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conferred long and earnestly as to how lawful author- ity should be restored to the city, and the people quieted. One of their first acts was to remove the Collector of Customs-Ploughman,-who was a Catholic, and therefore ineligible, and to appoint in his place four commissioners. worthy and reputable citizens, Protestants all, Nicholas Bayard heading the list. These gentlemen, after taking the oath of office, received the keys and began their duties. They had barely time to change the first letter in the king's arms, however, when the clank of sabres and tread of armed men was heard, and Leisler, at the head of a body of militia, marched in, and sav- agely ordered them out of the room. Bayard sternly reminded him that they were there by authority of the king, and warned him against offering violence to his Majesty's officers. Leisler, in reply, began a long tirade, in which the epithets "rogues, traitors, and devils," were freely applied to the commission- ers. In the midst of it, a soldier seized Wenham, one of the commissioners, and dragged him into the street, where he was sadly battered by the mob. Bayard himself was struck at fiercely, but warded off the blows, and succeeded in escaping to a house near by, which was at once besieged by the rabble. . He, however, escaped to his own house. Meantime a mob filled the street, and clamored for the blood of the aristocrats. They had but one rallying cry : " The rogues have sixty men ready to kill Captain Leisler !"
Next morning friends of Colonel Bayard, includ- ing the aldermen, came to him with the warning that
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his life was in danger, and besought him to flee the city. Bayard at last consented. Horses were pro- vided outside the city limits, and in disguise, accom- panied by two negro servants, he succeeded in leav- ing the city, and in reaching Albany. He returned secretly in October, having learned that a favorite son was at the point of death. His presence was quickly discovered, however, and an armed posse was sent to the house of death to arrest him. The men searched the house from top to bottom with oaths and ribald shouts, swearing they would fetch their victim " from the gates of hell," but failed to find him. They next attacked the house of Mayor Van Cortlandt, threatening to take his life, but were held at bay by Mrs. Van Cortlandt until her husband could make his escape. Fleeing from the city, Van Cortlandt passed up into Connecticut, and took ref- uge with Governor Treat, at Hartford.
It is not necessary to detail the various acts of vio- lence and usurpation committed by Leisler from this time forward. Let us see how retribution finally came to him.
Shakespeare's Ariel must have written the first state paper intended to regulate affairs at New York. Nicholson had not then reached London, and the ministry, supposing him to be still in power, addressed a letter to him ordering him to as- sume the government, call the chief citizens to his aid, and " do and perform all the requirements of the office." By some fatuity, this letter was not ad- dressed to Nicholson by name, but to " Our Lieu- tenant-Governor and Commander-in-Chief of our
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Province of New York in America, and in his ab- sence to such as for the time being take care for pre- serving the peace and administering the laws in our said province of New York in America."
When John Riggs, the messenger bearing this let- ter, reached New York, Leisler sent an armed force to conduct him to the fort. Next morning the coun- cillors, summoned by Riggs, met in the fort to re- ceive the letter, but were not allowed to accept it by Leisler. "The king," he said, " knew that he wasat the head of the government, and intended the letter for him." The councillors protested, but Leisler's show of force overawed the messenger, and the packet was delivered to him, whereupon he turned upon the councillors, and calling them "popishly- affected dogs and rogues," bade them "begone." Leisler now told the people that the king had named him Lieutenant-Governor, and at once entered on the duties of the office-appointed a council and other officials, had William and Mary proclaimed a second time, and when the Sabbath came, rode to the Dutch Church and sat in the Governor's pew, while his council walked gravely in and seated them- selves in the pew reserved for magistrates.
One can imagine the feelings of the aristocrats. No doubt they prayed heartily that this rogue might soon come to the end of his tether. Meantime Governor Nicholson had reached London, and had laid his case before the king and the Plantation Committee. They sustained him in all his acts, and at once appointed a new governor, Colonel Henry Sloughter, while Nicholson was rewarded by being
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made Lieutenant-Governor of Virginia. The Irish and other internal troubles, however, prevented Sloughter from at once setting out, and for some time longer the Lord of Misrule continued to play his pranks with the colony. In the winter of 1690, Leisler learned that Sir Edmond Andros, who had lain in jail in Boston since his arrest, was about to be sent to England for trial, and apprehensive that the councillors would send let- ters to the king by him, he caused sturdy John Perry, the Boston post rider, to be closely watched. The house of Colonel Lewis Morris, in Westchester, was the last place where Perry received letters for Boston, and one day, after leaving it, he was seized by Leisler's men-at-arms, brought to the city, and thrown into prison. In his mail-bag were found, as Leisler had suspected, letters to the king from Bayard, Van Cort- landt, and others of their party, complaining bitterly of the acts of the usurper. Leisler at once pro- claimed that he had discovered a " hellish conspiracy " against the government, and that Colonel Bayard was the ringleader in it. A file of soldiers, therefore, seized that gentleman, loaded him with chains, and cast him into the common gaol, where he received the treatment accorded the worst malefactors. Van Cortlandt escaped the soldiers and became again a fugitive, but William Nicolls, the Attorney-General of the province, was captured and lodged in the same prison with Colonel Bayard.
In the spring of 1690 Leisler called a congress of all the colonies, to meet at New York, and deliberate on the threatening attitude of the French in Canada. This was the first American Colonial Congress, and met in New York May 1, 1690.
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Tyranny often works its own cure ; and the weak- est of all governments is that based on the ignorance. and superstition of the governed. Leisler had by this time become very unpopular with the people. His imprisonment of so many leading citizens shocked their sense of justice, and to many other odious and arbitrary acts he now added that of seizing estates and personal property to satisfy taxes. The right of his Assembly to lay such taxes was denied by many, and refusal to pay was often followed by con- fiscation. " Governor Dog-driver," "Lieutenant Blockhead," "Deacon Jailer," were the epithets now conferred upon him. Once, in May, 1690, he was assaulted in the streets.
An address to William and Mary, written about this time, and signed by the French and Dutch dom- ines and leading citizens of New York, describes the city as being " at the sole will of an insolent alien, assisted by those who formerly were not thought fit to bear the meanest office, several of whom can be proved guilty of enormous crimes. . . . They im- prison at will, open letters, seize estates, plunder houses, and abuse the clergymen."
Some six months later, after a series of fresh out- rages, the people of Jamaica, Hempstead, Flushing, and Newtown addressed a yet more piteous appeal to the king's secretary.
Milborne, they charged, famous for nothing but cruelty, had " in a barbarous and inhuman manner plundered houses, stripped women of their apparel, and sequestered estates," and they besought the king to relieve them of this oppressor, all of whose
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acts seemed based on Catiline's maxim : "The ills that I have done cannot be safe but by attempting greater." The king seems to have been brought to a lively sense of the situation by these petitions, and Governor Sloughter was ordered to proceed to his government at once. The Archangel, the Bea- ver, and two smaller vessels were gotten ready, two companies of soldiers were placed on board, and early in December, 1690, the fleet set sail, Sloughter and his staff in the Archangel, Major Richard In- goldsby, the Lieutenant-Governor, in the Beaver. The instructions, commissions, Leisler's letters, and the petitions of the people were given to Sloughter, with instructions to inquire carefully into the whole story of Leisler's rule. Sloughter was given also a system of government for the colony, which contin- ued in force until the close of the Revolution. It differed little from that of James. There was to be a governor and council appointed by the king and an assembly elected by the people. Liberty of con- science was assured all peaceable citizens "except Papists"; but the Church of England was made the State church and placed under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of London. The former members of the council were re-appointed with scarcely an exception, thus condemning Leisler in advance. News reached New York, by way of Boston, that the Governor was on the way, long before the ships arrived. Both par- ties watched breathlessly, as one might say, the day of reckoning. At length, on the 29th of January, 1691, a vessel was signalled from the Battery, and as she came on it was seen that it was one of the Governor's
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fleet. One, two, three soon appeared, but the fourth could nowhere be discovered. By strange mischance the absent vessel proved to be the Arch- angel, the one which bore the Governor. Had it been either of the others, the crimes of treason and murder might not have been fixed on Leisler, and the city would have been spared scenes of riot and bloodshed. As the Beaver came to anchor she was boarded by Phillipse, Van Cortlandt, and others, to whom Ingoldsby explained that the fleet had been separated by a great storm, and that, for aught he knew, the Archangel might be at the bottom of the sea.
The councillors then briefly acquainted him with the position of affairs, and urged that he make an immediate demand for the possession of the fort and government. A strange scene ensued-one of the last acts in this tragedy of errors.
Ingoldsby sent a messenger to Leisler demanding the fort for the king's soldiers and their stores. Leis- ler, in reply, demanded to be shown Ingoldsby's com- mission and authority. The Lieutenant-Governor had nothing of the sort ; every thing was with Gover- nor Sloughter in the Archangel. Leisler then re- plied, emphasizing his loyalty to the king, and tender- ing the City Hall for the troops, but refusing to yield the fort until Ingoldsby could produce written orders from the king or Governor. Ingoldsby was afraid to land, and remained cooped up in his ship for several days; but at last, being assured that the great body of the people were with him, he landed his soldiers as cautiously, he wrote home, as though making " a de-
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scent into the country of an enemy," and took post in the City Hall. Next he sent a letter to Leisler, order- ing him to release Bayard and Nicolls-still confined in the fort,-since they were named councillors to the king. This demand threw Leisler into a paroxysm of rage. "What !" he cried," those popish dogs and rogues !" and he returned word that he should hold the prisoners until his Majesty's further orders arrived. This was the situation from day to day for six weeks : the king's Lieutenant-Governor cooped ยท up in the City Hall, practically a prisoner; the king's councillors confined in the common gaol; both con- trolled and dictated to by a citizen whose power con- sisted only in his supposed hold on the people and his command of the city militia. Perhaps if Ingoldsby, who was a brave soldier, could have produced his commission, he would have adopted a bolder policy.
It is charitable to suppose that Leisler was at this time really insane. He now committed the overt act.
Hearing that Ingoldsby and the councillors had gathered a force of several hundred men in the city, he sent orders to them to disperse under pain of being attacked and destroyed. Two hours for a reply was the ultimatum. It came in less time. It said that the Lieutenant-Governor proposed to pre- serve the peace, and that whoever should attack him would render themselves "public enemies to the crown of England." Some of Ingoldsby's soldiers were drawn up on parade, probably on the Bowling Green, as Leisler received the message. A gun from the fort was at once turned on them and fired. A
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house in which the soldiers lodged was also fired into. Two British soldiers were killed and several wounded. The fire was returned without injuring any of Leisler's men. Next day, March 19th, as both parties stood at bay confronting each other, the Archangel was signalled in the Narrows. Had she been really a celestial visitant, she could not have been more welcome. Governor Sloughter, be- ing informed of the condition of affairs, hurried in a pinnace to the city. Night fell ere he arrived, but he went at once to the City Hall, where his commission was read to the people. Their joyous shouts and acclamations, we are told, were heard by Leisler in the fort. The Governor and the coun- cillors then took the oath of office. It was eleven o'clock at night; nevertheless, Ingoldsby and his soldiers were despatched to the fort to demand it in the name of the king. Leisler would not comply until he had sent Sergeant Stoll, who had met the Governor abroad, to make sure of him as the real Sloughter. Stoll told Governor Sloughter that he was glad to find him the same man he had known in England. "Yes," was the quick retort, "I have been seen in England, and intend now to be seen in New York." Stoll, as an envoy, was ignored, how- ever, and Ingoldsby was again sent to the fort with orders for Leisler and those calling themselves his "council to report to the Governor at once, and to bring Bayard and Nicolls, the prisoners, with them. But Leisler was fruitful in expedients, and urged that it would be against all military precedent to surrender a fort at night. A third time Ingoldsby
A
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was sent, and a third time he was " contemptuously " refused. Then, it being past midnight, Governor, councillors, and messengers retired with an agree- ment to meet at an early hour next morning. The morning came, and Governor and council met promptly at the City Hall. In the interim Slough- ter had matured his plans. Taking no notice of a humble letter from Leisler, asserting his loyalty, and offering to give "an exact account of all his actions and conduct," he ordered Ingoldsby to go to the fort and command the men to lay down their arms, offer- ing pardon to all save Leisler and his council. In- goldsby did so. Leisler and his councillors were given up to the guards, and led prisoners to the City Hall. Then the heavy doors of the dungeons were thrown open, and Bayard and Nicolls, aged and emaciated almost beyond recognition, tottered out into the sunlight. They were met with congratu-
lations mingled with exclamations of pity.
For
thirteen months they had languished in prison, their estates plundered by a military despot, and their families exposed to the fury of a mob. Bayard and Nicolls were conducted to the City Hall, where they took the oath of office amid the cheers of the people. Leisler and his councillors were then led through the street to the fort, and thrust into the cells just vacated by their victims; the chain that Bayard had worn was even put upon Leisler's leg. A popular demand at once arose for the speedy trial and punishment of Leisler and his council. Sloughter, quite willing to escape the ordeal of sitting in judgment on them, agreed that a civil trial should be had. On Monday,
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March 23d, three days after the surrender, the prison- ers were examined and bound over for trial. The case was next given to the grand jury, which found a true bill against Leisler, Milborne, and eight others, and indicted them for treason and murder, " for hold- ing by force the king's fort against the king's Gover- nor, after the publication of his commission, and after demand had been made in the king's name, and in the reducing of which lives had been lost." Many other crimes might have been charged against the prisoners, but the prosecution wisely decided to bring only this, the penalty of which, if proven, was death.
The court sat March 30th, and the trial proceeded with that solemnity and stately ceremonial which then characterized English court procedure. It was a special court of Oyer and Terminer. The judges, too, had been specially appointed, and a very august tribunal they were, as they sat there clad in their black robes and full-bottomed wigs - Chief-Justice Dudley, Thomas Johnson, Sir Robert Robinson, former Governor of Bermuda, Jasper Hicks, Captain of the Archangel frigate, Lieutenant-Governor In- goldsby, Colonel William Smith, Major John Law- rence, Recorder Pinhorn, John Younge, and Isaac Arnold. They were gentlemen who had suffered little or nothing from the prisoners, and were consid- ered least prejudiced against them. The trial lasted eight days, and was watched with intense interest by every class of citizens. Not for sixty years would the city see another trial of such absorbing interest. The eight lesser prisoners pleaded not guilty to the
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charge. Leisler and Milborne declined to plead at all until the court should decide whether the king's letter to Nicholson had conferred the government on Leisler. The court referred the question to Govern- or Sloughter and his councillors, and their prompt reply was that neither in the king's letter, nor in the papers of the Privy Council, was there any authority for the prisoner to seize upon the government. This swept away any defence the prisoners may have hoped to make. Unless they could prove authority for their acts they stood convicted. Leisler and Mil- borne did the best that could be done under the cir- cumstances. They refused to plead, and appealed
to the king. They were therefore tried as " mutes." Leisler, Milborne and six of the eight other pris- oners were found guilty ; two were acquitted. Chief- Justice Dudley at once passed sentence of death upon the eight, there being but short shift in those days between trial and execution. The prisoners pleaded for a reprieve until the king's pleasure should be known, and the petition was for a time entertained, Sloughter having doubts as to his authority for sign- ing the death-warrant in case of an appeal to the king. In his letter to William accompanying the petition, Sloughter wrote : " Never greater villains lived, but I am resolved to wait your pleasure, if by any other means than hanging I can keep the coun- try quiet."
It was soon impressed upon him, however, that there was no security for the country's peace until the leaders, at least, were executed. The Dutch clergymen, it is said, openly advocated from the pul-
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pit the death of Leisler and Milborne. Ladies of the highest station, who had suffered from Leisler's acts, earnestly pleaded with the Governor to sign the death-warrant. . The most loyal and eminent men of the province came to him, declaring that there was no security for life or property while the leaders lived, as they could at any moment be rescued by a mob; they even said that they would remove from the country unless the sentence was carried out. There were counter-petitions, too, from the friends and families of the condemned, praying for clemency. At length news came from Albany that the Mohawks, incensed by certain acts of Leisler and his lieutenants while in power, were on the point of joining the French, and that nothing would have greater influence in quieting them than the death of their enemy.
At a meeting of the Governor and council held May 14th, it was " unanimously resolved " that, for the satisfaction of the Indians, and the assertion of the government and authority, and the prevention of insurrections and disorders for the future, it is abso- lutely necessary that the sentence pronounced against the principal offenders be forthwith put in execution." A minute of this action was sent to the Provincial Assembly-which the Governor had convened,-and returned with this endorsement : "This House, ac- cording to their opinion given, do approve of what his Excellency and Council have done."
Upon this grave counsel and advice, the Governor signed the death-warrant. On a dismal, rainy Sat- urday morning Leisler and Milborne were brought
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out to die. The gallows had been erected on what is now the east side of the City Hall Park, near the present site of the Sun newspaper office. A motley crowd assembled, and greeted the condemned, as they appeared, with oaths and ribald shouts, and were only prevented from doing them bodily harm by a strong guard of soldiers. Leisler met his fate with firmness and dignity. He made a long speech on the scaffold, from which we extract two sentences:
"So far from revenge do we depart this world, that we require and make it our dying request to all our relations and friends, that they should in time to come be forgetful of any injury done to us, or either of us, so that on both sides the discord and dissension (which were created by the Devil in the beginning) may, with our ashes, be buried in oblivion, never more to rise up for the trouble of fu-
ture posterity." And again : " All that for our dying comfort we can say concerning the point for which we are condemned, is to declare as our last words, before that God whom we hope before long to see, that our sole aim and object in the conduct of the government was to maintain the interest of our sovereign Lord and Lady and the reformed Protestant churches of these parts."
Perhaps the justest judgment that could be passed over this man is, that he was of unsound mind, crazed by religious fanaticism, fear of Popish plots, and un- wonted possession of unlimited power. His earnest prayer that dissension should end with his death was not however fulfilled: his faction continued to survive for generations, and was a thorn in the side of royal governors for half a century. When the
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appeal of Leisler came before King William, he de- clared that the sentence was a righteous one and sustained the judges. He restored the estates of the deceased to their heirs, however, on the ground of loyal services rendered by Leisler, and four years later, in 1695, Parliament, on petition, reversed the decree of attainder, thus removing the stigma of treason. The six minor prisoners condemned with Leisler and Milborne, were eventually released.
VIII.
THE ROMANTIC AGE.
A LITTLE more than two months after the execu- tion of Leisler, Governor Sloughter died suddenly, not without suspicion of having been poisoned. Lieutenant-Governor Ingoldsby took the helm of government for a brief period-from July, 1691, to August, 1692,-when he was succeeded by Colonel Benjamin Fletcher. This gentleman was a soldier, who had been advanced by brave service done their Majesties in the Low Countries. He was a courtier, too, a politic man, shrewd, pliant, persuasive, posses- sing many of the characteristics of the modern poli- tician-not to be commended for every thing he did, but perhaps the best man for the place that could have been found ; for he came to the government in "very troublous days" indeed. The French and Indians were pressing hard his northern frontiers, and the spirit of faction was rife in the city. The Leislerites, having recovered from their panic, were engaged in constant intrigues and collisions with the aristocratic party, so-called, the issue being the exe- cution, or "murder," as the former called it, of Leis- ler and Milborne.
Governor Fletcher's reign may be termed the
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romantic age of the city-the age of tradition and story, of privateer and pirate, of Captain Kidd and the Red Sea Men. We will consider this subject of piracy somewhat at length, from its rare literary interest, and because former historians have dwelt but briefly upon it. The privateers were successors of the "buccaneers," bodies of adventurers who, early in the sixteenth century, under the patronage of the English and French courts, established them- selves on the islands of the Caribbean Sea, and waged bitter war against the common enemy, the Spaniards, whose many rich and populous cities scattered along the Mexican and South American Coasts of that sea invited to attack. The privateer, who succeeded them, was more regular. He was a private citizen, owner of a swift merchant-vessel, whom his govern- ment in time of war commissioned to proceed against the enemy and kill, burn, and capture wherever he might meet him. If captured, the privateer's com- mission entitled him to be treated as a prisoner of war. The English, Dutch, and French were the first to adopt this arm of war, and it continued to be used by them until abolished by the treaty of Paris in 1856. If, however, a privateer turned his guns upon peace- ful nations not named in his commission, he became a pirate, and the common enemy of mankind. A Captain Petersen was the first American privateer of whom we have an account, and we know of him only from the fact that with his barque of twenty- two guns and seventy men he captured two French vessels off the Canadian coast, and not content with that exploit, attacked and carried the French fort
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