USA > New York > New York City > History of the city of New York in the seventeenth century Vol. II > Part 30
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This was John Palmer of New York, and Hutchinson counts him among the New York councillors. But, sent by Dongan with despatches to England, he had there received his councillor's commission and, returning not to New York but to Boston, had been named an associate justice of the supreme court of the new Dominion. Nevertheless he re- tained his judgeship in New York. So too James Graham remained attorney-general of New York and recorder of the city although, like his friends West and Palmer, he removed to Boston and Andros there appointed him attorney-general. Sir Edmund, wrote Edward Randolph to John Povey, an official in England, was now 'safe in his New York confidants, all others being strangers to his councils.' West and Graham, he declared with truth, had worked much harm and confusion when sent by Dongan on official business to Pemaquid, un- justly taking for themselves and Palmer tracts of land already granted to the settlers there. In Boston, he also said, they had done much to make Sir Edmund's government seem 'grievous,' especially John West who used the secretaryship that he had leased from Randolph himself as an engine of oppression, exacting exorbitant fees. One of the many New England pamphlets of the moment, written by Nathaniel Byfield, likewise says that the people were 'chiefly squeezed by a crew of abject persons fetched from New York to be the tools of the adversary.' But a friendly correspondence which passed between West and Allyn reveals nothing in
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support of such charges; rather, it shows that it was largely to the good offices of West that Connecticut owed its compar- ative exemption from those results of arbitrary government that Massachusetts more painfully felt. A few years later Sir Edmund, West, Graham, and Palmer all lay in jail in Boston. In an able pamphlet defending Sir Edmund's gov- ernment which Palmer then wrote he protests that the New Yorkers deserved from honest men better words than they had got in Boston, and predicts that it will one day appear that their greatest crimes were their fidelity to their duties, their loyalty to the laws and the church of England. A committee of the council, he says, had fixed the fees to be taken by all officials. And West swore, when afterwards examined in England, that no charge of extortion had been brought against him at the time of his imprisonment in Boston.
On July 28 the royal orders regarding the consolidation of the colonies were published in New York. On the 30th the council resolved that because of these orders the collection of the new tax of £2556 should be postponed. On August 2 was dated the last legislative act of the old government - an Act to Prohibit Shoemakers from Tanning Hides; and on the same day Dongan issued the last of his land patents, to the town of Huntington on Long Island.
On August 11 Sir Edmund Andros, governor-general of a Dominion embracing what had been seven colonies or prov- inces, the regions called New Hampshire and Maine which had once been under Massachusetts, and the Narragansett lands called the King's Province, entered the city on Manhattan where from 1674 to 1681 he had borne rule over one province only. He came through New London -that far in the saddle, and the rest of the way by sloop or partly by sloop and partly in the saddle across Long Island. He brought with him the acting secretary of the Dominion, John West, and a number of the New England councillors. Outside the city he was received by its militia, a regiment of foot and a company of horse. At once his commission was read in the
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fort and in front of the City Hall. By proclamation he announced that all taxes were to continue as before and that all officials were to hold their places who had not been re- moved by the king, which seems to have indicated all except Governor Dongan and, presumably, the secretary of the prov- ince.
As instructed by the king Andros caused the seal of the province, the seal that the king had given it only two years before, to be broken in the presence of the council. Hence- forward the Great Seal of New England was to serve in its stead - as the event determined, for an even shorter period. This was described in the receipt that Andros had given for it in 1686:
Engraven on the one side with His Majesty's effigies standing under a canopy, robed in his royal vestments and crowned, with a sceptre in the left hand, the right hand being extended towards an English- man and an Indian, both kneeling; the one presenting the fruits of the country, and the other a scroll, and over their heads a cherubim holding another scroll, with this motto - Nunquam libertas gratior extat, with his Majesty's titles around the circumference; there being on the other side the King's Arms with the Garter, crown, supporters, and motto, and this inscription round the circumference : - Sigillum Novæ Anglic in America.
Nunquam libertas gratior extat was a truncated quotation from Claudian's panegyric on Stilicho which, when completed by the words quam sub regio pio, informed the Protestant Americans whose liberties the Catholic Stuart had just taken away that 'Never is liberty more agreeable than under a pious king.' A search made some fifty years ago among the archives in England, at Boston, and at Albany revealed no impression of this seal, but there is one, unfortunately broken, in the keeping of the New York Historical Society. It is appended to a commission signed at Boston in August, 1687, by John West as deputy-secretary and constituting Joseph Dudley and others a court of admiralty. The general design of the seal was followed when later provincial seals were bestowed. All those given to New York showed on one
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side the royal arms, on the other the monarch receiving tribute.
New York was now also to use the flag recently bestowed upon New England. The English flag bore at this time only the cross of St. George, the diagonal St. Andrew's cross of Scotland being added when the legislative union of the two kingdoms was effected in 1707; and the colonial ensign was a square flag with a St. George's cross, red on a white ground, in the centre of the cross a royal crown and the cipher "J.R." Another order, which not only afflicted sentiment but also presaged much practical inconvenience, said that the public papers of all the colonies now united should be removed to Boston and that all deeds and wills should there be registered.
On August 15 Sir Edmund took over the government of East Jersey, authorizing the governor, Andrew Hamilton, to act as his deputy, and on the 18th the government of West Jersey. Thus the name New England was extended from the St. Croix River at the northeast to Delaware Bay at the southwest. In no part of this wide Dominion had the people any secured political rights or liberties except the right, always understood in regard to the colonies, to be governed by laws not repugnant to those of England, and the liberty, specially bestowed by their Catholic king upon all excepting Catholics, to worship God in Jesus Christ as their consciences might counsel. The New Englanders were, indeed, permitted to elect their local officials in town-meeting, but merely by grace of the governor-general and his council; and upon these offi- cials it depended whether or not the cities and towns of New York should retain their charters.
The pride of New York was deeply outraged by these changes, its political aspirations were blighted, its material prosperity was thought to be seriously threatened. Sadly Colonel Dongan, the city magistrates, and the people must have regretted their loud and frequent lamentations over the weakness of the province, their reiterated outcries that it would perish were its borders not enlarged; for they can
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hardly have understood the ideas and aims of James Stuart well enough to feel that the result would have been the same had they never spoken; and, indeed, there is evidence that their pleadings actually hastened although they did not deter- mine the course of the king.
Some years later the city magistrates, addressing the gov- ernor of the time, spoke of
. . . the unhappy annexation to New England whereby our traffic not only drooped but all that was dear and valuable among us wholly destroyed.
And the conservative party in New York laid all the troubles of the so-called 'Leisler Rebellion,' which began in 1689 and lasted for two years, to the charge of this 'miserable union,' this 'cursed' and 'abhorred' connection, saying that it had enabled the people of the eastern colonies to poison with seditious and anti-monarchical doctrines their neighbors of New York who until then had been quietly loyal. Such words showed little appreciation of what had been the real temper of New York in 1689, but their very exaggeration gives a measure of the anger and dismay that had prevailed in 1688. Exaggerated were also the laments uttered at this time - laments that New York had been 'swallowed up' by the unhappy annexation, that its 'absorption' into New England had brought it into an 'unmerited state of degrada- tion.' It was necessary to select a capital for the great Dominion, but otherwise no part of it was exalted over any other part. Wherever the governor-general might choose to meet with a quorum of the councillors chosen from all parts, there legislation for all parts could go on. Nor were old names or old boundary lines of geographical and other kinds wiped out. Each colony, as appears from a letter written by Dongan to Andros, was to bear its own charges out of its own revenues. Each retained its own judiciary, a fortunate fact for men like Graham and Palmer who found office and profit both in New York and in Massachusetts. On the other hand, while New York was to have its own military estab-
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lishment - by the king's order, two regular companies of foot - it appears, somewhat ambiguously, that their pay, to be 'as in England,' was to come from the revenues of 'New England.' In short, each colony, so far as can be read in initial arrangements necessarily incomplete, remained as before a unit in respect at least to its individual civil affairs. Nevertheless, in a broad sense New York was now identified with New England, a name and a region that its people had detested since their early Dutch days. It was under a gov- ernment in which the voices of the aliens on the council, the voices of rivals who had often been covetous aggressors and sometimes avowed enemies, greatly outnumbered its own. The city on Manhattan was no longer in the old way a capital city; and it can scarcely have had foresight enough to be comforted by the thought that, should the union endure, geographical facts would probably bring about the removal of the capital of the Dominion itself to Manhattan.
When circumstances were lifting Jacob Leisler toward the seat that Andros and Dongan had occupied he declared that there had been 'great joy' in New York over the return of Andros in 1688 because 'we were delivered from a Papist's governor, Thomas Dongan.' While this was in some degree true, as the records of the Dutch church help to prove, no one felt anything but hatred for the union of which the return of Andros was a sign except the eastern Long Islanders who had always wanted to be New Englanders in name and fact as they were in blood and feeling. It has been imagined that the councillors also rejoiced who had gained in dignity and could now help to legislate for the New England colonies as the New England councillors could help to legislate for New York. It is more probable that even these officials were not pleased. Some of them were again members of the council in 1691, when the government had been reconstructed under William and Mary. The council then wrote to the home authorities that the union of 1688 had been 'evidently ruin- ous and destructive to these parts,' for it had 'obstructed' relations with the Iroquois who were not willing to obey or
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to deal with any of the king's subjects except those at Albany. And this unfortunate and dangerous result any one familiar with public affairs must have foreseen when the change was made.
When James II thus consolidated many of his American plantations he was almost at the end of his tether as king of England. Aided, like his brother in his latter years, by a ser- vile judiciary he had so outraged law and public sentiment in matters political and ecclesiastical, and had so moved his people to apprehension of further outrages, that they were close to the point of rebellion. Although he did not debase himself before Louis of France as Charles II had done, the friendship between the two monarchs threatened to strengthen James in such a degree that he would be able to deal with his kingdom as he might choose; and how he would choose had plainly been presaged, it was thought, by Louis XIV when he revoked the Edict of Nantes. Of course the voice of public sentiment in England found its echo in the colonies whenever it murmured against royal tyranny or predicted danger for the Protestant faith.
On the long catalogue of the sins committed by James II against liberty, law, and justice one of the blackest, to the mind of most of his colonial subjects, was the consolidation effected in 1686 and 1688. It should not, however, be placed upon this list without many qualifying words. Arbitrary though it was, unjust from many points of view, and distress- ing and disheartening to the colonies involved, it was not actually illegal, for New York and Plymouth had no char- tered rights and the other colonies or their proprietors had in one way or another exceeded the powers that their charters gave them or at least, as was the case with East Jersey, had constantly and openly transgressed the Navigation Acts. Nor, of course, was the consolidation in all respects unwise even from the American point of view. There are good reasons for believing that James intended to establish Cathol- icism in America as well as at home, and this would indeed
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have been both tyranny and folly. But, as Blathwayt wrote to Randolph, it was generally believed at the time by those concerned with colonial affairs that the union 'besides other advantages will be terrible to the French.' Certainly the tale of the long after years when the colonies, independent of each other, were by no means terrible to the French proves that some sort of union which would secure administrative con- cert in military affairs was highly desirable; and Englishmen at home could not understand that in regard to military mat- ters a union might be too close, that actual consolidation would have its own element of danger. They could not picture to themselves the great extent of the colonies, the difficulty and tediousness of their means of communication - facts which meant, as the reconstructed government of New York explained to the Lords of Trade in 1691, that in case of war one end of the Dominion of New England 'might have been destroyed before the other end have notice of it.'
The 'other advantages' referred to by Blathwayt - con- cord, economy, and strength in the conduct of all civil affairs and especially in the administration of the Navigation Acts - would have been disadvantages from any colonial point of view under a king as despotic as James II meant to make himself. It is hard to say whether under a king who would have permitted government by assembly they would or would not have outweighed certain attendant evils: for ex- ample, the loss of the local pride, local ambition, and local spirit of initiative which are highly desirable in young com- munities. It is hard, indeed, to imagine the consolidation of 1688 persisting successfully under any conditions when we remember those radical differences between the colonies, those mutual rivalries, suspicions, and jealousies which, again, English statesmen did not fully understand in the days of James II but which even a hundred years later, when the Thirteen States had passed together through the fiery furnace of the Revolutionary War, made their fusion so difficult to effect. As a matter of fact the Dominion of New England did not last long enough to be looked back upon as
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even an experiment in administration; and the chief result of its brief existence was a deepening of the dislike of the colo- nists to the very idea of any sort of administrative union.
On August 21 the common council of the city of New York directed the recorder to draw up an address congratulating Sir Edmund Andros and begging him to confirm the privi- leges of the city. On the 29th Sir Edmund, in session with the New York councillors and nine others, ordered that the act for raising £2556 which Dongan had suspended be duly executed, renewed the special impost which the assembly of 1683 had lifted from European goods not of English origin, and to encourage the bolting industries of Manhattan forbade the exportation of grain.
To the Lords of Trade Andros reported that the 'happy news' that in June a son had been born to the king had been long in reaching him but (by his order) had been 'solemnized' on September 2 'with all demonstrations of joy and gladness for so great a blessing.' At a banquet which formed a feature of the celebration the mayor of the city, Stephanus Van Cortlandt, it was affirmed at a little later day, grew so exu- berant that when his hat and peruke caught fire from a candle he held them over the table all ablaze 'on the point of his straight sword.' A letter to the classis of Amsterdam in which, in 1698, some members of the Dutch church reviewed the events of recent years says that the heads of this church likewise displayed 'altogether too much joy' at the news of the birth of the prince,
. . . for every man of intelligence . . . could have easily seen that the pretended birth of such a prince was nothing else than a deathly stab at the Protestant religion in England and consequently of our religion over here too.
This meant that intelligent New Yorkers believed what nine Protestants in ten throughout England then believed but no one believes to-day - that the queen had not been pregnant, and that the Prince of Wales, whom Dryden
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greeted with an 'awful joy' as a 'miraculous son of prayers,' was really a supposititious child supplied by the Jesuits and smuggled into the queen's bed in a warming-pan. These suspicions, says Hutchinson, came over the ocean with the news and were 'very easily received by the people in general.'
Even their new municipal charter cannot have seemed safe to the people of Manhattan, for no city magistrates were appointed or elected in this autumn of 1688. All were con- tinued in office according to the general edict recently issued by the governor in council. In November the assessors brought in a valuation of the property owned in the city. The total for the six wards was £78,231. The South Ward was the richest, its inhabitants possessing £29,254; the Dock Ward stood next with £16,241; for the West Ward as for the East Ward the amount was about £9600, for the North Ward £7625, for the Bowery Division of the Out Ward £4140, and for its Harlem Division £1723.
As soon as possible Andros took up Dongan's important work at the north. Starting for Albany by the end of August he there convoked in the City Hall a great council which sachems of all the Five Nations attended. 'Brother Corlaer,' they called him. 'Father Corlaer' was the term he would rather have had them use; for he told the sachems, as he had already told Denonville, that they were subjects of the king of England and upon pain of deprivation of all supplies must make no treaties without his own sanction. Fort Niagara, Denonville sent him word, had been demolished and aban- doned. This was a triumph for Dongan. And Dongan's spirit, Denonville wrote home, had entered into the heart of his successor who, although 'less passionate and less inter- ested,' might by his 'suppleness and smoothness ' be quite as dangerous as Dongan by his 'violence.'
When Andros returned to Manhattan he ordered a careful examination of the defences of the city. A phenomenal build- ing Fort James must have been in its proneness to rapid de- cay. In 1674 Governor Colve finding it in a wretched had left it in an excellent condition. Andros had written in 1679 VOL. II .- 2 A
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that he had again repaired and 'impregnably fortified' it, Dongan in 1687 that he had found most of its guns dismounted and had been forced to repair it in almost all its parts. And now in 1688 a report twelve pages in length drawn up by Mayor Van Cortlandt, Nicholas Bayard, and three others said that even the stone wall of the fort was in no more than 'indifferent good condition' while the stockade was gone and the rest of the fabric and the military buildings were almost in ruins. The battery in front of the City Hall had been 'mostly washed away by the sea,' the gates and half-moon batteries of the city wall were 'ready to fall down,' guns and carriages were out of repair, and of military stores there were practically none. The cost of 'fortifying the city anew' could not be computed unless some 'artist' should make a careful survey, and no such person could be found in the city.
A number of the troopers who had been drafted from the militia of the several New York counties for service at Albany petitioned Andros at this time, saying that they had had only fivepence a day for their food and begging that, as expenses in America were so great, they might receive, not the sum that Dongan had designated, but two shillings and sixpence a day.
In October, called back to Boston by reports of Indian troubles in Maine before he had had time to set the affairs of New York wholly in order, Andros put Lieutenant-Governor Nicholson in control of the province as his commission pre- scribed. All or a great part of the public papers of New York Andros carried with him to Boston where they remained until 1691. Many of the gaps now to be deplored in them were doubtless due to this migration.
After this month of October no sessions appear to have been held by a 'court of lieutenancy' which, composed of the offi- cers of the militia with its colonel, Nicholas Bayard, as presi- dent, had been charged with the regulation of its affairs.
During all these changes Colonel Dongan was living in re- tirement on Long Island, on a farm given him by the towns of Hempstead and Flushing in return for the renewal of their
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patents. It appears from letters which he wrote to Andros and others that he meant to depart in September but re- mained because, in answer to his appeals that his accounts might be audited, the new government declared itself incom- petent in the matter.
Before the end of the year Governor Andros went from Bos- ton with some eight hundred men to Maine where the Indians were dangerously active. There he received news which, when it was spread among the people, shattered in pieces the Dominion of New England.
Once at least Charles II displayed the gift of prophecy. If his brother James, he then told the Prince of Orange, should come to the throne he would not hold it 'four years to an end.' In fact, when James II was driven from the throne he had held it three years and less than eleven months.
He had perceived the danger that his people might rebel and seek the aid of William of Orange, his nephew and the husband of his eldest daughter. And, although he did not regard it as a peril serious enough to be allowed to check his progress toward his goal of absolutism, he had recalled the troops lent to the United Netherlands and, with the help of French money, was preparing a fleet to be used against them. The belief of his people that he had foisted upon them a prince who was no prince brought on the crisis which in any case could not have been long delayed. In July seven of the chief men of England, belonging to more than one political party and encouraged by other Tories as well as Whigs, secretly sent to the Prince of Orange an invitation to come as a leader in arms to defend the liberties of Great Britain and the Prot- estant faith. The great aim of William from the beginning to the end of his life was to crush the power of Catholic France. In no way was he so likely to accomplish this as by securing so much power in England as might enable him to bring into a great coalition against France the island kingdom which under the Stuarts had been its tacit ally. With the sanction of his country he now undertook the dangerous task that had
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been offered him. Aided by English refugees he prepared a fleet and an army. On November 5 he landed at Torbay. On the 28th, when great numbers of Englishmen had joined his standard, the king's army retreated before him from Salis- bury. On the 18th of December he entered London. With his connivance James fled from the kingdom, to find a wel- come with Louis XIV and a stately asylum at St. Germains. And thus the way to the throne was opened to the Prince of Orange who but for the flight of James could scarcely have hoped for more than a regency.
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