USA > New York > New York City > History of the city of New York in the seventeenth century Vol. II > Part 4
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56
Digested, like the New England codes, with the sections in alphabetical order and revised during the next session of the court of assizes at New York, the 'Duke's Laws,' as the code was called, filled two hundred and fifty-eight pages in the copy sent to the duke, indorsed by him, and now preserved in London. The most important sections were those that established a complete system of judicial administration, framed for the district called Yorkshire which was now held to embrace Long Island, Westchester (then meaning only the Bronx peninsula), and Staten Island, but capable of extension over the province at large.
28
HISTORY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK
[1664-
Yorkshire, like its namesake in England, was divided into three 'ridings.' Each of them was virtually although not in name a county. The East Riding comprised the present Long Island counties of Suffolk and Nassau; the West Riding King's County, the town of Newtown (now in Queen's), and Staten Island; the North Riding Queen's County (excepting Newtown) and Westchester. For the whole of Yorkshire a high sheriff was appointed, and for each riding a deputy- sheriff or high constable. Each town had its own court, composed of its constable and overseers, which had jurisdic- tion of causes under £5 and could fine for small offences and make local ordinances subject to the approval of the higher authorities. In each riding a court of sessions, composed of three justices of the peace with the high sheriff, the governor, or one of his councillors as president, had jurisdiction of criminal causes and of civil causes over £5, its decisions being final in all under £20. Trial by jury was prescribed for the courts of sessions, the jurors to be seven in number and a majority of voices to decide except in capital cases when twelve jurors were to bring in a unanimous verdict.
Appeals from the town courts lay to these courts of sessions and from them to the supreme court-the court of assizes. This, in which suits involving more than £20 might be begun, was now enlarged to include the high sheriff and justices of Yorkshire. It met only once a year, in October, but could issue special commissions of oyer and terminer in capital cases. Nicolls exalted it unduly when he called it an 'assembly,' for it contained no elected member; but it was a more broadly based tribunal than the provincial court of the Dutch, which had consisted only of the governor and his council, and it had certain legislative functions besides the registering of the edicts of the Duke of York and of the governor in council. At the close of a session, all but members of the court being excluded, it made such amendments and additions to the laws as it thought proper except in regard to the revenue where it could only offer advice. The secretary of the prov- ince served as clerk of this highest tribunal.
29
RECONSTRUCTION
1666]
The sheriff and deputy sheriffs of Yorkshire were annually selected by the governor in council from nominations made by the courts of sessions. The justices, who were also ap- pointed, held office during the governor's pleasure and except at the very first received no salary but merely an allowance for expenses. In each town four of the eight overseers were elected each year by a plurality vote of the landholders, and the constable was chosen from the outgoing four. These, with gaugers of casks, militia officers, ministers, and church- wardens, were the only officials in whose selection the people at large had a voice direct or indirect, and their election was the only function left to town-meetings. Certainly the Long Islanders could complain that they had received something very different from 'equal (if not greater) freedoms' than the New Englanders enjoyed.
Basing rights of suffrage upon the ownership of land, the Duke's Laws did not make use of the New England term 'freemen'; nor did they define the size of a freehold. Dutch influence showed also in the perpetuating of the town courts with the constable as their chief officer, in the erecting of courts of sessions which corresponded to Stuyvesant's district courts, in the system of rapid rotation in office, unknown in New England, and in the retention of the 'common fields.'
On the other hand the Duke's Laws radically altered methods of taxation. The Dutch provincial government, following the precedents of the fatherland, had raised its revenue almost altogether by customs and excise dues. It had never laid a general property tax; the tenths of the harvest that it exacted formed a tax not upon land but upon the produce of land; and the ordinance that once prescribed a direct tax on land and cattle seems never to have been enforced. But the new English government, while it also exacted customs dues, imposed direct taxes to defray the 'charges publicke' - that is, to support all civil and military officials who were not paid by the fees that were carefully tabulated in the Laws. The rate, sometimes as low as a
30
HISTORY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK
[1664-
half-penny in the pound, was fixed, as Nicolls reported to the duke, by the court of assizes, and the money raised was paid in to and 'managed exclusively' by the same body. The tax was assessed by the town officials according to their estimate of the real and personal estate of all male persons sixteen years of age and over excepting the sick and infirm. Town charges of the same direct sort were both fixed and levied by the town officers.
This method of taxation had prevailed in England under varying names until after the Restoration when it gradually passed into a land tax which, however, was not so called until the year 1697. It was also the current New England method and as such had been known in the eastern parts of Long Island. The poll tax of New England, it may be added, was afterwards collected in New York, but never its 'faculty tax,' a sort of income tax.
As the Duke of York assumed to be the original owner of the soil of his province, his code directed all existing pro- prietors to bring in their grants and 'take out new patents for the same' from the present governor acting on his Royal Highness's behalf. Purchasers of lands held by the duke were to take out a patent and to pay the governor such a fee as might be agreed upon. At the 'seating' of a new town two lots were to be given to the governor to dispose of as he might see fit. Dutch customs were perpetuated by the mandate that all papers relating to lands must be recorded by the clerk of a court of sessions.
The duke had instructed Nicolls to permit freedom of con- science, and the king had directed his commissioners to show, in dealing with New England, no undue zeal for the establish- ment of the Anglican church. This was not altogether a matter of special policy, for both the king and the duke, princes with Catholic leanings in a fiercely Protestant land, always advocated what Charles called 'liberty to tender consciences' and opposed the stringent laws for England which parliament compelled the king to sanction. Conse- quently the Duke's Laws did not mention the Anglican church
31
RECONSTRUCTION
1666]
but broadly said that a church building should be erected in every 'parish,' which meant in every town, and that, to ex- clude 'scandalous and ignorant pretenders,' no minister should anywhere officiate who had not been elected and presented by a majority of the householders of a town and inducted by the governor after giving proof that he had received Protes- tant ordination in some Protestant country. The overseers of a town were to be its poor-masters and to choose from their own number two churchwardens. No one professing Christianity was to be disturbed 'for differing in judgment in matters of religion,' and, it was implied, congregations of any Protestant faith might anywhere be formed; but every taxpayer had to contribute to the church rates collected for the support of the authorized church of his town. No minis- ter might refuse, as many did in New England, to baptize the children of Christian parents. All were to pray for the royal family and to observe the national anniversaries as in England.
Thus, in a manner which seems to have no exact parallel in history and no analogues except in the abortive 'Agree- ment of the People' of Cromwell's time and in the actual ecclesiastical arrangements of Plymouth Colony, all Protes- tant sects were put on an equal basis and equally subjected to the civil power. Nicolls's arrangement was, so to say, a loosely framed erection of Protestantism at large into a state church, 'local option' determining which sect should be established in any given place.
As the code thus contained no heresy clause so, again in contrast to those of New England, it said nothing about witch- craft, and about the Sabbath said only that it must not be 'profaned by travellers, laborers, or vicious persons.' Its list of capital crimes, however, showed Puritan influence, naming eleven among which was the striking of a parent. Estab- lishing trial by jury it made due provision for admittance to bail. All. disputes between white men and red men were to be settled 'as betwixt Christian and Christian.' Without a license no one was to sell guns, ammunition, or boats to the
32
HISTORY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK
[1664-
Indians or to trade with them for furs. To supply them with liquor was strictly forbidden, but for this privilege also licenses were afterwards issued.
Militia regulations the code carefully framed after the New England pattern, prescribing the enrolling, arming, and regular training of all able-bodied men between the ages of sixteen and sixty except justices, sheriffs, constables, clerks of the courts, 'ministers and professed schoolmasters,' medical men 'allowed of by two justices,' skippers of vessels of over twenty tons, and 'constant herdsmen.' The men were to elect their officers subject to the veto of the governor who issued commissions. No man was to be compelled to go out of the province 'upon any offensive wars' but only upon necessary 'vindicative and defensive wars.' None was to be impressed for any kind of labor except by due form of law and with due remuneration guaranteed.
Schools the Duke's Laws did not mention although, more often ratifying than changing existent rules and customs, they laid down regulations for physicians and midwives, masters and laborers, sailors, children, servants, and slaves ; established English weights and measures; dealt with cattle and crops, fields and fences, and the disposition of ballast and 'wrecks of the sea'; spoke of marriages and wills; fixed the bounties to be paid for wolf killing; and determined in de- tail such matters as the prices brewers might charge for beer and inn-keepers for meals, and the branding of the horses of the different towns.
As it was impossible, said a clause in the code, to frame laws to cover all possible cases, such cases as were not pro- vided for should be settled according to the discretion of the court of assizes and 'not contrary to the known laws of Eng- land.' Some writers have thought it possible to construe this clause as a legislative introduction into New York of the common law of England.
In imposing his code only upon Yorkshire Nicolls with great good sense practically divided his province for the time into an English-speaking and a Dutch-speaking portion. In
33
RECONSTRUCTION
1666]
the latter he enforced only a few of the new laws, notably those regarding taxation. Undoubtedly it was because he had had this policy in view that he summoned only delegates from the towns of Yorkshire to the Hempstead meeting in spite of the promise of the Articles of Surrender that deputies elected by the 'town of Manhatans' should have a voice in public affairs 'as much as any other deputies.'
When, as Nicolls urged, the new laws should be approved by the duke, printed, and sent back to New York they would give satisfaction there and be 'of some consequence to his Majesty's interest in relation to the other colonies.' This was never done. Instead, transcripts were made for the respective towns. The Long Island Historical Society now owns the one made for Huntington but long preserved at Roslyn and known as the Roslyn copy. From a copy em- bodied in the records of the town clerk of Easthampton, and known as the Easthampton Book of Laws, the code was first printed, by the New York Historical Society in 1811. Both these manuscript copies contain additions and amendments of later date than any that appear in one that is now in the State Library. Nevertheless this seems to have been made in London in 1684 from a copy that had been prepared in 1674 for the governor then sent out to New York, Governor Andros.
The West India Company's ship bringing the order for · General Stuyvesant to return to Holland arrived in Feb- ruary, 1665, while the court of assizes was elaborating the Duke's Laws. In May the old governor set sail with a pass from Nicolls permitting him, his son (his second son, Nicho- las), and his servants to go and to return. Taking formal leave of the burgomasters and schepens of the city and wish- ing them 'every luck and happiness,' he asked them to accord him a 'certificate of his comportment' which might be of use to him or his children 'to-day or to-morrow.' He had de- meaned himself, said this certificate, as a loyal servant of the Company, a supporter of the reformed religion, and 'an honest proprietor and patriot of this country.'
VOL. II. - D
34
HISTORY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK
[1664-
Nicolls licensed the Company's ship to come again from Holland with merchandise within the year, and also per- mitted a few prominent merchants to trade with ports in the north of Europe. This was to meet the insistent needs of his people, for no ships were arriving from England. With the West India Company he was highly indignant. Its 'scurrilous letters' to Stuyvesant and Van Ruyven - which, as he wrote to Winthrop, he compelled them to show him because nobody would 'tell any news' and which disavowed the Articles of Surrender - would justify him, he declared, in confiscating all its property to the use of the king of England. And, in fact, he did sequester its property when he got word by way of Virginia that the king had declared war with Holland and expected the colonies to guard themselves against probable attacks by De Ruyter's fleet.
Directing the Long Islanders and urging the New Eng- landers to take all possible precautions, on June 28 the governor called the people of the city together to consider how it might best be fortified, offering for his own part to contribute two thousand palisades and a thousand guilders in wampum. The burghers, say the city records, gave him 'no categorical answer.' Some declared that the defences were good enough, others said that they could not work until the governor restored the arms which he had taken from them while arming their English neighbors. All were dis- turbed by the new militia regulations which seemed to con- tradict the pledge in the Articles of Surrender that no Dutch- man should be forced to serve in war 'against any nation whatsoever.' And undoubtedly they were angered by the fact that Nicolls had just completed his work of reconstruc- tion by depriving them of all share, direct and indirect, in the choice of their magistrates.
That is, on June 12 he had revoked by proclamation 'the Form and Ceremony of Government' of the city which, pre- viously conducted 'under the name or names, style or styles of Schout, Burgomasters, and Schepens,' was thenceforward to consist of 'Mayor, Aldermen, and Sheriff, according to the
35
RECONSTRUCTION
1666]
411564
custom of England in other his Majesty's corporations.' On the same day by means of a formal commission he had appointed these new officials, to serve for one year and to govern in accordance with the general laws of England and such others as they might think 'convenient and necessary.' Although this commission was not, properly speaking, a municipal charter Chancellor Kent called it a 'charter of in- corporation' and it is sometimes referred to as the Nicolls Charter. Perpetuating in a new guise the old city govern- ment, it established the first English municipality which had an actual, active existence in the colonies. Also it greatly extended the limits of the city, saying that the inhabitants of New York, of New Harlem, and of all other parts of 'the Manhatans Island' were to form 'one body politic and cor- porate' under the rule of the city magistrates.
Thomas Willett was the first mayor of New York, Nicolls calling him from the farm to which he had retired at Reho- both in Plymouth Colony because he would be 'acceptable' to the Dutch and was better acquainted with their 'manners and customs' than any other Englishman in the province. Allard Anthony who had been serving as schout kept his place as sheriff in the English sense. The first aldermen were Cornelis Van Ruyven, Oloff Stevensen Van Cortlandt, and Johannes Van Brugh with John Lawrence, their long-time English friend, and Captain Thomas Delavall, member of the governor's council and collector of customs.
Not without 'divers debates' did the Dutchmen accept their new offices. The sixteenth of the Articles of Surrender, they protested, which said that the magistrates in office might continue to serve 'till the customary time of new election' and then might choose their successors, promised perpetuity for the existing form of city government. But the words were ambiguous, and Nicolls now explained that he had duly respected them in the previous February when, the time of the annual installation of magistrates then arriv- ing, he had in fact permitted the corporation to renew itself in the accustomed way. Possibly he had thus understood
36
HISTORY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK
[1664-
the pledge from the first. Possibly he stooped for once to subterfuge in the fulfilment of what he now knew to be the Duke of York's desire; for the duke, he took pains to inform the dissatisfied Dutchmen, had written him to make the government of New York 'conformable' to English customs. He had gone beyond the letter of this mandate, although not beyond the general spirit of the duke's commands, for the freemen of many English cities elected their magistrates. On the other hand the annual rotation in office that he pre- scribed in imitation of Dutch customs was an improvement on the life tenures common in English municipalities.
On June 14, 1665, the first mayor and aldermen - the first common council-of New York, all the members now consent- ing to be sworn, stepped at once into the property rights and the judicial functions of its last burgomasters and schepens. On June 15 they organized their court, using by command the English tongue and establishing trial by jury - that is, appointing twelve jurors to decide all civil and criminal cases and thus abolishing the Dutch practice of arbitration - but making few other changes. Between this time and 1673, when the Dutch recaptured New York, the city records were kept partly in English, chiefly in Dutch. Nicholas Bayard was soon appointed secretary to the corporation. The city treasurer of the Dutch was replaced by a collector who made payments upon warrants signed by the mayor and the secretary. Minor city offices the magistrates filled from a double number of nominations presented by their incumbents.
Thus the Court of the Schout, Burgomasters, and Schepens of New Amsterdam became the Mayor's Court of the City of New York, but with enlarged powers for it acted as a court of probate and a surrogate's court and also exercised the powers that were held in the ridings of Yorkshire by the courts of sessions. This enlargement and the extension of the limits of the city justified the perpetuation, in the person of the sheriff, of the schout whom the Dutch thought so im- portant an officer; for in England a sheriff was a county
37
RECONSTRUCTION
1666]
officer - a municipal officer only when a city was itself a 'county corporate' as were a number of the largest in- cluding London, Bristol, Norwich, Lincoln, and York.
Appeals from the mayor's court as from the courts of sessions of Yorkshire lay to the court of assizes of which the mayor, like the high sheriff and justices of Yorkshire, was ex officio a member. So important were the functions of his own court that, although they were distinct from those of the common council as such and the records were kept in two sets, 'the Court' was a customary term for the city government in a general sense.
In 1666, about a year after the limits of the city were ex- tended to cover the whole of Manhattan, Governor Nicolls upon petition of the town of New Harlem gave it its first written charter, renewing the document with some altera- tions in 1667. So doing he secured to the 'freeholders and inhabitants' of the town and their heirs, successors, and assigns as individuals their 'particular lots and estates,' and as a body their common lands and riparian rights with the ' privileges of a town but immediately depending on this city as being within the limits thereof.' This peculiar creation of a town within a city was made possible by the double char- acter of the mayor's court. Sitting from time to time in New Harlem as a court of sessions it received appeals from the town court; and it administered the oath of office to the town officials after choosing them from a double number elected by the townsfolk. Peculiar again was the fact that the subordinate town thus had a genuine charter and the right to elect its magistrates while the city that embraced it had neither.
The territories of New Harlem as defined by its charter included all those parts of Manhattan that lay beyond a line which, drawn due north from the East River at what is now the foot of 74th Street, ran diagonally across the island to the North River near the foot of 130th Street (the present Fort Lee Ferry) and therefore included about a fourth part of the present Central Park and half of Morning-
38
HISTORY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK
[1664-
side Park. Although the charter said that in future the village must be called not New Harlem but Lancaster, this being one of the duke's titles, the English name never took root and appears in no existing document save the charter itself.
All that part of the duke's territories adjoining Nova Scotia, Nicolls reported, was 'not worth a farthing.' It is not known that he made an effort to settle a government either here or in Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket. All the rest of his province he had set in order except the parts between Manhattan and the Delaware, and these had been cut off from it.
In June, before the duke had secured his prospective do- main, while his expedition was still at sea, he had made over by deeds of lease and release to Sir George Carteret and Sir John Berkeley (by this time Lord Berkeley of Stratton), who had both served on the committee of the Council for Plantations which advised the seizure of New Netherland, all those parts of it which lay between the Delaware and a line to run a little toward the northwest from the Hudson River at forty-one degrees of latitude, a point opposite the site of Yonkers; and he had named them Nova Cæsarea or New Jersey in memory of the island which Carteret, then its governor, had stoutly defended against the adversaries of Charles I. The deeds conveyed only the duke's right to the soil. Rights in government they neither bestowed nor re- served to the duke. But, as possession of the soil would by itself be useless, the patentees assumed that they held rights of government also, and drew up a constitution like the one adopted for Carolina, prescribing that New Jersey should be administered by a governor, a council, and an elected assembly, providing for the easy acquirement of lands, and establishing religious freedom.
The deputy-governor who was at once sent out to organize the new province in the name of the proprietors, Philip Carteret a relative of Sir George, made the coast at the
39
RECONSTRUCTION
1666]
mouth of the Chesapeake. It was his messengers who in- formed Nicolls of the outbreak of war in Europe as well as of the dismemberment of his province. In the most vigor- ous words, writing first to the duke and then to Lord Arlington the secretary of state, Nicolls urged that the grant be revoked or be changed to cover the banks of the Delaware instead of the region near Manhattan. Otherwise, he said, it would be well for James to divest himself of his whole domain, for New York, New Jersey, and the Delaware region would 'destroy each other.' New York ought not to be cut in two; it ought to own the whole of its great bay and both banks of its great river. Undoubtedly, Nicolls added, Berkeley and Carteret were ignorant of the damage they were inflicting upon the duke :
. . but I must charge it upon Captain Scott who was born to . work mischief as far as he is credited or his parts serve him. This Scott (it seems) aimed at the same patent which your Royal High- ness hath, and hath since given words out that he had injury done him by your Royal Highness, whereupon he contrived and betrayed my Lord Berkeley and Sir G. Carteret into a design (contrary to their knowledge) of ruining all the hopes of increase in this your Royal Highness his territory, which he hath fully completed unless your Royal Highness take farther steps herein.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.