USA > New York > New York City > History of the city of New York in the seventeenth century Vol. II > Part 34
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kept order in the city. Nor had the lieutenant-governor, and now he also abandoned the task. He 'departed . . . without taking leave' on the night of June 3, wrote Leisler. Leave of his people, in fact, he did not take; but he did not go as soon as Leisler said, and he did not exactly 'abscond' as the historians Smith and Colden believed. On June 6 the council decided that it was 'most safe' for him to go to Eng- land by the first ship, to give an account of the 'desperate and deplorable' state of the government in New York and to pray for 'some immediate release.' On the 10th he took leave of his three colleagues, committing to them the burden which even with his assistance had proved too heavy, and instructing the collector also to perform his duties as his com- mission prescribed. With the entry of these proceedings the minutes of the council end. Attested by its secretary, Van Cortlandt, they were given to Nicholson, as were likewise the minutes of the convention which were attested by the town clerk. Both sets are now in the Public Record Office.
Nicholson also bore letters from the councillors to the secretary of state and the Lords of Trade, a number of affi- davits relating to recent events, and a certificate from the Dutch church attesting the Protestant orthodoxy of Van Cortlandt and Bayard - no letter or address to the new sovereigns. On the 11th, in company with Mr. Innis, he secretly left the city. Three ship-masters who were about to sail for Europe - one of them the Quaker, George Heath- cote, who had carried William Dyre and the charges against him in 1681 - now refused to carry the lieutenant-governor and the chaplain whom the people distrusted. Colonel Don- gan had recently embarked with a cargo of pipe-staves and flour destined for Madeira but, dreadfully seasick, had come back declaring that he would rather die on land than on the sea. Nicholson bought a half-share in his brigantine, un- loaded it, thriftily procured a cargo of log-wood for himself, and on the 24th set sail. Dongan returned to his farm at Hempstead.
As a long and varied after-career in America showed Francis
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Nicholson to be, if not a man of discretion, yet a man of cour- age, energy, and much personal ambition, his flight from his post in 1689 can be interpreted only as meaning that he doubted the permanence of the changes in England and wished to be where he might most easily trim his sails to the wind of the hour. At the same time, and giving the same reasons for going, Governor Hamilton of East Jersey returned to Eng- land. Lord Howard of Virginia soon followed. Nicholson had a brother in New York who remained until the following December. Then Leisler wrote that after he was on board ship, it was reported, he had 'drunk the king's health with a letter J.'
The letters prepared for Nicholson by the councillors said that all government had been overthrown in New York by some disaffected and dangerous people 'in like manner as in Boston,' and that the fort had been seized by the 'rabble.' Now the writers were in daily hope of getting orders to pro- claim their Majesties but, they predicted, no orders would be obeyed by the people, adding :
We cannot learn that hardly one person of sense and estate . . . do countenance any of these ill and rash proceedings except some who are deluded and drawn in by mere fear which do hope that a general act of oblivion will salve all. . . . But it will be most certain in case no exemplary punishment be established, in future time at every act of government not agreeing to the tempers of such ill- minded people the same steps must unavoidably be expected.
Thus began, to be reiterated with ever growing violence, a series of exaggerations and flat falsehoods which hopelessly confused the minds of the authorities in England. Of course none of the revolutionists in New York was counting upon an 'act of oblivion'; all were looking for praise and encourage- ment from the sovereigns to whom they had so plainly shown their loyalty. The fort had not been seized by a 'rabble' but, as the councillors themselves recorded in their minutes, by the train-bands and their captains and the 'inhabitants' of
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THE UPRISING IN NEW YORK
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the city. To the best of his judgment all the citizens except 'not above forty persons' had joined in the act, said under oath in 1692 Isaac De Riemer, a reputable burgher and in after years mayor of New York. Certain by-laws drawn up for Captain Lodwyck's company and signed by his men show that at least this company accepted strict discipline. And, indeed, it is impossible to picture a rabble dominating a city where, as Andros and Dongan had testified, all poor were cared for and there were no beggars and very few servants or slaves - none of the material out of which a rabble forms itself.
Again, things had by no means gone 'in like manner as in Boston.' No new form, or revived old form, of government had as yet been set up, and no officer of the old government had been thrown into jail or even threatened. Dongan had been permitted to set sail in an armed vessel, and Nicholson had been permitted to depart in it although any one could foresee what sort of testimony he would give at Whitehall. As a deposition made by ten Dutch citizens in 1694 explained, Nicholson 'went unmolested out of the city,' was allowed to remain several days longer in the neighborhood, and then, 'uncompelled and unconstrained, left the government and withdrew from the execution thereof.'
More and more heated grew the letters, reports, summaries, and petitions of the one faction and the other as the months wore away in New York. Chief among these conflicting docu- ments are Leisler's letters and despatches; a journal kept by Nicholas Bayard to be sent to Nicholson, which we have in an abstract beginning with June 11, 1689, and continuing for about three weeks; a Brief Deduction and Narrative of the 'disorders, abuses, enormities, and insolencies' committed by Leisler and his associates, also written by Bayard but in the third person for the eye of the king; a long letter that Van Cortlandt sent to Andros in July; and a pamphlet written in whole or in part by Bayard which was called A Modest and Impartial Narrative of Several Grievances and Great Oppressions that the Peaceable and most Considerable Inhabitants of their
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Majesties' Province of New York in America lie under by the Extravagant and Arbitrary Proceedings of Jacob Leysler and his Accomplices. The imprint on this pamphlet says that it was published at New York and at London in 1690. Really, it was first printed at Boston; there was no printing-press in New York.
Chief among the similar documents of later but not distant years are a pamphlet called A Letter from a Gentleman of New York to Another Concerning the Troubles which happened in that Province in the time of the late Happy Revolution, which, it is believed, Bayard, William Nicolls, and one of their friends, Chidley Brooke, either wrote or employed David Jamison to write; the letter sent by Leislerian members of the Dutch church to Amsterdam in 1698; and the Leislerian pamphlet called Loyalty Vindicated by a Hearty Lover of King William and the Protestant Religion. This answers the Letter from a Gentleman page by page. It is not known who wrote it, but certainly not a Dutch-American unless he had a very capable editor, for in correctness of form and vigor of style as well as in power of invective it equals any of the controversial pamphlets written in England at the time.
Some of the statements repeated over and over again in these papers and in others of their time are patently false. It was not only the 'lesser and meaner part of the people' that followed Leisler - 'poor, ignorant, and senseless folk,' as Bayard said, suffering themselves to be 'ruled and hectored by about twenty or thirty ill-drunken sots.' Every man of 'sense and reputation' was not from the first opposed to Leisler. He was not a 'vile usurper' prompted by the spur of 'desperate fortunes,' nor were his chief associates likewise of 'mean birth, sordid education, and desperate fortunes.' Neither his religion nor their religion was 'as unaccountable and obscure as their birth and fortunes' until they made Protestantism a war-cry in 1689; Leisler as well as Bayard and Van Cortlandt had served as a deacon in the Dutch church, and his attack upon Van Rensselaer had made his preferences plain in as early a year as 1675.
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These evident slanders cast something more than a doubt upon other assertions, as that Leisler, his fellow-officers, and their men were usually drunk and that they violently at- tacked and injured many persons. The people were not 'drunk or mad,' Loyalty Vindicated protests; the fact that in the 'very convulsion of changing the government' no man, woman, or child was hurt - not even, except 'by the fright their own guilt had occasioned,' the officials who were most distrusted and hated - proved that the 'Revolutioners' must have been either 'very sober or loving in their drink.' It is clear, indeed, that at this and at later moments there was often loud brawling in public places, much scuffling and threatening, some drawing of weapons, and at times a nearer approach to a dangerous riot. But these disturbances are credited with equal plausibility now to the one faction, now to the other; and no serious consequences followed them. No one was killed, no one seems to have been grievously hurt. There was no burning, no looting, no murdering on Man- hattan as there was in London and at other places in England when the revolution there was young.
On the other hand Loyalty Vindicated shows that the 'revo- lutioners' also slandered their opponents. The papists in office, it says, were 'justly' suspected of designs to betray the country to King James's 'faithful ally, the French king;' and with the same sort of justice Protestants were called papists, and officials whose chief fault at first was timidity were charged with the will to commit all kinds of tyrannical and cruel acts.
The councillors, says Bayard's journal, were now hoping to get an actual copy of the proclamation of the accession so that they might publish it 'with all speed.' None was brought by Major Brockholls who, coming on June 14 by way of Bos- ton from Maine where the garrisons set by Andros had been disbanded or reduced, was intercepted by the sentries and ordered to go to the fort without speaking to any one. On June 13 the insurgent - or resurgent - government of Con-
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necticut had proclaimed their Majesties and framed an ad- dress to them. Soon afterwards it sent two envoys, Major Gold and Captain Fitch, to advise with the insurgent leaders on Manhattan and to get an account of their actions. The major seems to have been the same Nathan Gold, or Gould, who, then a prisoner on one of the Dutch ships, had witnessed the surrender of New York in 1673. Bayard and Van Cort- landt tried in vain to intercept these envoys in Westchester. They brought a copy of the much-desired proclamation. The mayor and his associates asked for it that they might publish it with due 'honor and splendor.' This, as Van Cortlandt wrote to Andros, was on June 22, and so says Bayard's journal although letters written to England by Bayard, Van Cort- landt, and Philipse say, mistakenly, that it was on the 17th. Captain Leisler asked the use of the paper for an hour or two, Van Cortlandt continues, and then, at the fort in the fore- noon, had the drum beat and the king and queen proclaimed. About three o'clock he and his partisans sent to ask the mayor to be at his house, and,
. . . the two Hartford gentlemen and our captains came with their halbardiers; being set down Leisler asked me whether I would not proclaim the king and queen. I told him it was done already. He answered if I would not do it he would do it at the Town Hall. I told him he might do what he pleased. They fell out, called me a papist or popishly affected, and several abusive words in my house.
Gold and Fitch then desiring the mayor to go with them to the City Hall, where they would make the proclamation, he and the aldermen consented :
When they came to the Town Hall Leisler comes and would have me to proclaim the king. I answered, He that read it before the fort can read it here; I have no clerk. Upon which he falls into a rage saying, If it was to set up a tyrannical king, a Prince of Wales, he would do it; you're a traitor, a papist; and made the people just ready to knock me in the head. Others said, Take hold of the rogue. So I was forced to answer for myself, saying that Leisler told a false untruth, I did not hinder the reading of the paper of proclaiming of their Majesties etc.
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According to the oddly named Modest and Impartial Nar- rative, after the proclamation was read Leisler invited the magistrates to go to the fort to drink the king's health, but when they got there told them that the people were so in- censed that it would not be safe for them to stay. This was doubtless because of an incident which Van Cortlandt did not mention in his report to Andros, an incident which had in truth incensed the populace. On this same day of the proclamation, fire had been set in three places to the church in the fort which was also the store-house for powder, supposedly by a papist who had been seen within the fort.
A Leislerian account of the day says that the 'former council' and the city magistrates were asked to join in the proclamation at the fort in the morning; they desired an hour's time to consider, 'which being expired and no com- pliance yielded but on the contrary an aversion discovered thereto,' Captain Leisler and 'the committee of safety and most part of the inhabitants' celebrated the event. This wit- ness, it will be noticed, mentions a committee of safety which had not yet been formed; and others, of both factions, like- wise forget at times the actual sequence of hurried happen- ings.
On the 24th, Mayor Van Cortlandt recorded, he received from a friend a printed proclamation dated February 14 and continuing in office, in the king's name, all minor officials 'being Protestants' - all 'sheriffs, justices, collectors etc.' He did not add that this referred to the colonies, and the date he names shows that it did not. What he held was the proclamation concerning officials within the kingdom itself. Nevertheless he and the aldermen published it, greatly, he said, to the anger of their adversaries; and then, in defer- ence to it, they removed with his own consent Plowman the collector whom Leisler had vainly tried to oust, and appointed Bayard and four others, provisionally, to administer the cus- tom-house. The popular leaders turned out these appointees and installed as collector Peter Delanoy, the Dutchman who had held the post temporarily after Santen was suspended
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and before Plowman arrived, and who was still the treasurer of the city.
On this occasion there was certainly a riot. With 'a party of men in arms and drink,' says the anti-Leislerian Letter to a Gentleman, Leisler came to the custom-house and tried 'to massacre some who were saved by Providence.' Bayard says that 'Stoll the dram-man' would have murdered him 'unless by Providence prevented'; that he was rescued in Delanoy's house but, this being attacked, made his 'further escape'; and that during the 'fury' the people had the drum beat an alarm and cried 'Verraet, verraet, or treason, treason, the rogues will kill Captain Leisler.' According to Van Cortlandt, Bayard safely stayed under Delanoy's roof over night; and Loyalty Vindicated also says that this adversary sheltered Bayard although otherwise it gives a different account of the tumult. When Leisler, it relates, questioned the authority of the new incumbents in the custom-house, they threatened to turn him out by force :
On which tumult (made by three Jacobites) a guard of inhabitants from the fort came to defend their captain. And the people in the streets were so enraged at Colonel Bayard (who they knew was as inveterate as any papist against the revolution) that they certainly had tore him to pieces had not the good temper of Captain Leisler been his protector, who was the only person capable of saving him in that extremity. ... No man was hurt, not so much a skin broke of those who deserved the halter.
Colonel Bayard, it grows apparent, was not a lion for valor. He now went up to Albany, as he explained, 'to shun the trouble and hazard of being destroyed' in New York. Van Cortlandt, whose fears prescribed only a two days' seclusion in his own house, was thus left to do what he could as mayor and as virtually the only councillor; for Philipse was playing a strictly follow-my-leader part which seems to justify the tradition that calls him the dullest as well as the richest man in the province.
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REFERENCE NOTES
PRINCIPAL PUBLISHED DOCUMENTS : Col. Docs., III, IX (398) ; Minutes of the Common Council, I (409) ; Papers Relating to the Adminis- tration of Lieut .- Gov. Leisler (278); Documents Relating to the Administration of Leisler (276) ; Cal. of Hist. MSS., English (390) ; Cal. S. P. Col., 1689-1692 (485).
LEISLER : Purple, Genealogical Notes Relating to Lieut .- Gov. Jacob Leisler (277) and Ancient Families of New Amsterdam and New York (184); Hoffman, Administration of Jacob Leisler (275) ; Schuyler, Colonial New York (395) ; Anon., The Wife of Jacob Leis- ler in Valentine's Manual, 1860 (508). - His CORRESPONDENCE : chiefly in Col. Docs., III, and in Papers Relating to . . . Leisler. FITZ-JOHN WINTHROP TO ALLYN ABOUT 'LEISLERISM': in Winthrop Papers in Mass. Hist. Soc. Collections, 6th Series, III.
MILBORNE: Col. Docs., III; Cal. Hist. MSS., English; W. Nelson, Edward Antill ... and his Descendants, Paterson, N.J., 1899. - RANDOLPH TO LORDS OF TRADE: in Col. Docs., III, and in Cal. S. P. Col., 1689-1692.
EDSALL: T. H. Edsall, Something About Fish, Fisheries, etc., in N. Y. Genea. and Bio. Record, XIII (199).
BAYARD: see Reference Notes, Chap. VIII.
VAN CORTLANDT: Schuyler, Colonial New York.
PHILIPSE: see Reference Notes, Chap. XX.
PETER SCHUYLER: Schuyler, Colonial New York; Munsell, The Schuyler Family (466).
LIVINGSTON : see Reference Notes, Chap. XXIII.
LOCKERMANS ESTATE: Cal. Hist. MSS., English; Gleanings from the Surrogate's Office in Pasko, Old New York, I (412) ; Purple, An- cient Families of New Amsterdam and New York; Innes, New Amsterdam and Its People (357) ; Schuyler, Colonial New York. SMITH (quoted) : his Hist. of New York (420).
PROPOSED FRENCH INVASION : Col. Docs., IX; Papers Relating to the Invasion of New York, 1690, in Doc. Hist., I (397) ; Parkman, Frontenac (191).
SELYNS (quoted) and VARICK (quoted) : in Ecc. Records, II (167).
LOYALTY VINDICATED: in Documents Relating to . . . Leisler.
LEISLER (quoted about 'Jesuit college') : in Hutchinson, Hist. of Massachusetts-Bay, I (313).
NICHOLSON : W. C. Ford, Sir Francis Nicholson in Mag. of Amer. History, XXIX (303).
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DEPOSITION OF GREVERAET AND BREWERTON : in Col. Docs., III. NICHOLSON TO FITZ-JOHN WINTHROP: in Winthrop Papers in Mass. Hist. Soc. Collections, 6th Series, III, Appendix.
SUMMONS TO COUNCILLORS : ibid.
PROCEEDINGS OF THE COUNCIL, MAGISTRATES, AND OFFICERS: in Documents Relating to . . . Leisler.
MINUTES OF THE COUNCIL: ibid. and in Cal. S. P. Col., 1689-1692.
CAPTAINS' COMMISSIONS : in Muster Rolls in Report of State Historian, 1896, Appendix H (454).
NICHOLSON AND OTHER COUNCILLORS TO BRADSTREET: in Hutchinson, Hist. of Massachusetts-Bay, I.
DISTURBANCES ON LONG ISLAND: Col. Docs., III; Cal. S. P. Col., 1689-1692; histories of Long Island.
COUNCILLORS TO SECRETARY OF STATE AND TO LORDS OF TRADE: in Col. Docs., III, and in Cal. S. P. Col., 1689-1692.
DUTCH LETTER OF 1698: in Documents Relating to . . . Leisler and in Ecc. Records, II.
LODWYCK'S DEPOSITION : in Documents Relating to . . . Leisler.
BULL AT ALBANY : Records of Connecticut Colony (125) ; Papers Relat- ing to . . . Leisler.
CUYLER'S DEPOSITION : in Documents Relating to . . . Leisler, and in Cal. S. P. Col., 1689-1692.
OTHER AFFIDAVITS : in Papers Relating to . . . Leisler.
DECLARATION OF INHABITANTS AND SOLDIERS: in Papers Relating to Leisler and in Cal. S. P. Col., 1689-1692.
LEISLER'S LETTERS : ibid.
COLDEN (quoted) : his Hist. of the Five Indian Nations (188).
ADDRESS OF THE MILITIA AND INHABITANTS TO THE KING AND QUEEN : in Col. Docs., III.
PAPERS CARRIED BY NICHOLSON : ibid .; Cal. S. P. Col., 1689-1692.
DEPOSITION OF DUTCH CITIZENS, 1694: in Documents Relating to . . . Leisler.
DE RIEMER'S AFFIDAVIT : ibid.
BY-LAWS FOR LODWYCK'S COMPANY : ibid.
BAYARD'S JOURNAL AND LETTERS : in Col. Docs., III, and in Cal. S. P. Col., 1689-1692.
BRIEF DEDUCTION AND NARRATIVE: ibid.
VAN CORLANDT TO ANDROS : ibid. and in Cal. S. P. Col., 1689-1692. MODEST AND IMPARTIAL NARRATIVE: in Col. Docs., III.
LETTER FROM A GENTLEMAN OF NEW YORK : in Papers Relating to . . . Leisler and in Collecteana Adamantæa, XXII, Edinburgh, 1887. GOLD AND FITCH: Col. Docs., III; Papers Relating to . . . Leisler.
RIOT IN THE CUSTOM-HOUSE: Col. Docs., III; Cal. S. P. Col., 1689- 1692; Loyalty Vindicated.
CHAPTER XXVI THE RISE OF LEISLER
1689
(JACOB LEISLER, COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF)
The eighth of this instant arrived by the way of Boston a messenger with two gracious letters, the one from their Majesties with orders to do and perform all things which to the place and office of his Majesty's Lieutenant-Governor and Commander-in-Chief of New York doth or may appertain until further order. - Jacob Leisler to the Governor of Barbadoes. December, 1689.
LITTLE was known in New York of what had happened in the mother-country, but rumors had come by one channel or another and any acceptable half-truth was welcomed as a fact. It had been proposed in England to send out two com- missioners to administer provisionally the affairs of the north- ern colonies. Hearing this, both factions daily expected and heartily hoped for their arrival. They did not come nor did any orders. All authority, Van Cortlandt wrote, was 'over- thrown.' More exactly, it had crumbled away. Yet, says the Dutch letter of 1698, all would have remained quiet if only the officials who had 'already given up the administration of affairs' had not tried to disturb everything and to expel from office those who now held 'the power of arms in their hands.' From the pulpit Domine Selyns supported the cause of the old officials and 'with the greatest bitterness and partiality' accused the people of rebellion and riot. This made the breach 'incurable'; and the people began 'greatly to hate' their magistrates, feeling that they ought to have been the leaders in what had been done wholly 'in uprightness for a good cause.'
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Truly, in June, 1689, no one except the militia held any authority on Manhattan; and it was of their own motion that they then shared it with others. Leisler exaggerated when he wrote that 'the most part of the country' had asked the rest to send representatives, two from each county, to form a committee of safety. It was the leaders of the insur- gents, who comprised the most part of the people of the city and its vicinity, that had sent out circular letters containing this invitation by the hands of Captain De Peyster and Cap- tain De Bruyn, explaining that it was especially needful to prepare an address to the new king and to consider the re- pairing of the fort.
On the 26th delegates from six New York counties and from one place in East Jersey assembled in the fort. Two of them, it has often been written in our day, soon withdrew because they saw that the intention was to make Leisler commander-in-chief, ten remained, and these appointed themselves a committee of safety. But Leisler's letter shows that the counties were expected to return the actual mem- bers of such a committee; the town of Newtown, it is re- corded, sent delegates to Jamaica for the purpose of electing two persons to represent Queen's County on the committee of safety ; and an Abstract of the Proceedings of the Committee of Safety of New York which covers almost two months from the time of its assembling says that the delegates from the respec- tive counties at once presented their credentials as committee- men.
It is not so easy to be sure who all these delegates were. Their names are usually given as Peter Delanoy, Samuel Edsall, Richard Panton, Thomas Williams, William Law- rence, Matthias Harvey, Daniel De Klercke, Teunis Roelofse, Johannes Vermilye, and Jean Demarest; and these are in fact the names, denoting five Englishmen and five Dutchmen or Huguenots, signed to the two commissions which the com- mittee soon issued to Captain Leisler. The Abstract, however, gives a longer and somewhat different list. It does not men- tion Vermilye and Demarest who were old and respected
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