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There is no direct evidence that Scott had thus behaved. But it appears that he had been a special adviser and protégé of Berkeley's, and all that is known of him before and after this time bears out the belief that he was ingenious enough, unscrupulous and revengeful enough, deliberately to work mischief as Nicolls supposed. Before long another of the royal commissioners, Samuel Maverick, also wrote home about the 'inconveniencies' and the 'very prejudicial' effect of the dismemberment of New York; and in 1668 the duke tried to exchange the Delaware country for New Jersey. In spite of this effort, and in spite of the fact that throughout colonial times the governors of New York earnestly echoed the pro- tests of their first English predecessor, no part of the lost
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HISTORY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK [1664-1666
territory except Staten Island was recovered. And so, it seems probable, it is because of the malicious counsels of the wandering adventurer John Scott that to-day the State of New York owns only a part of the waters that should belong to it, and that the city on Manhattan cannot incorporate with itself the great suburbs which lie beyond the North River in another State as it has incorporated those which lie in its own State - beyond the bay on Staten Island, beyond the East River on Long Island, and beyond the Harlem on the mainland.
Permitted by Nicolls to take peaceable possession of New Jersey, in July, 1665, Philip Carteret established Elizabeth- town as its capital. To the Dutch town of Bergen he granted a new charter. Nicolls had recently bestowed upon people from Long Island portions of a wide tract of country which Augustine Herrman had acquired long before but, apparently, had resigned to the provincial government. These grants Car- teret did not disturb, but not many years later they became a chief cause of the intestine quarrels so conspicuous in the early history of New Jersey. The claim of its proprietors to rights of government proved another source of trouble; and so did the ready hearing accorded in New England to the agents whom Carteret immediately sent there to drum up settlers for his province. Many of the 'theocrats' of New Haven, hating its incorporation with Connecticut, migrated to New Jersey; other New Englanders, differently minded, sat down beside them; Dutchmen and Englishmen came from Long Island, numerous Quakers among them; Quakers also came across the sea and bands of Scotchmen followed; and the sectarian animosities that ensued complicated for many years political and territorial disputes.
REFERENCE NOTES
PRINCIPAL PUBLISHED DOCUMENTS : Col. Docs., II, III, XII, XIII, XIV (398); General Entries, V, 1 (396); Appendix to Com- memoration of the Conquest of New Netherland (380) ; Records of New Amsterdam, V (360) ; Cal. Hist. MSS., English (390); Cal. S. P. Col., 1661-1668 (485) [especially useful for this period, noting a number of papers not included in the Col. Docs.].
GENERAL AUTHORITIES: Brodhead, Hist. of New York, II (405) ; Stevens, The English in New York (419) ; Thompson (291), Flint (287), Riker, Newtown (300), and other histories of Long Island; Japikse, Verwikkelingen tusschen de Republiek en Engeland (523) ; Blok, Geschiedenis van het Nederlandsche Volk, V (348) ; Lister, Life of Lord Clarendon (100); Lefèvre-Pontalis, John De Witt (525) ; Osgood, The American Colonies in the Seventeenth Century (116) ; Kaye, English Colonial Administration under Lord Claren- don (103).
CARTWRIGHT TO NICOLLS (quoted) : in Col. Docs., III.
ROBERT HOLMES : Cal. S. P. Col., 1661-1668.
MACPHERSON's Original Papers (433).
CLARKE's Life of James II (243).
WEST INDIA COMPANY AND STUYVESANT: in Trumbull Papers in Mass. Hist. Soc. Collections, 5th Series, IX.
PEPYS (quoted) : his Diary (157).
'GOVERNOR NICHOLLS OF MASSACHUSETTS': C. T. Atkinson, The Anglo- Dutch Wars (534).
POWNALL (quoted) : his Administration of the Colonies (115).
TYPES OF COLONIES AND STATUS OF NEW YORK: Pownall, Adminis- tration of the Colonies; Osgood, The American Colonies in the Seventeenth Century, The Corporation as a Form of Colonial Gov- ernment (137), and The Proprietary Province (448) ; A. H. Snow, The Administration of Dependencies, New York, 1902; L. D. Scisco, The Plantation Type of Colonies in Amer. Historical Re- view, VIII (52) ; Cheyney, The Manor of East Greenwich (307).
DUKE OF YORK'S PATENT: see Reference Notes, Chap. XV.
NAVIGATION ACTS : see Reference Notes, Chap. XII.
NICOLLS'S COMMISSION : see Reference Notes, Chap. XV. - His COR-
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HISTORY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK
RESPONDENCE : chiefly in Col. Docs., III, XIV, Clarendon Papers (101), and Cal. S. P. Col., 1661-1668.
ARTICLES OF SURRENDER: in Col. Docs., II; in General Entries, V, 1; in O'Callaghan, Hist. of New Netherland, II, Appendix; in Com- memoration of the Conquest of New Netherland, Appendix; in Smith, Hist. of New York, I (420), and in Munsell, Annals of Albany, IV (40).
MATTHIAS NICOLLS : Thompson, Hist. of Long Island, II, Appendix. - MAVERICK (quoted) : in Clarendon Papers.
CARTWRIGHT AND HUDSON RIVER SETTLEMENTS : Col. Docs., III; Gen- eral Entries, V, 1; Report of State Historian, 1896, Appendix G (454) ; New Hampshire Grants in N. Y. Hist. Soc. Collections, 1869 (214).
OATH OF ALLEGIANCE: Records of New Amsterdam, V; General En- tries, V, 1; Capture of the City of New Amsterdam (358) .- 'CATA- LOGUE' of those who took the oath: in Col. Docs., III, and in Valentine's Manual, 1854 (508).
CARR AND THE DELAWARE REGION: Col. Docs., III, XII; O'Cal- laghan, Hist. of New Netherland, II, Appendix (382).
CONNECTICUT BOUNDARY : Col. Docs., III; General Entries, V, 1; Report of State Historian, 1896, Appendix G; Records of Con- necticut Colony (125) ; Cal. S. P. Col., 1661-1668; New York Senate Documents, 1857, No. 165; Regents' Reports on the Bounda- ries of New York (71) ; Commissioners' Report on the Boundary Line between New York and Connecticut (73); Bowen, Boundary Disputes of Connecticut (72). - AGREEMENT in Trumbull, Hist. of Connecticut, I, Appendix (124). - SMITH (quoted) : his Hist. of New York, I. - DOUGLASS (cited) : his Summary .. . of the First Planting . . . of the British Settlements (78). - COLDEN (cited) : his Report to the Lords of Trade, 1764, in Col. Docs., VII. MAGISTRATES TO THE DUKE OF YORK : in Records of New Amsterdam, V. HEMPSTEAD MEETING: Col. Docs., XIV; O'Callaghan, Origin of Legislative Assemblies in New York (60) ; histories of Long Island. - ADDRESS TO THE DUKE: in Col. Docs., III. - NICOLLS TO HOWELL AND YOUNG: in General Entries, V, 1.
DUKE's LAWS : Contemporaneous MS. copies in Public Record Office, London, in State Library, Albany, in Town Records of East- hampton, L.I., and in library of Long Island Historical Society, . Brooklyn. Printed in N. Y. Hist. Soc. Collections, 1809, in Colonial Laws of New York, I (272), and in Laws of the Province of Pennsylvania, ed. by J. B. Linn, Harrisburg, Penn., 1879. - Osgood, The American Colonies in the Seventeenth Century, II; Howard, Local Constitutional History of the United States (130) ; Fowler, Constitutional and Legal History of New York in the
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REFERENCE NOTES
Seventeenth Century (127) ; Mckinley, Transition from Dutch to English Rule in New York (422); E. R. Seligman, The General Property Tax in Political Science Quarterly, V; Cobb, Rise of Religious Liberty in America (453); Thompson, Flint, and other histories of Long Island. - TOWNS: M. Egleston, The Land Sys- tem of the New England Colonies, Baltimore, 1886 (Johns Hopkins University Studies) ; and see Reference Notes, Chap. VIII. - COURTS : Werner, New York Civil List (129) ; Fowler, as above; and see CITY COURTS in Reference Notes, Chap. X. - COURT OF ASSIZES : Records in Report of State Historian, 1896, Appendix G. STUYVESANT'S CERTIFICATE : in Records of New Amsterdam, V.
NICOLLS TO WINTHROP : in Trumbull Papers in Mass. Hist. Soc. Col- lections, 5th Series, IX.
CITY GOVERNMENT : Records of New Amsterdam, V; and see Reference Notes, Chap. X. - NICOLLS's 'CHARTER': in Records of New Amsterdam, V, in Papers Relating to the City of New York in Doc. Hist., I (397), and in Hoffman, Estate and Rights of the Corpora- tion of the City of New York (136). - KENT (quoted) : his Charter of the City of New York (93).
WILLETT: see Reference Notes, Chap. X.
MAYOR'S COURT: see CITY COURT in Reference Notes, Chap. X.
HARLEM: see Reference Notes, Chap. XIII. - PATENT: in Riker, Harlem (209), and in Pirsson, Dutch Grants (207).
NEW JERSEY : New Jersey Archives, I (374) ; Cal. S. P. Col., 1661- 1668; Smith, Hist. of the Colony of Nova Cæsaria (378); White- head, The English in East and West Jersey (377) ; Tanner, The Province of New Jersey (379) ; Osgood, The American Colonies in the Seventeenth Century, II. - NICOLLS (quoted) and MAVERICK (quoted) : in Col. Docs., III, and in New Jersey Archives, I.
CHAPTER XVII
THE EARLY YEARS OF NEW YORK
1665-1673
(GOVERNOR NICOLLS, GOVERNOR LOVELACE)
I hope some others will receive encouragement by your good ex- ample to look a little abroad and employ themselves in doing good for their country. - Clarendon to Governor Nicolls. 1666.
THE war between England and Holland, declared by Charles II in March, 1665, began in June with the naval battle of Lowestoft in which the Dutch were defeated. Again the king of France urged a compromise, proposing that New Netherland and the other places recently taken by the Eng- lish be exchanged for Pularoon, the chief of the thrice-precious Spice Islands, which the Dutch had taken from the English. New Netherland, said the States General, could not be in- cluded in any such arrangement; it had been seized in a time of peace and should simply be given back. For the sake of peace, said Louis, Holland should surrender it al- though 'habitation joined to long possession' formed a suffi- ciently good title to destroy 'all the reasons of the English.' The reasons of the English, said Clarendon, were that King James had granted the country to the Earl of Stirling whose rights the Duke of York had purchased - transactions which, in fact, had related only to the Maine country and Long Island. Furthermore, he said, 'the Scotch' had begun to cultivate the province a long time before any Hollanders were 'received there.'
No compromise was possible. The king of Spain died in September. Now if ever was the time when Louis XIV
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THE EARLY YEARS OF NEW YORK
1665-1673]
might hope to acquire the Spanish Netherlands. Hoping still that the Republic would countenance him in this design, and fearing on the other hand that Charles and De Witt might make terms to his disadvantage, in January, 1666, he declared war against England.
Although the transatlantic correspondence of this period is not nearly as voluminous as it is for the years while Stuy- vesant was in power, Nicolls's letters to the duke, to Arling- ton, and to Clarendon amply suffice to show the effect upon his province of the English seizure and the war in European and West Indian waters. Trade was annihilated. Neither ship nor supplies, the governor wrote in July, 1665, had yet come from England, and letters had to pass infrequently and precariously by way of Virginia or Boston. His people and his soldiers were in great distress. But he did not fear a Dutch attack, for his city had 'no ships to lose, no goods to plunder,' his 'ragged sort of fort' had been put in the 'best posture of defence possible,' his troops were loyal, and even his burghers, who at first had hoped for De Ruyter's advent, now felt that it would work 'their certain ruin.'
So busy had he been with his work as governor of New York that he could scarcely think of his other duties as the chief of the four commissioners who were to settle the affairs of New England. His colleagues, he knew, could do little without him; but his people, he reported, cried out that they would 'leave their dwellings' if they could not prevent him from going to Boston, such was their 'apprehension of a Dutch invasion.' Toward his English soldiers, however, they had no kindly feeling. In March, 1665, some months before he reorganized the city government, the magistrates, say their records, informed 'divers burghers and inhabitants' whom they had summoned to the City Hall that the gov- ernor had decided that as some of his soldiers,
. having committed here within this city great insolences and insults toward divers burghers and inhabitants, and are still com-
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HISTORY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK
[1665-
mitting such, and as they live together and have neither washing nor board, nor cooking done for them, but practise nothing but how to perpetrate these and other disturbances ... it is necessary there- fore for the greater peace of the burghers to quarter them out, in order to prevent further insolence and insults. .. .
This referred to about one hundred men who could not be accommodated in the fort. The governor now proposed to supply them with rations, to pay 'lodging money,' and to guarantee against trouble and damage the householders who would receive them. When the 'old burgomasters and schepens,' summoned by the magistrates to give their advice, urged the people to take in one or two men, they still refused, saying that 'they would rather contribute than lodge sol- diers.' By the middle of April some agreed to take them if five guilders instead of the three that had been proffered might be the weekly lodging money. But as Nicolls, then about to start for Boston, thought best to postpone the quartering until his return, the burgomasters made a 'general assessment' of the citizens to determine what each should pay toward the support of the houseless soldiers for six weeks.
The month of May Nicolls spent in Boston, going there, as he wrote to Clarendon, 'through the woods.' Even if he had been able to give his colleagues more help they would not have succeeded in enforcing everywhere the main desires of the king, who asked that the New Englanders should con- sent to take the oath of allegiance, should administer justice in the name of the crown and permit of appeals to it, should respect the Navigation Acts, and should grant the religious tolerance that would secure civil rights to members of the Anglican church. The smaller colonies, indeed, received the commissioners amicably and permitted them to hear ap- peals; but Massachusetts, while it begged the king to con- serve its liberties and 'religious enjoyments,' denied some of his requests, met others with evasions, and refused to admit of appeals. More than one of the commissioners advised coercive measures of some kind; and Nicolls, anticipating
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THE EARLY YEARS OF NEW YORK
1673]
counsels that led to action a hundred years later, said that a temporary embargo should be laid upon the trade of Massa- chusetts, a punishment that would divert the whole com- merce of New England from Boston to New York. Accom- plishing little in other ways the commissioners did, however, settle the boundaries of Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Plymouth, and, warning Massachusetts away from the Narra- gansett lands, erected them provisionally into a 'King's Province' under the authority of the government of Rhode Island.
It was no time for Charles with a war on his hands in Europe to think of coercion in America; and it was no time for the Duke of York to pay much attention to the newly acquired domain where, as Nicolls wrote him, the one hope was for the arrival of English ships 'to the supply of trade to the country.' All the duke's own hopes of profit, said Nicolls, must centre in the city on Manhattan which, he felt sure, was 'the best of all his Majesty's towns in America.' If properly fostered, within five years it would be the chief mart in America, as 'the brethren of Boston' very well knew. But its whole trade was lost for want of shipping, and so 'mean' was its condition that none of his soldiers had yet found a pair of sheets or anything better to sleep upon than 'canvas and straw.' Again he wrote:
Our neighbors of Boston have made good use of our necessities in raising the price of their goods, but this poor Colony hold down their heads and see their feet and legs without shoes and stockings, or shirts to their back, and all mean necessaries at an invincible rate.
And in November, acknowledging a letter from the duke, the governor spoke of the 'great joy and thanksgiving' ex- cited by the account of the naval victory of Lowestoft and the assurance of his Royal Highness's safety, the mere news of which' would serve as an 'antidote against hunger and cold' until such time as the duke should think his people 'worthy of a nearer consideration' and relieve their distress.
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HISTORY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK
[1665-
In this autumn of 1665 Nicolls went up to Albany where there was war again between the Mohawks and Mohegans, and to the Esopus country where the Dutch were more rest- less and insubordinate than elsewhere. This was because the Englishman in charge, Captain Brodhead, lacked the tact and gentleness that the governor himself had shown. He should avoid harsh words and passions, Nicolls told him, and not try to become the head of a party or listen to whispers and insinuations that would prejudice him against the Dutch :
For, though I am not apt to believe they have a natural affection to the English, yet, without ill usage, I do not find them so malicious as some will seek to persuade you they are.
Inviting sachems of the Esopus tribes to Fort James, Nicolls signed with them a treaty wiping out all old scores. It was less easy to conciliate the Englishmen of Long Island. No one could imagine, he explained to Clarendon, the pains he had taken, the patience he had shown, in dealing with 'a sort of people of such refractory and peevish dispositions' as were not known in 'old England.' He had tried to placate those who murmured when the Duke's Laws were promul- gated at the Hempstead meeting by appointing some of the chief among them to office - making John Underhill, for example, surveyor of customs for Long Island and deputy- sheriff or high constable of the North Riding. Underhill and some others were, in fact, pacified. The general murmuring continued. Toward the end of the year 1665 Nicolls wrote home that now that he had put the whole government 'into one frame and policy' even the 'most refractory republicans' were 'fully satisfied,' but a few months later that his new laws were 'grievous to some republicans' because 'democ- racy' had taken so deep a root that the mere name of a justice of the peace was 'an abomination.' The discontent was not confined to those eastern parts of the island that were wholly English. In the district where John Underhill was respon- sible for the collection of the rates some of the people refused
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THE EARLY YEARS OF NEW YORK
1673]
to pay them although Nicolls directed that if they could not get grain for the purpose any other 'equivalent,' such as beef, pork, or horses, might be accepted but not tobacco. And at Flushing the militia so excited the wrath of the gov- ernor that he dissolved for a time the organization composed of such 'mean spirited fellows' whose fidelity and courage he had reason to doubt. In May, 1666, he wrote to Underhill asking that he would identify the persons who, as he had reported, were protesting against the arbitrary character of the government and saying that the governor exercised more power than a king. This, said Nicolls, was 'a charge of no less weight than high treason,' and he was determined to clear himself and to return the accusations upon the heads of his accusers. He would 'spare no pains to give any private man satisfaction' but did not intend to vindicate himself 'thus privately' when he could get the names of those who had 'opened their venomous hearts so freely' to Underhill. The late rebellion in England, he explained, with all its ill consequences had begun with 'the self-same steps and pre- tences' - with defamations of his Majesty's government and attempts 'to steal away the hearts of his Majesty's subjects.' He could say of himself with a clean conscience that he had 'no benefit from the country but a great deal of trouble,' which was increased by seeing men so factious that they would hazard 'both life and estate in a mutiny and rebellion rather than bear the burden of the public charge.' Much as he sympathized with his people in many ways, the royalist soldier could not understand that an aversion to public charges might be expected when they were imposed by other than the public will.
It was worse, however, in the eastern parts of the island. Here the people were almost in open revolt. Resenting their separation from Connecticut, and hating the new autocratic government all the more heartily because it represented a Stuart prince and king, they vented their anger on the dele- gates to the Hempstead meeting, who not only had ratified the new laws but also had signed a loyal address to the Duke
VOL. II. - E
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HISTORY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK
[1665-
of York, and so abused and vilified them that when the court of assizes met in the autumn of 1666 it thought needful to decree that any one who should defame these delegates or speak against any person in the public employ should be prosecuted before the courts of sessions. Three or four hot- heads being thus dealt with and whipped, fined, or set in the stocks, the signs of sedition ceased for a time.
At this same session the court issued an ordinance em- phasizing the laws in regard to lands included in the new code but as yet generally disregarded. If, it said, ‘both towns and persons' did not renew their 'grants, patents, or deeds of purchase' within six months all such titles would be held invalid.
In the New England colonies a general land system did not exist; a colony seldom granted land to individuals and sel- dom leased it, giving it as a rule without price to the towns as such. In royal and proprietary provinces a land system sprang naturally from the wish of the owners to draw profit from their property in the soil. The provisions in the Duke's Laws were similar to those elsewhere framed, but they excited a discontent not everywhere else provoked. The quit-rents prescribed were one penny an acre upon lands bought of the duke, two shillings and sixpence per hundred acres, to be paid into his treasury, upon those bought directly of the Indians. Of course the Dutchmen objected, for the West India Company, greedy though it was in other ways, had asked nothing for lands, merely ordering that Indian owners should be satisfied. On the other hand, one Englishman expressed what may well have been a general feeling among New Yorkers of his race. Thomas Pell of Westchester, writ- ing to John Winthrop, declared that New Netherland had never rightfully been Dutch; therefore he judged it im- possible that it could 'legally fall to the Duke of York by conquest'; and now the renewal of Dutch ground briefs left the king's subjects who had none 'in a worse case than in- truders and open enemies.'
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THE EARLY YEARS OF NEW YORK
1673]
Nicolls explained that :
The reason for renewing all former ground briefs was, and is, to abolish the express conditions contained in every one of them, to hold their lands and houses from and under the States General of Holland and the West India Company as their Lords and Masters.
Moreover, the public purse sorely needed a revenue from quit-rents and the governor's purse the fees that were his perquisites. The duke was sending no money, the customs were yielding scarcely a shilling, and very little, Nicolls re- ported, could be raised by taxation if he were to win the affections of the people. Corn and cattle were not assessed for the property tax in Yorkshire; and from the whole of Long Island, which he said had 'as barren a soil as any part of New England' and was 'meanly inhabited by a poor sort of people . .. forced to labor hard for bread and clothing,' not more than £100 sterling a year could be gathered to meet the expenses of the courts and all other public charges.
Within a year or two all the towns of the province except those at the far end of Long Island took out their new patents - among them, as has been related, the town of New Harlem. In dealing with individuals it was found hard to adjust the new patents to the old grants as their border lines often overlapped, but personal as well as town patents seem to have been generally renewed. Presumably the fees for re- newal were paid. But in the city Nicolls eased the working of the ordinance, saying that no one need pay more than one beaver skin for a new patent or confirmation, and that no one need pay anything who could get from the mayor or two aldermen a certificate of his inability. And nowhere does he seem to have insisted strongly upon the payment of quit-rents, for most of the deeds of the time make no mention of them or say merely that such acknowledgments should be paid as were then or might thereafter be agreed upon. Prob- ably the governor felt in regard to this matter as he did when he wrote to Clarendon that he would not 'seize some few estates of Hollanders' which were 'lying darkly in the hands
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