USA > New York > New York City > History of the city of New York in the seventeenth century Vol. II > Part 35
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residents of New Harlem; it says, and so Van Cortlandt said, that Edsall and Delanoy represented the city and county of New York, although the histories of Long Island, where Ed- sall was then living, say he was sent by Queen's County; and it names as the other committeemen Williams and Pan- ton of Westchester; Harvey and Richard Betts of Queen's; Gerardus Beekman and Myndert Coertens of King's; Jacques Puillon of Staten Island (Richmond County); William Law- rence and Teunis Roelofse of Hackinsack (in Orange County) ; and Henry Lyon and John Curtis of Elizabethtown (in East Jersey). At all events Englishmen predominated on the com- mittee which proceeded to organize the movement that the other faction called a 'Dutch plot.' The most notable of the Dutchmen, barring Delanoy, was Gerardus Beekman, a native- born son of William Beekman the early settler. As he held a physician's diploma he had undoubtedly studied in Holland. He and Nicholas Stuyvesant had married sisters. He was living at Flatbush where Dongan had appointed him a lieu- tenant-colonel of militia and a justice of the peace.
Three important counties, it will be noticed, stood aloof: Albany and Ulster, and Suffolk which hesitated but decided to try again to annex itself to Connecticut. Dutchess County was also unrepresented but it had scarcely an inhabitant. Cornwall had been lost to New York. And no one at this period seems to have remembered as a part of New York the islands of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket which composed Duke's County. In the counties that were represented, says an opposition letter of the time, some towns had voted, some had not; and the committeemen were the 'greatest Oliverians' in the province, more than one of them openly declaring that since Oliver's day there had not been a lawful king in England.
As its moderator the committee elected Delanoy. As its clerk it appointed not one of its own members but Abraham Gouverneur, a young man familiar with the three languages of New York. He was the son of Nicholas Gouverneur, a French merchant who in Dutch and English times had passed
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his life partly on Manhattan, partly in France and Holland, and had been one of the three commissioners that signed for the merchants of Amsterdam their appeal on behalf of New Netherland when it passed for the second time to the English crown. Nicholas had married a Dutch New Yorker, a sister of the lady who married first Cornelis Steenwyck and then Domine Selyns; and it was he who carried to the West India Company the message which secured for Steenwyck in 1676 his commission as governor of Acadia. Abraham, born at Amsterdam in 1671, was only eighteen years of age when as secretary to the committee of safety of New York he began a long public career of many vicissitudes.
On June 26 the envoys from Connecticut, Gold and Fitch, addressed to 'Captain Leisler and the other Captains' who had been active in securing the fort in New York for his Majesty's service and the preservation and security of his territories, a letter of approval and advice, counselling them to remember the 'hellishly wicked and cruel' popish attempt on the powder magazine, to disarm all known papists, and to repair the fort and the guns. The writers promised the aid of Connecticut should it be needed, urged the captains to wait patiently for the orders and commands of the 'never equalled, commended, and admired King William, the very best this lower world knows,' and declared that justice re- quired them to acknowledge the good service already done this sovereign by
. . . noble and loyal Captain Leisler, whose loyalty, courage, prudence, pains, and charge hath been great, and you the other noble, courageous and loyal Captains, Lieutenants, Ensigns, Sergeants, and good soldiers in the train bands that hath been active in this affair, as also loyal Mr. Samuel Edsall and other good and worthy loyal gentlemen. . .
This letter was dated from the fort - called no longer Fort James but for a while simply 'the Fort in New York' and then Fort William.
As soon as the committee of safety organized, on June 27
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says the Abstract of its proceedings, it resolved to enlist a new militia company as a garrison for the fort, the men to be raised and paid 'in proportion' by the several counties rep- resented on the committee. The newly arrived Frenchmen who had established the town that they called New Rochelle in Westchester County sent word that they would contribute toward the outlays for defence. On the 28th the committee resolved to send an address to the crown and to appropriate the king's revenues received since June 1 toward the repairing of the fort. And, continuing the commissions of all the militia captains, it issued to Leisler a special commission declaring :
. . . Captain Jacob Leisler shall be captain of the said fort . .. till orders shall come from their Majesties, and the said Captain Leisler shall have all aid and assistance, if need be and demanded by him, from city and country to suppress any foreign enemy and prevent all disorders which evidently may arise.
This was Leisler's first step above the heads of his fellow captains. As captain of the new military company - the first raised on Manhattan as a paid garrison - he had as his lieutenant William Churcher, as his ensign his quondam sergeant Joost Stoll. At once enlisting recruits, he summoned the people to notify him if they thought any of the men unfit to be trusted with the fort. Describing them in a letter to a friend at New Haven he said:
There is seventeen born in New York, eight in old England, two French, known Protestants, two Swiss, four Hollanders, and I a Ger- man, all known Protestants.
Connecticut promised to send ten men to strengthen the garrison. Massachusetts also expressed its sympathy with the insurgents. After confirming Delanoy as collector of customs and receiving a report on the condition of the forti- fications the committee of safety adjourned. On July 1 Leisler began to exercise his newly conferred powers, signing custom-house passes and military orders as 'the Captain ap-
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pointed to secure the fort in New York for their Majesties William and Mary, King and Queen of England etc.' Neither Van Cortlandt nor the aldermen who sat with him in the mayor's court would recognize his authority. He told them, Van Cortlandt wrote, that the people were ready to 'hale them by the legs from the Town Hall' and that he would not interfere to prevent; and so the court adjourned for a month, hoping that in the interval the 'fury' might be allayed.
July passed more quietly on Manhattan than the month of June. Its most dramatic incident was the drowning, on his way back from Amboy, of one William Cox whom Leisler had sent to proclaim their Majesties in East Jersey. He was buried in great state wrote Van Cortlandt to Nicholson in England, - the whole town invited, gloves given to every man and woman, the flags at half-mast on the fort and on all the ships in the harbor, the drums beating 'mournfully,' and the guns all firing 'till he was in his grave.' There was 'a good rich widow left,' says another account. She soon re- married, thrice; and as her third husband she chose a man destined to go to his grave in a very different way from the first, - William Kidd the pirate.
Meeting, after its adjournment, on July 22 the committee of safety called before it the former collector of customs; and, Van Cortlandt reported, Plowman 'as a madman gave them an account of the money in the fort, upon which they opened it.' This fund of about £770, says Loyalty Vindi- cated, was thereafter spent 'with great prudence' for the 'safety and defence of the revolution.' By order of the com- mittee Abraham Gouverneur and another made a list of the books, parcels, rolls, and papers in the secretary's office. It showed more than a hundred items including two copies of the acts of the late assembly. Colonel Bayard now rec- ognized the authority of the committee in so far as it might serve, he hoped, his private interests, presenting to it a claim for money he had spent on the fortifications. Of course he asked in vain. Most of the work had been left undone.
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Leisler completed it. Acting at first as captain of the fort, afterwards as appointed with Henry Cuyler by the committee to superintend the task, he put the walls of the fort and the buildings within it in good condition and opened a well which for some reason Dongan had filled up - a well which must have been dug since the surrender of 1664 as there was then none in the fort. Also, Leisler renewed and extended the other defences of the city, inspiring the people to long-con- tinued diligence and even, says one of his own letters, enlist- ing the children who in a single day collected more than a hundred loads of stones. Some of the cut stone intended for the fort, he also said, Dongan had used for a pigeon-cote, some James Graham had used in enlarging his house. Much of his own work was finished in August, including the chief of his innovations - a semicircular redoubt bearing six guns and built 'behind the fort on the flat rock to the west- ward' where, he wrote, it defended 'the landing of both rivers' and was itself defended by the fort. Long known as Leisler's Half-Moon, it was the first of the works which afterwards gave the locality still called the Battery its name.
Thus, says the affidavit of a New York seaman, Leisler provided for the 'safety and defence' of the country much better than the deponent had ever known done in the time of the three preceding governors. He put the city in such 'full posture of defence,' declares the Dutch letter of 1698, that his name was respected everywhere in the West Indies, and New York had no need to fear any attack from abroad.
Meanwhile, on August 2, Andros escaped from his prison, the castle in Boston harbor, but was soon apprehended at Newport and brought back. As all the colonies were in danger from the Indians, wrote Edward Randolph to the Lords of Trade, the governor had intended to try 'to moderate the minds of the people.' In New York the people thought that he had designs on their city; and they believed that, hoping to meet and to aid him, Colonel Dongan had gone as far as New London while Mayor Van Cortlandt and several others had started on the same errand.
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Van Cortlandt and Philipse wrote to Blathwayt in England that the people were now very unruly and insolent, every thing was in confusion, no one paid duties save those who chose to, and the king should be urged to prevent, by send- ing speedy relief and orders, the 'utter ruin' of the province and city whose trade and revenue were now 'wholly destroyed.' The captains, Van Cortlandt wrote to Nicholson, could no longer control their men, and the self-constituted authorities were seizing and opening all letters, imprisoning whomsoever they saw fit, and releasing imprisoned debtors.
The Leislerian papers say nothing of disorder at this time or of insubordination. But Leisler and the committee of safety had in fact arrested a number of persons - among them Brandt Schuyler, a brother of the mayor of Albany, a brother-in-law of Van Cortlandt - because they spoke against the committee, refused to take their turns in stand- ing guard, or otherwise showed what were considered signs of disloyalty to their Majesties. Even the anti-Leislerian Modest and Impartial Narrative does not assert that the prisoners were harshly treated. One was quickly released because his wife and son were sick. Another, sick himself, was sent home in a sedan-chair 'by order of the gaoler Leisler.' Others were kept in confinement for as much as three weeks. Eight, wrote Leisler to Governor Treat on August 13, had just been set free upon taking the oath of allegiance, 'and about us we are now, God be thanked, very quiet.' A letter written at this time to Nicholson by a Captain Mckenzie indicates that Leisler's roughness and insolence were exag- gerated by his enemies. To the great surprise of Mckenzie, who had been arrested because he had landed on Manhattan secretly at night, Leisler and the committeemen treated him courteously, speaking 'with as much smoothness and civility' as ever he had heard.
According to the Abstract the members of the committee had again 'adjourned to their several counties' on July 25 after appointing seven of their number to be for the future a quorum. Nevertheless the others did not then disperse.
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With the entries for August 15 the Abstract ends, for it was prepared to accompany an address which the committee then resolved to send to their Majesties by the hand of Ensign Stoll. But on the 16th all the ten committeemen who had signed Leisler's commission signed a second one extending his powers. Because, it says, the members who lived at a distance feared that they might not be able to stay in the city through the winter and no one knew when orders from England might come, therefore:
. . . to direct all necessary matters touching the ruling and ordering of the inhabitants in the province . . . Captain Jacob Leisler is hereby appointed to exercise and use the power and authority of a Commander- in-Chief of the said province, to administer such oaths to the people, to issue out such warrants, and order such matters as may be necessary and requisite to be done for the preservation and protection of the peace of the inhabitants, taking always seasonable advice with militia and civil authority as occasion shall require.
This second promotion of Captain Leisler, say various affi- davits, met with popular approval. But, as William Smith wrote at a later day, his 'sudden investiture with supreme power' and the prospect that King William might approve of his course,
. . . could not but excite the envy and jealousy of the late council and magistrates who had refused to join in the glorious work of the revolution, and hence the spring of their aversion both to the man and his measures.
The quiet of which Leisler boasted was soon broken. Four young men, coming from Boston without passes and in com- pany with John Perry the postman, a suspected person, at once despatched a mounted messenger out of the city. This, Leisler wrote to Governor Bradstreet, excited a fear of a 'bad design,' the people still thinking that Andros was at liberty and in or near New York. Therefore he sounded an alarm and arrested the strangers; and when he released them, finding that they were harmless students from Harvard College travelling for pleasure, the act provoked 'great dis-
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content.' If he did not exaggerate when he added that five hundred men in arms had responded to the alarm, evidently almost the whole population of the little city was on his side. But many Englishmen, his opponents said, were now leaving Manhattan; soon there would be few of any reputation left.
The address to the king and queen, signed on August 17 by Edsall and Delanoy for the committee of safety, declared the loyalty of the province and described the forming of the committee and its determination to defend the fort, which it had thoroughly repaired, against all their Majesties' enemies. With the Abstract and various affidavits and other confirma- tory papers it was confided to Ensign Stoll and Matthew Clarkson, a brother-in-law of Captain Lodwyck. Leisler himself sent to their Majesties a long personal letter describ- ing in detail the work on the fortifications, reciting the oc- currences of the past months, and painting the loyal temper of the people. His commission as captain of the fort he mentioned but not the recent one as commander-in-chief ; probably when this was issued the letter had already been drafted. No one, he explained, now remained in the fort except the committee and the soldiers who had all taken the oath of fidelity. To administer the oath he had had to make use of a justice from Long Island - Gerardus Beekman - as the justices of the city refused their services and had not had the 'zeal' to tender the oath to the citizens. From other papers it appears that the city magistrates, when asked to swear the soldiers, said that they would do so if the men would come one by one to the City Hall. The men demanded to be sworn as a body.
Before the end of August Jacob Milborne returned from a voyage to Holland. Having recently been in England he assured the insurgents that the course of events there would certainly be held to justify their course in New York. From this time on he was Leisler's chief adviser, often his mouth- piece, unquestionably the instigator of many of the words and deeds for which the commander was most severely blamed.
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The up-river New Yorkers were managing their own con- cerns with small regard to what was passing in the lower counties. On July 1 William and Mary were jubilantly pro- claimed at Albany. Nicholas Bayard, fleeing from the threats of the New Yorkers, arrived there on the 5th. It may easily be imagined how his account of what had happened to him and his colleagues was received by his friends in a place which, because of the Bolting Acts, regarded Manhattan with a jealous antagonism. Although messengers sent by Leisler had tried to start a revolutionary movement in Albany and Ulster Counties, the people decided to maintain their old magistrates; and these magistrates declared, so Bayard wrote, that they were in no wise subordinate to the city of New York nor to the power then exercised therein.
On August 1 the Albany magistrates, justices, and militia officers formed themselves into a convention to manage all public affairs in their Majesties' interests. There was great fear of an instant attack from Canada; and there was great reason to fear, if not exactly this, at all events a border war into which New York would be drawn. The savages were again threatening the northeastern settlements of New Eng- land where the eleven garrisons set by Governor Andros had either disbanded because they distrusted their officers or been greatly reduced because the revived colonial governments had no money to spend upon them. The New York Indians would not listen to the desire of the eastern tribes that they should lift the hatchet against all Christians of whatsoever nation; but at a time when Callières, the governor of Mont- real, was absent in France and Denonville suspected no danger they struck the French a terrible blow. In the night of August 4 fifteen hundred Iroquois braves fell upon Lachine on the upper point of the island of Montreal, burned the place, killed its sleeping inhabitants, spread over the island almost to the gates of Montreal itself, and when they retired to the mainland left two hundred Christians dead behind them and carried off more than a hundred to be slain by torture. It was the worst disaster that ever befell the French province.
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It paralyzed the people and so demoralized Denonville that he forbade his lieutenants to pursue the Iroquois and, yielding to their haughty demands, ordered that Fort Frontenac, the invaluable frontier post on Lake Ontario, be demolished and abandoned.
It was not true, as the Canadians asserted, that the advice of Governor-General Andros, given at a time when France and England were at peace, had provoked this fierce onslaught. It was as false as the counter report, believed for a moment by the Iroquois, that Andros had given the Frenchmen leave to extirpate their tribes. Nor had the Albany authorities en- couraged the Iroquois. There was nothing they wanted less than a war for which they were so ill prepared. The Iro- quois themselves soon assured the New Englanders that they had not been incited to war by their 'brethren' at Albany. They had determined of themselves to revenge their injuries and had not even told their brethren of their plans until their braves had been for a fortnight on the march. But by the time when they sent a report of their success to Albany the magistrates knew that France and England were at war and that the eastern Indians, instigated by the French, had taken the fort at Pemaquid and killed or captured some forty persons. So, congratulating the Iroquois on their great victory, they urged them to follow it up without delay; and, they added, if the French attempt anything, warn us as we shall warn you.
Robert Livingston had lent some money to the convention. It promised to repay him six months after orders should come from England, and, laboring to raise more funds, to put the fort in good condition, and to enlist men for the frontier, it also sought aid from Manhattan. On September 4 it sent an express with a letter to 'Captain Leisler and the rest of the militia officers' asking for ammunition, money, and a hundred men. Returning on the 17th the messenger reported that Leisler had said he had nothing to do with the civil power; he was a soldier and to a soldier would write. Addressing, in fact, two of the militia officers at Albany he explained
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that there was no public money to give and that no volunteers could be raised in New York, for the people felt that Albany had slighted them. He sent, however, some powder which belonged to Albany merchants with four small cannon and the advice that Albany should choose two representatives to join the government at New York.
Disappointed in this quarter the convention, speaking for the Mohawks as well as the white men, asked Massachusetts and Connecticut to send two hundred men to remain through the winter. Overburdened by the troubles on its own frontier Massachusetts could only promise that, with Plymouth, it would contribute some soldiers toward a company to be raised in Connecticut. Connecticut notified Leisler that the ten it had sent him would be transferred to Albany but that it would instantly give aid should New York be attacked. The Five Nations, refusing the request of the New Englanders that they would join with them against the eastern Indians, declared that they would stand with their lives by the men of Albany should the French come against them.
Writing at this time from Albany to Randolph at Boston Bayard averred that only Edsall and Delanoy were now ad- vising Leisler; as even Delanoy would put his name to noth- ing, Leisler took everything upon himself; and many believed that, even if the arrival of a new governor were delayed, never- theless the rebels would soon and suddenly fall. In reality the committee of safety was still acting in concert with Leisler, and Jacob Milborne was advising him. And it was Milborne, some of their adversaries affirmed, who in September prompted a new and important move. The city records mention only its outcome, but the anti-Leislerian Modest and Impartial Narrative describes it. By the commander-in-chief and the committee of safety the Protestant freemen of all the counties represented on the committee were directed to hold the annual elections at the usual time and to elect not only such officials as the laws of previous years had permitted them to choose but also the justices and militia officers who should have been
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appointed by the governor. In the city they duly voted on Michaelmas Day, September 29, the day appointed by the Dongan Charter. And, early in October, another city election was ordered for the choice of the higher officials, mayor, sheriff, and town clerk, whose appointment also had rested with the governor of the province.
On the day of the first election in the city its results were laid before the common council - the old magistrates who were then holding in the City Hall their first meeting since the month of March. The six newly elected aldermen were John Spratt (not to be confounded with John Spragge the former provincial secretary), Captain De Bruyn, three others with Dutch names, and Robert Walters, an Englishman and a son-in-law of Leisler. Leisler, says the Modest and Impartial Narrative, forced Walters' election by challenging the vote of Major Brockholls on the ground that he was a papist, and by proffering with his own vote those of his son Jacob and of Walters himself. All the six assistant aldermen and all but one of the constables bore Dutch names.
The revolutionists must now have got possession of the City Hall, for three common council meetings over which Van Cortlandt presided early in October, before the new magistrates took office, were held at the house of one of the old aldermen. They were devoted wholly to the considera- tion of the treasurer's books and of outstanding accounts. After the minutes of the third, on October 7, stands in the same book an entry saying that, the committee of safety having ordered the election of such officers, Peter Delanoy had been returned as mayor, Johannes Johnson as sheriff, and Abraham Gouverneur as town clerk. And then follows an entry signed by Leisler on the 14th saying that, as specially empowered by the committee of safety, he confirmed the election of all the new officials and required all inhabitants of the city to yield them due obedience. Meanwhile the old mayor's court had met, after its adjournment for a month, on October 8. Failing of a quorum it once more adjourned
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