USA > New York > New York City > History of the city of New York in the seventeenth century Vol. II > Part 40
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
. .. an act was made to raise throughout the whole government three pence in every pound real and personal to be paid the first of June, and that all towns and places should have equal freedom to bolt and bake and to transport where they please directly to what place or country they think it fit, anything their places afford, and that the one place should have no more privileges than the other.
This, said Van Cortlandt, was 'all what this wise assembly did' except to receive petitions for the release of the prisoners whom Leisler held.
It is certain that the tax was laid; and we have Leisler's own statement that he prorogued the assembly when he saw that it 'intended to work with the prisoners.' The letter which so says, written on April 30 to his commissioners at Albany, also says that he was sending them the new 'laws.' But, excepting Van Cortlandt's statement, no word of this or of a later time indicates that these laws annulled the Bolt- ing Acts of Governor Andros's making. Most likely such a measure was introduced but was not passed or was vetoed by Leisler.
A part of this letter of Leisler's may be quoted literatim as well as verbatim to show that it is not hard to distinguish the products of his pen from those of Jacob Milborne's. After referring to the laws he reported that 'mest riars,' meaning Mr. Ryer Schermerhorn,
desired som guns with iff your seemeth most be taken from sloop or petrares for Schonectede with wee Desiers ma not be desertet doo It shuld kost 50 soldiers to maentain Evert Wendell Is re- mained heer by min leve becas his Chelder died therefore can be ex- VOL. II .- 2 H
466
THE HISTORY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK
[1689-
cused the mayer and me Selvst are In continual compayni with the Comisioners we have advice off marsch off the marilanders It Is thougt the will travell by land for faer off the small poks. . ..
The 'Marylanders' were the soldiers Maryland had agreed to send to Albany. The 'commissioners' were the members of the intercolonial congress or convention summoned by Leisler to discuss military affairs. This met at New York at the end of April, just when the assembly was prorogued. It was the first assemblage of its kind, for the meetings of the commissioners of the United Colonies of New England had not been in the same sense intercolonial; and it had no suc- cessor until a larger congress met at Albany in the year 1754. Four colonies sent delegates, New York appointing Leisler and Delanoy, Massachusetts Samuel Sewall and William Stoughton, Connecticut Nathan Gold and William Pitkin, and Plymouth Major Walley. Rhode Island and Mary- land were represented by letter.
Sewall does not explain in his famous diary why he visited New York, and says nothing of the city, of the congress, or in a descriptive way of Leisler whom he calls sometimes 'the governor' and sometimes 'Captain Leisler.' Unfortunately, Sewall was chiefly concerned with a fit of religious depression that happened to possess him and therefore, after describing his journey, remarked only upon the church services he attended in New York. On April 21st, he says, he and Stoughton and some others started from Boston on horse- back for Newport. Thence, on a sloop which they hired for twelve shillings a day, they voyaged to Oyster Bay taking their saddles and bridles with them. By way of Hempstead and Jamaica they rode to 'Brookland' where, on the 28th, Mr. Edsall met them 'with a file or two of troopers' and escorted them over the ferry. Sewall dined with Leisler and, being 'disturbed' in his lodgings and 'overcome by the governor's importunity,' consented to lodge at his house.
There was still much sickness in Connecticut and Massachu- setts, sickness and scarcity approaching famine in Plymouth Colony, and smallpox in New York although, Leisler declared,
467
LEISLER'S ADMINISTRATION
1690]
'not so great nor mortal' as had been reported. The little congress held its sessions two miles out of the city, probably in or near the Bowery village, in a house which Leisler had found to be fit for 'such general and great concerns a good and neat house . . . where no smallpox is.'
New England now felt as strongly as New York the need to strike at once at the heart of the French power, for, toward the end of March while Massachusetts was preparing its expedition against Acadia, the second of Frontenac's raiding parties had destroyed a settlement called Salmon Falls on the border between New Hampshire and Maine. Unanimously the con- gress decided upon a joint expedition to strengthen Albany and to pursue and subdue 'the French and Indian enemies of their Majesties.' Articles signed on May 1 promised that New York would supply 400 men, Massachusetts 160, Con- necticut 135, and Plymouth 60, while by letter Maryland agreed to send 100 and Rhode Island no soldiers but a 'reason- able proportion' of money. The lieutenant-governor of New York, the articles said, should appoint 'the major' (the commanding officer or major-general) of the allied forces, the New England colonies the 'next captain.' The major was to decide all 'matters of great concernment' in council of war with the other commissioned officers or so many as opportunity might permit to aid him. Without the further consent of the colonies the soldiers were to be employed in no other service than was now agreed upon. Plunder and cap- tives 'if any happen' should be divided 'according to the customs of war.' The officers should discountenance and punish vice, maintain the worship of God, and so far as pos- sible keep the Sabbath. Such was the agreement regarding the first body of troops that could be called an American army. All the delegates signed it, but none, so Walley wrote to Governor Hinckley of Plymouth, set beside his name that of the colony he represented. Some thought that the com- pact would need to be ratified by the colonial assemblies. And even Leisler understood that the promise to send a certain number of men was not a formal and inviolable pledge.
468
THE HISTORY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK
[1689-
On May 4, says Sewall's diary, he went with some com- panions to the Dutch church and joined in singing the psalms, which Captain Leisler had taught him the night before. On the 5th, after dining with Captain De Peyster, he started by water for Newport. Governor Leisler, Walley informed Hinckley, was 'a man that carried on some matters too arbitrary' but, he thought, was 'earnest to promote the design against the common enemy.' So Leisler himself reiterated to all his correspondents. He wrote to Hinckley that he was fitting out three vessels to go against the French, a frigate carrying 24 guns and 150 men, a brigantine, and a sloop - 270 men in all; it was not yet certain that Boston would send any ships but 'ours shall go, please God, though there should go no more.' To the commissioners at Albany he wrote that Massachusetts would send ships but that it wished the New York ships to go 'under command of theirs which cannot be.'
Maryland, Governor Coode wrote to Shrewsbury on May 14, would do all that it could in answer to Leisler's requests for aid against Canada. Leisler's determination that New York should do all that it could did not lessen his difficulties at Albany and increased them in the other parts of the prov- ince. Not every one on Manhattan can have seen as clearly as he the immediate need for a hard and costly campaign toward which the mother-country was contributing nothing, not even a word of encouragement - a campaign which would greatly interfere with the course of trade and for the sake of which heavy taxes had been imposed by a government pro- visional in character and precarious in power. The first formal protest against this government that was spoken on Manhattan by persons outside the group of officials who had served under King James, the first protest sent to the home authorities after Nicholson's government disintegrated, was signed on May 19 by thirty-six persons who described them- selves as 'merchants, traders, and others, the principal in- habitants.' Addressed to the crown, it declared that for
469
LEISLER'S ADMINISTRATION
1690]
almost twelve months New York had groaned under a 'bur- then of slavery and arbitrary power' exercised by some 'ill men' who, assisted by a few others, formerly thought scarcely worthy of the meanest offices, to whom no better name than a rabble could be given, had assumed his Majesty's authority, overturned all civil power, and ruled by the sword and 'the sole will of an insolent alien, he being none of your Maj- esty's subject.' Without any warrants they had imprisoned his Majesty's subjects in 'dark, noisome holes,' seized estates, and plundered houses, pretending it was all for the king's service. They had scandalized and abused the ministers and rulers of the churches and seized their revenues, so that re- ligion was in great danger and some of the best and most con- siderable inhabitants had been forced to leave the province. Moreover, the trade of the province was almost extinguished. Therefore the petitioners besought his Majesty speedily to send 'such persons or orders' as would extend to New York protection and relief.
Four of the captains who had at first supported Leisler signed this address: Minvielle who had soon fallen away from him; De Peyster who seems still to have been on good terms with him when, only a fortnight before, he helped to enter- tain Samuel Sewall; Nicholas Stuyvesant; and Charles Lod- wyck who had been for some time a waverer, for, at the end of March, Leisler had written to Fitz-John Winthrop that Cap- tain Lodwyck was 'quite reformed' since a recent visit to Boston and intended 'to keep better correspondence with us.' Others who signed were Brandt Schuyler, Philip French whom Leisler had released from jail, Nicholas Bayard's brother Balthazar, and Stephanus Van Cortlandt's brother Johannes. Among the rest were many who were aliens in the same sense as Leisler and, in some cases, had not been nearly as long in New York. Such were Domine Varick of Long Island, Pierre Peiret who had come in Dongan's time to assist Daillé as the pastor of the French church in the city, and Stephen Delancey the Huguenot from Normandy.
From the first all the ministers except Bonrepos, the French
470
THE HISTORY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK [1689-
pastor at New Rochelle, had been opposed to Leisler. They were obnoxious to him, Varick said, because they tried to per- suade the people that it was unjust to call their old magistrates 'traitors, papists, etc.' All that Varick himself had done, he wrote two years later to the classis of Amsterdam, was to warn an elder in his own church who was one of Leisler's chief advisers (probably Dr. Beekman) to desist from acting cruelly toward respectable people, telling him that such con- duct would be his ruin as the English were greatly provoked 'by their losing the fort a second time' - a phrase which implies that Varick put the uprising of 1689 on a par with the Dutch reconquest of 1673. None of the ministers, says the Modest and Impartial Narrative, escaped 'the lash' of Leisler's 'inveterate tongue.' But, says Loyalty Vindicated, they all preached against his government continually and bitterly ; Selyns in especial 'flung from the pulpit' everything that the 'most furious partisans' could suggest to exasperate the people.
Some of the newly arrived Huguenots in and near the city were also making trouble for Leisler, asserting that the pro- posed war was needless and refusing to pay taxes because, they said, the king of England had invited them into his dominions with a promise that their lives should be 'made sweet to them.' Leisler spoke of their 'ill carriage' in one of his wonderful autograph letters, written to a person in West Jersey who had made some complaint regarding a ship:
Honoreth Ser,
Your last is before us. having considert the Content I most allow Wath your represent to me therein. I am Sori Your vessell happent Yust at sutche theime when som Franch heer by their Il Caridg provoket the piple Whereby the was Stierd up to us Severite to prevent some off the Franch their theime. We are distrost at ouer bak and in ouer Bossm We have Men with we kannot well trost with was the Cas 2 was sesed one Clerd thoder Condemned then In- formation was Brought In Court When the Suth with I kold en most, noth hinder. en so se was Condemned.
Nothing was yet known in New York of the king's intentions
471
LEISLER'S ADMINISTRATION
1690]
save the bare fact of Colonel Sloughter's appointment. On May 20 Joost Stoll arrived from England with his report upon the mission he had undertaken almost a year before. The king, he said, had received him graciously but had taken no further notice of him and had appointed Captain Nicholson to high office. Bad as this news was for Leisler it troubled him much less than what he heard from Boston ten days later. The third of Frontenac's raiding partes had surprised the fortified post at Casco Bay in Maine and, as Governor Bradstreet wrote, had 'killed or captivated all the persons there, men, women, and children'; and Massachusetts had been forced to recall the soldiers who had already started toward Albany so as to 'speed them away to the eastward.' Plymouth did the same. Only from Connecticut could New York and Maryland now hope for aid in the land attack upon Canada.
On the other hand, the disaster in Maine emphasized the need in some way to cripple if not to conquer Canada, and the success of the naval expedition that Massachusetts had sent against Acadia heartened it for another and a greater effort at sea. This expedition had started late in April, just when the intercolonial convention was assembling at New York - a frigate and half a dozen smaller vessels under command of Sir William Phips. Formerly the agent of Massachusetts in England, Phips had since taken service in the royal navy, had raised a Spanish treasure ship in West Indian waters, and had come home with his share of the bullion, £16,000, and the honor of knighthood. There were now some 7000 people in Acadia but they made no organized resistance. By the end of May Phips was back at Boston bringing sixty prisoners and much booty. From Port Royal to their own settlements the 'Bastonnais,' as the Acadians called all New Englanders, were masters of the coast; but their easy conquest was not to prove more permanent than the one that had been effected by Cromwell's expedition.
Leisler now wrote to Governor Treat that a person newly from England told of 'great preparations' being made in
472
THE HISTORY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK
[1689-
France with 'eight stout men-of-war to come to take New York and to make it strong'; the New York ships had put to sea; he had news of Phips's 'victorious success at the eastward'; he would send no soldiers to Albany who had not had the smallpox. Later he wrote that his ships had gone northward early in June, by themselves as no New England ships were ready. At the end of June he and his council sent another long despatch to Shrewsbury. Stoll, they said, had told them how Nicholson and Innis, reaching England before him, had been able 'to show a fair face' of an 'ill cause, ' but as the king had referred the affairs of New York to Shrewsbury himself they did not doubt that truth would be vindicated. Telling again of the preparations for war, again they asked for arms and powder. As the 'malignant party' had drawn 'un- expected life and vigor' from the news that the late king was holding his own in Ireland and that William had dissolved parliament, 'every wind that blows favorably on King James's part raising their billows,' it was to be feared that not half the taxes imposed by the assembly would be collected. The governor of Canada had sent an embassy to the Five Nations to restore some of the braves who had been carried captive to France; the savages, as directed from Albany, had made the Frenchmen prisoners; although they had then given four of them to four of the tribes 'to be treated in their barbarous manner,' they had sent the chief of them, the Chevalier D'Eau, and all his papers to Albany. Brought thence to New York he was now confined in Fort William. On the 6th of June some thirty-odd persons had assaulted the lieutenant- governor on the street, trying to injure his person, refusing to pay the taxes, and demanding the release from prison of 'certain malefactors.' A postscript to the letter said that Major Milborne had been recalled from Albany to carry it to England and to give the secretary of state a 'more particluar account of affairs,' but as 'great distractions' had broken out among the troops at Albany he could not be spared and Cap- tain Blagge, a member of the council, was to go in his stead. Milborne might better have been sent. Neither he nor any
473
LEISLER'S ADMINISTRATION
1690]
one else could then have done Leisler's cause any good in England, but more than any one else Milborne did it harm in New York. Blagge carried also a brief despatch to the king calling his attention to the letter, copies of the earlier despatches that the French had intercepted, a Memorial setting forth once more the course of events 'since the news of their Majesties' happy arrival in England,' and an unusu- ally large batch of affidavits.
Describing in a letter to Governor Coode the riot of June 6 Leisler said that some of his assailants tried to seize his sword while others struck at him, one with a cooper's adze intending to kill him, but that drawing his own sword he made his way through the throng and the people then flocked to his rescue. Thirty-three affidavits taken before the mayor or some other magistrate between the 6th and the 11th of June attested these details, as did also the Memorial sent with them to England. This explained that Leisler's life was saved by the populace and that some of the ringleaders were then seized and imprisoned, but :
This riotous action of the malcontents occasioned a further tumult of ill consequence to themselves, for the country people, upon a rumor that the government was in danger by the rising of the dis- affected party, flocked into the city armed in great numbers, and notwithstanding the efforts of the magistrates to appease them, they took the liberty (as is too usual with an enraged multitude) to perpe- trate revenge on those which were the occasion of their coming, quartering themselves in their houses for two days and committing divers insolences upon them, much to the dissatisfaction of the magis- trates till they could persuade them to return quiet to their houses ..
This was a more serious riot than any that the Leislerians had begun, the most serious that occurred during the long two years of uncertainty and disturbance. According to Leisler the score of persons arrested - mostly English but including Brandt Schuyler and two or three other Dutchmen -- were offered their liberty if they would pay a fine and bind themselves to good behavior; about half of them accepted;
474
THE HISTORY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK [1689-
the rest, refusing, remained in confinement. As their friends, says the Memorial, sent them provisions 'in a superabundant and extraordinary manner, designedly to affront the governor,' they were forbidden to have anything brought in and were kept on bread and water, but only for two days after which they had what provisions they pleased.
The ordinance calling for these arrests, issued by the lieu- tenant-governor in council the day after the riot, said that the rioters had resisted the militia and hindered the proclamation of orders to keep strict watch in the city and to complete its fortifications; moreover, an intended plot for a rising to release the prisoners in the fort had been discovered through a letter of Bayard's found in the hands of his wife, who had been brought before the council. Therefore, being informed of the trouble in Ireland and fearing an invasion by the enemy, the government renewed the proclamation put forth by the people of New York on June 3, 1689, and directed that it be signed by all who did not wish to be thought 'enemies to king and country' and to be treated accordingly. As this meant a fresh recognition of Leisler's government another exodus followed. Domine Varick was one of those who fled, going to the Delaware country. Returning after a time he was then charged with speaking treasonable words and was sentenced by the mayor's court to remain in confinement until he should pay a penalty of £80. At the end of five months he was released without payment. He was not imprisoned, says his own letter to the classis of Amsterdam, like his fellow-suf- ferers 'with nailed up windows,' or underground, or with irons on his legs; he was in a 'lighted chamber' with the Chevalier D'Eau from whom he 'thankfully learned French.' The city pastor, Domine Selyns, was never actually disturbed but, it was said by his friends, was abused in his church by Leisler himself and 'threatened to be silenced.' Among the papers taken from D'Eau was a letter from one Jesuit to another which spoke with praise of Domine Dellius of Albany. This sufficed to confirm the suspicions of the Leislerians that Del- lius was in treasonable correspondence with the French. He
475
LEISLER'S ADMINISTRATION
1690]
was summoned to New York but escaped and made his way to Boston with the intent to return at once to Holland.
Even Bayard and Nicolls, Loyalty Vindicated affirms, were imprisoned 'without barbarity ... and not in a nasty gaol but in handsome lodgings' which were afterwards thought fit for government employees 'to lodge and keep office in.' It was true that Bayard was kept in irons, but this he well de- served for his aversion to the revolution, disturbance of the peace, and attacks on Captain Leisler; 'nor could it be safe to admit such fire-brands to bail.'
The cruelties charged against Leisler were no worse than those charged against the Bostonians by the officials whom they kept in prison so long. Judge Palmer's Impartial Ac- count of the State of New England spoke of the 'horrible usage' that Andros and his companions had suffered. After Andros attempted to escape he was lodged in the castle in the harbor, and here, Randolph wrote to the Lords of Trade, his jailer treated him as the 'worst of malefactors,' keeping him and Graham in a very small room without a fire where the rain soaked through the walls so that the water sometimes lay six inches deep on the floor. Randolph himself, he thanked God, was better off, having 'a little place in the common gaol,' but was in danger of being 'stunk up' by the filling of the jail with poor prisoners, especially wounded men who were left to 'rot and perish' for want of any one to dress their wounds. Nor, indeed, judged by any general standard, by any account of the treatment usually meted out to prisoners in England or America in Leisler's time, can his practices be called unduly severe. It may again be said that while he held power no life was taken in a street brawl or by judicial or military exe- cution, and that except in a street brawl or by some hasty exclamation no life was threatened.
Domine Varick declared that his wife had had to 'fly with everything' because of constant threats of pillage. Threats of this kind seem to have far outrun and outnumbered cor- responding deeds. The charges of robbery loudly brought
476
THE HISTORY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK
[1689-
against Leisler and his agents are seldom more specific than the charges of papistry and treason which they laid against their enemies, and when specific were not very black. For example, even the writers of the Modest and Impartial Narra- tive could find nothing worse to say of the day of excitement when Bayard was arrested than that, when he was dragged from the house where he had hidden himself, 'in that riotous tumult were stolen three silver spoons' while in searching Van Cortlandt's house 'most of his doors and locks' were 'spoiled.' It had never been proved, says Loyalty Vindicated, could never be proved, and was 'point blank a lie' that Leisler ever gave directions to plunder Bayard's house; the soldiers were strictly forbidden to plunder any one and were com- pelled to restore whatever they took, on one occasion 'even so small a matter as a hat.'
When Leisler was fitting out his little men-of-war, Van Cortlandt wrote to Andros, he laid an embargo on all provi- sions, ordered all guns and powder, all beef, pork, flour, and pease, to be carried to the fort or aboard the vessels, against the will of the owners, breaking open their cellars and making no price with them but saying that as soon as the war was over they should be paid; if he supposed a man indebted for arrearages in Dongan's or Andros's time, without making sure or going to law he took his goods; the money which years before had been left over after Leisler himself and 'the other slaves in Turkey' were redeemed, and which had then been given to the fund for a new Dutch church, the church- warden had invested in Holland in linens, and these Leisler seized and sent to Albany. Usual, necessary, laudable measures of war, Loyalty Vindicated explains. It was true that Leisler ordered the merchants to supply the garrison; otherwise it might have perished. But that he 'honestly gave them credit in the king's books' was proved by the fact that in after years they were for the most part paid. When they were 'refractory' he broke open their storehouses. But 'exact accounts' were kept of these goods also, and 'entries made in books kept for that purpose so that it was not plunder.'
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.