USA > New York > New York City > History of the city of New York in the seventeenth century Vol. II > Part 36
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for a fortnight. It did not meet again. So died out in 1689 the last remnant of the government that Charles and James Stuart had established on Manhattan in 1664.
According to Bayard the revolutionists had at first set up in New York without any commission or authority, 'an illegal and arbitrary power ruling by the sword,' and there was nothing to which Captain Leisler was more 'averse .. . than a civil government.' Again he did not speak truth. The chief things that Leisler and his friends had done after secur- ing the fort they had asked in vain the councillors or the magistrates to do; and they were under no compulsion to organize a civil government. This proceeding Bayard now made the ground for fresh complaints against them, saying that those who had issued the writs did not seem to know that all inferior officials had been confirmed by royal proc- lamation, and that they had violated the royal prerogative. In fact, so far as can be read, no royal proclamation had yet reached New York except the one that related to the kingdom, not the colonies; and although the elections did violate the prerogative there was no other way in which the insurgent leaders could secure a civil government except by a more flagrant violation - by themselves assuming powers of ap- pointment.
This 'undue election,' wrote Bayard, had seated 'several malicious, senseless, unfit, and mean persons and some of very ill lives and conversation.' Knowing it to be illegal, says the Modest and Impartial Narrative, 'far the greatest number' of the inhabitants of the city did not appear; for no other reason did they object to it; nor would the writers of the Narrative themselves be 'offended' if it should please King William to add unto their former privileges the right to elect all their magistrates. It would be interesting to know just how large a proportion of the citizens really joined in the election that seated Peter Delanoy as mayor, for no mayor was again seated in New York by a vote of the people until 1834. Then they elected Cornelius W. Lawrence, a descend- ant of the William Lawrence who, with his brother Thomas
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and the more conspicuous John, had settled in New Nether- land at an early day.
The William Lawrence who was serving on the committee of safety, it may be noted, was of the second generation, a son of Thomas. His wife was a daughter of Samuel Edsall. He himself, his father, and his brother, John by name, adhered to the popular party. His uncle John stood with the con- servatives both before and after he was turned out of his office as alderman by the election of 1689.
Evidently 'our Masaniello,' as the Narrative calls Leisler, and the 'unsafe committee' had not banished all papists from New York as William's adherents in England banished them from London. Brockholls, who had married a Dutch New Yorker, had ventured to return and to try to vote at an elec- tion to which only Protestants had been summoned; and Plowman also was in or near the city, writing to England requests for another appointment and advising that two hundred soldiers should be sent out 'to awe these rebellious Dutchmen.'
It was at this time that Leisler bought lands for the Hugue- nots intending to come over from England. Those of their compatriots who had started the settlement at New Rochelle had bought small properties from John Pell, the second proprietor of Pelham Manor. And this seems to have been the reason why Leisler decided to buy of Pell six thousand acres, two-thirds of the manor, paying a price unusually large for that period, £1625 sterling 'in current money of the province,' and promising a yearly rent of 'one fat calf.' The deed, signed on September 20, names none of Leisler's military titles; it calls him simply 'Jacob Leisler of the city of New York, merchant.' During the year 1690, while his hands were overfull of public work and trouble, he sold off the whole of the tract to incoming Frenchmen. It now forms the township of New Rochelle.
The new magistrates were sworn in on the day when Leisler certified to their election - October 14, the birthday of James Stuart but the day set by the Dongan Charter for municipal
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installations. At once they appointed a high constable and a marshal and ordered that to the constable the late mayor should deliver the seal of the city, its charter, and all other public papers in his keeping. The constable reported that he had presented this mandate to Mrs. Van Cortlandt who 'did throw it out the doors.' Van Cortlandt should be constrained to do his duty, the magistrates soon reported to Leisler, for he always absented himself, and his wife declared that if they wanted the charter and seal they must take them by force. According to Bayard their emissaries had used force, trying to constrain 'Mrs. Mayoress' and 'grossly abusing, assaulting, and battering' her in her own house; and 'the mayor,' mean- ing of course Van Cortlandt, had been so threatened that he had to leave the city secretly. He and Bayard, William Smith explains, finding it 'impossible to raise a party' against Leisler at New York turned their attention to 'fomenting the opposition' to him at Albany.
At Albany also elections were held at the proper time but in accordance with the terms of the city charter, the appoint- ive officials holding over. The oath of allegiance to their Majesties was administered to magistrates and militia-men, and also to the citizens at large because 'divers persons' had falsely spoken as though the people of the city were more affected to King James than to his successors.
Bayard now wrote from Albany to some of the militia captains in New York directing them as their colonel and as a king's councillor to cease abetting Leisler and the others who had subverted the government without any shadow of author- ity from their Majesties, and to submit themselves to the commands of the civil government which had been established by law; for even though a governor were imprisoned, 'yea, dead,' he was but an inferior officer while the commissions were 'matter of records.' Of course the only effect of these orders was to deepen the suspicion with which the Leislerians looked upon Bayard. It had been discovered, Leisler said, that he was engaged in a plot to retake Fort. William. In the hope of securing the ringleaders in this plot several houses
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in the city were searched including those of Bayard, Van Cortlandt, and Domine Selyns. Some of the country folk came in to aid the citizens in watching the fort. And the oath of fidelity to the king and queen was again administered to all who would take it, together with an oath of obedience to the committee of safety 'as the supreme authority' and to Leisler as commander-in-chief. Nevertheless the New York- ers were not too much alarmed to disport themselves in loyal fashion, lighting bonfires and roasting whole oxen on Novem- ber 4 and 5-the one day being the anniversary of King William's birth and of his marriage, the other a customary holiday, Guy Fawkes' Day, and the anniversary of William's landing in England.
Toward the end of October it was reported at Albany that Leisler meant to send armed men to turn its government upside down and to make themselves masters of the fort. This, it was felt, would create divisions and so alarm the Iroquois that they would be tempted to make friends with the French. The convention sent an agent to New York to investigate and if needful to protest, saying that it would gladly receive reinforcements if put under its own control but could not pay the men and would not yield to anybody the control of the fort. Returning, the messenger confirmed the reports. The convention then summoned the people to the City Hall - as the old magistrates on Manhattan had never had the will or the wit to do. Forty of them signed a paper indorsing the course of the convention. And with less formality than had attended the promotion of Leisler to a similar post of responsibility, Mayor Schuyler was now appointed to the chief command in the fort.
On November 9 three sloops arrived from Manhattan flying the king's flag and bearing some fifty soldiers under command of Jacob Milborne. Refused admittance to the fort but in- vited to explain himself at the City Hall, and there welcomed by some members of the convention, he addressed himself not to these but 'with a high style and language' to the 'common'
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people who thronged in, telling them that, as everything done during the reign of James II had been illegally done, even the charter of Albany was null and void, its magistrates had no right authority, and the people should proceed to a 'free election.' He was asked for his credentials. The mayor had thought best to remain on guard in the fort. To the recorder acting in his stead Milborne presented a letter which showed that Leisler certainly was not, as Bayard had asserted, taking everything upon himself. It was signed by twenty- four persons calling themselves the committee chosen by the freemen and a council of war. The first names appended to it were Edsall's and Delanoy's. Among the others stood Leisler's as undistinguished by any title or sign of official superiority as the accompanying name of his young son. And so also stood the names of the militia captains De Peyster and De Bruyn and of some of the members of the committee of safety.
The signers of the letter, it said, were sending fifty men in arms who, they felt sure, would be useful, for they believed that all willing to be thought 'of the Reformation' would agree in the measures which, following the example set in Eng- land, they had taken in New York to prevent the 'raging interest of the Roman Catholic party,' and the fruits of which New York was now reaping in 'tranquillity and peace.' To Jacob Milborne they gave 'full power to consult, order, do, and perform' all that might be requisite for the king's service ; and they desired that he might be amicably treated so that there would be no occasion for the enemy to take advantage of any disputes especially at a moment when they were 'upon such good terms of breaking the papist and arbitrary yokes from our necks forever.'
Although Albany was just as well pleased as New York to be free from the yoke of James Stuart, its magistrates saw no reason why they should bend their necks to what they considered the yoke of the larger city. Nor was Jacob Mil- borne the man to persuade them. Whatever verbal instructions may have supplemented his letter of credence he assumed
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a tone which the letter itself hardly warranted. Writing to the people of Schenectady and the other settlements in the county he advised and required them to repair at once to Albany to secure their rights and liberties 'in such manner as if the government of King James the Second . . . or any of his arbitrary commissions' had never existed; and this, he said, he did by virtue of his own commission 'to arrange and settle the affairs of the city and county of Albany according to the constitution of the other counties of the province.' With the letter to Schenectady went, one from Henry Cuyler which promised, apparently on no authority except his own, that the people of that town should have wider trading rights - meaning that right to trade with the Indians which had been reserved to the people of Albany - and would undoubtedly 'be preferred to those of Albany in the approaching new government.'
Meanwhile on November 10 Milborne, invited by Mayor Schuyler to explain himself again before the convention, showed his commission signed by the signers of his letter of credence. The recorder informed him that a commission granted by a 'company of private persons' was of no au- thority. Milborne again addressed the 'common people' in the same strain as before. There had been a free election according to the city charter, he was told; with his 'smooth tongue and pretended commission' he aimed at nothing but to raise mutiny and sedition; if he should have his way everything would 'run into confusion' especially as concerned the Indians; therefore he should desist from such discourses, for the magistrates would no longer dispute with him. Nevertheless the convention decided to meet again on the following day to discuss methods of quartering the men sent for its assistance who were suffering hardship by lying on board their vessels.
On the following day the City Hall was so full of a multitude of people gathered 'in an illegal manner,' largely country folk, that the convention had to meet at the recorder's house. Thrice it ordered the people to disperse; but about a hundred
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of them, 'most youths and them that were no freeholders,' chose Lieutenant Jochim Staats of the Albany militia to be captain of the soldiers from New York. Staats was a relative of Dr. Samuel Staats, a prominent Leislerian at New York. 'Contrary to the order of the convention of which he was a member' he accepted the proffered post. So 'raging and mutinous' were the people that some members of the con- vention withdrew in fear of their lives, 'all which was oc- casioned by the instigation of Jacob Milborne' who had come 'with no other design than to overthrow all.'
So reads the record of events kept for the Albany magis- trates by Robert Livingston. Unfortunately it cannot be checked by any account written from Milborne's point of view. It is evident, however, that Milborne was exasper- atingly aggressive, probably much more aggressive than those who sent him had intended, while the magistrates showed a praiseworthy desire to compromise, to preserve harmony, and to restrain popular excitement. After various confer- ences they said that if the New York troops would recognize the authority of eight designated members of the convention, one of them being Mayor Schuyler, the convention would recognize Staats as their captain, would take them into service until March, 1690, or until orders from the king should come, and would feed and lodge them and treat them well. Mil- borne's ultimatum was that some one unconnected with the civil power should have control of the fort and that an account of its munitions and stores should be rendered to himself. Bringing his soldiers into the town where 'the burghers of that faction' received them in their houses without 'lawful authority,' he marched them to the fort and demanded ad- mittance. Schuyler bade him depart with his 'seditious company.' A band of Mohawks, gathered near by, threatened to fire upon the strangers should they disturb their friends in the fort. After much parleying and reading of papers Milborne led his men away. The next day he signed a con- tract regarding their support with certain 'private but extreme active men in these revolutions.' Then he departed for New
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York leaving his men in 'confusion,' for only after much persuading had they consented to accept Staats as their captain. On his way down the river Milborne stopped at Kingston but there also 'accomplished nothing,' the people knowing of his ill success at Albany. The chief thing he had accomplished at Albany and at Schenectady was to foster into open outbreaks dissensions which before he came the magistrates had been able to keep in hand.
A few days later Captain Bull of Connecticut and eighty- seven men marched into Albany and were received by the magistrates with much honor, 'orderly quartered in the city, and extremely well accepted.' These reinforcements from New England were put under command of the convention which promised to pay the officers. To Bull and to Staats it now presented the needs of the 'out plantations' like Sche- nectady where the foe from the north might first be expected. After much discussion Bull detailed thirty of his men for their protection. Staats refused to divide his smaller force but pledged himself to act in no way against the orders of the convention.
Nothing, William Smith explains, could have been more 'egregiously foolish' than the conduct of both parties in New York in 1689. Leisler should have been content when Albany declared for King William, but he was 'inebriated with his new-gotten power.' On the other hand the Albany magis- trates ought 'in prudence' to have given their fort into his hands rather than sacrifice peace and concord to 'the trifling honor of resisting a man who had no evil designs,' but they could not 'brook a submission to the authority of a man mean in his abilities and inferior in his degree.' The reader of to- day, with much more contemporaneous evidence before him than Smith can have had, sees excuses for both sides. The men of Albany knew that the Five Nations trusted them as they trusted no one else; and they understood, much better than Leisler and his friends, the vast importance of keeping the savages faithful and the consequent need to keep them in
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a confident and an amiable temper. The excuse for the Leislerians is that they rightly felt that to consolidate the province and its military and pecuniary resources was the only way to prepare it for an attack from the north or from the sea, and the best way to enlist the sympathy and the aid of the other colonies. It would be easier, however, to weigh the justifications of the one party against those of the other were it known in how far Milborne's manners and methods misrepresented the intentions of those who had sent him.
During these autumn months Leisler was corresponding on friendly and equal terms, as the commander-in-chief of his Majesty's forces in New York, with the governors of Con- necticut and Massachusetts, of Pennsylvania and Barbadoes, and with the new assembly of Maryland and its new governor, John Coode. From Philadelphia he got much-needed sup- plies of powder, from Maryland and Barbadoes much-desired European news. Lieutenant-Governor Nicholson's adver- saries in New York had believed, since the time of his secret departure, that he would not dare to show his face in England but would turn privateer or, as Leisler wrote to Barbadoes, would join with other persons 'popishly and evilly affected' in some plot against the Protestants of New York. With such fears the Marylanders sympathized. While Leisler wrote to Coode that he had heard that some of the 'papist grandees' of Maryland were at Philadelphia and meant to come nearer to confer with those of their kind 'for some bad design,' Coode assured him that three popish priests who had fled from Maryland with three small vessels certainly had 'a design towards' New York, and asked for any further information about them which might lead to a discovery of the great scheme that was evidently on foot. Such confirmations of Leisler's worst fears, coupled with the general acknowl- edgment of his new station and responsibilities, go far to explain why he felt it both necessary and proper to do what- ever he could to bring all parts of the province together under his own control.
Late in November Coode wrote that a packet-boat had
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arrived from England bringing the formal announcement that the king had declared war against France and the promise of a 'great squadron of ships' to protect the West Indies and the other English plantations. Then, early in December, the voice of the king speaking directly to New York was heard at last, but in such a way that it merely deepened discord.
An almost unsupportable burden lay upon William III. He had to contend with the distrust and the misunderstandings which the rule of a foreigner, and of one who was the military head of a rival state, naturally aroused in the minds even of those Englishmen who had most deeply felt the need to ask his aid. He had to guard against the intrigues and to suppress the open assaults of a large minority in England and Scotland, of a great majority in Ireland, and to try to win over multi- tudes of the wavering, to hearten multitudes of the lukewarm. He had to care for the interests of the United Provinces as sedu- lously as for those of England while in each country soothing or overriding jealousies of the other and of its claims upon his attention. And all this was but part of the preparation he was making for the great effort to which his life was vowed - the effort to destroy or effectually to cripple the power of Catholic France. The other part was the task of bringing together and holding together not only monarchical England and republican Holland but also as many as possible of the other major and minor powers of Europe, individually selfish and shifty, mutually envious and jealous.
In September, 1688, Louis XIV had moved his armies upon Alsace and Lorraine, impelled, it seems, less by the reasons he published than by a wish so to absorb the attention of the Prince of Orange that he would be unable to go to the aid of England. When later in the year he heard that the prince had landed in England, he declared war against Holland but attacked the borders of Germany, sanctioning that dreadful devastation of the Palatinate which is one of the blackest blots upon the name of war. In March, 1689, a month after
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William assumed the crown of the exiled James, James landed in Ireland with a French army; and, joined by his lord- lieutenant, Dongan's uncle Tyrconnel whom William had not yet tried to displace, he entered Dublin on the 24th. Thus began in Ireland a struggle between the supporters of the old king and the new which lasted for two years and a half. For the crushing of an insurrection that broke out in Scotland a few months sufficed.
Two months after the soldiers of Louis entered Ireland, on May 7, William as king of England declared war against him. This was the time when Louis decided to attempt the conquest of New York and gave his cruel instructions to Count Frontenac. By the end of the year William as stad- holder of Holland had formed against France an alliance, defensive and offensive, which included almost all the princes of Europe, Catholic as well as Protestant; and into this Great Alliance England soon entered. The great war thus initiated continued until the peace of Ryswick was signed in 1697; and it spread into America where it is remembered as King William's War, a name that it might well have borne in Eu- rope. It was the first European war in which the colonies were involved.
William might be held excusable if, during the years when the destinies of all Europe depended more upon him than upon any one else, he had paid scant attention to the colonies on the other side of an ocean wider in that day than is half the circuit of the earth in our own. From the beginning, however, he gave them much attention. He professed for them, says Chalmers, 'a particular care.' The same is true of his advisers. It is one of the most curious facts in the history of the writing of histories that Lord Macaulay's long and laudatory record of William's reign scarcely indicates that the king or his councillors knew that English colonies existed.
In April, when Phips was carrying to Boston the orders so long delayed that they found Governor-General Andros
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fast in jail, the privy council had directed that those most interested in colonial affairs should present the names of persons suitable for the offices of governor and lieutenant- governor in the plantations. On May 2 the king, upon the advice of the Lords of Trade, instructed them to frame at once such a government for the northern colonies as would enable them to present a united front to the French with whom war was then imminent. In June the packet-boat whose arrival Coode in due time announced to Leisler was despatched with letters to the governors of Virginia, Mary- land, and Pennsylvania. By the middle of July the first prayer for instructions from the councillors at New York, the testimony of the messenger who brought them (one John Riggs who had served as an ensign under Andros in New England), a petition from Andros himself, the constant pres- sure from New England, and the counsels of its Nonconformist sympathizers in England had worked together to decide the king and his advisers not to try to perpetuate the great Do- minion created by James II. Lists of the names of persons thought suitable to govern one colony or another were sub- mitted to the king - for New York at first the names of a Colonel Slingsby and a Colonel Sankey but in a 'final list' drawn up by the Lords of Trade those of Colonel Henry Sloughter and of Captain Nicholson, no one yet knowing that Nicholson had quitted his post. Before, however, a choice was made, the secretary of state on behalf of King William signed on July 30 a personal letter of instructions addressed :
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