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 6
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council before his death were Abraham De Peyster, so efficient with Leisler in the opening of the revolution; Dr. Staats, one of the con- demned of Leisler's council; and he was now succeeded by William Lawrence, another of Leisler's council. Mr. Weaver took his place as collector of the port.
The burdens thus imposed upon and borne by the earl during his administration, and not less during the closing months, while he was being so "pushed at" in England and was so utterly uncertain of the result, may now be seen. When Hercules went forth to his celebrated labors, the gods gave him an outfit suitable to the tremendous task before him ; but the club with which he won so many victories he cut with his own hand from the forest of Nemea. The gods at Whitehall gave the earl no outfit at all, simply sent him to New-York to do almost impossible things; and his only club throughout was his own inflexible resolution and integrity and energy. Shortly after his return, the assembly met. The session was short, not up to the earl's wishes in the matter of fortifying the frontier; but they passed an act which, perhaps, they thought answered as well and saved the money. It threatened the severest penalty of the law against Jesuits and Catholic priests who should come into the province. The reason of it was that Romanism meant France, and France meant Romanism ; in the woods or in the province the presence of a priest was, therefore, to them the sure sign and fore leg of some new intrigue, some new danger, from France, in particular Canada. On August 10 the earl went to Albany. The Indians were slow in coming to meet him, and again the Jesuit was supposed to be the cause of it. When they did come they were sullen and out of humor, and gave him (as he says) eight days of the greatest fatigue he ever underwent in his whole life. We can imagine it : the elegant and well-dressed earl "shut up in a close chamber with fifty sachems, who, besides the stink of bear's grease with which they were plentifully bedaubed, were continually smoking or drinking drams of rum"! A surplus of perfumery worse than musk - enough to give him a fit of the gout! But the conference being ended, with presents on the one side and compliments to my lord and lady (who always went with him) on the other, they were eight days returning "in a little nasty sloop" which made his journey "extremely tiresome." The usual annoyances, and even greater, awaited him in New-York. His enemies were now quite sure of his recall, and acted accordingly. It is not at all probable that he would have been recalled during Wil- liam's life, who himself at this time was being " pushed at" by the same sort of men and knew them well. But upon Queen Anne's accession he certainly would have been: Cornbury stood ready. The question was not to come up. Late in February, 1701, the gout attacked him severely. Notwithstanding, and imprudently, he dictated letters and
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LORD BELLOMONT REVIEWING COLONEL ABRAHAM DE PRYSTER'S REGIMENT IN PEARL. THEN QUEEN STREET.
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wrote one or two. Upon the 5th of March he died. Then, at least, by the grief it caused throughout the provinces, was seen how highly men whose self-interest and party prejudices were not concerned had appreciated his qualities. In Massachusetts a fast was proclaimed throughout the province. His remains were interred with becoming honors in the chapel of the fort at the Battery. When the fort was taken down and the Battery leveled, in 1790, the leaden coffin was respectfully removed and deposited in St. Paul's churchyard.
We close this survey with a summary of his character. Its domi- nant trait, as we conceive it to be and as history bears out, was suf- ficiently expressed in an early letter of his to the lords of trade: "A hearty lover of English laws and that values no Englishman that is not so"; and he declares it to be his chief design "to give the people here a just idea of English laws, that they bear the stamp of the highest authority of the King and nation of England, and ought to be re- spected as sacred." A loyal Englishman of the olden time, if ever there was one! That was the grain of the oak all the way through. A thorough Protestant, he believed fully in "the late happy revolution," and to his official superiors, as representing it and the will of the na- tion, and, therefore, to their instructions, he was as faithful and sub- missive as a dog to his master. For the same reasons and as part of the law, he would not manage elections nor interfere with "the rights and liberties of the House of Representatives." He would not allow of illegal traffic. But, after listening to the Boston merchants, it did not at all prevent his representing to the lords (as he did) how the acts of trade and navigation might be altered so as to remove all reasonable dissatisfaction and promote the "mutual advantage" of England and the colonies. A law-abiding conservative, he was in his tendencies a liberal one, open to reason and justice. And to this must be joined his inflexible honesty and firmness. But for this he might have lived on terms with the New-York merchants -had he been willing to shut his eyes or accept a bribe or let things go as they were. The simple trouble was that their greed and practices, and law and the earl's hon- esty, could not be made to run in harness together. Nor should we underestimate the courage and firmness it required in him to withstand their angry opposition. It was a small city. Some of these men had become for the time being colonial barons. Their wealth and estates and display, joined in some of them to official consequence, imposed upon people. Of course they had influence. They moved in a party, at a time when party spirit was rank, bitter, violent, and unscrupulous; and at such times men not personally open to charges of corruption are carried with the current to sustain persons and things they would otherwise not approve. It is the stronghold of wicked and designing men. It required a well-knit moral fiber and persistent courage to
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enable a man to do his duty in the face of all this. He was slandering "eminent and respectable persons," they said. Nevertheless, neither their wealth nor acquired position nor names should influence history in its judgment of the case. The question before the earl, and now, was and is, the means by which they were obtaining this great wealth and ascendancy in the community.
In order of prominence must next be mentioned his wonderful energy-for his years truly such. Without the aid of a secretary, un- less it may have been his estimable wife, and sometimes with a lame hand, what he wrote was immense: long letters, some of them cover- ing many pages of the large print- ed collection of colonial docu- ments to the lords of trade, lords justices, or the admiralty; letters to the different lieu- tenant-governors, and many others; and on how many different subjects : the state of the province, ex- Governor Flet- cher, removals, land grants, acts of council and assembly, Indian THE DE PEYSTER SILVER. affairs, fortifica- tions, piracy and seizures, bedding and condition of the soldiers, accounts past and present, masts, tar, making salt and potash, and many other things! All these, matters personally investigated or con- sidered by him, and then written about! And in the midst of what wor- ries! At his age what constitution could long endure such a drain?
Amid such various labors; amid such hindrances thrown in his way; with so much information to be derived from sources reliable and sometimes unreliable; with even his attorney-general not to be de- pended on; with the necessity on his part of rapid thinking, rapid writing and acting: it would be wonderful if he never misjudged, made no mistakes. It is not to be supposed that he made none. Yet, in connection with his voluminous letter-writing, it is due to the sub- ject to recur to one point at which we consider his real character mis- judged. We refer to what has been called his intense hatred of ex-Governor Fletcher, his predecessor. The impression is derived from his own letters to the lords of trade, which are full of Fletcher's doings and misdoings. We have already alluded to his own words as a true description of him: "a hearty lover of English laws, and that
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valued no Englishman that was not so"; and also to his feelings con- cerning the king and the lords of trade. To their superior authority and wisdom he submitted everything; whilst he also, as he said re- peatedly, considered it right and due that he should communicate everything that might assist their judgment. And he was a wonder- ful correspondent: a typical Englishman, with his grumbles and feel- ings all at your service, all uttered frankly, freely, and without reserve, from "beastly" to "nasty"! Without revising, correcting, or copying, except necessary duplicates, everything heard, said, or done went down in those despatches to the lords of trade, about individuals and things, even to the "stink of bear's grease" and the "little nasty sloop"! Momentary feelings or suspicions, which the next letter might correct -as once in Livingston's case-they were all there. So frank, so outspoken, so English was the man; we may even say, so did he gossip to the lords of trade! And it was not merely what he remembered; he had a little note-book of sayings and doings, in which every- thing went down. What Mr. Graham said at the earl's dinner-table about land grants, but took back the next morning, was there to face him and to go to the lords as an instance of his unreliability. He had to do this, for his employments were various, and he was among enemies. Nevertheless, in what was really important, as in all re- movals, he took depositions and evidence, as by his instructions required, and sent them for final judgment by the lords.
In relation to Colonel Fletcher, this is to be considered-that he "valued no Englishman" who did not hold and uphold the laws as "sacred "; that the opposition he had himself met with from the very beginning came from maladministration of the laws; that a man of his unbending integrity and immense energy could but attribute "such abuses," in the language of his instructions, to "the remissness or connivance" of the governor; and that so feeling, it could but awaken his indignation. As he proceeded, there was nothing to miti- gate, much to increase, his belief that Fletcher was not only remiss, but corrupt; and all this went into his correspondence with the lords. His information, at times, may not have been trustworthy or sufficient as proof; run to earth, individual stories may have collapsed; but the general scope of that administration lay patent around him, in those land grants and many other things. We do not, therefore, accept everything in his letters as deliberate utterance or literal truth; but we acquit him of unreasoning and unreasonable prejudice. He had no reason to spare Fletcher or his own honest indignation. Yet if sometimes his phrases sound harsh, turn to the other side. They cultivated no amenities in those days; Fletcher himself exercised none. When it suited his turn to say so, both De la Noy and De Pey-
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ster were "rascals." And they pursued Lord Bellomont with persis- tent misrepresentation, not to say hatred, both at home and abroad. If he was sometimes unduly suspicious of men and frank to utter it -as once in particular of Schuyler-in those peculiar days in New- York, how many of the men of station around him could he really trust! How many could William trust in England ? Honesty was at a low ebb, and partizan morality a most uncertain and limited quan- tity. Only in spots might one bore for trustworthy integrity, with good assurance of finding it; it did not run through the town. One man the earl seems to have trusted im- plicitly, without being disappointed : it was Abraham De Peyster. We regard Lord Bellomont, then, as one of the very best, one of the most unselfish and purest, of the English governors. Whatever his especial faults, they belonged to a frank and honest nature. If he completed nothing in his own day, he planted seeds which were to ripen in the future, and then at the call of death went his way. It was the fall of a noble English oak, torn suddenly and prematurely from its place.
During the administration just closed incidents relating to the city proper were too few to require interruption of the main narrative; or, rather, that narrative was itself quite largely a picture of the city's in- terior life and morals. We now confine ourselves to matters therein till the coming of Lord Cornbury. It may at this point be said that physically the city was in good condition. Within the limits were some seven hundred and fifty houses, besides plantations and build- ings outside upon the island; and (by the census of 1703) four thousand five hundred white inhabitants and seven hundred and fifty slave and free blacks. The buildings, says Madam Knight1, who took a horse- back ride from Boston, were mostly of brick, some of them glazed, of divers colors laid in cheques, and "looked very well"; inside, such as she saw "were neat to admiration"; and the ladies wore caps and "an abundance of ear-rings and other jewelry." For these many people two markets, one at the Bowling Green, the other at Hanover Square, sup- plied the meat; another, at Coenties Slip, the fish. Wells of water there were enough in the center of the streets; but being unpaved in the middle, in the absence of sewerage the streets, also, absorbed much that
1 "Journal of a Journey from Boston to New-York, in 1704," from the original MS. New-York, 1824.
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a board of health would not have called wholesome. Therefore it must be regarded as an important step in advance, not often noted, that in 1699 public scavengers were first appointed. It did not imply any im- mediate decline of the hog, nor, for many a long day, the absence of his portly and familiar figure from the streets. They served together as aldermen and assistant aldermen of the streets. When, during that year, the Brooklyn ferry was relet to Mr. Philip French, it is most curious to observe that the same legal tariff was continued-twopence each for a man and a hog, one penny for a sheep. Was it that (too common vice of the period) the men were usually "disguised with liquor" and equally unmanageable; or had they already discovered what a leading physiologist affirms, that "the common hog (Sus scrofa) is a creature especially suitable for comparison with man"? It is cer- tain that, had the comparison been made with the soldiers of the gar- rison, the hog would have been found the better fed, better bedded, better treated and esteemed.
As of historical interest it is to be added that in 1699-1700 a new City Hall was built. The old "Stadt Huys" of 1642 was in such decay that courts and common council had already sought other quarters. Mr. Abraham De Peyster and Colonel Nicholas Bayard at this time owned nearly the whole north side of Wall street in alternate sections; and one of these, facing Broad street, Mr. De Peyster now gave to the city. Lord Bellomont allowed some material to be used from the old fort; and, in 1699, Mayor David Provoost, who had succeeded Johannes De Peyster and was the brother-in-law of both Abraham and Johannes, laid the corner-stone. It was finished in 1700, and there in due time Wash- ington was inaugurated. Nor should another incident of 1699, one of excellent import to the city, be passed by. It was the coming of Rev. Gualterus Du Bois as colleague with the now infirm Domine Selyns, who, indeed, died in 1701. Domine Selyns had been pastor of the Dutch church since 1682: as such painstaking, useful, and influential. The first charter given to a Dutch church was due to his efforts. As a Latinist and poet he had note beyond the province. As a poet, both in Latin and Dutch, and one of a most "nimble faculty," he exceeded both Steendam and Nicasius De Sille, the other (earlier) Dutch poets of the colony. But his course during the Leisler troubles, and those troubles themselves, produced alienations and divisions, which ex- tended even to the calling of a colleague. Nevertheless, in 1699 Domine Du Bois began (in his twenty-eighth year) a ministry of use- fulness and honor, conciliatory, prudent, and kind, which continued fifty-two years. The only other collegiate-church pastorate of such duration is the one of the Rev. Dr. Thomas E. Vermilye, the present senior pastor, who was installed in October, 1839, in his thirty-sixth year.
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We now return to subjects which were speedily to engross the peo- ple. When the earl died (March 5, 1701), Lieutenant-Governor Nanfan was at the Barbados, nor did he arrive till May 19. Meantime the government devolved upon the council, of whom at the first only four were in town, viz .: Abraham De Peyster, Dr. Samuel Staats, Robert Walters, and Thomas Weaver. When Chief Justice Smith arrived, followed soon after by Robert Livingston and Peter Schuyler, an acri- monious squabble arose over the presidency. The chief justice, sup- ported by Livingston and Schuyler, claimed it by right of seniority, whilst the majority said it should be decided by vote. Livingston is again back with his old party associates. The difficulty itself the chief justice attributes to the influence of Weaver. But under the wing of that dispute new party quarrels were being fledged. Each side distrusted the other, and each side sent home its own report of matters to England. For the present the Leislerians had the ascen- dancy both in the council and (when it met) the assembly. The margin, however, was narrow, the situation one to evolve increasing heat and contention, without a head or hand of sufficient authority to quell or restrain rising passions. Osho: Noell Even when Nanfan arrived, he was a young
man, merely a captain at the fort, not entirely ignorant of his duties, since, during the earl's absence in Boston, he had acted as lieutenant- governor under his directions; but not of force enough for the emer- gency. With this explanation we may now advance to the arrival of Chief Justice William Atwood, on July 24, a very important and in- fluential figure in what remains of this history. He was not an un- known man in England; on the contrary, a writer of learning on political subjects of the day, well read in the law, a stanch Whig and upholder of the rights of Parliament. His last publication was in 1704, and he seems to have died in England in 1705. As he was a rigid judge in admiralty, with Weaver as the collector, he was not popular, nor was Weaver,-perhaps no man could be. But as he took the place of Chief Justice Smith and acted with the Leislerians, and as neither Smith nor Livingston nor Schuyler appear again at present, . it made the council a unit in all subsequent proceedings, with Atwood and Weaver evidently the leading personages.
In October occurred the annual election for mayor and aldermen. It was a most remarkable one even for New-York. The common coun- cil of that period consisted of the mayor, recorder (Mr. Gouverneur), six aldermen, and six assistant-aldermen. Mr. Noell, anti-Leislerian, was appointed mayor without dispute; but for aldermen and assistants, every alderman returned the candidate of his own side as elected. Three wards were not disputed and three were; the latter being Leis- lerian and the candidates for aldermen Johannes De Peyster, David
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Provoost, and Nicholas Roosevelt. At the usual time for the meeting of the new council, the contest began. The Leislerians had them- selves previously sworn in by Mr. De Riemer, the retiring mayor; the others were sworn in by the new mayor. As the mayor refused to sit with the Leislerians returned elected by the aldermen but not sworn in by himself, and as there could be no legal scrutiny of the vote except by order of the council, the city government was at a standstill. In this dilemma the mayor himself appointed a committee of four in each of the Leislerian wards to canvass the vote; but as the two Leislerians in each refused to serve, the other two reversed the vote to their own side. Those reported by them were sworn in, whereupon both parties seated themselves upon the official benches, making twenty in all; and, to prevent imminent trouble, the mayor adjourned the meeting for a fortnight. It was late in Decem- ber before the council could organize, and then only through a decision of JACOB STEENDAM.1 the chief justice in the Supreme Court, which left the parties evenly divided. Scarcely had the flame and heat of this conflagration subsided when another began, this time involving the court itself. It was the trial, conviction, and sentence of Colonel Nicholas Bayard (with Alderman John Hutchins, of less account) for high treason-the culminating scene of these years of party strife. The occasion of it may be thus briefly stated. Early in June, 1701, King William had appointed Lord Cornbury, a cousin of Queen Anne, to be governor. His arrival was delayed till May 3, 1702, but his appointment was known. It gave fresh impulse and hope to the anti-Leislerians, as the city election had just shown. It was thought by them a good time to send petitions or addresses to the king, Parliament, and my Lord Cornbury-addresses . of the old partizan sort, which in an ordinary political contest might simply have been met by others. But this was not an ordinary con- test. Moreover, it was two hundred years ago. Certain sentences in the addresses seemed hooks strong enough on which to hang an in-
1 Jacob Steendam was a native of Holland, and came to this city in 1632, at the age of sixteen. He owned houses in Broadway and Pearl street. His principal poems are entitled, "Complaint of New Amsterdam, in New Netherlands, to her Mother of her Beginning, Growth and Present Condition,"
and "The Praise of New Netherland." They were translated and published at The Hague, with a memoir of the poet, in 1861, by Henry C. Murphy, and later were included in his anthology of New Netherland, issued by the Bradford Club of New- York. EDITOR.
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dictment of Bayard, as being "scandalous libels" against the govern- ment past and present, and adapted to make it "vile and cheap"; and particularly since among the numerous signatures were the names of about thirty soldiers of the garrison, who had been "drawn in" with many others to sign these papers. It was, in a word, inciting to a sedi- tious spirit, and in this way disturbing the peace and quiet of his Majesty's government. Now it so happened that in 1691, after Leisler's execution for high treason, Bayard had himself procured to be passed by the assembly (and approved by the king) an act which said that "whatsoever person or persons shall by any manner of way or upon any pretense whatever endeavor by force of arms or other ways to disturb the peace, good and quiet of their Majesties' government as now estah- lished shall be deemed and esteemed as rebels and traitors unto their Majesties and incur the pains, penalties and forfeitures as the laws of England have for such offenses made and provided." Those "pains and penalties" were as yet barbarous, cruel in the extreme; but the law was of Bayard's own procurement-a man now in danger, as it seemed, of being guillotined with his own invention. We have his son Samuel's declaration that Atwood and Weaver "drew in the rest " of the council to his prosecution under this act, but for which, he says, "we had not been in this condition." Strange! These were Englishmen, Atwood only six months in the colony and its chief justice. Of Weaver we only know that he had come over with the earl, had been intrusted with some law cases, had been sent to England as government agent, and had stayed there three years, much to the earl's dissatisfaction. He had only returned to replace Van Cortlandt as collector, and had been in the council a year. These men, at least, had no such terrible rea- son for hating and pursuing Bayard in this way as had, for instance, Walters and Dr. Staats. What was their motive? Proceedings were not pushed unduly. It was January 21, 1702, when Attorney-General Broughton (who had come over with Atwood) was asked for his opinion on the case. He was not in sympathy with Atwood and Weaver, and his opinion was that no crime had been committed. It was February 19 before the court sat-a special Court of Oyer and Terminer, with Chief Justice Atwood presiding, and De Peyster and Walters lay judges. Meantime Bayard was in jail, and Lord Cornbury on the sea-he might arrive any day.
It is now to be said of this celebrated trial, that, as Mr. Broughton refused to appear, Mr. Weaver was appointed solicitor-general for the government; that the judge refused to have notes taken except by the solicitor and counsel; and that we have no official account of it, no- thing but a collection of "memorials taken by divers persons" (Bayard's friends) "privately." It is simply their memory assisted by notes, compared and collected, and printed by order of Lord Cornbury at
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