Conceived in Liberty (79 page)

Leisler’s dream of conquering Canada was a shambles; following the classic course of tyrants, the now desperate Leisler redoubled his tyranny to maintain himself in power. The New York Assembly met again in September 1690 and levied a tax of three pence per pound sterling on all property for military purposes. It also demanded the return, in three weeks, of all who had fled the colony—on the rather absurd enticement of a promised fair trial. A seventy-five-pound penalty was placed on anyone refusing a military or civilian appointment by Leisler. A 100-pound penalty was levied on everyone leaving Albany or Ulster without Leisler’s consent, and all emigres were ordered to return.

Again, resistance arose in New York to Leisler’s depradations. The town of New Rochelle continued evading Leisler’s order to all towns to name justices of the peace and tax collectors. In Queens County an armed revolt flared in October. The courts were suspended and Leisler directed the prohibition of anyone aiding or encouraging the rebels. Thomas Willett, who had participated in the previous personal assault on Leisler, now gathered 150 men for a march on New York. But Milborne’s armed group of 300 easily routed the rebel forces. The Kings County militia also showed signs of rebellion, but Milborne’s ample use of court-martials soon quelled that disturbance. Finally, Leisler tried desperately to collect the property tax, but the towns failed to name assessors and tax collectors and few of them paid. Petitions against Leisler were sent to London, old women taunted him on the street, and crowds stoned him, denouncing his tyranny and calling him such names as “dog driver,” “deacon jailer,” and “little Cromwell.”

Cracking in all directions, Jacob Leisler’s reign in New York was swiftly coming to an end in more ways than one. On March 19, 1691, Governor Henry Sloughter, appointed by the king almost two years before, finally made his long-delayed arrival in New York. Sloughter was thoroughly opposed to Leisler and his supposed “rabble” and thoroughly partial to the old oligarchy, as seen by his defense before the Lords of Trade of the alleged necessity of New York City’s port monopoly.

But before Sloughter could arrive, Leisler had more troubles. At the beginning of 1691, Major Richard Ingoldesby arrived at New York with a troop of English regulars. Ingoldesby demanded that Leisler surrender the fort, but Leisler stubbornly maintained that Ingoldesby had no written authority from Sloughter or the king. Both sides now began to recruit forces. Large numbers of militiamen joined Leisler in response to the menace of the royal troop. Meanwhile, Thomas Clark, veteran opponent of Leisler, was raising troops for Ingoldesby on Long Island and arresting some Leislerians. Flatbush and Kings County were also centers of recruitment by Ingoldesby, and Westchester arrested several
Leislerians. Civil war was now in the offing, although an uneasy truce permitted Ingoldesby to quarter his troops at the city hall. Both sides continued to threaten and to raise forces; Leisler darkly warned that all this was a papist plot against William and Mary and himself.

Most eager for war against Leisler were Ingoldesby’s theoreticians—the men appointed to Sloughter’s Council. This group, largely representing the old oligarchy, consisted of the
still
imprisoned Nicholas Bayard, Stephanus Van Cortlandt, Frederick Philipse, William Nicolls (who had been imprisoned along with Bayard), Gabriel Minvielle (the lone militia captain who had always been against the revolution), William Smith (an anti-Leislerian), Thomas Willett (who had led Long Island revolts against Leisler and had plotted the June 6 assault upon him), William Pinhorne (an English merchant who had fled Leisler tyranny to East New Jersey), Chidley Brooke (a relative of Sloughter), and the notorious Joseph Dudley (governor of the Dominion of New England before Andros). This group of advisers called on Ingoldesby to overthrow the Leisler rule.

On March 16 Leisler issued a proclamation ordering Ingoldesby to cease his preparations for war and demanded an answer in two hours. Civil war then ensued within the city with Ingoldesby capturing a blockhouse. Several hundred men on each side now skirmished with each other.

When Governor Sloughter finally arrived on the 19th, he stepped into a developing civil war. Leisler continued to delay surrendering the fort, but finally did so. It is possible that pressure by Leisler’s own men helped end his purposeless stubbornness. Since Leisler never proposed to mount a direct revolt against King William’s authority, his continued balkiness made little sense.

The old oligarchy now moved back in, thirsting for vengeance. Leisler and all his leading supporters were arrested and imprisoned. On the advice of his Council, Sloughter quickly created a special court with ten supposedly “unconcerned” judges: four bitter anti-Leislerians and six veteran royal officials and partisans of Andros and Sloughter. Three of Leisler’s most implacable enemies were assigned to prepare the evidence against the Leislerians, and the three prosecuting attorneys were also bitter enemies of the prisoners.

Charges against Leisler and his nine fellow-defendants were the maximum: treason and murder, including “traitorously levying war” upon the king. Instead of following the usual practice of sending the defendants to England for a sober trial, the enemies of Leisler determined on speedy “justice.” To say that the charges, let alone the procedure, were excessively harsh would be an understatement; after all, Leisler, as lieutenant governor and commander in chief, had been acting upon a plausible commission from the king. The conflict with
Ingoldesby, on which the charges rested, was a jurisdictional dispute, with legal lines hardly clear-cut.

Yet, by March 31 the ten defendants had been indicted for treason and murder by a grand jury. The trial proceeded rapidly. Finally, Leisler, Milborne, and six others (Gerardus Beekman, Abraham Gouverneur, Johannes Vermilge, Thomas Williams, Myndert Coerteus, and Abraham Brasher) were convicted and sentenced to death, and their property was confiscated by a bill of attainder. Numerous other Leislerians, such as Joost Stol, were indicted for riot. The Leisler jury, incidentally, was as packed as the special court of ten judges: three of them had been leaders in the attempted June 6 assassination of Leisler! Two of the defendants, however—Peter Delanoy and Samuel Edsall—were acquitted by the jury; this shocked people like Bayard, and later historians have hinted at bribery.

Governor Sloughter, at this point, began to lose his nerve about carrying out these mass executions on his own responsibility. He therefore reprieved the six lesser Leislerians and even asked for a royal pardon for them. The question now was what to do with Leisler and Milborne. Sloughter’s close friend, Nicholas Bayard, now led the pack calling for Leisler’s blood, as a warning against all future rebellion against the royal government. Three Dutch ministers close to the old oligarchy, led by Reverend Mr. Selyus, also called for death. The only minister pleading for reprieve was the Reverend Peter Daille, a Huguenot, who was fined by the new anti-Leisler Assembly for these activities. Opposing the oligarchs was the voice of the people, who once again rallied around their former champion. Petitions, with over 1,800 signatures, were circulated calling for Leisler’s reprieve. The sheriffs of Staten Island and other counties were ordered to arrest anyone circulating petitions for reprieve.

Sloughter’s Council, led by Bayard, was bent on death, and overrode the opposition of the relatively disinterested Dudley. The Assembly agreed, and Leisler and Milborne were executed on May 16, 1691. Sloughter was perhaps helped to decide for execution by a special gift of money from the anti-Leislerian Assembly. One interesting story about the hanging is that no carpenter could be found to supply a ladder, which had to be provided by the Reverend Mr. Selyus. If not strictly accurate, the story is indicative of the depth of popular feeling against the killing of Leisler. The revolutionary government in Massachusetts was, of course, none too pleased at this potential precedent; Rev. Increase Mather declared that the two men were “barbarously murdered.” But Massachusetts did not, like New York, have to face a strong and vindictive royal oligarchy.

The upshot of the Glorious Revolution for New York was that, by the spring of 1691, the self-governing regime of Leisler was ended and New York was again a royal colony, headed by a royal governor, with the old oligarchy back in power. But the retrogression was only partial;
Sloughter came bearing instructions for New York to have a regularly elected Assembly, an institution which that colony had never really had before. To this extent, considerable progress had been made since Dongan’s pre-Dominion government.

The first regular Assembly met at the end of March 1691. While it was anti-Leislerian, its actions of most lasting significance were those repealing the Carting Act—the provision for permanent financial support of the government—and the other acts of Dongan’s short-lived Assembly of 1683. The Assembly thus placed the governor on notice that though he could call and dissolve it at will, he was continually dependent on the Assembly for the raising of revenue. The new Assembly also greatly extended the definitions of rebellion and treason to include such vague offenses as disturbing “the peace... and quiet” of the government. All land grants were reconfirmed. The New York City Council passed tighter regulations for carters and made requirements for freemanship more restrictive.

The oligarchy was in power, but the Leislerians remained active and embittered. The quarrel was intensified by the numerous damage suits put through by the oligarchy against the former Leislerian leaders. And Delanoy, freed on the treason charge, was imprisoned by Sloughter for being Leisler’s collector of customs.

Governor Sloughter died in the summer of 1691 but his policy of vengeance was continued in full force by his acting successor, Major Ingoldesby, who was selected by the Council. The new governor, arriving in late summer 1692, was Benjamin Fletcher. Fletcher, who ruled during the 1690s, sided with the oligarchy but was not the zealot that Ingoldesby was. He finally agreed to release the six Leislerian prisoners as well as the minor convicts, and to restore their confiscated estates. But first he forced the Leislerians to admit their guilt, and he arbitrarily voided the election of several of them to the Assembly. Fletcher, moreover, continued to mutter threats of execution against them until they finally secured a full pardon from the Crown in 1694. Finally, Leisler was fully though posthumously vindicated when Parliament, in 1695, retroactively absolved Leisler and Milborne of guilt and annulled their convictions.

The end of turmoil in New York in 1691 still left the status of post-Glorious Revolution Massachusetts unresolved. By the spring of 1690, the Crown had dismissed the Massachusetts charges against Andros and his aides, but argument over the permanent settlement continued to rage. Finally, in October 1691, after almost two years of struggle over the type of new charter to be issued, the Crown promulgated the new Massachusetts charter.

The new charter, which fixed the course of Massachusetts government for three-quarters of a century, was part-way between the old charter and the royal absolutism of the Dominion. On the one hand, the self-government of the old charter was completely buried; Massachusetts
was now a
royal
colony, with a governor and lieutenant governor appointed by the Crown rather than elected by the people. Furthermore, the governor was the dominant ruler of the colony; all military and judicial officers were to be appointed by him, with one exception—admiralty courts, which enforced customs duties, would still depend on the Crown for their makeup. Moreover, the governor could veto any legislation. In addition, the General Court was to be called into being and dissolved at the governor’s command. On the other hand, in contrast to the totally dictatorial Dominion, there
was
an elected assembly—the House of Representatives, which was to levy taxes and pay the salary of the government officials, including the governor. This power over government salaries was a mighty weapon for the House to wield. The Council—the upper house of the General Court—was to be elected indirectly by the whole General Court rather than by the people (old charter) or royally appointed (the Dominion). Its membership, however, was subject to the governor’s veto, giving him substantial control over its affairs. Furthermore, the new Council was not nearly as powerful as the old Council of Assistants; the latter’s judicial powers were transferred to a new, appointed Supreme Court and its executive powers shifted to the new governor. Royal control was further provided by giving the king a veto of legislation and the power of appeal of major judicial decisions in the colony. In short, as a royal colony, Massachusetts’ formal political structure was quite close to that of Virginia or even of New York—especially after its newly formed Assembly exerted itself against the executive.

One of the most momentous features of the Massachusetts charter of 1691 was its change in the requirement for voting; its sole test was now either a modest freehold property yielding forty shillings in annual rent, or
any
property, personal or landed, with a total value of forty pounds sterling. No longer did Puritan church members have exclusive or even discriminatory rights to vote. Now everyone could vote who met the property qualifications, pitched so low as to make suffrage almost universal in the colony.
*
A lethal blow had at long last been delivered to the Puritan theocracy.

Liberty of conscience was granted by the charter to all Christians except Catholics. The vital land question was amicably settled by automatically reconfirming New England land titles, and by not requiring quitrents on any land to be granted in the future. All mineral rights were, happily, granted to the colony, but the king reserved to himself all trees with a diameter larger than two feet, for the use of the Royal Navy.

As a sweetener to Massachusetts for the deprivation of its old self-government, the new charter granted to Massachusetts the Maine towns, Pemaquid (eastern Maine, transferred from New York), Nova Scotia (newly captured from the French), and Plymouth. The Mason claims, as we have seen, kept New Hampshire as an independent royal colony, with the people struggling against the gubernatorial rule of the proprietary claimant.