USA > New York > New York City > History of the city of New York in the seventeenth century Vol. II > Part 43
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On November 8 Joseph Dudley wrote that an 'impetuous wind' had somewhat damaged the fleet,, on the 28th that they were still windbound with a 'miserable winter voyage' before them. On the 29th the fleet at last set sail from Cowes, more than a year after the king had ordered the governor's departure. The frigate Archangel, commanded by Captain Jaspar Hicks, carried the governor, his wife, and his suite. It was to go first to Bermuda for it also carried a new governor for that island. On the Beaver with one company of soldiers sailed their commander Major Richard Ingoldsby, Matthew Clarkson who had secured the post of provincial secretary, and Chidley Brooke the kinsman of the governor who was the new collector and receiver-general. On the Canter- bury embarked the other company of soldiers, which the governor himself was to command. These vessels and a store-ship were to go with the Archangel. Joseph Dudley sailed on one that was bound for Boston. The day after they all sailed, says a report afterwards rendered by Sloughter, the Archangel ran aground, for many hours was expected to 'bulge' at any moment, and had to be lightened before it could be floated.
Leisler's envoy Captain Blagge did not know the tenor of
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Sloughter's instructions and probably had not heard of his departure when, on December 16, apparently about to sail himself for New York, he wrote from Plymouth to the post- master-general at London. A ship just arrived had brought a 'trunk full of papers' from New York; they included the acts of assembly and letters to the king, Shrewsbury, Bishop Burnet, and others which, Blagge urged, should be so pre- sented that 'misrepresentations' might be avoided and 'loyal subjects' might not be abused by having set over them men who had been 'justly laid aside' at the time of the revo- lution. To achieve this end, he asked, and to get a line or two from the king in favor of his 'master,' would his personal presence in London be required ? These were the despatches that had been prepared by the Leislerians in October.
At New York on January 20, 1691, Blagge's 'master' signed for four militia officers what proved to be the last of his many commissions. Civil and military together, more than two hundred are preserved, and from their numbering it appears that at least three hundred were issued. The elec- tions ordered by the assembly for assessors and collectors to raise the new tax, half of which was to be paid by January 21, had not been held, for on the 25th Leisler ordered immediate elections in New York, Westchester, Richmond, and King's Counties. This was the last of his civil ordinances. It died still-born. On January 25, says a report sent home a few weeks later by Chidley Brooke, the Beaver, carrying Major Ingoldsby and his company of regulars, and the store-ship arrived off New York. On the 29th they came up to the town, and about four days later the Canterbury followed with the rest of the soldiers. Sloughter's report says that there had been difficulty and delay in finding the islands of Bermuda in the winter season, and that the three companions of the Archangel had parted from it 'without any direction or allow- ance.'
Leisler made no move to meet or to greet the new-comers, believing that it was their duty to present their credentials to
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him as the king's appointee in charge of the province. If this was a tactical mistake his adversaries reaped the full bene- fit of it. However they may have learned of the approach of the fleet, a number of them were at hand including Stephanus Van Cortlandt who had been so long a refugee. Immediately they visited the Beaver and urged Ingoldsby to demand pos- session of the fort. Van Cortlandt and others, says the affi- davit of one Thomas Dawson, a sailor on the Beaver, came and made complaints about Captain Leisler and desired Ingoldsby 'to land with his soldiers' whereupon they would 'raise men and join him and force or pull Captain Leisler out of the fort.'
In Sloughter's absence none of the New Yorkers newly appointed to office could be sworn. No one held any actual commission from the king except Ingoldsby and his military sub- ordinates; and Ingoldsby's simply empowered him to command his one company of troops and directed him, without men- tioning Sloughter's name, to obey such orders as he might get
. . . from us, our Governor of New York now and for the time being, or any other your superior officer according to the rules and discipline of war.
These words, some of the Leislerians afterwards argued, In- goldsby should have interpreted to mean that until Sloughter's advent he must take orders from Leisler. Nothing was fur- ther from his mind. As more than one of the New Yorkers who had greeted him was named for high office by the king, as they all insisted upon immediate action, and as there was no one else to act, he did what they desired. According to Chidley Brooke's report, as soon as the ships came up to the city, which was on the 29th, Ingoldsby sent Brooke himself and two others to demand admission to the fort for the royal troops and their stores. According to the affidavit of Thomas Jeffers, a New York skipper who had been in the port since the previous autumn, as soon as Leisler received Ingoldsby's summons he sent Major Milborne to his ship to see 'his orders for receiving the said fort'; and upon Milborne's return he
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reported in the deponent's hearing that Ingoldsby had no such orders but only a commission to be captain of a foot company. To quote Brooke again, Leisler answered that he was willing to admit the stores but not the men, and asked Brooke who had been appointed of the council.
The list of names that he then heard must have given a hard blow to that hope of the king's approval which he had never allowed to be tempered by any shadow of doubt. Besides Brooke, and besides Dudley who could bear Leisler no good will, it included Bayard and Nicolls whom he had now kept for almost a year in jail; Philipse who had nominally made peace with him but had since held aloof from public affairs and had now rejoined his old friends; Gabriel Minvielle who first of the New York captains had deserted Leisler; William Smith ('Tangier' Smith) and Thomas Willett, both of Long Island, both his enemies; William Pinhorne who had been speaker of the second assembly under Governor Dongan and, like other anti-Leislerians, had lately taken refuge in East Jersey where he owned lands; and Nicholas De Meyer, Francis Rombouts, and John Haines all three of whom had recently died.
Whatever Leisler had expected, however deep his dis- comfiture, he showed no sign of alarm or of wavering. He refused to admit Ingoldsby to the fort unless he could show that he held, from the king or from Sloughter, authority to take command of it, but offered good accommodation for the major and other officers in his own houses and for the soldiers in the houses of the burghers. To surrender command of the fort, he knew, would be to surrender all civil as well as military authority; and such an abdication, except in response to the definite instructions of the crown or its authorized represent- ative, would be a confession that from the first he had borne rule illegally, that he was in his own estimation what his ene- mies had called him - a usurper and a rebel. Therefore until Sloughter arrived he maintained the attitude that he at first assumed, always basing his right and his obligation to retain his authority upon his antecedent right to receive and to act upon what he called the king's instructions of
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July, 1689, 'for governing this province until further orders.'
On the 30th Ingoldsby wrote him that having seen a copy of this letter, addressed to Lieutenant-Governor Nicholson, he failed to understand how Leisler could therefrom derive any authority ; he did not want the accommodations 'speciously ' offered him; 'possession of his Majesty's fort' was what he demanded, and if Leisler refused it he would esteem him no friend to the king and queen.
On the same day Ingoldsby summoned the militia to aid and assist him in fulfilling his commission from their Majes- ties and, upon pain of being considered rebels, to help in 'encompassing and overcoming' all who stood 'in opposition against their Majesties' commands'-a summons which utterly misrepresented the tenor and the scope of the commission it cited. In the name of their Majesties Leisler then pro- tested against the major and his 'accomplices ' who without showing any authority had not only demanded the fort but issued a call to arms, forbade them to commit any hostile deed, and declared that they would be responsible for any bloodshed that might ensue. By another proclamation, ex- plaining again that he acted only because of Ingoldsby's action, he also summoned to his aid the militia of the province. The officers of King's County he instructed not to obey any orders save his own but to receive 'with all courtesy and accommodation' troops who were intending, he heard, to land on Long Island from a ship at Sandy Hook, provided they did not appear in a hostile way or break the king's peace.
Although Ingoldsby would not land his men he was giving them shore-leave, for on February 1, protesting against Leisler's protest, he said that those whom Leisler called his soldiers had on the previous night fired a shot at some of his own soldiers 'while they were coming on board.' Leisler answered that he found upon inquiry that a shot had indeed been fired; if Ingoldsby would order those whom he thought injured to appear justice should be done: 'God forbid any under my command should be countenanced in an ill action.'
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Again he offered good accommodations outside the fort. In- goldsby proclaimed that he meant to do his best to protect their Majesties' subjects. Leisler proclaimed that as certain notice had come of the appointment of Governor Sloughter, as his arrival was daily expected, and as in the meantime the soldiers intended for the service of the province could not be accommodated otherwise than in the city, therefore every person in city and province must
. receive and entertain and bear all due respect and affection unto the said Major and all under his command, not offering the least offence by word or deed, but as in duty bound to embrace, assist, help, and do all good offices imaginable, as being sent hither for their Majesties' and our enemies, as they will answer the contrary at their utmost perils.
Milborne's touch is not to be traced in the phrasing of this proclamation. It is in another, issued on the following day, February 4. This says that all Ingoldsby had done or had refused to do was inspired by 'flagitious counsellors' who wished to carry on their 'accursed designs of mischief ' and to gratify their 'revengeful spirits.' Thus influenced the major had presumed to levy forces by his own authority, dignifying himself by 'the sovereign title (us).' In conse- quence divers outrages had been committed. Lodgings, provisions, and all other necessaries and suitable housing for their stores were still tendered to the major and his men, all to be under his own 'possession and ordering' until the gov- ernor or until the king's orders for the delivery of the fort should come; then the fort would be delivered, being now and having always been 'holden and preserved for that in- tent without any sinister or double meaning or other purpose whatever.' Meanwhile all persons were forbidden to join with or to countenance Major Ingoldsby in the way he re- quired; he must forthwith recall his warrant to the militia and prohibit further proceedings of the kind; and he must not raise or quarter soldiers on Long Island where his agents had created great disturbance, confining several persons and seiz- ing Leisler's orders.
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On February 6, when all the troops had arrived, Ingoldsby appeared at a meeting of the mayor, common council, and militia officers of the city and asked for the use of the City Hall for the king's troops. The magistrates granted the request upon condition that there should be no interference with the customary holding of the courts; and Ingoldsby, landing his men at once, quartered them in the City Hall and the adjacent building that was also city property. According to Chidley Brooke the 'best and greatest number of the people' had been overjoyed at the arrival of the ships; but 'the taste of power' had so infatuated the 'puny usurper' that he could not conceal his resentment; and, encouraged by him, the 'rabble' that had set up and supported this 'Masa- niello' frequently expressed their hatred; therefore the men could not be landed until some well-affected persons had been prepared to defend them in case Masaniello attacked them; and on the 6th they were put ashore as cautiously as if they were making a descent into an enemy's country.
Just at this time Joseph Dudley was writing from Boston to Blathwayt in England that a voyage of eight weeks' 'easy weather' had brought his ship to port, and that 'the fleet and frigate' were daily expected at New York where he would meet them to assume his duties. Leisler, he heard, was raging because of the prospect before him; the whole country was in every way in a very bad state; the king's delay in settling matters would make the colonies long a prey to their enemies and to each other ; it would be hard to support and to quiet the true lovers of the crown if they lay much longer neglected.
On February 14 Leisler civilly refused Ingoldsby's request, proffered through Major Milborne, that he would release his prisoners. He was withholding, he said, nothing that might promote their 'comfortable subsistence' and respectfully accepted some 'charitable offer' that Ingoldsby made on their behalf; but so many persons who were disaffected to the king's interest and had fled from justice had now been encouraged to return to the city that if those in durance were
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released it might be impossible to keep the peace hitherto, thank God, preserved without bloodshed.
During the latter half of February, to judge again by the lack of surviving documents, there was a lull in the struggle. Thus far it had been no more than a conflict of words and wills. Nor had it wholly absorbed the thoughts of Leisler and those who stood close to him. On February 3 a license had been issued for the marriage of Jacob Milborne and Mary, one of Leisler's daughters. Milborne, whose first wife was Samuel Edsall's daughter, was now a widower more than forty years of age; Mary Leisler was twenty-one. Nothing more is known about the marriage celebrated at so ill-omened a time except that it took place soon after the license was is- sued. There is no warrant for the belief that the fort was the scene. Not yet were the holders of the fort confined within its walls, nor does it appear that at any time Leisler's family or any women took refuge there.
Major Ingoldsby had served in the armies of William in Holland and in Ireland. When, in later days than Leisler's, he more than once held for a time the chief power in New York he satisfied neither the crown nor the people. Now, had he respected the narrow limits of his commission, had he seen what was best for the province where at any moment the gov- ernor might appear, he would have accepted Leisler's first offers or, at least, would have let things remain as they were at the middle of February. Leisler had made no effort to interfere with the return of the adversaries who had fled from what he considered his justice. Although, by virtue of the recent act of assembly which forbade residents of Albany and Ulster Counties to leave their limits without a license, he summoned all such persons on Manhattan to explain their presence there, he did not follow up the command. Nor did he argue that, as Ingoldsby's commission directed him to obey the orders of the king's 'governor of New York now and for the time being,' he should have taken orders temporarily from Leisler. In short, it is evident that Leisler knew that
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his best chance of winning the approbation which he had not ceased to count upon, was to prove his good intentions in the past by treating the king's troops as well as he could without abdicating in Ingoldsby's favor, and by quietly surrendering a quiet city to Governor Sloughter.
Ingoldsby much more than Leisler was responsible for the dis- turbances which, breaking out as the month of March opened, ended in bloodshed. It can hardly be questioned that he was inspired by the impatience and the desire for personal revenge of Van Cortlandt, Philipse, and those other New Yorkers who now supported them. Every day that Leisler defied them added to their rage against him, all the more because it added another day to the long incarceration of Bayard and Nicolls. They wanted to pull down the usurper themselves; and they felt that the character of the king's appointments gave them a right to do so even though the appointees had not yet as such any legal status. Their hands were strengthened by the arrival from Boston of Joseph Dudley who had been named first councillor. There were then in the city six 'intended councillors,' as Leisler correctly called them, besides the two whom he held in jail; and they organized and acted as 'their Majesty's council' while Matthew Clarkson, the intended secretary of the province, managed their correspondence. James Graham had also arrived. He had petitioned to be restored to his old offices as attorney-general of the province and recorder of the city; the Lords of Trade had referred the matter to Sloughter, expressing their approval; and Graham now assumed or was given the title of attorney-general.
On March 1 the criss-cross protests and proclamations began again. Leisler then complained to Ingoldsby that some of the major's men, making the rounds of the city 'under the character of the City Hall rounds,' had sundry times passed the fort which was a 'province' they had no right to tread upon ; for the future such a thing was wholly forbidden in order that the peace of the people and the 'constitution' of the city might be preserved. The soldiers repeated the offence, disregarding the challenge of the sentinels of the fort;
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and Leisler arrested a sergeant and three men but released them at once upon Ingoldsby's demand. Meanwhile, says the affidavit of Jeffers the sea-captain, Ingoldsby was hinder- ing 'Captain Leisler and the burghers' from going the rounds and keeping watch in the city; and when he heard of the arrest of his men he exclaimed in the deponent's hearing that 'Captain Leisler should die for that same or he would die for him.'
Most of the burghers must have been on Leisler's side or he could not have held the fort so long. Indeed, at the time of Ingoldsby's arrival a great part of them must have been serv- ing as the garrison with - it may be presumed although it is nowhere so said - some admixture of adventurers who had drifted in from the neighboring colonies. It may also be guessed that citizens of the more respectable class were not influenced in Ingoldsby's favor by the presence in their streets of his two hundred idle regulars.
Outside the city Leisler was supported in some places, repudiated in others. Great numbers of armed men were daily resorting to the fort, wrote Clarkson to Willett on Long Island, urging him to bring in the militia to Ingoldsby's aid. The magistrates of Westchester reported that a number of people in that county were publicly declaring themselves 'Leisler's men' so that it was feared they meant to start a 'new rebellion'; and, to prevent this, Richard Panton of Westchester was carried to New York upon a special warrant and confined in the City Hall. On the other hand, certain English freeholders of Queen's County declared their intention to join with the royal troops merely to keep the peace by pre- serving them from the 'rage, tyrannies, and designs' of their enemies, for they had heard of the 'abuses ' Leisler had put upon them and therefore concluded that he meant to preserve the province for 'some foreign prince or state.'
The members of Leisler's council as they signed a procla- mation dated March 5 were Mayor Delanoy and Dr. Samuel Staats, Johannes Provoost, Johannes Vermilye, Jacob Mauritz, Hendrick. Jansen Van Vuerden, Robert Lecock, and Thomas
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Williams. Whether still of the council or not, Edsall and De Bruyn were at Leisler's elbow, and so was young Abraham Gouverneur. This proclamation of the 5th says that as In- goldsby had taken it upon himself to 'superintend' the militia of the city, under 'frivolous ' pretexts of searching for papers had abused some members of the king's garrison, and had in- duced 'great numbers of papists and French with others of the inhabitants' to show themselves in arms in a 'rouatous, riotous, hostile manner,' putting the citizens in fear of their lives and possessions 'without the least color or cause shown,' for these and other similar reasons, stated at length, the lieutenant-governor and his council were constrained to take up arms in defence of their Majesties' supremacy over the province and the peace and welfare of their subjects until the governor or the king's further orders should come, and all good subjects within the province were summoned to give their aid. On the following day the intended councillors and the officers of the king's troops proclaimed that in view of Leisler's violent proceedings they would take measures for the defence of the province. On the 10th Leisler summoned the major to disband the forces he had raised within a province where, by the king's own instructions, Leisler himself was temporarily in power, and charged him with exciting 'doubt- ful apprehensions ' among those who from the first had been loyal to King William by encouraging those who had been notoriously disaffected and by publishing falsehoods designed to render Lieutenant-Governor Leisler odious to the people. Plainly, these doubtful apprehensions were that Leisler might be forcibly overthrown and despitefully used before he could legally surrender his powers.
Meanwhile Matthew Clarkson was asking the Connecticut authorities for countenance and aid. By Allyn's hand they replied that it might seem a 'mean thing to advise to peace ' and to 'reflect a supposition of the contrary upon Captain Leisler,' yet the only counsel they could give was 'rather to bear anything tolerable and redressible' than to use any force. In a letter to Leisler they likewise urged patience and
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peace. This they enclosed to Clarkson, begging that Leisler might not know its 'mode of conveyance.'
Impatience had now turned to anxiety and alarm. Where was Colonel Sloughter and why again so long delayed ? Send- ing the letter to find at him Bermuda, Joseph Dudley wrote on March 11 that it was hard to picture the constant hurry by night and day caused by Leisler's 'threats '; the king's troops were daily strengthened by the arrival of 'country soldiers ' from all parts, four or five hundred in all, who could hardly be restrained from violence against Leisler because of the oppressions of the past two years; the new councillors were trying to quiet things but if pressed would feel compelled to defend themselves against the two hundred desperadoes who called themselves the government. Chidley Brooke, writing at the same time, told Sloughter that if he himself could not come at once he must empower some person in express words to demand the fort from Leisler. This implies that Leisler's enemies believed that if expressly instructed he would yield. Afterwards they said that he had never meant to yield, not even to the governor himself, unless by force compelled.
Leisler also wrote to Governor Sloughter, sending his letter on Jeffers's ship which probably carried the others as well. Before he sailed, so Jeffers deposed at a later day, Ingoldsby 'did besiege the fort and planted divers great guns against it.' It was impossible, so Leisler informed Sloughter, to continue many days longer without the bloodshed which his party was making the most earnest efforts to avoid. With that sense of the importance of wider than local affairs which was stronger in him than in his adversaries he added that, as the strictest union was necessary to fortify and protect the prov- ince against the common enemy, it was all the more need- ful that the governor should hasten his advent,
, which that the stars may be propitious, as it is our longing expectation, so it shall be the daily prayers of your Excellency's most humble servant.
VOL. II. - 2 L
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