USA > New York > History of the state of New York. Vol. II, Pt. 1 > Part 38
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At the Court of Assizes this autumn, besides the usual 6 October, members, justices attended from New Jersey, Nantucket, Anizes. Court of and Pemaquid. There were thirty members present, in- cluding Sir Edmund Andros, " who was a good lawyer." John West was now appointed clerk of the court, as well
* Leaming and Spicer, 660-655; Col. MES., xxix., 98-101, 106-124, 127, 144, 153, 154, 160, 175, 179, 184, 194, 199; Gen. Ent., xxxii., 94, 95, 97 ; Whitehead, 74, 15; Newark Town Rec., 79; Dankers and Sluyter, 346, 351. It appears that when Carteret was seized at Elizabeth- town, Bollen and Vauquellen secured his most important papers, and hastened to England, the former by way of Boston, and the latter by Maryland : Dankers and Sluyter, 349; Ilat- field, 193.
f Gen. Ent., xxxii., 75, 90: Col. MSS., xxix., 136; Pemaquid Papers, 35; Col. Rec. Conn., iİL, 64, 263; Dankers and Sluyter, 370; Trumbull, i., 375; Thompson, i., 359, 300; N. Y. Revised Statutes, iii., 2; ante, 139.
$ Gen. Ent., xxxii., 92, 93; Col. MSS., xxix., 92, 136, 137, 213; Ord., Warr., etc., xxxiik., 1-4; Pemaquid Papers, 83 -44; Nantucket Pap , 116-123. West had been a lawyer at New York, deputy clerk of the Mayor's Court, and clerk of Sessions on Long Island, and had re- turned from England with Andros in 10TS : C. Wolley, 5, 70; ante, 219.
336
HISTORY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK.
CHAP. VII. as clerk of the council, and also provincial secretary in
S Novem.
1680. place of Nicolls, who was about going to England. At the request of the metropolitan mayor and aldermen, West was soon afterward appointed clerk of the City and Coun- ty of New York .*
As soon as the Court of Assizes adjourned, Sir Edmund hastened to Boston, by invitation of Lord Culpepper, the Governor of Virginia, who was there on his way back to 13 October. Andros at England. The General Court of Massachusetts was then Boston. in session ; and Pynchon, who had written to Andros for leave to treat with the Mohawks at Albany, was directed to go thithier, and, with the advice of the New York au- thorities there, procure a renewal of the covenant made in April, 1677. An interview was accordingly held, in the presence of Brockholls and the Albany officers, at which the Mohawks, whom Andros had forbidden to send parties 10 Novem. eastward, agreed to lay down the axe, and be at peace with the New England Indians. t
9 Novem.
After the return of Andros, Randolph remained in Lon- don more than a year, occupied by the affairs of Massachu- setts. The intended alterations in the government of that , colony were, however, avoided by the skill of her agents, Stoughton and Bulkley, in disposing of her bribes "to per- sons then in a great station at Court." Having been ap- pointed collector of the customs in New England, Ran- dolph returned with Dyer to New York, whence he went to Boston. There he was so obstructed in executing his office, that he sent home bitter complaints. As the best remedy, Randolph recommended the abrogation of the
Randolph returns from En- Fland. Es Jan'y.
8 April.
* Ord., Warr., etc., xxxiix, 6, 7; Col. MSS., xxix., 234; Col. Doc., iii., 303, 314, 315, 657 ; Wood, 140; Val. Man., 1853, 330, 331 ; Bancroft, ii., 428; C. Wolley, 70. Besides Governor Andros, the members of the Court of Assizes, in October, 1680, were Secretary Nicolls, Coun- sellors Dyer, Phillipse, Dervall, and Van Cortlandt, Mayor Rombout, and the metropolitan aldermen Beekman, Van Brigh, Lewis, Marius, Verplanck, and Wilson ; Richard Betts, high-sheriff of Long Island, or Yorkshire: Justices Topping, Arnold, Woodhull, and Wood, of the East Riding, Willett, of the North Riding, and Hubbard, Elbertsen, and Palmer, of the West Riding of Long Island; Teller and Van Dyck, of Albany ; Delavall, of Esopus ; Spaswill, Browne, and Parker, of New Jersey; Gardiner, of Nantucket ; and Knapton and West, of Pemaquid. Salisbury, the commandant at Albany, having died in the winter, was succeeded by Brockholls in the spring of 1650 : Ilist. Mag .. iv., 50; ante, 312, 32S.
t Col. Doc., ill., 244, 302. 303; ix., 140-145, 795. 796; Chalmers, i., 344, 438; Hutchinson, 1., 332 ; Burk, ji., 226; Palfrey, iii., 343 ; Mass. H. S. Coll., xxxv., 52; Mass. Rec., v., 29?, 300, 319, 320; Col. MISS., xxix., 196; ante, 309. Colden does not mention this conference. As Robert Livingston was then in New York, asking leave to buy lands on Roeloff Jansen's kill, his duties as secretary were performed by Richard Pretty : Ord., Warr., etc., xxxii 16. 13, 14; Doc. Ilist., ilf., 267. An account of Culpepper's visit to Boston is in Campbell's Vir- ginia, 312, 320, 330, 349-305: see also Mass. II. S. Coll., v., 124.
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337
SIR EDMUND ANDROS, GOVERNOR.
Massachusetts charter by a writ of Quo Warranto. That CHAP. VII. result, indeed, could scarcely have been averted, except by the submission of the recusant corporation. Yet it obsti- 1680. nately disobeyed the king's orders to send over new agents; and, while it could afford to buy territory in Maine, and bribe venal courtiers in London, pleaded poverty to excuse 11 June. contumacy. This policy was neither manly nor wise. The Policy of local rulers of Massachusetts knew that they were the crea- sette. Massachu-
tures of the King of England. Nevertheless, they affected a braggart independence of him. Neither ready nor will- ing to renounce subjection to England, the Puritan cor- poration clung to her royal charter as "the ark of her safety." If the inhabitants of Massachusetts had then been allowed to make a Constitution for themselves, they would hardly have intrusted to a sectarian oligarchy the power which had been abused by the grantees of "Charles the Martyr." Yet, as an English corporation, the ruling power in Massachusetts tried to maintain the inconsistent attitude of loyalty and rebellion; and, professing to be "humbly bold," demonstrated absurd weakness. Brad- street, the governor of the corporation, however, sent a is May. dutiful reply to the inquiries of the Plantation Committee street's Brad- at London. In this interesting paper he complained that report. Andros had laid heavy duties on the Pemaquid fishermen for the benefit of the Duke of York; and, at the same time, reported that a Boston vessel brought from Africa " betwixt forty and fifty negroes, most women and children, sold here for ten, fifteen, and twenty pounds apiece, which stood the merchants in near forty pounds apiece, one with another. Now and then, two or three negroes are brought Negro hither from Barbadoes, and other of his Majesty's Planta- Massachu- slaves in tions, and sold here for about twenty pounds apiece ; so setts. that there may be within our government about one lun- dred, or one hundred and twenty." At this time a good negro was worth about thirty-five pounds in New York; but, as the climate of Massachusetts was less genial to the African, he did not sell for quite so much there, when freshly imported into slavery .*
* Mass. II. S. Coll., xxviii., 350-340 ; xxx., 250 ; xxxii., 288-292; Mass, Rec., v., 270-289 ; Hutch. Mase., i., 324-322; Coll., 4-5, 495, 519-526; Chalmers, i., 4:5-410, 438-440. 500; Barry, 1., 462-464; Palfrey, ili., 314-340, 367, 368; Col. Doc., iii., 261, 263; Story's Miscel- lanies, 06; Moore's Notes on Slavery in Mass., 49 ; ante, 313, 319.
IL-Y
338
HISTORY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK.
1680. & May. 30 June.
15 July. Reports of and, Plyin- outh, and Connecti- cut.
CHAP. VH. Rhode Island reported to the Plantation Committee that there were "only a few blacks imported" into that colo- ny. Plymouth represented that " slaves we have very few. except Indian women and boys taken in the late war." Connecticut answered that since Sir Edmund Andros came Rhode Ist- to New York, her correspondence with him was not "like what it was with his predecessors in that government;" that her chief trade was with Boston; that she had about thirty slaves; and that sometimes three or four blacks a year were imported from Barbadoes, who were usually sold at the rate of twenty-two pounds apiece."
20 May. Habeas Corpus Act in En- gland.
In the mean time, England had been convulsed by Titus Oates's story of a "Popish Plot," and its Protestantism was whipped into violent excess. In the height of this 1679. fanaticism the king prorogued Parliament, after assenting to what is familiarly known as the " Habeas Corpus" Act -- chiefly due to Shaftesbury, and which may be considered to be, perhaps, the most meritorious work of his life. This statute, however, did not extend to the English Colonies or Plantations ; just as the Test Act of 1673 did not af- fect them, as has been already explained. The same day Freedom of the censorship of the English press expired with the law the press. which authorized the abomination.|
These events gave rise to two remarkable party appella- tives, which have ever since been familiar in England. The friends of the king and his brother were nick-named '"Tories," as were the Roman Catholic Irish Robbers, Tories and known as "Rapparees" and "White Boys;" while those Whigs. who desired a Protestant English sovereign were desig- nated " Whigs," as the persecuted Scotch Covenanters were then called. These political epithets-at first given in de- rision and accepted in bravado-have continued to distin- guish the conservative and the progressive parties in En- glish local strifes.
The Duke of York.
The Duke of York, threatened by the House of Com- mons with exclusion from the throne on account of his
* Chalmers's Ann., i., 282-254, 807-310; Arnold, i., 4SS-491 : R. I. Rec., iii., TS, 86; Col. Rec. Conn .. iii., 290-303 ; Mass. HI. S. Coll .. xxxv .. 52; Palfrey, iii, 420-123; Moore's N:03 on Slavery in Mass., 41 ; ante, 296.
t Statute 31 Charles II .. cap. ii .; Parl Hist., iv .. 661, 1148 ; Kennett, iii., 877 ; Rapin, il., 675, 707 : Lingard, xiii., 193, 134, 165: Macaulay. i., 249; Barnet, i., 455; ii., 103: Jacob , iii., 227; Chalmers's Ann , i , 56. 74; ii., 72, 113; Rov. Col., i., 236. 308, 895, 412; N. Y. H >. Coll., 1963, 72, 113; Cell. Doc., iii., 857 ; iv., 204; ante, 201, 902, note.
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SIR EDMUND ANDROS, GOVERNOR. 339
Roman faith, was obliged to withdraw from England; first CHAP. VII. to Brussels, and then to Scotland, where he remained until February, 1680, when he returned to London. During 1680. these exciting movements James had little time for the af- fairs of his American province. But he was now com- pelled to look anxiously into them."
The complaints which the Quakers settled in West Jer- sey had sent home of their treatment by Andros were so 1679. strongly supported, that Sir John Werden inquired official- 19 Septem. New Jersey affairs. ly of the English Secretary of State whether they were empowered, as grantees of the duke, to set up a distinct government, and whether they were not still liable to the laws established in New York. The king's secretary, how- ever, does not appear to have answered these legal ques- tions. Wishing to know the right of the matter, the duke ordered his commissioners " to hear and make report to him concerning the customs demanded in New West Jersey in America, by his governor of New York." This was ac- cordingly done. The Quakers' case was elaborately ar- gued by Penn and others, who insisted that, in Berkeley's Penn's ar- conveyance to them, " powers of government are expressly gument granted ;" that the Duke of York had no authority to levy Quaker. duties on the colonists in West Jersey, or exclude them of their "English right of common assent to taxes ;" and then, adroitly alluding to "the Duke's circumstances and the people's jealousies," they submitted that as he had now the opportunity to free that country with his own hand, " so will Englishmen here know what to hope for, by the jus- tice and kindness he shows to Englishmen there, and all men to see the just model of his goverment in New York to be the scheme and draft in little, of his administration in Old England at large, if the crown should ever devolve upon his head."t
This bold and able, but very sophistical argument, which so skillfully touched the duke's present "circumstances," would have been unanswerable, if its material allegation had been true, that powers of government were "expressly granted" in Berkeley's conveyance to Fenwick. But the
* Clarke's James II., i., 512-589: Temple, ii , 426-472; Courtenay's Temple, il., 13-82; Burnet. i., 422-469 ; Dalrymple, i., 168-177, 261-274, 202, 227, 332, 335: N. Luttrell, i., 10, 21-22; Macaulay, i., 220-257; Martin, i., 503-500.
t Index N. J. Col. Doc., 7; S. Smith, 117-124; Gordon, 40-12; ante, 266, 805, 320.
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