USA > New York > New York City > The Memorial History of the City of New York: From Its First Settlement to the Year 1892, Volume II > Part 21
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1 Council Minutes, 14, et passim ; Calendar N. Y. las Bayard gave notice in the newspapers of the Hist. MSS., 2: 492.
2 Cal. N. Y. Hist. MSS., 2 : 455.
$ Ib., p. 457.
4 Ib., pp. 457, 458.
5 N. Y. Doc. Hist., 3 : 278-281 ; Calendar N. Y. Hist. MSS .. 2 : 454.
6 Cal. N. Y. Hist. MSS., 2 : 460.
7 Calendar N. Y. Hist. MSS., 2 : 456, 491; Jour- nal Legislative Council, 1 : 461, 536, 557, 558, 562; Doc. rel. Col. Hist. N. Y., 5 : 847. In 1730 Nicho-
day that he had erected a refining-house for refin- ing all sorts of sugar and sugar-candy, and had procured from Europe an experienced artist in that mystery. (N. Y. Gazette, Aug. 17, 1730.) This sugar-house stood back from Wall street, between Nassau and William, a high board fence along the street front securing it from intrusion.
8 Journal Legislative Council, 1 : 509, 518. 9 Ib., p. 514.
10 Ib., pp. 526, 536.
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HISTORY OF NEW-YORK
this latter year also an act was passed for the more effectual preser- vation and increase of deer on the Island Nassaw (Long Island).1
One smiles at the primitive simplicity of the City Fathers of those unsophisticated days, to read the financial statements of the chamber- lain. He actually managed to keep the city's expenditures within its income. In 1721 the city's receipts were £559, of which only £215 was spent, leaving a balance of £344 in the treasury. In 1722 the re- ceipts were £704, and expenditures £310, leaving a balance of £394; in 1723, the income was £721, and the outgo £575; in 1724, income £430, outgo £428, which was close sailing; in 1725, income £257, outgo £248; in 1726, income £288, outgo £224; in 1727, income £217, which was £30 more than the expenditures. A pound in New-York currency was reckoned at eighteen pence to the shilling, and so was equal to two-thirds of the pound sterling. In 1728 there was due the city £1384, and a bonded debt was undreamed of. One of the sources of income was the lease of the ferry to Brooklyn-the only ferry established then, the lessee being required to provide a house on each side, and boats for passengers and cattle. In 1717 two ferries were established, both running from what is now the foot of Fulton street on the Long Island side. In 1728 the privilege was leased for five years for two hundred and fifty-eight pounds yearly. The resi- dents of the little Dutch village of Breuckelen, a mile back from the river, insisted upon their right to ferry themselves across, but New- York claimed the exclusive privilege, and the legislature frequently enacted strong measures to protect the city and its lessees." The rev- enues of the province amounted to about four thousand pounds annu- ally, raised principally by duties on rum, molasses, negroes, and Madeira wine, imported in foreign vessels. There was also a tonnage duty on vessels coming into port, and a small tax on salt and other necessaries. In 1726 the assembly wanted to remove the tonnage duty, on the ground that it drove commerce to New Jersey; they also wished to take off the duty on salt and molasses, which fell on the poor, and to impose a poll-tax on negroes, which the rich would chiefly have to pay. Gov- ernor Burnet was strongly in favor of a paper currency, and presented numerous and long arguments in its behalf, notwithstanding his un- fortunate experience in the South Sea speculation. Indeed, he urged that the failure of that scheme was partly due to the neglect of the government to fix a maximum price for the stock. Another argument he adduced was that in New Jersey, where paper money was popular, the currency being based on real-estate loans, secured by a tax, the effect had been to send gold and silver out of the province to England.3
1 "Journal Legislative Council," 1 : 486, 506, 517, 532, 550. 2 Ib., pp. 536, 562, etc.
3 Doc. rel. Col. Hist. N. Y., 5 : 551, 700, 736, 738, 769, 889-91; Calendar N. Y. Hist. MSS., 2 : 479; N. J. Archives, 5 : 76, 87, 153 -8.
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THE ADMINISTRATION OF WILLIAM BURNET
Governor Burnet found time amid his multifarious official duties to devote himself to his books-of which he was passionately fond- and to his researches in science and theology. "He was useful in pro- moting science, and by a quadrant of a large radius and well divided, by a good telescope of eighteen feet, and by a second pendulum of large vibrations, he made sev- eral good astronomical obser- vations, towards ascertaining latitudes and longitudes."1 He prepared a paper on the eclipses of Jupiter's satellites, which was published in 1724 in the "Transactions" of the Royal Astronomical Society, of which THE SLAVE-MARKET OF NEW-YORK. he was a member.2 But his great hobby was the study of divinity and of the Bible, and when he got a listener he was loath to let him go. He said that Sir Isaac Newton had taught him that the prophets had a language pecu- liar to themselves, which once learned, the prophecies could be as readily understood as other writings.8 Whether or not he applied this method, or whether he rightly understood his famous precep- tor, cannot be told, but he spent two years or more in writing an ex- position of that stumbling-block of expositors-the twelfth chapter of Daniel, publishing the results in 1724, anonymously. Having in this book proved to his own satisfaction that the first period referred to by Daniel occurred in 1715, he easily showed that the second would happen in 1745, and the third in 1790. While engaged on this work he conceived the idea of going over to France to persuade the leading men in that country to destroy the Papacy-a whimsical notion which greatly alarmed his wiser brother Gilbert in England.' Dr. Colden says he was a zealous Christian, but not in all points ortho- dox, for he "often declared that many orthodox men were knaves, while he had never known a heretick that was not an honest man."5 As the censorious Dr. Thomas Bradbury Chandler puts it, "his eccen- trical genius was not to be confined within the limits of orthodoxy."" He was the terror of young preachers, for, no matter even if they had been licensed by the Bishop of London, the governor would give them a text and a Bible, and shut them up in a room for a certain time to prepare a sermon, and if it did not satisfy him they were not suffered to preach in his dominions.7 Still, he was tolerant of all forms of
1 Douglass's "Summary," 1 : 480. 2 Whitehead's " Perth Amboy." p. 165.
3 Cadwallader Colden. in N. Y. Hist. Soc. Coll., 1868, pp. 214, 215.
4 Whitehead's " Perth Amboy," pp. 162, 163.
5 N. Y. Hist. Soc. Coll., 1868, 215.
6 Chandler's "Life of Johnson " (London, 1824),
p. 41.
7 Whitehead's "Perth Amboy," p. 162.
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HISTORY OF NEW-YORK
religion. When Nicholas Eyers, brewer, set forth in his petition in January, 1722, that his hired house in Broad street had been registered as "an anabaptist meeting house" since the first Tuesday in February, 1715; that he had been a public preacher to a Baptist congregation in the city for at least four years; that he had just hired a house from Rip Van Dam for a public meeting-house, and that he desired a license as a preacher, the governor readily granted it.1 He cared little for the external forms of religion. While on his way to Boston, when transferred to that government, he complained of the long graces of the clergymen on the road, and asked Colonel Tyler when they would shorten, who replied: "The graces will increase in length until you come to Boston; after that, they will shorten till you come to your government of New Hampshire, where your Excellency will find no grace at all."" One day, when about to sit down to dinner with an "old charter" senator of Massachusetts, who retained the custom of saying grace sitting, his host asked him which way he preferred, to which the hungry governor impatiently replied: "Standing or sitting, any way or no way, just as you please."3
Another trait of the governor's character was his fondness for exer- cising the office of chancellor. The historian Smith says he " made a tolerable figure in the exercise of it, tho' he was no lawyer, and had a foible very unsuitable for a judge, I mean his resolving too speedily, for he used to say of himself, 'I act first, and think afterwards""; + or, as he put it on another occasion: "I am inclined to believe as I wish."5 Two cases which came before him as chancellor were partly instrumental in causing his removal. The French congregation, " L'Église du Saint Esprit,"" worshiped in a stone building fifty by seventy-seven feet, erected in 1704, in Pine street. The congregation was large and flourishing; the Rev. Louis Rou was called to the pas- torate about 1710, and as the church increased the Rev. J. J. Moulinars was called as his colleague. In the fall of 1724 the consistory of the church dismissed Mr. Rou, in the interest of Mr. Moulinars. Mr. Rou and a large number of the church members protested, and brought the matter before the council, who, after a hearing, decided that the dismissal was irregular and unlawful, but advised the congregation to adjust their differences amicably. As the consistory refused to re- instate Mr. Rou, he filed a bill in chancery to compel them to produce their contract with him; the consistory pleaded to the jurisdiction of the court, which plea the governor overruled. As Rou, a scholarly
1 "New-York Documentary History" (4to ed.). 3: 290, 291. Benedict, in " History of the Baptists" (Boston, 1813), 1 : 537, is in error in saying that Burnet witnessed the baptism of Eyers in 1714; Governor Hunter is meant.
2 Belknap's " New Hampshire," 3 : 75.
3 Hutchinson's " Massachusetts," 2 : 32. + Smith's "New-York," p. 201.
5 Doc. rel. Col. Hist. N. Y., 5 : 703.
6 For illustration of the church, see Chapter II. EDITOR.
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THE ADMINISTRATION OF WILLIAM BURNET
man, was known to be on intimate terms with Burnet, and as the decision just given indicated what the final decree would be, the dis- satisfied party dropped the suit, reinstated Mr. Rou, and left the church.' They were thereafter enemies of the governor. Among them was Stephen De Lancey, one of the most influential men in the province. The other suit was on a bill in chancery filed by Adolph Philipse, in relation to a suit at common law brought against him by the widow of one Codringtone, his former partner, on a bond for fif- teen hundred pounds. The governor dismissed the bill, and left Mr. Philipse to make his defense at law as best he could .?
When the legislature met in September, 1725, Governor Burnet found that Adolph Philipse was elected speaker, and that Stephen De Lancey was one of the new members, of whom several had been chosen to fill vacancies. With a deplorable lack of judgment, Mr. Burnet allowed his resentment to take an unjustifiable turn, for when Mr. De Lancey presented himself to be sworn in, the governor ques- tioned his citizenship, and declined to admit him until he had consulted Chief Justice Lewis Morris. On further reflection and consultation with friends, the governor perceived his error, and wrote to the assembly, saying that he left the matter entirely with them - where, indeed, it properly and exclusively belonged. Mr. De Lancey had been denizened in this province in 1686, and had sat in the council and in the assembly for nearly twenty years. It was the height of folly for the governor to raise a question as to his right to sit in the assembly now.3 Thenceforth the whole De Lancey interest, thus twice antagonized by the governor, was bent on his removal. Although the assembly declared their readiness to meet all demands, they had their own ideas of what ought to be done. As a punish- ment for Chief Justice Morris, who was a member of the house, in advising against Mr. De Lancey's right to sit, they proposed to reduce his salary one hundred pounds, and to abolish the office of second judge, giving Morris more work,' and in other ways they manifested a dispo- sition to break with the governor. After sitting five or six weeks they were adjourned till the ensuing spring. At this session the assembly persisted in making an appropriation for only three years, instead of for five, as formerly, and as the governor urged upon them; so he dissolved them, after an existence of eleven years.5 The new assem- bly, which met on September 27, 1726, was not a whit more favorable to the administration ; it promptly affirmed the views of its prede-
1 N. Y. Doc. Hist. (4to ed.), 3 : 281-290; Smith's New-York, pp. 222. 223; N. Y. Hist. Soc. Coll., 1868, pp. 207-9. Dr. Colden says that in the answer filed by the consistory they swore that they had no knowledge of such a contract. but they afterward admitted that they meant this to be understood of them as a body, for some of them had been
members of the consistory when the contract was made, and knew all about it.
2N. Y. Hist. Soc. Coll., 1868, pp. 212. 213.
3Smith's New-York, pp. 223, 224: Doc. rel. Col. Hist. N.Y., 5: 769 ; N. Y. Hist. Soc. Coll., 1868, pp. 210, 211. + Doc. rel. Col. Hist. N. Y., 5 : 769.
5 Journal Legislative Council, 1 : 537.
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HISTORY OF NEW-YORK
cessor as to the sufficiency of the revenue and the propriety of reducing salaries-which the governor disregarded. However, they sustained his Indian policy, and authorized him to build a fort and lodge twenty soldiers in it at the mouth of the Onondaga River, and then he adjourned them until spring. He lost no time in taking ad- vantage of the act just mentioned, but sent out workmen to build a stone fortress, with walls four feet thick, at Oswego, with sixty sol- diers. There were already there about two hundred traders-so rapidly had the business grown under his wise management. The assembly voted three hundred pounds for the purpose, but he ex- pended twice that sum out of his own pocket, so anxious was he to have his plan carried out.1 In the summer of 1725 fifty-seven canoes went there, and returned with seven hundred and thirty-eight packs of beaver- and deer-skins. The French were alarmed, and erected a fort at Niagara, and at the same time demanded that the English abandon their fort at Oswego .?
On the accession of King George II., Burnet ordered the election of a new assembly, which met on September 30, 1727. It went through its business with little trouble, and adjourned on November 25, 1727, having sat less than half the time since the session opened. Everything moved along smoothly, and the acts passed were pub- lished with the usual solemnity on the last day of the session. Now his enemies sprung their mine. They knew that he was to be re- moved,3 and, the business of the session being ended, the assembly adopted a series of scathing resolutions, denouncing the court of chancery as set up by the governor: that it rendered "the Libertys and properties of the Subjects extreamly Precarious, and that by the violent measures taken in & allowed by it some have been ruined, others obliged to abandon the Colony and many restrained in it either by Imprisonment or by excessive bail Exacted from them not to depart"; also that the court should not have been set up without the consent of the assembly, and that that body proposed at their next sitting to pass an act declaring all acts, decrees, and proceedings of the court null and void. It was five years since Burnet had caused Philipse to be removed from the council; it was two years since he had insulted De Lancey by questioning his citizenship; ' it was two years, likewise, since he had dismissed Philipse's bill in chancery. Their turn had come at last, and the governor found himself in a hopeless minority. With unwise but not unreasonable indignation, he dissolved the assembly which had thus heaped contumely upon
1 Journal Legislative Council, 1 : 541, 554; Doc. rel. Col. Hist. N. Y., 5 : 812. 813, 818, 879. 2 Smith's New York, pp. 228, 229.
3 Colonel John Montgomerie, the groom of the chambers to George II. while Prince of Wales,
had been appointed governor on August 12. 1727. Doc. rel. Col. Hist. N. Y., 5:823.
4De Lancey was a merchant, and interested in defeating the governor's Indian policy. N. Y. Hist. Soc. Coll., 1868, p. 220.
-..
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THE ADMINISTRATION OF WILLIAM BURNET
him in his person as chancellor.' Sensitive as he was, and having much self-complacency, this action of the assembly stung him to the quick, the more so that it was grossly unjust.
Moreover, this blow came at a time when he was suffering the sever- est domestic afflictions. On the morning of August 7, 1727, Mrs. Burnet presented him with a son;2 but the joy of the household was soon changed to mourning, and mother and child were laid to- gether in the chapel within the old fort. He made his will at this time, dated at New-York, September 6, 1727, in which he directs that his body " be buried at the Chapel of the Fort at New-York, near to my dearest wife Mary and one of my chil- dren, in a vault prepared for them, in case I die in the Prov- ince of New-York. But if I die elsewhere, in the nearest church or burying ground, or in the sea, if I should die there, well know- ing that all places are alike to God's All-Seeing Eye."3
Writing home to the lords of trade, under date of August 26, he solicits their favor with the new king for his continuance in his governments of New-York and New Jersey, on the score of his faithful and efficient service. But his enemies were numerous and powerful, which made it easy for the king to consent readily to let his friend and former groom of the bed-chamber, John Montgomerie, have his wish when he
1 Journal Legislative Council, 1 : 562; N. Y. Hist. Soc. Coll., 1868, p. 212; Doc. rel. Col. Hist. N. Y., 5 : 847, 848.
2 Calendar N. Y. Hist. MSS., 2 : 487.
3 N. Y. Genealogical and Biographical Record, 6:6; Historical Magazine. April, 1865, p. 129. Mrs. Burnet's funeral sermon was preached in the chapel in the fort, by the Rev. Mr. Orum, whose MS. fails to give the date. (Hist. Mag., December, 1864, p. 398.) The will names "my children Wil- liam, Thomas and Mary," by late wife " Mary Van- horne," and appoints Abraham Van Horne and' Mary Van Horne his wife Executors. The will was proved at Boston September 25, 1729, where Abra- ham Van Horne, his executor, filed the inventory of his estate on October 13, 1729, amounting to
£4540 4s. 312d. The daughter Mary married William Brown, of Beverly, Mass., and had issue William Burnet Brown, who settled in Virginia. In Abraham Van Horne's will, dated December 27, 1740, only two of the governor's children are named. (Ib., January, 1865, p. 34 ; April, 1865, p. 129; N. Y. Gen. and Biog. Record, 6 : 6.) William Brown married, 2d, Mary, daughter of Philip French, of New Brunswick, N. J .; he died April 27, 1763. (Duer's "Life of Lord Stirling," p. 3, note.) Governor Jonathan Belcher, who succeeded Burnet in Massachusetts, tried to get the legis- lature to vote to his children the salary (at the rate of £1000) which they had withheld from the governor. Wynne, 1 : 153.
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HISTORY OF NEW-YORK
made choice of the government of New-York. Mr. Burnet felt a natural resentment at being thus removed, and his friends inter- ceded with the queen in his behalf, but she replied with courtly politeness that the king thought it necessary to appoint a man of Governor Burnet's abilities to manage the troublesome people of Massachusetts, and as the king's service required the sacrifice, any loss resulting therefrom would be made good. So he reluctantly accepted the new position. He continued to attend to the duties of his office faithfully, promptly, and without a word of complaint, while he waited patiently for the arrival of his successor; and when Colonel Montgomerie landed at New-York on April 15, 1728, Governor Burnet tendered him the hospitalities of his mansion in the fort; and although his courtesy was not accepted, he does not appear to have shown any ill-will.1 Soon after, he departed from New-York to assume his new government in Massachusetts. In doing so he was burdened with an instruction to insist upon the assembly of that province making an appropriation for at least five years for the support of the govern- ment;2 this led to constant differences between him and that body, which were ended by his death at Boston, on September 7, 1729, caused by his taking cold from the overturning of his carriage upon the causeway at Cambridge, the tide being high and he falling into the water.3 Burnet was but forty-one years old.
Said a writer in 1725: "Never a Country was happyer of a Gov- ernor than these Provinces are of him. He is Not only a Learned Man But one that has a peculiar Talent of Eloquence & good Humour Suitable to his Learning he is a Man of great generosity Supplying the necessitous and Distributing his Justice Equally to great and Small. He is one who has at heart the promoting the welfare of these provinces."" Says Smith: "We never had a Governor to whom the colony is so much indebted as to him. . . . The excessive love of money, a disease common to all his predecessors, and to some who succeeded him, was a vice from which he was entirely free. He sold no offices, nor attempted to raise a fortune by indirect means; for he lived generously, and carried scarce anything away with him, but his books. These and the conversation of men of letters were to him in- exhaustible sources of delight."" The judicial Grahame speaks of him
1 Doc. rel. Col. Hist. N. Y., 5 : 855, 856, 858. 870, 871; N. Y. Hist. Soc. Coll., 1868, pp. 219, 226. : N. Y. Hist. Soc. Coll., 1868. pp. 217-19.
3 Hutchinson's " Massachusetts," 2: 364. " He was conducted to the grave with the respectful solemnity of a public funeral, and with demonstra- tions of esteem creditable alike to the liberality of those who entertained this sentiment, and to the merit of the individual who inspired it." (Grahame's "United States, " 3: 124.) The funeral sermon was preached in the King's Chapel. Bos- ton. September 12. 1727. by the Rev. Mr. Price.
(Hist. Mag., December. 1864. p. 398.) In accor- dance with the directions in his will. his son Gilbert ("a lively youth about fifteen "), by his first wife, was sent from Boston to his aunt Mary, wife of David Mitchell, in England. It was said that he was well provided for by Bishop Burnet's will. The other children were brought from Boston to New-York by their grandfather, Abraham Van Horne. N. J. Archives, 5: 261 ; N. Y. Gen. and Biog. Record, 6 : 6.
+ N. J. Archives, 5 : 100.
5 Smith's "New-York," p. 231.
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THE ADMINISTRATION OF WILLIAM BURNET
thus: "He labored with equal wisdom and assiduity to promote the welfare of the province, and cultivated the favor of the people with a success which only the clamors and intrigues of an interested faction prevented from being as entire and immediate as it proved lasting and honorable. Though in the close of his administration his popularity was eclipsed by the artifices of those who opposed his views, the tes- timony that farther experience afforded to the tendency of these views to promote the general good gained him a time-honored name, and a reputation coequal with his deserts; and more than twenty years after his death, the Swedish philosopher, Kalm, during his travels in America, heard Burnet's worth commemorated with grate- ful praise by his people, who lamented him as the best governor they had ever obeyed."1 Writing thirty years after his death, Dr. Colden says of him: " He studied the true interest of the province more than any before him or any since. No instance can be given of oppression in any shape. No man was more free from Avarice. He was gener- ous to a degree so far that if he erred it was in not takeing sufficient care of his private interest. He expended yearly considerable sums in private charitie, which he managed so that none knew of them more than what could not be avoided and thereby in some degree doubled the charitie to many who received it."" James Alexander was greatly overcome by the intelligence of the governor's death. " The death of Mr. Burnet," he writes to ex-Governor Hunter, "gave me the greatest grief & concern of anything I have met with, the world Loses therby one of the best of men, & I in particular a most Sincere friend & one to whom I Lay under the greatest of Obligations he was a man who bating warmth was almost without a fault & that by degrees he became nearer & nearer Master of & in time had he lived would probably have been entirely so."3 Reviewing his career, after the lapse of more than a century and a half, the impartial stu- dent of that period will, we think, accept as just these tributes of his contemporaries to the character of Governor William Burnet.
MAYORS OF NEW -YORK.
ROBERT WALTERS was mayor in 1720-1725. Early in life he came to New-York and engaged in mercantile pursuits. He was an Englishman by birth, and married a daughter of Jacob Leisler. At first the inheritance from her father was confiscated, but, being subsequently restored, it added materially to her husband's fortune. Be- sides the mayoralty Mr. Walters held several offices of distinction and trust in the province, as appears from the course of this history.
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