Part 7 (1/2)

The Inhabitants generally were satisfied therewith, and Leisler's committee was dismissed, and a Council chosen to a.s.sist him in the government; but the members of the old government opposed all this and created a faction. This excited fear lest the Province should yet be delivered up to the French in Canada, which fear greatly agitated the Protestant population. The said faction also surrounded Captain Leisler and abused him with ill language and threats, and would have done violence to him, if they had not feared the people, who rescued him out of their hands, and imprisoned the ringleaders of the opposition. Mult.i.tudes also flocked into the city from the country, to defend the existing government, and it was with great difficulty that their zeal could be restrained. The prisoners were ultimately fined and discharged upon their own recognizance to keep the peace.

The Fort and City were therefore, now in a good condition, excepting a lack of ammunition. The Commission of all military men who had acted under Governors {159} Dongan and Andros, had been called in, and other Commissions issued in the name of their present Majesties, and only to those who were well affected thereto. But our efforts thus to secure their Majesties interests have been greatly misrepresented, and we have been loaded with reproaches; our actions have been called a Dutch plot, although three quarters of the inhabitants are of Dutch descent, and speak Dutch; and our ruin is threatened, if the government ever falls into the hands of our opponents.

To this lengthy defense Bayard and Nicolls made response as follows:

Jacob Leisler a man of desperate fortune, ambitiously did a.s.sume unto himselfe the t.i.tle of Lieutenant-Governor of this Province of New York, and chose a councel of ye meanest and most abject common people; made to himself a Broad Seale, which he called ye Seale of ye Province, with ye usuall armes of Kings of England; and affixed the same to some unlawful graunts of land within this Province; and commissionated under ye same Justices of ye Peace, in whose hartes were mischiefe. He const.i.tuted Courts of Oyer and Terminer, and tryed severall subjects for pretended treason, murther and other crimes. He taxed and levied monney upon their Majesties subjects to their grievous oppression and great impoverishment. When he wanted more money for his occasions, he forcebly robbed and spoiled, broke open doors and locx were he guissed it was to be found, and carried away to ye vallue of some thousands of pounds in money or goods; and all this against the {160} best Protestant subjects in the Province. He imprisoned whom he feared, without any other cause than that their integrity to ye Protestant interest, and fidelity to their Majesties, became a terroire to him; some of them after a tedious confignment, without collour of law, he whipt and branded; and some he kept in duresse so long as he held ye fort.

Upon one point, both the followers and opponents of Leisler agreed: there was no Dutch plot behind this revolution. ”The notion of a Dutch plott cannot be applicable to Leisler and his adherents,” said Bayard; ”the much greater part of Albany which wholly consists of Dutch people, and all the men of best repute for religion, estatte, and integrity of the Dutch nacon, throughout the whole Province, having alwaies been manifestly against Leisler and his society, in all their illegall and irregular proceedings.” To these representations their Majesties'

advisers made no reply, but the appointment of Governor of New York was given to Colonel Henry Sloughter, ”a profligate, needy, and narrow minded adventurer,” the selection of whom did little credit to the wisdom of William of Orange. All the papers from both factions were committed to this inefficient officer with instructions to examine the allegations strictly and impartially and to make a true report.

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In December, 1690, Sloughter set sail with several s.h.i.+ps and a body of troops. By some accident the vessels were separated, and the s.h.i.+p bearing Major Richard Ingoldesby, ”a rash, hot-headed man” who had served in Holland and recently returned from service in Ireland, arrived in the _Beaver_ two months before Sloughter's s.h.i.+p reached New York. His commission required him to obey the royal Governor, but did not give him authority to act as commander-in-chief in case of Sloughter's absence or death. Nevertheless Ingoldesby at once announced the appointment of Sloughter and demanded the surrender of the fort. Leisler replied by offering quarters for Ingoldesby's soldiers; but refused to surrender the fort till he saw the Major's commission.

Ingoldesby had no credentials whatever, but he issued a proclamation calling on the people and magistrates to aid him in enforcing the royal commission. Leisler issued a counter proclamation warning him at his peril not to attempt hostilities against the city or the fort; but on receiving a.s.surances that Ingoldesby had no intention of using force against the people of New York, he permitted the troops to land. The fort, however, he would not yield. With rival forces in the town, {162} peace was difficult to maintain. Neither commander trusted the other. Recrimination followed protest. Finally, on the 17th of March, Leisler fired on Ingoldesby's troops, killing two and wounding others.

At length on March 19, 1691, Sloughter entered the harbor of New York.

Representative anti-Leislerians hastened to board his s.h.i.+p and escorted him to the City Hall, where he took the oath of office at eleven o'clock at night. He immediately dispatched Ingoldesby to demand the surrender of the fort. Again Leisler's bigotry and obstinacy overcame his prudence. Instead of surrendering at once he dispatched a messenger bearing letters and warning him to look well at Sloughter and be sure he was no counterfeit. Sloughter informed Leisler's messenger that he intended to make himself known in New York as well as in England and ordered Ingoldesby for the second time to demand possession of the fort and to release from their prison Colonel Bayard and Mr.

Nicolls, that they might attend the council to which they had been appointed members.

Leisler refused either to surrender the fort or to release the prisoners but sent Milborne and De la Noy to endeavor to make terms.

Sloughter {163} imprisoned both envoys and ordered his frigate to hold itself in readiness to fire on the fort. Leisler, at length and too late realizing that resistance was useless, sent a letter to the Governor offering submission. For the third time Ingoldesby was ordered to demand the possession of the fort. This time the garrison yielded and Leisler was put under arrest.

With Milborne, now his son-in-law, and eight others, Leisler was arraigned before a court having inveterate royalists as judges. Two insurgents were acquitted. Six made their defense, were convicted of high treason, and were reprieved. Leisler and Milborne declined to plead and appealed to the King. They were, however, condemned and sentenced to death. Sloughter was reluctant to sign the death-warrants; but his a.s.sociates, more particularly Bayard, who had been imprisoned by Leisler, were determined on the execution. It is maintained that the Governor's signature was obtained at a banquet when he was under the influence of liquor, and that an officer stole with the warrant to the prison and ordered the victims led out for immediate execution. Be this as it may, Sloughter's compunctions were overcome and the death-warrants signed.

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The scaffold was erected at the lower end of the park and weeping people thronged about the victims. Leisler's dying speech, which was marked by neither anger nor bitterness, affirmed that he had no other aim than ”to maintain against Popery or any schism or heresy whatever the interest of our Sovereign Lord and Lady and the Reformed Protestant Churches” in these parts. The drop fell, the populace rushed up to claim some relics of their leader, the bodies were taken down, beheaded, and buried, and so the worthless Sloughter thought to make an end of ”a troublesome fellow.”

But the Leisler blood still flowed in the veins of the dead man's son, who never ceased fighting till in 1695 the attainder on the estate was removed. This action of the English Parliament was tantamount to a confession that Leisler had been unjustly accused, tried, and hanged, and that these, the only people ever put to death for political reasons on the soil of New York, died as misguided martyrs, not as criminal conspirators.

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CHAPTER X

PRIVATEERS AND PIRATES

Sloughter did not live long to enjoy his triumph over Leisler, and his death came so suddenly that the anti-Leislerites raised their eyebrows and whispered ”poison,” while the Leislerites shrugged their shoulders and sneered ”delirium tremens.” Neither faction seemed particularly reluctant to part with him.

Colonel Benjamin Fletcher, who was sent over from England as the next Governor, arrived in New York in the summer of 1692. His rule is chiefly memorable for the founding of Trinity Church and for the encouragement which he gave to piracy. These strangely differing activities were both obnoxious to the Dutch burghers, who were almost as strongly opposed to the Church of England as to that of Rome, and who suspected the Governor of conniving at the practice of piracy or at least of closing his eyes to the source of the {166} doubloons of Spain, the louis d'or of France, and other strange coin which at this epoch had begun to circulate together with ivory and sandalwood in the little town at the tip of Manhattan Island.

In one sense Fletcher cannot be held responsible for the existence of piracy in the colony or on the high seas. The inst.i.tution was as old as navigation. Moreover the issuance of letters of marque in the war with Spain had legalized privateering, which was so near akin to piracy that it was often hard to distinguish between the two. Even royalty was not above accepting a share in the questionable spoils of the sea, as in the well-known case of Queen Elizabeth and the booty which Drake brought home.

It is easy, therefore, to guess the source of the Eastern rugs, the carved teakwood furniture, and stuffs from India looms which adorned the houses of the rich men of New York. On the streets pirate captains were pointed out as celebrities. One of them, Edward Coates, presented Madam Fletcher with jewels, silks, and cashmere shawls. Thomas Tew, another ”filibustier,” is described by a contemporary as a slight, dark man about forty years of age, who wore a uniform consisting of a blue jacket bordered with gold lace and short {167} trousers of white linen covering his legs to the knee, below which came embroidered stockings.

Around his neck he wore a chain of beaten gold and from his belt protruded a dagger's hilt set with sparkling jewels.