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LORD BELLOMONT'S STORMY REIGN.
evil cannot be swept away in a moment, and the at- tempt if made is apt to provoke a revolution. The new Governor ordered summary seizures of goods, and arbitrary arrests of persons on suspicion ; he dismissed · high officers of government without a hearing, and removed members of the council to supply their places with his partisans; he also pre- pared a bill for vacating the lands granted by former governors, and prohibiting any one person from holding more than one thousand acres in the prov- ince. One of the land grants aimed at was that of Domine Dellius, of Albany, which had been pur- chased by him of the Indians, and had been con- firmed by Fletcher. Another was a grant made by Fletcher to Trinity Church. Thus in a brief period Lord Bellomont found arrayed against him in de- fence of their rights the clergy, the landed aristoc- racy, the merchants, and the king's officers. The province was torn with the dissensions of the fac- tions thus created. Domine Dellius sailed for Eng- land to lay his grievances before the king. Rev. William Vesey, Rector of Trinity Church, left the Governor out in his prayers on the Sabbath, and openly prayed that Domine Dellius might have a pros- perous voyage and be successful with the king. The Governor seems to have had no friends, except the reinstated Leislerites. Meantime Colonel Fletcher, smarting under the imputations cast upon him, had been clamoring to have his accounts with the govern- ment settled that he might proceed to England, armed with his vouchers, and have his accounts in- vestigated by the Lords of Trade. Having, he said,
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held a commission under the crown for thirty-five years without reproach, " he did not think he should become a castaway in the rear of his days." It is proper to add that in a subsequent examination before the above-named body the charges against him were dismissed as groundless.
In 1699, Bellomont proceeded to Boston to attend to affairs of government in that quarter, and while there had the pleasure of arresting his former friend and whilom associate, Captain Kidd. This person- age was either a very great rascal, or a man greatly wronged, probably the latter. On leaving New York in quest of pirates, he had proceeded to the Indian seas, where, as he declared, his men mu- tinied and forced him to embark in a course of piracy. While the Governor was in Boston, Kidd came into Gardiner's Bay, on the eastern coast of Long Island, with a sloop, having left his "great Moorish ship," the Quidah Merchant, in the West In- dies, and from that point despatched a message to Lord Bellomont, saying that his men had forced him into piracy, and offering to give up all his treasure, of which he had a large amount, if he could be as- sured a free pardon. Bellomont said in reply that if Kidd would deliver himself up, and could establish his innocence, he should not be molested. Kidd accordingly came to Boston, where he was arrested and thrown into prison, and on examination was remanded to England for trial. He was hanged on Execution Dock in 1701.
On the 5th of March, 1701, Governor Bellomont died suddenly, and was buried with due honors in
LORD BELLOMONT'S STORMY REIGN. 189
the chapel of the fort. When the latter was levelled in 1790, his leaden coffin was removed, it is said, to St. Paul's Churchyard, although no monument marks his grave. What the outcome of his government would have been had he lived, it is impossible to say, but as it was, he left the colony in a much more un- satisfactory condition than he found it.
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XI.
MIDDLE COLONIAL PERIOD.
THE period between 1701 and 1764 is barren of events of great inportance, and may be passed over with brief reference to events of special significance. During this period the French and Indian wars troubled the peace of the city, and more than once she was called upon to furnish men and money for the protection of her northern frontiers. For some time the Leislerites also made much trouble, but in time the bitterness of the quarrel subsided. On the 7th of March, 1702, King William III. died, after a reign of thirteen years, and Queen Anne was at once proclaimed. So excellent a ruler was she that her subjects called her " good Queen Anne." She gave many gifts to struggling churches, and among others, in 1705, Lord Cornbury being Governor, bestowed on Trinity Church the Annetje Jans estate, a tract of some sixty acres above Chambers Street on the west side of Broadway. This was in addition to the King's Farm, before mentioned, and although at that time of little value, now yields large revenues. Lord Lovelace succeeded Lord Cornbury as Gover- nor, and on the former's death, in 1709, Colonel Robert Hunter was appointed Governor. This gen-
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MIDDLE COLONIAL PERIOD.
tleman was a man of culture and refinement, who, in England, had enjoyed the friendship of Swift, Addi- son, Steele, and other wits of Queen Anne's reign, and who corresponded with them while in this coun- try. He was accompanied by quite a fleet of vessels bearing three thousand Palatines, Protestant Ger- mans who had been forced from their homes on the Rhine by the French armies, and had sought refuge in England. It was the design of the English min- ister to plant them on the colony's northern frontiers to serve as a barrier against the French and Indians, and also to employ them in producing naval stores which were then much in demand. And as the poor people were utterly penniless, Queen Anne agreed to give them a free passage to this country, and to maintain them for a specified time until they should be in a position to support themselves. Newburgh, Germantown, the valleys of the Schoharie and Mo- hawk, and a portion of Pennsylvania, were largely settled by these people.
During Governor Hunter's reign, a serious upris- ing of the negro slaves occurred. These were mostly Africans, as barbarous as when in their native wilds; and in 1712, a few of them, who had been badly treated by their masters, formed a plot to massacre the people indiscriminately. They met at midnight in an orchard not far from the present Maiden Lane, armed with guns, swords, butcher's knives, and other weapons, and, setting fire to an out-house, struck down the citizens who came running to put it out. Nine men were thus murdered and six severely wounded before any could escape and give the alarm ;
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THE STORY OF NEW YORK.
but at length the news reached the fort, and the Governor sent a detachment of soldiers to the scene, at the sight of whom the conspirators fled to the forests on the northern part of the island. Sentries were stationed at the ferries that night, and next day the militia was called out, and by beating the wood, succeeded in capturing all but six of the crimi- nals, who committed suicide rather than suffer the vengeance of the whites. Those taken, twenty-one in number, were condemned and executed, several being burned at the stake. A similar plot was dis- covered in 1741, of which the reader will find an ex- tended account in the chapter on colonial manners and customs.
In 1725 quite an event occurred in the birth of the first newspaper, the New York Gazette. It was, indeed, an infant when compared with our present mammoth dailies, being printed on a half sheet of foolscap. It was filled with custom-house entries and foreign news, and appeared weekly. William Bradford, the government printer, was the editor and publisher.
In 1730 another event occurred in the granting of a new city charter, giving increased privileges, which, from the fact of its having been granted during Gov- ernor Montgomery's term of office, is known as the Montgomery Charter.
Nine years after its inception the Gasette found a rival in a new paper, called the Weekly Journal. The Journal was edited by John Peter Zenger, one of the Palatines who had come over with Governor Hunter in 1710, and who had been apprenticed to
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Bradford the printer. The new paper supported the party opposed to the Governor ; in fact, it had been established as the organ of the Whig or popular party. There was nothing that the Journal could do to bring the "aristocrats," as it called the Gov- ernor's party, into contempt that it did not do. It criticised Governor, Councillors, Assemblymen, everybody and every thing connected with the ruling class. It made use of squibs, lampoons, ballads, wit- ticisms, satire, when such would serve its ends, and is noteworthy as furnishing the first instance where the power of the press was invoked in aid of or against a political party. Bradford, who, as the State printer, espoused the Governor's cause, replied in his Gazette, but his articles lacked the pith and vigor of those in the Journal, some of which were written by the ablest men of the city. At length the Govern- or's council pronounced four issues of the Weekly Journal "libellous,"as containing many things " tend- ing to sedition and faction, and to bring his Majesty's government into contempt," and ordered them burned by the public hangman, at the same time directing that the mayor and other city magistrates should attend the ceremony; but the magistrates declined to obey the council's behest, declaring it to be an arbitrary and illegal act, an opinion which was shared by most of the citizens. But when, a few days later, Zenger was seized and thrown into prison on a charge of libel, the city was wild with excite- ment. The same spirit which thirty years later re- sisted the Stamp Act, was exhibited then. Men clearly perceived that the right of the public press
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THE STORY OF NEW YORK.
to openly criticise measures of government was in danger, and rallied, not so much to the support of Zenger as to the defence of a free press. The tidings created the greatest excitement throughout the colo- nies, and the issue of the trial was awaited with the deepest interest.
If Governor Cosby had been a wise man, able to gauge the popular feeling, he would not have forced the issue ; but he was not wise, and the trial of Zen- ger for libel was decided on. The leaders of the popular party in New York at this time, were two lawyers-William Smith and James Alexander. Smith had been Recorder of the city, and had filled other offices with credit, and was noted for his cap- tivating eloquence. Alexander had been Surveyor- General, and had also a great reputation as a lawyer. These two gentlemen now volunteered as counsel for Zenger, but at the outset were betrayed into an in- discretion which led to their removal from the bar. They boldly questioned the legality of the commis- sions of Chief-Justice De Lancey and of Justice Phil- lipse, the two judges composing the court, on the ground that they were not worded in the usual form, and had been issued by the Governor without con- sent of the council. The judges considered this act gross contempt of court, and excluded the offenders from further practice. " You have brought it to that point, sirs," said Judge De Lancey, " that either we must go from the bench or you from the bar." John Chambers was assigned as counsel for Zenger ; at the same time the disbarred attorneys hastened to Phil- adelphia, and secured for the defence Andrew Ham-
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ilton, who was reputed the greatest and most elo- quent lawyer of his day. At the same time through the press, at clubs, and by private conversation they made the public fully acquainted with the merits and demerits of the case.
When the trial came on, in July, 1735, Hamilton
MERCHANTS' EXCHANGE, 1827.
appeared armed for the fray, and was greeted by the crowded court-room as the champion of popular rights. His first contention was that the newspaper articles charged as false, scandalous, malicious, and seditious libels, contained only the truth, and could not, therefore, be libellous. Brad- ley, the king's Attorney-General, took exception to
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THE STORY OF NEW YORK.
this, and quoted the old English law, that even the truth, if repeated maliciously, with intent to de- fame and injure another, became a libel, and was punishable as such. The legal battle raged all sum- mer, with varying fortunes for the combatants. At length there came a day when the case was given to the jury. The court's charge had been against the prisoner, but after a few moments' deliberation the jury returned a verdict of " not guilty." It was re- ceived with the wildest expressions of delight by the crowds within and without the court-house. Ham- ilton became the hero of the hour, and would have been borne to his hotel on the shoulders of the peo- ple but for his emphatic protest. As it was, the cor- poration of the city tendered him a public dinner, at which he was presented by the mayor with the freedom of the city in a gold box ; the same evening a grand ball was given in his honor. This trial is generally regarded as having secured the freedom of the press in America ; it is also interesting to us, as tending to create and sharply define the two great parties of a generation later.
The event of the year 1752 was the building, by subscription, at the foot of Broad Street, of the Royal Exchange, for merchants. The building was supported on arches, the lower story being open- much as markets in southern cities now are. One room in the upper story was set apart as a meeting room for the merchants ; a coffee-room, which later became a famous resort, was opened in one end. The Exchange stood until 1827, when it was suc- ceeded by a finer building on Wall Street. It was
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KING'S COLLEGE.
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THE STORY OF NEW YORK.
the home of the first organization of merchants in the port, the present Chamber of Commerce not hav- ing been founded until 1769.
The closing days of British rule in New York were marked by the founding of the city's noblest insti- tution of learning-Columbia College. For several years prior to 1751, sums of money had been raised by.public lotteries and other means for the founding of a college in the city. In that year it was learned that £3,443 had been raised, and a bill was passed by the Assembly naming ten trustees to take charge of it. The next year the vestry of Trinity Church of- fered to donate from the estate granted them by Queen Anne a site and the necessary grounds for a campus. This offer was accepted by the trustees, and in 1753 they invited the Rev. Dr. Samuel John- son, a clergyman possessing excellent qualifications for the place, to be the first president. His salary was £250 per annum. The vestry gave to the col- lege the use of their large room in the church build- ing, and here in the autumn of 1753 the college was opened with an entering class of ten. The charter, signed by Acting Governor De Lancey, October 31, 1754, named the new college " King's" after the ven- erable institution on the banks of the Cam. On August 23, 1756, the corner-stone of the new building was laid by Governor Hardy with appropriate cere- monies. Its site included the whole block now bounded by College Place, Barclay, Church, and Murray streets-a beautiful situation at that time, with its surroundings of groves and green fields, and its fine view of the Hudson.
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MIDDLE COLONIAL PERIOD.
The first Commencement was held in June, 1758, and the new building was first opened to the students in May, 1760. In 1763 Dr. Johnson resigned, and Dr. Myles Cooper, a fellow of Queens College, Ox- ford, who had accepted a professorship in the college the preceding year, succeeded to the presidency. During the Revolution the college was dismissed and its building used as a hospital. On its reorganization in 1787, it was given the name Columbia, any thing savoring of royalty being then exceedingly odious to American ears.
XII.
THE PEOPLE DURING THE COLONIAL PERIOD.
QUITE a number of distinguished gentlemen ac- companied Sir Edmond Andros to New York in 1678. Among them was the Rev. James Wooley, a recent graduate of Cambridge University, who came as chap- lain to the king's forces in New York. On returning to England, Mr. Wooley published a little book called, " A Two Years' Journal in New York," which was eagerly read by the public of that day, curious to know something of the Duke's new possessions. We transcribe from this book some pleasant descrip- tions of the city and its domestic life in 1678-80, pre- serving the quaint English in which they were written.
"The country," he says, "is of a sweet and wholesome breath, free from those annoyances which are commonly ascribed by naturalists for the insalubrity of any country, viz., south or southeast winds, stagnant waters, lowness of shoals, inconstancy of weather, and the excessive heat of the summer ; it is gently refreshed, fanned, and allayed by constant breezes from the sea. It does not welcome guests and strangers with the seasoning distempers of fevers and fluxes, like Virginia, Maryland, and other plantations. Nature kindly drains and purgeth it by
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THE COLONIAL PERIOD.
fontanels and issues of running waters in its irriguous valleys, and shelters it with the umbrellas of all sorts of trees from pernicious lakes, which trees and plants do undoubtedly, tho' insensibly, suck in and digest into their own growth and composition those subterranean parti- cles and exhalations which otherwise would be attracted by the heat of the sun, and so become matter for infec- tions, clouds, and malign atmospheres. ... I myself, a person seemingly of a weakly stamen, and a valetudinary constitution, was not in the least indisposed in that cli- mate during my residence there the space of three years."
The people he found very hospitable, though "a clan of high-flown religionists." The two clergymen -the Lutheran and the Dutch Reformed-he criti- cised as severely as the Labadists did him.
"They behaved themselves one toward another so shily and uncharitably, as if Luther and Calvin had be- queathed and entailed their virulent and bigoted spirits upon them and their heirs forever. They had not visited or spoken to each other with any respect for six years together before my being there, with whom I being much acquainted, I invited them both, with their vrows, to a supper one night unknown to each other, with an obliga- tion that they should not speak one word in Dutch, under the penalty of a bottle of Madeira, alleging I was so im- perfect in that language that we could not manage a sociable discourse. So accordingly they came, and at the first interview they stood so appalled, as if the ghosts of Luther and Calvin had suffered a transmigration, but the amaze soon went off with a salve tu quoque and a bottle of wine, of which the Calvinist dominie was a true carouser, and so we continued our mensalia the whole evening in
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THE STORY OF NEW YORK.
Latin, which they both spoke so fluently and promptly that I blushed at myself, with a passionate regret, that I could not keep pace with them. The inhabitants," he continues, "both English and Dutch, were very civil, amongst whom I have often wished myself and family, to whose tables I was frequently invited, and always con- cluded with a generous bottle of Madeira."
And he has this account of one of the amusements of the day :
" We had very good diversion in an orchard of Mr. John Robinson, of New York, where we followed a bear from tree to tree, upon which he could swarm like a cat, and when he was got to his resting-place, perched upon a high branch, we despatched a youth after him with a club to an opposite bough, who, knocking his paws, he comes grumbling down backwards with a thump, so we after him again."
It seems scarcely credible that only two hundred years ago, between Cedar Street and Maiden Lane, men took bears by shaking them, like fruit, from the orchard trees.'
Every New Year's Day, our author goes on to say, the English observed "a neighborly commerce of presents." Some sent him "a sugar loaf," some " a pair of gloves," some " a bottle or two of wine." One day he saw two " Dutch boors" grappling each other under his windows.
" I called up an acquaintance and asked him to fetch a kit full of water and discharge it at them, which im- mersion cooled their courage and loosed their grap- ples. So,". he adds, "we used to part our mastiffs
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THE COLONIAL PERIOD.
in England. The city of New York," he goes on to say, "in my time was as large as some market towns with us, and all built the London way : the garri- son side of a high situation and a pleasant prospect ; the island it stands on all a level and champain. The diver- sion, especially in the winter season, used by the Dutch, is aurigation, i. e., riding about in wagons. And, upon the ice it is admirable to see men and women as it were flying upon their skates from place to place with markets upon their heads and backs."
Some values given in this book will be of interest to readers of to-day.
"Wampum," he says, "is more prized than gold and silver. Beaver skins are also a circulating medium. Good, merchantable beaver is worth Ios. 3d. per pound ; minks, 5s .; grey foxes, 3s .; otters, 8s .; raccoons, Is. 5d .; deer skins, 6d .; bear skin, 7s .; black otter, 20s .; fishers, 3s .; wolf skin, 3s .; Barbadoes rum, Iod. per gallon ; mo- lasses, 5os. per barrel ; sugar, 12s. per 100 pounds ; 'new negroes,' i.e., those just imported, £12 or £14 ; if they can speak English, £16 or £17, and at New York £35 to £40 (whereupon," he says, "let me observe, the Indians look on these negroes or blacks as an anomalous issue, mere Edomites, hewers of wood and drawers of water) ; Long Island wheat, 3s. a skipple (a third of a bushel) ; Sopus wheat, one half a crown ; Indian meal, 15s. per 100 pounds ; bread, 18s. per 100 pounds ; pork, £3 per barrel of 240 pounds ; beef, 30s. per barrel ; butter, 6d. per pound ; tobacco, 2}d. per pound. The best liquors," he observes, "are Fiall (Fayal), Passado, and Madeira wines, at 2s. per bottle ; the best ale is of wheat malt from Sopus, about sixty miles from New York by water. Syder is 12s. per
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barrel ; for quaffing liquors, rum punch, and brandy punch, not compounded and adulterated as in England, but pure water and pure nants."
When our author returned home he took with him as mementoes of the country, "a gray squirrel, a parrott, and a raccoon." While Mr. Wooley was preaching in New York, two young travellers from Germany, in queer scollop hats and long cloaks, came to the city-members of a sect of German pietists, called the Labadists, deputed by their co- religionists to seek a location in this country for a community. These men had sharp eyes, and went prying all about the colony, picturing the things they saw with both pen and pencil. Among other things, they heard Mr. Wooley preach at the fort, and were no better pleased with him than he was with the Dutch domines.
"After the prayers and ceremonies," they wrote, "a young man went into the pulpit, who thought he was performing wonders ; he had a little book in his hand, out of which he read his sermon, which was about a quarter of an hour long. With this the services were concluded, at which we could not be sufficiently as- tonished."
The Labadists spent some time in New York with kind friends, who regaled them on "milk and peaches, fish and fruit." One day, they called on Jean Vigne, the ancient miller, who was the first male child born of European parents in New York. On September 29, 1679, they set out for a journey through Long Island. Crossing the ferry, they went
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THE COLONIAL PERIOD.
up a hill, "along open roads and woody places, and through a village called Breucklen, which has a small ugly church standing in the middle of the road." At the farm-house of Simon de Hart, where they spent the night, they had for supper, a roasted haunch of venison, a goose, a wild turkey, and oysters, both raw and roasted ; and sat up with their host late into the night, before a hickory fire that roared half-way up the chimney. They visited New Utrecht, and were entertained by Jacques Cortelyou, who lived in a large stone house, one of several in the village, and was a doctor of medicine, a land surveyor, and mathematician. Owing to sickness in his family, they were obliged to sleep in the barn, which they did on straw spread with sheepskins, "in the midst of the continual grunting of hogs, squealing of pigs, bleating and coughing of sheep, barking of dogs, crowing of cocks, and cackling of hens." Afterward they returned slowly to New York, noting the Indian villages, the wild grapes, peach orchards, and fields of watermelons by the way, and finished their travels by a journey up the Hudson and through New Jersey.
From the statements of these travellers it would appear that at that time a primitive state of affairs existed. But with the advent of the English the order of society gradually changed. Dutch social life was democratic in tone, simple, domestic, unos- tentatious. The English social structure, however, was founded on caste. There was a lower, middle, and upper class, each with separating walls so strong that few could break them down. Some of the
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