USA > New York > New York City > History of the city of New York in the seventeenth century Vol. II > Part 42
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Connecticut preserved its dignity, making no direct reply. In October its general court decided that Winthrop's conduct had been in all ways commendable, condemned his confine- ment at Albany as dishonoring to all New England, thanked him for his good services, and gave him £40.
In hope of aid from the mother-country the Bostonians had long delayed their naval expedition against Quebec. Their appeals brought no replies, a sloop they sent to England for powder got none. William's government had sent a strong squadron to the West Indies, stores to Bermuda, and a gov-
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ernor to Virginia. To New York it sent nothing, to New Eng- land only a ship to get masts and spars for the royal navy. At last, on August 9, a few days after Winthrop started north- ward from Albany, the fleet set sail - more than thirty ves- sels commanded by Sir William Phips and carrying about 2200 men. Almost all were from Massachusetts, a few from Ply- mouth. Although for the most part fishermen and farmers, they might have taken Quebec had they come sooner. But the voyage was long, for the pilots were unfamiliar with the difficult course. Frontenac, who had gone to Montreal to deal with Winthrop's army, had time to hear of its retreat and to return to Quebec before, on October 5, the New Englanders arrived. Bravely enough but with small intelligence and no success Phips tried a summons to surrender, a bombardment, and a land attack. Many of his ships were injured by the fire from the fort. As in the army, provisions ran short and smallpox and dysentery broke out. Tempests and very cold weather added their terrors; and the damaged vessels, to save themselves from destruction, straggled down the river and slowly straggled homeward. Phips reached Boston late in November, some of his companions not until February. They had burned a French post on Anticosti Island and intercepted a few French supply ships. For these small successes they paid a ruinous price. Several of their ships were never heard from; nine hundred or a thousand men died of disease or were drowned or frozen; to meet its debts Massa- chusetts was compelled to issue paper money, and thus it sowed the seeds of a long-lived crop of financial and commercial troubles.
So ended the first attempt at intercolonial cooperation in warfare - in a great disappointment on land, a great disaster at sea. If Canada had been shown that the English colonies could unite against it, the lesson had not been very impres- sively taught; and it had also been shown that, for a time at least, they could expect little support from their mother- country. All of them, north and south, were now disheartened and apprehensive. New England was as little certain of the
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king's intentions as New York, and the internal troubles of New York and its difficulties with Connecticut were aggra- vated alike by the common failure. Frontenac judged wisely when he wrote home that it was the time for Louis XIV to strike:
Now ... that the king has triumphed over his enemies by land and water, and that he is master of the seas, would he consider some squadrons of his fleet badly employed in punishing the insolence of these veritable and old parliamentarians of Boston; in storming them, as well as those of Manath, in their dens and conquering these two towns, whereby would be secured the entire coast, the fisheries of the Great Bank, the preservation of which is of no small impor- tance nor of slight utility. ... This would be the true and perhaps the only way of bringing the wars of Canada to an end; for when the English are conquered we can easily reduce the Iroquois to complete submission.
The king of England, Frontenac said in another letter, meaning the exiled James, must be 'the first to desire the chastisement and reduction of those rebels and old repub- lican leaven of Cromwell,' for they had never heartily recog- nized the authority of his late brother and had 'declared openly against himself.' It was fortunate for the English colonies that Frontenac's master found his hands just then overfull with European affairs. By his order all plans for an immediate attack upon New York and New England were abandoned although not all preparations for such a move at some future day.
Leisler's little squadron of one twenty-gun ship (the first New York man-of-war), a brigantine which, it was said, be- longed to De Peyster and had been 'pressed' for the king's service, and a Bermuda sloop, also pressed, had not joined the New England fleet. Ordered to attack Canada on their own account and to make what prizes they could at sea, Cap- tain Mason of the twenty-gun ship acting as admiral, they devastated Port Royal which had revolted after Phips took it. Leisler's men-of-war, wrote James Lloyd a merchant of Boston, had made a 'desolation' in Acadia. Along the coast
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they burned eighty French fishing shallops and destroyed great stores of fish; and they brought back to New York six prizes including a ship of a hundred and fifty tons and another of two hundred. On one of these was found a letter from the French king saying that he would send no more troops to Canada that year. A court of admiralty in which Mayor Delanoy presided duly condemned the prizes, Milborne act- ing as attorney-general to exhibit the libels and as vendue- master to sell the vessels. One brought £500, one £750. The usual 'king's tenths' were reserved.
Much more money than this Leisler needed, and only through the assembly could he hope to get it. Prorogued in April, the house had met again on September 15. Writs had been issued for new elections to return an additional member for Albany County and to fill the seats of Piersoll of Queen's and Beekman of New York who had not served at the first session, and of Browne of Westchester who had since died. Again no list of members survives. John Spratt still served as speaker. The new tax imposed was threepence in the pound on all estates real and personal, half to be paid by the 21st of January, half by the 25th of March. Assessors and collectors were to be elected to execute this act. Another prescribed that any person refusing to accept civil or mili- tary office should pay a fine of £75, and that without special license no inhabitant of Albany or Ulster County should leave the county or export any merchandise except furs, grain, or 'other necessaries.' These measures received Leisler's signa- ture as lieutenant-governor. A third, which did not, con- firmed to the inhabitants of the province 'the full privilege and benefits' of his Majesty's laws, promising a lawful trial to all imprisoned persons and to all fugitives accused of any crime if they would return within three weeks.
At this time Domine Selyns wrote to Holland that Domine Dellius of Albany was intending to return to the fatherland to give the classis of Amsterdam a 'detailed report of every- thing'; Varick and Selyns himself had suffered more than was credible and were forced to 'cultivate patience'; and they had
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resolved that, unless the Lord inclined the heart of his Maj- esty to send over some one who could tranquillize the coun- try, they also would return to Holland or else, like Elias, hide themselves 'in the wilderness and administer the service of Christ ultra Garamantos et Indos.'
On October 20, when the result of the New England naval expedition was not yet known, Leisler and his councillors wrote again to Shrewsbury and briefly to the king, calling his Majesty's attention to the fact that it was the fourth time that they had humbly shown what it had been their duty to do for the preservation of the province from 'the intestive rage and foreign forces of the enemy.' Giving Shrewsbury an account of the success of the New York ships and of the failure of the land expedition, they laid the blame for this upon the dila- toriness and pusillanimity of Winthrop. In spite of their reverses, they said, they were 'in good posture' to defend themselves and might be 'without peril' should the naval enterprise against Quebec succeed. Otherwise their forces at Albany must be increased, and so they were daily 'beating up for volunteers.'
The councillors who signed this letter were Mayor Delanoy, Captain De Bruyn, Dr. Samuel Staats, Johannes Provoost, Gerrit Duyckinck, Hendrick Van Vuerden, Robert Lecock, and Jacob Mauritz. With some of these names there appear on an ordinance of a few days' later date the names of Samuel Edsall, William Lawrence, and Dr. Gerardus Beekman. Thus a number of the most prominent of Leisler's earliest compan- ions in revolution were still at his side although De Bruyn was the only one of the five militia captains of 1689 who so remained. Henry Cuyler had died. Jacob Mauritz had been of the party from the first but, as he was a sea-captain, had not always been at hand. Captain Blagge was still in England whither he had carried the despatches written in June. Nothing had yet been heard of him or of them.
In the stead of the three commissioners whom Leisler had sent up from Manhattan he now empowered five residents of
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Albany County, among them Captain Staats, Ryer Scher- merhorn, and Johannes Wendell, to administer and control all its public affairs, to manage all negotiations with the Five Nations, and 'to depress and discountenance' all persons who had protested against the proclamation of their Majesties and all their 'adherents and abettors.' An experienced Indian agent, Aernout Viele, was commissioned to reside among the Iroquois at their 'court' at Onondaga, there to deal with them as directed by the Albany authorities or, in case of need, by his own judgment. Wendell was appointed mayor of Albany in Peter Schuyler's stead, and a new set of aldermen and assistants were elected, says the only entry for the year in the Albany records, on October 14, 1690, 'when Jacob Leis- ler had usurped the government.'
In this part of the province, it may well be believed, a major- ity of the people hated Leisler more hotly than ever, but they no longer tried to resist him even by written protests. From Manhattan his chief adversaries had fled, and here his hold upon the people at large seems to have been little if at all im- paired. In October the Dutch church at Harlem, which had steadily adhered to him, even broke off its connection with Domine Selyns. There was, however, a new centre of dis- affection. In October many of the Englishmen of Queen's County on Long Island rose in arms, denouncing Leisler's government. By a proclamation prepared in council he de- clared that the malicious 'speeches and insinuations' of the ringleaders were tempting some of the soldiers at Albany to withdraw from their duty and were thus endangering the safety of the province at a moment when its frontiers greatly needed defence; all persons must return at once 'to their allegiance and respective habitations' or be held responsible for the consequences of the war with the common enemy. Another order postponed the meeting of the court of quarter sessions of Queen's until the 'rebels' should be reduced to obedience. A third directed Milborne to reduce them, taking what men he could immediately gather and using 'all violence and act of hostility' - a phrase which, in a document framed
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in imperfect English, need not be construed as meaning more than that force must be used if necessary. Milborne then scattered the insurgents while Edsall and Thomas Williams went by water along the shores of Long Island Sound to intercept and seize the fugitives.
A Memorial addressed to King William's secretary of state on November 7 and prepared by Captain John Clapp as so instructed by 'divers of the freeholders' of Newtown, Hemp- stead, Flushing, and Jamaica, begged relief for the English- men of Long Island from the 'usurped power and tyrannical proceedings of Jacob Leisler and his accomplices' whose 'ex- orbitant wills and devilish lusts' were inflicting all manner of cruelties. This 'bold usurper' had collected to himself a 'rabble of the worst men' headed by three or four 'as disso- lute of life, as desperate of fortunes as the most wicked and poorest of the sons of men can be,' chief among them Jacob Milborne and Samuel Edsall:
These two foregoing base villains with their collected rabble in a barbarous and inhuman manner came over from New York to Long Island and there did break open, plunder, and destroy the houses and estates of their Majesties' subjects in a most rude and barbarous manner, not regarding age or sex, stripping our wives and daughters of their wearing apparel, carrying away with them all that was port- able, shooting at and wounding divers poor Englishmen (some deemed mortally wounded) ; whose rage and fury yet stopped not here but flew so far as to sequester our estates and expose them to sale, a piece of tyranny yet unknown to freeborn English subjects ..
As a result of these proceedings, and as a punishment for refusing to pay an 'illegal tax,' a hundred and four persons 'of the chiefest and best estates on Long Island' had been driven from their homes and dispossessed of their free- holds, the 'tyrant' turning his plunderings to his own uses. The Memorial said nothing of the armed upris- ing that Milborne and Edsall had been ordered to sup- press. No existing document tells from the Leislerian point of view how much force they used, how much plun- dering they permitted.
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During the last months of 1690, to judge from the paucity of documents of any kind, New York lay in a sort of exhausted lethargy, the one thought in every man's mind, When will Governor Sloughter come? Yet Leisler did not forget that in the spring a stronger army might be needed at the north. In King's County and on Manhattan, he directed, courts-martial should examine into the condition of the militia and the con- duct of officers and men; in Ulster County eighty or a hundred men 'complete in arms' must be made ready to go to Albany at the beginning of the year.
Although Connecticut had not answered the outrageous letter about Fitz-John Winthrop, Leisler had since proposed that representatives of the two colonies should meet at Rye near their border-line to consult about the defence of the frontier. On January 1, 1691, Milborne again his scribe, he wrote that he had waited long for a reply to this proposal. He would have been unfaithful to the king's interest and the public weal if he had not dealt plainly with persons who had broken their covenant, had 'invaded' his province, and, in so far as they could, had defeated the undertakings to over- come their Majesties' enemies. These persons, moreover, had supported Mr. Livingston and other refugees when 'called to justice ' in New York, and they had not seen fit to 'make good ' the provisions, ammunition, and other 'disbursements ' supplied by New York upon their orders and promises. They recommended that Albany be well guarded, yet, while they cried out 'like condemned fiends fearing to be tormented before their time,' they would do nothing to ward off the danger. They fancied that if they could but 'patch up something looking loyal' it would 'answer the calls' of their God and their prince and the trust that their country reposed in them, but they should not make the mistake of thinking 'such fig-leaves sufficient covering' for their 'strenuous evils.' It was unjust to attribute to Leisler the losses of all New England for which he was in no way respon- sible, but it mattered nothing to him 'whether Don Quixote encounters with a flock of sheep or windmills.'
VOL. II. - 2 K
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Again Connecticut kept silence, merely indorsing the mis- sive as Leisler's 'railing letter.' It is not possible to excuse Leisler for signing such letters or for treating Winthrop so contumeliously. It is possible, however, to understand the frame of mind which found by Milborne's hand such violent expression. No colonial ruler ever stood in a more difficult place than Leisler filled for two years with no guidance from the mother-country, with no help except from men as inex- perienced in government as himself. This would be true even if he had met with no determined opposition. But the kind of opposition he had to deal with, added to the never- ceasing sense of danger from the French, the burden of respon- sibility for the safety of the province, the pressure of financial needs, and the strain of suspense as to what was happening in England, might have developed arrogance and passion in a man more pliable than Leisler and more helpfully disci- plined by familiarity with public affairs. There can be no doubt that, although very willing to rule when he was given the chance, he took up the task in the spirit of a patriot. No one directly charged by the crown to defend a threatened province could more earnestly have tried to defend it, greatly though the effort increased the difficulty and the danger of his position. After he grew used to power he may have hoped that William would reward him with some high and permanent post, but no sign of this appears in his correspond- ence. All that he ever asked for, all that we know he wanted, was an indorsement of his past course. Despotic as were many of his acts, he believed them necessary for the prevention of anarchy and the obstruction of a foreign foe, and in executing them he observed as far as pos- sible the forms of law. There is no more proof that he was a 'tyrant' of 'insatiable ambition' in the early months of 1691 than that he had been a 'vile usurper' of 'desperate fortunes' in the spring of 1689. Such charges are no more to be believed than his own assertions that the chief among his opponents were papists and friends to the French.
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Where and why, during all these months when the fate of New York hung in the balance, had lingered Governor Slough- ter ?
In November, 1689, the king had approved the revised draft of his commission and directed that a ship be forthwith pre- pared to take him to his government. In January, 1690, his commission passed the great seal, a chaplain was appointed to accompany him to New York, the king signed his instruc- tions, and the Lords of Trade ordered that he and ten of his servants should have passage on a frigate, the two companies of regulars recruited for his province to sail at the same time. Late in April the king directed that the public records of the province should be sent back from Boston, and also the guns brought there from the fort at Pemaquid which had once be- longed to New York; and more than once again he ordered Sloughter's speedy departure. But a far more insistent mat- ter was the need to break what Leisler once called 'the late King James his strength in Ireland'; and when the king em- barked in June to put himself at the head of his troops in Ire- land the frigate intended for Sloughter was detached to do convoy duty.
On July 30 the French won the naval battle of Beachy Head - a barren victory for on the 31st William won the battle of the Boyne. James Stuart fled again to France, and the con- quest of Ireland was assured although not completed for another year.
About the middle of June, so Sloughter complained to the Lords of Trade, he had marched to Southampton hoping to embark his men at once but had been ordered to the Isle of Wight; his ship was not there and he greatly needed another advance of three months' pay. On August 20 he wrote that, although his companies were complete and ready to embark, the admiralty, which a month before had been so zealous for his departure that it would not give him time to clean his ship, had now taken his provisions away; his voyage, he feared, would be frustrated and his province lost. On the 25th he said that his ship had not yet been victualled, on the
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27th that orders for victualling had come and he hoped he might sail at the end of the week.
Late in September Captain Blagge reached London and presented, with the letters and the Memorial written at New York in June, a concise petition of his own prepared for the eye of the king at Leisler's request. He begged that his Maj- esty would grant him a personal interview so that he might further explain the condition of the province. Meanwhile he besought him to permit the assembly in New York to choose the councillors who would advise the new governor, explain- ing that the 'disaffected party,' being those who had held office under King James, were threatening the destruction of those in present power should the government ever again come into their hands - which that it might never do the petitioner most humbly prayed.
That it should so do had already been decided. Twelve councillors had been named in Sloughter's instructions. All but one of them were New Yorkers, almost all of them were Leisler's declared enemies, and four of them were Bayard and Nicolls, Van Cortlandt and Philipse. Moreover, at Sloughter's request Joseph Dudley had more recently been appointed first councillor and had joined him at Cowes.
The promptness with which the Lords of Trade considered the communications from New York, and the abstracts and summaries they caused to be made, bear witness that they were not indifferent to the dissensions in the province. But the written testimonies flatly contradicted each other, and the only persons familiar with New York affairs whom the authorities had seen and talked with - barring the ridiculous Leislerian envoy Stoll - were Nicholson and Innis, Andros and the other officials from Boston. Some of these had gained a hearing before even a word on paper from Leisler's party came. And the fact that they had all held office under the Catholic Stuart, which the revolutionists in New York be- lieved would discredit them with the revolutionists in Eng- land, was really a strong point in their favor. To the eyes of William and his servants they were simply persons who had
1691]
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held office under the crown of England. Naturally it was their friends whom Sloughter named on a list of councillors he prepared and whom the higher powers appointed, here also influenced by the fact that some had already served on the king's council in New York while others had been proposed for possible future service. It would hardly have been prac- ticable, even had it seemed desirable, to reconsider these arrangements in deference to such a petition as Blagge pre- sented at a moment when the king was absent and Sloughter was making ready to sail. What could be done in the inter- ests of justice was done. The privy council, after considering Blagge's many papers, sent them to Sloughter with the peti- tion that had recently come from the twenty-five anti-Leis- lerian merchants and traders who called themselves, as Blagge called the Leislerians, the 'principal inhabitants' of New York, charging the governor upon his arrival at New York
. . . strictly and impartially to examine and enquire into the several allegations therein contained, and to return unto us for their Maj- esties' information a true and perfect account of the state of that province and of the representations and complaints aforesaid, to the end we may receive the signification of his Majesty's pleasure upon the several particulars thereof.
To Sloughter was also referred a petition from the officers of the two companies of regulars stationed in New York who in 1688 had been promised their pay from the revenue of New England. Neither officers nor men, said this petition, had ever got any pay, subsisting only through the kindness of Mr. Stephanus Van Cortlandt and other New Yorkers while they underwent great hardships on the frontier; and the com- panies were now broken up and dispersed by reason of the late disorders. Van Cortlandt had written to Andros that £728 were still due him on account of these soldiers besides other advances and arrears of salary. He had urged Sir Edmund to get him the place of collector of customs at New York, and Bayard had asked the same of Nicholson while he was still in England. But this place, next in responsibility
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and in chances of profit to the governor's own, was reserved for one of Sloughter's kinsmen.
In October Sloughter was still complaining to Blathwayt, the secretary of the Lords of Trade, that he had no orders to embark his men, while Blathwayt was reproaching him for not taking advantage of a favorable wind. On the 22d Blathwayt wrote that the captain of the frigate had his sail- ing orders and wished Sloughter a pleasant voyage. Not yet did the voyage begin. Not yet was relief despatched to New York although it had been sent so long before to the West Indies that it was now known in England that St. Christo- pher's had been retaken from the French, and the seas had been made so safe again that, says Luttrell's diary, thirty ships had recently arrived from Barbadoes, about forty from Vir- ginia.
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