USA > New York > New York City > History of the city of New York in the seventeenth century Vol. II > Part 44
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Many were now afraid that the stars had been adverse, that Sloughter had perished at sea. In that case what might not happen before fresh instructions could come from Eng- land ? On March 12 Gerardus Beekman, in command of the militia of King's County, urged by proclamation that, in view of the imminent danger that the whole county would be 'bathed in blood,' its people and those of Queen's should on the following day meet at the Ferry and there 'write a peace address ' to the effect that things should remain 'in statu quo' until the arrival of the governor or of further orders. On the 13th Leisler directed the officers in charge of a block-house near the city wall to hold it for their Majesties by force if needful, explaining that Major Ingoldsby and his 'accomplices' were threatening both block-house and fort. On the other hand Matthew Clarkson was urging Connecticut to give Ingoldsby aid with three hundred men; day after day he wrote to hurry the coming of militia-men from Long Island; and the intended councillors issued to Ingoldsby a commission as 'chief commander of their Majesty's forces' to defend their subjects from any 'outrageous and hostile proceedings ' until the governor should come or their Majesties' further pleasure be known.
The refrain grows tiresome in the reading. In the uttering it began to have a tragic tone. For two years the cry had been for aid and for orders from the crown. Now that aid had come in the shape of troops, and there were still no definite orders, Manhattan was on the brink of civil war.
Gradually the fort had been invested closely enough to make egress difficult although the provisions that were sent from various parts of the province and from East Jersey could still be brought in. Leisler's son afterwards made affidavit in England that Ingoldsby
. . . did by many indirect means to the great terror of your Majes- ties' liege subjects in a hostile and dreadful manner assemble great numbers of French and other persons and besieged the said fort, divers batteries against the same.
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Other affidavits, as well as Leisler's proclamations and letters, say that there were many Frenchmen and papists with In- goldsby, but none explains who they were or whence they had come.
A Declaration prepared on March 16 by 'The Lieutenant- Governor and Council, Burghers, and other Inhabitants' of · the city and county of New York explained, in more full and more formal shape than before, the reasons for Leisler's at- titude. It specified Ingoldsby's offences as no counter docu- ment specified Leisler's: he had assumed power over the militia, harassed the soldiers of the garrison, and fomented 'seditious distinctions' between the Dutch and English sub- jects of the crown whereby 'woful divisions ' had grown to a 'degree of hate' that threatened mutual destruction. He had encouraged and protected avowed papists, had received deserters from the army at Albany, had surprised at night the sentinels of the fort in the evident determination to make himself master of it 'like an enemy in a declared war.' He had demanded the key of the city gates and, when refused, had violently burst them open. He had formally demanded the surrender of the block-house 'as if there were actual war' between him and his confederates and the king's faithful sub- jects, and had employed a 'blasphemous privateer ' who joined in ill-treating and wounding messengers sent by the lieuten- ant-governor. This privateer was the famous pirate of later years, Captain William Kidd. Thus, says the Declaration, Ingoldsby had prevented the collection of the taxes, to the great peril of the service on the frontier. All 'moral means' for restraining him had failed. The speakers were unwilling to deliver themselves and their descendants to such a fate as certainly threatened them, especially from the expressed hopes of papists, Frenchmen, and 'approved apostates' from the Protestant church. Therefore, to maintain law and liberty, they had resolved to resist the aggressor to the ut- most of their power. They abhorred and detested the name - of rebels with which their antagonists had tried to brand them, but felt confident that as they had made 'so plain
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and clear an offer' - namely, that everything should remain 'in the former inoffensive condition' until Governor Slough- ter's advent - all their Majesties' loyal subjects would ap- prove the course to which they had been driven as to their 'last refuge and means of relief.' Ingoldsby must disband the forces he had raised in the province, all inhabitants must refuse to aid or abet him.
This manifesto was sent to Ingoldsby and the intended councillors on March 17, says Chidley Brooke's account, with a demand that they answer it within two hours. Denying its accusations they said that they were 'immediately com- missionated' by King William, that they meant nothing more dangerous than a patient waiting for the governor, and that the people who were with them in arms had voluntarily as- sembled. Scarcely an hour had passed after Leisler received this reply, says Brooke, when he
.. . fired a great shot at the king's forces as they stood in their parade and made several shots at the house where they lodged and kept guard, in hope to batter it down about their ears. These great shot were accompanied with vollies of small shot. Neither men, women, age, or sex were spared, several of the inhabitants were wounded and two killed; this action continued till night, we open to his shot and he safe immured in the fort. The block-house which he had ordered (at the same time that he did from the fort) to fire upon us disappointed him, several of his rabble there being unwilling to engage themselves in so rash an enterprise, and, being informed we designed to attack them by land and water, surrendered that evening; this discouraged those in the fort very much; all night they were quiet. The 18th day they made some few shots but did no harm; we also desisted with them and were desirous to live in peace would he admit us; nor indeed had we been inclined could we hope to storm the fort with our handful of men, but we stood still in a defensive posture, every minute expecting when he would sally or batter the town down, but it pleased God to prevent his bloody design in great measure by the happy arrival of our Governor on the 19th who found all his friends with white tied about their left arms for a badge of distinction and their lives in eminent danger.
The 'handful of men,' Brooke himself had said on another page, comprised four or five hundred 'country soldiers' be-
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sides the two hundred regulars and the citizens who may have sided with them. No one estimated the men then in the fort at more than four hundred; most witnesses said three hundred, and so Governor Sloughter afterwards wrote, saying that about five hundred 'of the country ' had come to Ingolds- by's assistance 'against about three hundred' who had been 'got into the fort.' Brooke merely hints at the fact that Ingoldsby as well as Leisler brought his guns into action. Other accounts say that both sides fired many times; several persons in the town were wounded by the shots from the fort and four were killed; and six more were killed by the bursting of one of Ingoldsby's guns. Among the dead was a certain Josiah Browne whom Abraham Gouverneur was afterwards accused of shooting, and a Patrick Macgregory who had been the leader of one of the trading parties which Governor Don- gan sent into the far west and the Canadians captured.
All the anti-Leislerians declared that the fort fired first. The Leislerians declared that Ingoldsby fired first, and so said some of the affidavits taken in 1692. The most circum- stantial of these is George Dolstone's. Ingoldsby, it relates, besieged the fort, planting great guns against it, blocking up most of the streets leading to it, and forbidding all persons to carry in provisions. By his order Dolstone himself was com- pelled to take up arms and to serve as a gunner in a battery of eight guns planted against the fort. To this battery Ingoldsby sent word by his brother-in-law that it should fire with one of its best guns upon a boat bringing men from Long Island to the fort and sink it if possible, 'which was the first shot that was made on either side.' Afterwards the same battery fired at a boat that was leaving the fort and wounded one man, and then fired both great and small shot against the fort with much violence for several hours, during which time the guns of the fort might easily have battered down the town but that Captain Leisler, as the deponent had been told and believed, ordered his men not to fire 'to do any hurt.'
Another affidavit says that the ship Beaver was ordered to get into position to fire against the block-house but on that
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day it surrendered. Still another, relating specifically to a dispute about one of the prize-ships condemned and sold by Leisler's court of admiralty, was sworn to in 1692 by Kiliaen Van Rensselaer, the fourth patroon, the near kinsman of Bayard, Van Cortlandt, Livingston, and the Schuylers. In 1689 he had been a member of the Albany convention and one of its envoys to Connecticut. Since then he had been absent from the province. Returning on Jacob Mauritz's ship in May, 1690, he then saw, as his affidavit says, that the majority of the people acknowledged and respected Jacob Leisler as governor of the province, that by his order the defences of the city had been well repaired, and that in maintaining city and province he acquitted himself as a brave soldier. When Ingoldsby arrived and demanded the fort without 'the slight- est order from his Majesty or the Colonel Sloughter ' Leisler refused to accede unless such order could be shown, requesting Ingoldsby to keep peaceful and quiet, inviting him to his own house where he would be dealt with as a gentleman of his position should be, and offering his men good quarters and board. Then the affidavit goes on to say
That the said Ingoldsby, refusing to listen to the good proposi- tions and representations of the said Leisler, thereupon had begun to attack the said fort of New York, and further had issued warrants to enlist men who should aid and assist him in his enterprise.
That the said Ingoldsby after he had picked up a number of people and had armed several papists and negroes had commenced to fire upon the said fort from the batteries which he had erected, and had also turned the cannon of the city toward the fort.
That he moreover had caused to be imprisoned several burghers and inhabitants of New York, who refused to enter into his service and to assist him.
That the aforesaid Ingoldsby continued and persisted in his hos- tilities until Governor Sloughter arrived there.
Nearer in time to the event than any of these New York testimonies is a letter written by Samuel Worden of Boston on March 30 to his father-in-law Governor Hinckley of Ply- mouth. He had recently heard from New York of the quarrel between the town and the fort occasioned, it was thought,
.
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'by rashness on both sides,' the town having raised men on some pretence, erected works against the fort, and offered several affronts to its governor, 'it's doubted, on very purpose to provoke him to do something that might evidence against him.' This was 'the opinion of the sober'; but others said that, without any provocation but the raising of some men for the town's safety, Leisler had fired from the fort almost twenty shots, killing four persons, while the town in answering him occasioned the killing of six others by the unhappy dis- charge of one of their own guns loaded with two bags of small-shot. Some said that the 'other party,' growing weary of Governor Sloughter's delay and fearing lest he had mis- carried, had intended to wrest the government out of Leisler's hands, and that he, 'not willing to be so ejected, sent the shot among them.' Even if this were true, Worden thought, 'his plea will be the better and they not justifiable in so pre- sumptuous an action.'
Others, of more consequence in the affair than this Bos- tonian, believed that Leisler had fired the first shot but did not think his plea the better. Governor Sloughter arrived on March 19. On the 20th Leisler was in the prison where Bayard and Nicolls had lain so long, and Bayard's fetters were on his leg.
REFERENCE NOTES
PRINCIPAL PUBLISHED DOCUMENTS: Col. Docs., III, IV, IX (398) ; Papers Relating to the Administration of Lieut .- Gov. Leisler (278) ; Documents Relating to the Administration of Leisler (276); Cal. Hist. MSS., English (390); Cal. S. P. Col., 1689-1692 (485).
LIVINGSTON TO CONNECTICUT: in Col. Docs., III. ALLYN ABOUT MILBORNE : in Cal. Hist. MSS., English.
LIVINGSTON TO NICHOLSON : in Col. Docs., III, and in Cal. S. P. Col., 1689-1692.
THOMAS NEWTON (quoted) : in Cal. S. P. Col., 1689-1692.
FITZ-JOHN WINTHROP TO WAIT WINTHROP: in Winthrop Papers in Mass. Hist. Soc. Collections, 5th Series, VIII. 1
LEISLER'S COMMISSION TO WINTHROP: in Papers Relating to . .. Leisler.
JOURNAL OF CUTHBERT POTTER : in Cal. S. P. Col., 1689-1692.
WINTHROP FROM ALBANY TO TREAT: in Winthrop Papers in Mass. Hist. Soc. Collections, 5th Series, VIII.
WINTHROP'S JOURNAL : ibid., and in Col. Docs., IV.
CANADA EXPEDITION : Col. Docs., III, IV, IX; Papers Relating to . . . Leisler [including Journal of Captain John Schuyler]; Win- throp, Journal as above; Cal. S. P. Col., 1689-1692.
PETER SCHUYLER TO CONNECTICUT: in Winthrop Papers in Mass. Hist. Soc. Collections, 6th Series, III.
NICHOLSON TO LORDS OF TRADE ABOUT LEISLER : in Cal. S. P. Col., 1689-1692.
LEISLER'S CORRESPONDENCE WITH CONNECTICUT: in Papers Relating to . .. Leisler, and in Trumbull, Hist. of Connecticut, I, Appendix (124).
EXPEDITION AGAINST QUEBEC: Col. Docs., IX; Cal. S. P. Col., 1689- 1692; Parkman, Frontenac (191) ; histories of Massachusetts and of Canada.
FRONTENAC (quoted) : in Col. Docs., IX.
NEW YORK SQUADRON : Leisler to Shrewsbury in Col. Docs., III; Cal. Hist. MSS., English; various affidavits in Papers Relating to .. . Leisler. - JAMES LLOYD (quoted) : in Cal. S. P. Col., 1689-1692.
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REFERENCE NOTES
COURT OF ADMIRALTY : Papers Relating to . . . Leisler; Street, Council of Revision of the State of New York (143).
ASSEMBLY : Papers Relating to . .. Leisler; Colonial Laws of New York, I (272); O'Callaghan, Origin of Legislative Assemblies in New York (60).
SELYNS (quoted) : Ecc. Records, II (167).
LEISLER AND COUNCIL TO SHREWSBURY AND TO THE KING : in Col. Docs., III, and in Cal. S. P. Col., 1689-1692.
ALBANY RECORDS (quoted) : City Records in Annals of Albany, II (40).
REVOLT IN QUEEN'S COUNTY : Papers Relating to . .. Leisler; Riker, Annals of Newtown (300). - CLAPP'S MEMORIAL : in Col. Docs., III, and in Cal. S. P. Col., 1689-1692.
CORRESPONDENCE ABOUT SLOUGHTER'S DEPARTURE FROM ENGLAND . in Cal. S. P. Col., 1689-1692.
LEISLERIAN MEMORIAL and BLAGGE'S PETITION : in Col. Docs., III, and in Cal. S. P. Col., 1689-1692.
SLOUGHTER'S INSTRUCTIONS : in Col. Docs., III.
ORDERS OF PRIVY COUNCIL TO SLOUGHTER : in Col. Docs., III.
REGULARS AT NEW YORK : Col. Docs., III; Cal. S. P. Col., 1689-1692.
LUTTRELL (quoted) : his State Affairs (483).
SLOUGHTER'S REPORT: in Col. Docs., III, and in Cal. S. P. Col., 1689-1692.
BLAGGE TO POSTMASTER-GENERAL: in Cal. S. P. Col., 1689-1692.
LEISLER'S COMMISSIONS AND CIVIL ORDINANCES : in Papers Relating to . .. Leisler, in Muster Rolls in Report of State Historian, 1896, Appendix H (454), and in Cal. Hist. MSS., English.
CHIDLEY BROOKE'S REPORT: in Col. Docs., III, and in Cal. S. P. Col., 1689-1692.
DAWSON'S AFFIDAVIT : in Documents Relating to . . . Leisler.
INGOLDSBY'S COMMISSION : ibid.
JEFFERS'S AFFIDAVIT : ibid.
LEISLER'S AND INGOLDSBY'S LETTERS AND PROCLAMATIONS : ibid. DUDLEY TO BLATHWAYT: in Cal. S. P. Col., 1689-1692.
MILBORNE'S MARRIAGE : License in Marriage Licenses (309).
DISTURBANCES IN WESTCHESTER : Papers Relating to . . . Leisler. DECLARATION OF FREEHOLDERS OF QUEEN'S COUNTY : ibid. CLARKSON TO CONNECTICUT : ibid.
DUDLEY AND BROOKE TO SLOUGHTER: in Cal. S. P. Col., 1689-1692.
LEISLER TO SLOUGHTER: ibid., and in Documents Relating to . . . Leisler.
BEEKMAN'S PROCLAMATION : in Papers Relating to . Leisler.
COUNCILLORS' COMMISSION TO INGOLDSBY : ibid.
AFFIDAVIT OF LEISLER'S SON; in Documents Relating to . . . Leisler.
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DOLSTONE'S AFFIDAVIT : ibid.
KILIAEN VAN RENSSELAER : Papers Relating to . . . Leisler. - AFFI- DAVIT: in Documents Relating to . . . Leisler.
WORDEN TO HINCKLEY : in Hinckley Papers in Mass. Hist. Soc. Col- lections, 4th Series, V.
CHAPTER XXIX
THE DEATH OF LEISLER 1691
(GOVERNOR SLOUGHTER)
Your petitioners are under apprehension that your Excellency is informed that the fort was detained (after your arrival here) in dis- obedience to his Majesty or your Excellency for some ill design, when in truth it was purposely kept until yourself appeared, whose arrival was with pain longed for to discharge them and heal those unhappy troubles which have arisen since Major Ingoldsby came hither .. . whom nothing would suffice but immediate possession of said fort, and consequently the government. - Petition of Leisler, Milborne, and Others to Governor Sloughter. March, 1691.
WHILE all the other actors in the Leisler drama have always had harsh critics and warm defenders, Governor Sloughter has never had a friend. He is usually dismissed with a mere citation of the judgment passed upon him in William Smith's history, the first in which he figured. He was remembered in New York, it says, as 'utterly destitute of every qualifica- tion for government, licentious in his morals, avaricious, and poor.' His administration, ended by his death in little more than three months after he reached Manhattan, was too short to enframe for us a convincing portrait of the man or the official. Yet something more is known about him than Wil- liam Smith knew, and it serves in some degree to modify Smith's verdict.
Undoubtedly Sloughter was poor; otherwise he would not have wished for the post he held. Charges of worse than avarice were brought against him soon after his death: Ingoldsby then declared that he had converted to his own use
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£1,100 sent out to pay his two companies of regulars, and Kiliaen Van Rensselaer made affidavit that he removed from the city walls twenty pieces of the best cannon and sent them out of the country, so that New York 'remained in no state of defence whatever.' More certainly it appears that, setting aside the condemnation in Leisler's court of admiralty of the prize-ships taken from the French, he seized at least one of them and sold it again, without consideration for the owner who had bought it in good faith. It was in regard to this mat- ter that Kiliaen Van Rensselaer's affidavit and several others were taken - as evidence that the people of the province had considered Leisler's government legal. It is certain also that Sloughter at once acquired a share in a trading vessel. It is probable that he was drunk at a time when he should most carefully have kept himself sober. He did not show, as his superiors had ordered, an impartial spirit in settling the troubles in his province. There is some reason to think that he connived at bribery when the Leislerian leaders were brought to trial. And in reporting upon the trial he was not strictly truthful.
On the other hand, there is no sign that Sloughter was 'licentious in his morals' if Smith meant these words to have the significance they now convey. It may be thought that the twenty-one English merchants trading with the colonies who thanked the king for his appointment knew something about him when they praised his 'integrity, courage, and con- duct.' And he showed a certain high qualification for his office which many a colonial governor did not show - a real interest in the work before him. From the moment when his appointment was considered he seems to have tried to learn all he could of the state and the needs of New York, and he urged more vigorous measures for its defence than the Lords of Trade adopted. He had liberal ideas, for he asked that the 'establishment of the government' might be the same as it had been in Dongan's time, meaning government by assembly. Moreover, it must be said in his defence that only an excep- tionally cool-headed, conscientious, and self-reliant man could
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have resisted for a moment the powerful stream of partisan influence into which Sloughter was swept before he set foot on the shore of his province. Naturally he had prejudged the situation from the same point of view as the Lords of Trade; as naturally he assumed that his subordinate, Major Ingoldsby, must have done his duty as an English officer should; and therefore he accepted without question the ac- counts of past and of current happenings poured at once into his ears by the major and the councillors. Had he not done this, had he really tried to be an impartial investigator, an even-handed dispenser of justice, the officials appointed by the crown to aid him would have been his most bitter critics, and he would have found no support elsewhere. He would have stood quite alone in a place divided against itself by the sharpest possible lines of distrust and hatred, in an atmos- phere dense with contradictory accusations and recriminations.
His commission resembled Governor Dongan's commission of 1683 in directing him to summon from time to time, with the consent of the council, 'general assemblies of the inhab- itants being freeholders.' This order was the first by which the crown of England confirmed to the people of New York that right of assembly which, as Duke of York, James had briefly recognized. The instructions that supplemented the commission conformed in general to those that Dongan had received in 1686 but differed from them at two or three points, notably in establishing, for the first time in the old Dutch province, a religious test for office. All public officials were now to take 'the Oath appointed by Act of Parliament to be taken instead of the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy and the Test.' This meant that they must now declare their adherence to the Protestant faith, as all officials within the kingdom of England had been obliged to do since the passage of the Test Act of 1673.
Neither the commission nor the instructions referred to the abnormally disturbed condition of New York. Except as Sloughter had been charged by the privy council to report
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upon the state of his province after a strict and impartial ex- amination of the papers that had been handed over to him, he was left to his own discretion.
He had reached New York after just such a 'miserable winter voyage' as Dudley had predicted for all the vessels - after a 'hard passage,' say his own official reports, of sixteen weeks from Cowes. Making Bermuda on January 11 the Archangel, in a stormy midnight hour, struck on the rocks seven times but then 'beyond all hope got clear,' losing a great piece of its false keel which was fished out of the water and brought on the deck to New York. Before, however, the ship could sail for New York it was detained three weeks by the ill-conduct of Captain Hicks. This is said in the reports of the council of Bermuda and of its new governor, Isaac Richier, who had been Sloughter's fellow-passenger. Hicks had already subjected Sloughter to 'extravagant ill- usage.' Now he treated Richier with scorn and his orders with contempt, espousing the cause of the old governor of the island, Sir Robert Robinson, who was charged with serious offences but was determined to return to England. Hicks sent an armed pinnace to bring Robinson on board the Arch- angel. Richier stretched a chain across the harbor but let it down when he reflected upon the need that Sloughter should speedily reach his government. Then Hicks sailed away with Robinson and a number of other persons whom Richier had likewise forbidden him to take. The letters written to Sloughter from New York had not had time to reach him.
Again the voyage was exasperatingly long, some six weeks from Bermuda to New York. On March 18, Sloughter re- ported, he arrived at the Narrows. Because of adverse winds the ship could not enter the harbor but, as Colonel Dudley and others who came on board told of the distress they were in at New York, the governor instantly went up to the town in the pinnace. This was on the 19th, a month and twenty-one days since Ingoldsby had come up the bay.
At once the governor published his commission at the City
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Hall in the presence of the people, took the oaths of office, administered them to all the new councillors except the two who were in Leisler's custody, and then sent Major Ingoldsby with his company of foot to demand entrance into the fort.
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