1686 as in their most shameless modern days. It has been called a flagrant example of extortion, of bribery, and even of blackmail although this word means the price of silence and nothing could have been more open and above board than the way in which Dongan received the grant from the city and the sums of money or parcels of land given him by Albany and by other places and various persons when he bestowed or renewed their land patents.
To speak in this manner is to ignore not only the frank testimony of Dongan himself but also the fundamental general facts in regard to the administration of public affairs in seventeenth century New York and seventeenth century England. The fees that many officials were entitled to in New York, usually in the stead of salaries, sometimes as their supplement, were tabulated, it will be remembered, in the Duke's Laws and confirmed by the first assembly.
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And these measures merely established for the province the current unquestioned customs of England where, in the time of Charles II, even the highest courts of justice were chiefly supported by fees.
Modern criticisms of Dongan's conduct are based partly upon ignorance of these clear facts, partly upon accusations made in the governor's own day by a subordinate who was soon afterwards dismissed from the king's service. In 1686 Dongan was accusing the collector of customs, Lucas Santen, of gross malfeasance in office and partially excusing him by the suppo- sition that he was not in his right mind. In return Santen was bringing various charges against the governor, among them the charge of extortion. But, answering him in a report written in 1687, Dongan said that it was not true that Albany had given him £700 for its charter; it had promised him £300; and this was not 'near' what his perquisites would have amounted to, for, as fixed by a committee appointed by the assembly to establish all fees, they were 'ten shillings for every house and the like for every hundred acres patented by me.' Santen himself had sat on the council when the renewal of all land patents was decided upon and, moreover, had been chairman of the committee on fees. Van Rensselaer, the governor also explained, had paid him £200 for his manorial patent, and this again did not nearly equal his lawful per- quisites, the patroon having a 'vast tract of land.' In general, he pledged his word, he had not got from his people a fourth part of his perquisites, preferring 'rather to want than take from the poor people who cannot spare it.'
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