We must now take a hasty glance at the colonies, which we left at the eve of the Revolution of 1688, and discover how this great change affected them.
We have seen the Grand Model constitution of Carolina fall before the wishes of the people, and a more practical and popular form of government take its place. In 1694, considerable dissatisfaction existed in the colony owing to contentions between Dissenters and Churchmen, who, though forming but a small minority, yet demanded exclusive privileges. It was therefore advised by Thomas Smith, who had succeeded Philip Ludwell as governor, that in order to give respectability to the office, and to restore harmony between the contending parties, one of the proprietaries himself should be sent out as governor. The young Earl of Shaftesbury was elected to this office, but he declining it, John Archdale, an honest Quaker proprietary, was chosen.
Archdale, as might be expected, gave the Dissenters a majority in the council, as they formed a majority in the colony; he also appeased the discontent which the system of quit-rents had caused, by remitting them for three or four years, and forgiving the arrears due—a very politic act, as it would have been next to impossible to collect them. He was a wise and humane man, and not only succeeded in quieting the discontents and disputes of the colonists, but established an amicable relationship with the Indians by an act of humanity. He protected the natives round Cape Fear from kidnappers, and they in return engaged to befriend shipwrecked mariners on their coast. Spite of his peace principles, he yet raised a militia-force for the defence of the colony, excusing however all from being enrolled who could plead scruples of conscience against it. With the Spaniards of St. Augustine he also established friendly relations, by ransoming four Indian Catholic priests, prisoners among the Yamasees, and sending them back to St. Augustine. “I shall return your kindness,” was the reply of the Spaniard; and when an English vessel soon afterwards was wrecked on the coast of Florida, and the crew taken captive by Indians, they were ransomed by him.
Archdale soon brought the affairs of Carolina into a flourishing condition; the fame of her prosperity attracted to her soil industrious Scotch emigrants, as well as settlers from Massachusetts; she was in fact looked upon as a sort of “American Canaan flowing with milk and honey.”
Archdale having thus, by his wisdom, patience and labour, laid a firm foundation for a most glorious superstructure, he appointed Joseph Blake, son of that Joseph Blake, brother of the admiral, who twenty years before led a colony of Dissenters into Carolina, as his successor, and returned to England. Scarcely, however, was Archdale gone, than Blake, to satisfy the importunate church party, endowed the episcopal church at Charleston with a parsonage and annual stipend; and though the Huguenots, who had suffered so long disabilities on account of religion and country, were very properly enfranchised, yet were Catholics excluded from liberty of conscience, which was granted to all other Christians. Again religious, or rather irreligious, contentions raged violently. Nathaniel Moore, the successor of Blake, not only established the episcopal form of worship, but excluded all Dissenters from any share in the government. The Dissenters, indignant at this arbitrary and unjust exclusion, appealed to the British parliament in 1706, and these acts were declared contrary to the laws of the charter. They were repealed therefore by the colonial assembly; but though the disabilities of the Dissenters were removed, the Church of England remained the established religion of the province until the American Revolution.
Party spirit and strife had entered the colony, not only as regarded religion, but on the questions of finance and quit-rents; nevertheless the colony continued to flourish.
Rice, of which a bag had accidentally been brought to Charleston in a vessel from Madagascar at the time of Archdale’s government, and distributed among various planters, had been cultivated at first as a matter of curiosity, but was now becoming a staple product of the colony, and a great source of wealth. So important had it become indeed, in 1704, that an act of parliament placed it amongst the “enumerated articles.” The cultivation of this grain led to the large importations of negroes which yearly took place into Carolina.
The fur-traders of Carolina adventured far into the interior; the oak of the inland forest was cleft into staves for the West Indies, and the pine furnished masts, boards and joists, tar and turpentine. These naval stores, however, were rather the produce of the hardier North Carolina, where but few negro slaves were to be found, and the inhabitants were of a much more sturdy and independent character. “North Carolina,” says the historian, “like ancient Rome, was famed as the sanctuary of runaways. Seventy years after its origin, it is described as a country where there is scarce any form of government; and it long continued to be said, with but slight exaggeration, that in North Carolina every one did that which was right in his own eyes, paying tribute neither to God nor to Cæsar.” But in this lawless state, where there was neither church nor creed, where “Quakers, Atheists, Deists and other evil-disposed persons,” lived a life of freedom and peace, all went well; and the stone which marks the grave, beneath the shade of a large cedar-tree, of Henderson Walker, the governor in 1694, records simply that “North Carolina, during his administration, enjoyed tranquillity.”
But to this irreligious state, as it was considered, the proprietaries determined to put an end, by establishing episcopacy as the religion of the colony; and Robert Daniel was sent over by them as deputy-governor for this purpose. The apple of discord was now thrown into the colony, and long and bitter disputes followed, the Quakers being accused as the principal fomenters of these distractions. The colony was broken up into two factions, and each party in 1706 had their own governor and their own house of representatives, neither of which were able to gain the ascendancy—the one, of which Thomas Cary was head, wanting a legal sanction; the other, led by William Glover, popular favour. At length, Edward Hyde, a relative of Queen Anne’s, was sent over, in the hope of restoring order; and he, as deputy-governor of North Carolina, was to receive as usual his commission from Tynte, the governor of South Carolina; but Tynte was dead when he arrived, and the turbulent people of North Carolina paid him no respect. Affairs grew desperate; the friends of Hyde took up arms to assert his power, and called in the aid of Spotswood, an experienced soldier and governor of Virginia. But Spotswood, though vehement against “the mutinous spirit of North Carolina, yet pleaded the difficulties of marching forces into a country so cut up with rivers;” besides which he had no troops but militia, and Virginia herself, at least the counties bordering on Carolina, “were stocked with Quakers;” and he only sent a party of marines from the guardship as an evidence of his good disposition. Cary and the leaders of his party having, however, appeared in Virginia with the intention, as they said, of appealing to England in defence of their actions, were compelled by Spotswood to take their passage in a man-of-war just then returning.
Whilst all these disturbances were going forward, North Carolina increased greatly in population. Disturbances, in fact, in these young American states, seem to have been merely like the ebullitions of vigorous youth, which grows in spite of them, and through which all their powers are brought into exercise. In 1698, the first settlements were made on Pamlico River, the Indians of that vicinity having been nearly destroyed by fever and the ravages of war with more powerful tribes. In 1707, a number of French Protestants removed into Carolina from Virginia; and a few years later, a hundred German families from the Palatinate, whence they were driven by the devastations of war and religious persecution, found a home there also, 250 acres of land being assigned by the proprietaries to each family.
The Revolution produced no ill effects in Virginia. Francis Nicholson, who in the reign of James had been expelled from New York by the insurgents, was the first governor of Virginia under William III.; and Andros, “fresh from imprisonment in Massachusetts,” was the second. To Nicholson Virginia was indebted for the establishment of the College of William and Mary, which was endowed by a gift of quit-rents from the king and a royal domain, and by a tax of a penny on every pound weight of tobacco exported to the other colonies. To Andros it owes the preservation of what few annals of the province had escaped the destruction of neglect, time and civil war.
Though the powers granted to the governor were exorbitant—“the armed force, the revenue, the interpretation of the law, the administration of justice, the church, all being under his control and guardianship”—the spirit of independence was vigorous in Virginia; and when, in 1691, the revenue being exhausted by the governor and his favourites, additional supplies were demanded, the assembly claimed the right, and maintained it too for some time, of nominating a treasurer of their own, and when finally this right was refused, declined to contribute their quota for the defence of the colonies against France. Nay indeed, being aware of the revenue derived by the mother-country from the duties on tobacco, “they made,” says old Quarry, “a nice inquiry into the circumstances of government, and concluded that the assembly itself was entitled to all the rights and privileges of an English parliament.” As regarded the established church, also, these independent colonists carried things very much in their own way. The Bishop of London might license, and the governor might recommend, a minister, but if the congregation did not like him they would not have him; and by refusing, spite of all protests, to accept a minister as an incumbent for life, but merely as a servant of the congregation from year to year, they kept the power in their own hands. Virginia was the opposite of Massachusetts; and though some of the parishes were so large that in many cases the inhabitants lived fifty miles from the church, the assembly would not be at the expense of altering the bounds, though it was threatened with “paganism, atheism, or sectaries.” Finally, this obstinacy with regard to the clergy led to a collision with the crown. In the meantime great was the liberty and great the enjoyment of Virginia. She had no large towns, no marts of commerce; “as to outward appearance,” it was said, “Virginia looked like a wild desert,” and in England it was reported to be “one of the poorest, miserablest and worst countries in all America.” Tobacco was still the general currency, and the colony having no vessels of its own, the merchants’ ships lay for months waiting for the cargoes which their boats picked up at the various plantations.
The principles of liberty for which Bacon had perished were not by any means dead. “Pernicious opinions, fatal to royal prerogative,” says an old writer, “were improving daily;” and though the Virginians resented any charge of republicanism, yet the colonial mind was, in effect, strongly biased that way. From the insurrection of Bacon, for about three-quarters of a century, Virginia enjoyed uninterrupted peace.
In 1710, Governor Spotswood penetrated the Blue Ridge, a portion of the Allegany chain, an enterprise which had not been attempted since the days of Sir William Berkeley; and though settlers were slow to advance into these new regions, yet the Indian trader, gradually crossing the Alleganies, brought back knowledge of the country on the Ohio and the western lakes.
The English Revolution, which destroyed the doctrine of legitimacy, was fatal to the claims of Lord Baltimore. He had left Maryland, to assert his rights in England, just before the deposition of James, entrusting the administration of the colony to nine deputies; and these having hesitated for some time to proclaim the new sovereign, a rumour gained ground of a plot between the Catholics and Indians for the murder of the Protestants, and an armed association was formed for asserting the rights of King William and for the defence of the protestant faith.
This rumour was utterly baseless, but the Catholics were compelled to surrender all power of government, and the king proceeded, against every claim of justice, to deprive Lord Baltimore of his charter, though no charge existed against him but that of being a Catholic. In 1692, Sir Lionel Copley arrived in Maryland as the royal commissioner, and the whole system of government was arbitrarily changed. “The first act of the new assembly recognised William and Mary; the second established the Church of England as the religion of the state, to be supported by general taxation.” Toleration was, however, secured to Protestant Dissenters; the Quakers travelled about on their “religious visits” as well as “a sort of wandering pretenders from New England, who deluded even churchmen, we are told, by their extempore prayers and preachments.” All were tolerated excepting the Catholics, they who had been the founders of the province, and the first to acknowledge and legislate for liberty of conscience for all; they were subjected to a system of legalised persecution; mass was forbidden to be celebrated publicly; catholic priests were forbidden to preach or teach, and children were basely tempted to change their profession of religion by the offered bribe of a portion of their parents’ property. And, pitiable to say, Benedict, the son of Lord Baltimore, the worthy catholic proprietary, only recovered the province by renouncing the catholic church for that of England, in the year 1715.
Maryland, like Virginia, had no large towns, and remained undisturbed by either Indians or French. “Its staple was tobacco, yet hemp and flax were raised, and all were employed as currency. In Somerset and Dorchester the manufacture of linen and even woollen cloth was attempted. In Maryland, white labourers being found more advantageous than negroes, the market was always well supplied with them, the price varying from £12 to £30. Maryland was the most southern colony which, in 1695, consented to pay its quota towards the defence of New York, thus forming from Chesapeake to Maine an imperfect confederacy. The union was increased by a public post. Eight times in the year letters might be forwarded from the Potomac to Philadelphia. Public education was talked of, and promised by the assembly, but not carried out. The population increased, though not rapidly. In 1710 bond and free amounted to about 30,000; a bounty still continued to be offered for every wolf’s head; the roads to the capital were marked by notches on trees; and water-mills still solicited legislative encouragement.[13]
William Penn, more fortunate than his neighbour Lord Baltimore, recovered his province without any compromise of principle. Within two years after the Revolution, he had been three several times arrested and tried, and openly acquitted; and now, in 1690, he determined once more to visit his province, where, spite of all his efforts at good and happy government, discontent existed. Numbers of emigrants were again prepared to accompany him, “a convoy was granted, and the fleet ready to sail, when, on his return from the funeral of George Fox, messengers were sent to apprehend him.” “Three times having been tried, and three times acquitted,” says Bancroft, “he now went into retirement. Locke would have interceded for him, but he refused clemency, waiting rather for justice. The delay completed the wreck of his fortunes; sorrow lowered over his family; the wife of his youth died; his eldest son had no vigorous hold on life; and many, even among his friends, cavilled at his conduct.” It was a deep baptism of sorrow; but he had still powerful advocates who interceded successfully for him. “He is my old acquaintance,” said William of Orange, finally; “he may follow his business as freely as ever; I have nothing to say against him.” His innocence was fully established, and in August, 1694, he was restored to his proprietary rights.
But for the pressure of poverty, Penn would have immediately embarked for his province; but this he was not able to do until the last year of the century; and in the meantime Pennsylvania was governing itself by the members of the assembly, who acting upon Penn’s liberal permission that “the government should be settled in a condition to please the generality,” altered, and disputed, and altered again, paying little regard to the men whom Penn had left in authority, until at length all seemed settled to the public satisfaction and nothing was wanting but concert with the proprietary.
William Penn was once more in his beloved province—no longer in the prime of manhood, full of hope and joy, but gentle and conciliatory as ever. “Keep to what is good in the charter and frame of government,” said he, addressing the assembly the following spring, “and lay aside what is burdensome, and add what may best suit the common good.” The old charter was surrendered, which was a much easier thing than the forming of a constitution, which should prove, as a member of the council expressed himself, “firm and lasting to themselves and their children.” This was a difficult undertaking, besides which, the lower counties on the Delaware, dreading to lose the independence which they had lately enjoyed, refused a re-union with Pennsylvania, and hot and bitter disputes were the consequence.
In the midst of their disputes both parties were startled, and brought again into pacific relationship, by the news that the English parliament was about to annul every colonial charter. The occasion was momentous; Penn, who had come to America with the hope of ending his days in this province of his love, found it necessary immediately to return to England, to defend the common rights of himself and Pennsylvania. His hopes seemed in all ways destined to disappointment. At this moment his words to the assembly were: “Since all men are mortal, think of some suitable expedient and provision for your safety, as well in your privileges as your property, and you will find me ready to comply with whatever may render us happy by a nearer union of our interests. Review again your laws; propose new ones that may better your circumstances; and what you do, do quickly. Unanimity and despatch may contribute to the disappointment of those that so long have sought the ruin of our young country.”
The new constitution was called the “Charter of Privileges.” The territories were allowed to separate themselves from Pennsylvania, as they desired; and from that time Delaware has been an independent province. Penn would gladly have legislated for the sanctity of marriage among the slaves, but he was defeated: nor yet could he carry out all his benevolent plans for the Indians, though he obtained a law for the prevention of fraud in trading with them; and again treaties of peace were renewed with the Onondagas and their tributaries on the Susquehanna.
By the Charter of Privileges, which now became the fundamental law as long as the proprietary government lasted, the legislative power was vested in the governor and assembly to be annually chosen, to sit upon its own adjournments, and to propose bills subject only to the assent of the governor. Sheriffs and coroners were appointed by the people; questions of property could not be brought before the governor and council; and the justiciary was left to the legislature, which gave occasion to after disputes. Entire religious liberty was established.
“And now,” says Bancroft, “having divested himself and his successors of any power to injure, Penn had founded a democracy. By the necessities of the case, he remained the feudal sovereign; for only as such could he grant or have maintained the charter of colonial liberties. But time and the people would remove the inconsistency. Having thus given freedom and popular power to his provinces, no strifes remaining but strifes about property, happily for himself, he departed from the young country of his affections.”
Penn left James Logan, for many years the colonial secretary and member of the council, the agent of his private property, who was able, by his mild but firm character, to maintain Penn’s rights against the encroaching, mean spirit of the colonists, whose selfish bargaining contrasted so painfully with the broad liberality of the proprietary.
In England, the virtue and sacrifices of William Penn were not without acknowledgment; he retained his province. His poverty might have induced him to part with it to the crown; but insisting on the liberties which he had granted being unannulled, the crown hardly set any value upon it; and when, distressed and worn out with the angry and unworthy disputes of the province with him on questions of property, he threatened to resign his powers to government, the province, like a spoiled child threatened with the rod, yielded at once and promised no further offending. The early Pennsylvanians were in fact spoiled by the kindness and concessions of Penn; they were incapable of comprehending the breadth of his practical Christianity; they almost despised him for it, and treated him with no consideration.
Writs had been issued by James II. against the charters both of East and West Jersey, and the whole province was placed under the jurisdiction of Andros, governor of New York. The Revolution terminated the authority of Andros; and from June, 1689, to August, 1693, New Jersey had no regular government whatever, both the east and west portions being broken up into factions, headed by different proprietaries, which kept the country in a very unsettled state. At length the proprietaries, threatened by parliament, and finding no means of settling their contending claims, as well as a great falling off in their profits, agreed to surrender their authority to the crown; and in the first year of Queen Anne’s reign, New Jersey became a royal province, the claims of private property being in every case respected.
On the surrender of the proprietary claims to government, the two Jerseys were united in one province, and the government conferred on Edward Hyde, Lord Cornbury, of whom we shall hear more anon.
The commission and instructions to Lord Cornbury formed the constitution of New Jersey. The legislative power was vested in the governor with the consent of the royal council and representatives of the people; the elective franchise required a property qualification; all laws were subject to a veto of the governor and the crown. The governor, with consent of his council, instituted courts of law and appointed their officers; the people had no part in the justiciary. Liberty of conscience was granted to all but Catholics; and favour was invoked for the Church of England.[14] Two of the royal instructions deserve notice: First, “great inconveniences,” says the queen, “may arise by the liberty of printing in our province of New Jersey; therefore, no book, pamphlet, or other matter whatsoever may be printed without a licence.” Secondly, the “traffic in merchantable negroes” was especially enjoined.
A change was come over the administration of New Jersey since the days when honest Thomas Olive, the governor of West Jersey, had been satisfied with a salary of £20 a year, and had administered justice as a magistrate, sitting on the stump of a tree in his field. New Jersey was now a royal united province, and a kinsman of the queen was its ruler; but the change was not palatable to the sturdy quaker and puritan spirit of the colony. The history of Lord Cornbury’s administration was that of continual contention with the assemblies. But through all this, as we shall find was the case in New York, a more vigorous spirit of liberty awoke in the province.
The last meeting of Lord Cornbury with the assembly of New Jersey is, however, worth recording. Samuel Jennings, speaker of the assembly, a steadfast Quaker, was deputed to read a remonstrance to him on his acceptance of bribes, his new method of government, his encroachment on public liberties, and a long list of other offences, all very plain-spoken, as befitted an assembly of which a fearless, uncompromising Quaker was the speaker. “Stop!” exclaimed Lord Cornbury, not relishing the nature of the remonstrance. Again Jennings repeated the charges with greater emphasis than before. On this Lord Cornbury retorted by charging the Quakers with disloyalty and a factious spirit; and they, in return, replied in the words of Nehemiah to Sanballat, “There is no such thing done as thou sayest, but thou feignest them out of thine own heart!” And finally, said they, “to engage the affections of the people, no artifice is needful, but to let them be unmolested in the enjoyment of what belongs to them of right.”
As regards New York, we must take up the thread of history somewhat before the Revolution, having last parted from it when Sir Edmund Andros, the governor, made his ineffectual attempt on Connecticut. The government of Andros was arbitrary and unpopular, the people having no share in the legislation, and no voice in the imposition of taxes, while the popular institutions of New Jersey on the one hand, and Connecticut on the other, served but to increase their dissatisfaction by contrast.
Thomas Dongan, a Catholic, succeeded Andros as governor; he arrived in the province in 1683, and by the advice of ‘William Penn, came with instructions from the duke to convene an assembly of representatives. The first assembly, consisting of a council and eighteen representatives, to the great joy of the colony, met the following year, and a “Charter of Liberties” was granted, which declared the supreme legislative power to reside in the governor, council and people, met in general assembly; that every freeman and freeholder should enjoy the elective franchise; that no freeman should suffer but by judgment of his peers, and that all trials should be by a jury of twelve men; that no tax should be assessed but with consent of the assembly; that no seaman or soldier should be quartered on the inhabitants against their will; that no martial law should exist; and that no one professing faith in God by Jesus Christ, should at any time be in any way disquieted or questioned for any difference of opinion in matters of religion.
In 1684, the governors of New York and Virginia met the deputies of the Five Nations at Albany, on the Hudson, and renewed with them a treaty of peace.
On the accession of the Duke of York to the throne, the people of his province naturally expected, if not favour, at least the continuation of a representative government, which, however, was in part withdrawn; an arbitrary tax was imposed, and printing-presses forbidden. It was soon perceived that the intention of the king was to introduce the catholic religion into the province, and the officers appointed by him were of that faith; this added to the general dissatisfaction.
The exiled governor, Dongan, was recalled by James II., shortly before his abdication, and Francis Nicholson, lieutenant-general of Andros, who was now governor of New England, succeeded him. Dread of the establishment of Popery added to general discontent, and the want of perfect good feeling between the Dutch and English inhabitants of the province caused any change to be welcomed with joy; accordingly the news of the deposition of James, and the accession of William and Mary, was received with enthusiasm, and the people rose in rebellion to the existing government.
Jacob Leisler, a Dutch merchant and captain of militia, whose temperament, however, unfitted him for the command, was elected by the insurgents as their leader. Opposed to this faction were the large Dutch landholders, some English merchants, the friends of episcopacy, and the government party; nevertheless, at the head of several hundred men and a few companies of militia, and with the general populace in his favour, Leisler, at the commencement of June, took possession of the Fort of New York, in the name of William and Mary, to whom an address was sent, which in due course was received without disapprobation by King William.
Dongan, who had not yet left the harbour, was joined by Nicholson, thus deprived of his authority, and the two hastened to England. The magistrates in the meantime, unable to resist this popular movement, after seeing Leisler appointed by a committee of safety as temporary governor of the province, retired to Albany on the Hudson, where, denying the authority of Leisler, they yet continued their administration in the name of William and Mary. Milborne, the son-in-law of Leisler, who had just arrived from England, was appointed by him secretary of the province, and sent to demand the surrender of the Fort of Albany, which of course was refused.
About this time, a letter arriving from the king, addressed to “Francis Nicholson, or to such as, for the time being, take care for the preserving the peace and administering the law in New York,” together with a royal commission; Leisler, in Nicholson’s absence, regarded his own authority as now sanctioned by the monarch.
In the meantime, France having espoused the cause of James, war was declared with England, and the little party at Albany, alarmed by the hostile inroads of the French and their Indian allies on the frontier settlements, and weakened by internal discord, yielded up the fort to Milborne.
The horrors of intercolonial war were now beginning. As soon as the declaration of war between France and England was known, Count Fontenac, who had but lately arrived in Canada—a man of extraordinary capacity and energy of character, although approaching seventy years of age—prepared to visit, upon the English frontier, some of the miseries which Canada herself had so lately suffered from the hands of the Five Nations. Three several expeditions were planned, all of which were successful. The war-parties consisted principally of converted Indians, chiefly Mohawks; the fruits of the self-denying perseverance of the French missionaries being made use of for the most barbarous purposes. Religious zeal was added to native ferocity; the English were represented not only as enemies but as heretics, to destroy whom it was their duty as Christians, and their glory as soldiers.
In January, 1690, whilst the province of New York was convulsed by internal tumults, one of these war-parties, advancing in single file through the deep snow, a track being made by the snow-shoes of the foremost, arrived at Schenactady, a Dutch village on the Mohawk, after twenty-two days’ march. It was midnight, and the inhabitants were asleep, fearless of danger, when at once the awful war-whoop roused them, and the most dreadful scenes of murder, fire and devastation succeeded. Sixty lay dead in the street; seven-and-twenty were taken prisoners; the rest, half naked, fled towards Albany amid driving snow, some perishing by the way, others losing their limbs by the intensity of the cold. The terror of this attack decided the party who held it to give up Albany to Leisler.
The whole of the following summer was spent in fruitless preparation and attempts, in conjunction with Connecticut, to protect their frontiers, and invade Canada; but all ended in unsuccess, and distrust and confusion prevailed throughout the miserable province. In January of 1691, Richard Ingoldsby arrived from England with a commission as captain, and announcing the speedy arrival of Colonel Sloughter as governor. He demanded possession of the fort, but not producing any order from the king, nor yet from the expected governor to that purpose, Leisler refused to yield, promising him courteously, at the same time, aid as a military officer. Ingoldsby, angry at opposition, and supported by the enemies of Leisler, proceeded to land his troops, at the same time denouncing Leisler and his garrison as traitors. The passions of the militia were roused, and, greatly to the grief and dismay of Leisler, shots were fired, by which several lives were lost.
On March 19th, Colonel Sloughter, “a profligate, needy, and narrow-minded adventurer,” entered the harbour. Leisler immediately sent messengers to receive his orders; the messengers were detained; the next morning he wrote, inquiring to whom he should surrender the fort. Sloughter’s only reply was an order to Ingoldsby to arrest Leisler and his council. The following day Leisler, Milborne, and six others, were under arrest and brought up to trial before a special court, composed of the adverse party. Six of the prisoners were immediately found guilty of high treason, but afterwards reprieved. Leisler and Milborne, denying the jurisdiction of the court by which they were tried, refused to plead, and appealed to the king. But they were condemned of high treason as mutes, and sentenced to death. Nevertheless, Sloughter hesitated to carry the sentence into execution, until the will of the king should be known, writing to him “that certainly never greater villains lived.”
The friends of Leisler boldly defended his conduct, but the opposite party was now in power, and the execution of Leisler and his son-in-law was demanded; still Sloughter hesitated, but nothing could allay the bitter hatred of Leisler’s enemies. At a dinner-party, therefore, when Sloughter was intoxicated, they obtained from him the signatures of the death-warrants, and before he had recovered his senses, the executions had taken place.
On the 16th of May, amid drenching rain, Leisler having taken leave of his wife and his numerous family, he and his son-in-law were conducted to the gallows outside the city-wall. “Guarded by troops,” says the historian, “the sad procession moved on, thronged about by weeping friends and exulting enemies. More distressed for the fate of his son-in-law than for his own, Leisler admitted that he might have fallen into error; and turning to the sorrowing populace, said, ‘Weep not for us, we are going to our God; but weep for yourselves that remain behind in misery and vexation.’” The handkerchief was bound round his face, and he said, “I hope these eyes shall see our Lord Jesus in heaven!” These were his last words. Livingstone, one of the leaders of the adverse party, pressed forward to the prisoners to gratify himself with the sight of their last moments. “I will implead thee at the bar of God for this,” said Milborne. His last words were: “I die for the king and queen and the Protestant religion in which I was born and bred. Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit!” The distressed people, with cries and tears, rushed forward to receive some last memento of their favourite leaders, a fragment of their clothes or a lock of hair.
The rain poured down in torrents; but no rain could wash away the effect of that blood, the shedding of which was regarded by the populace as base murder. The appeal to the king was prosecuted by Leisler’s son; and a committee of the Lords Commissioners of Trade ordered the estates of the deceased to be restored to their families. But more was required; and in 1695 the attainder was reversed, after which the bodies were disinterred, and after lying in state, were re-buried in the old Dutch church.
The execution of these two popular leaders did more to strengthen their cause than their lives could possibly have done. Their friends, who were “always distinguished by their zeal for popular power, for toleration, for their opposition to the doctrine of legitimacy,” formed a powerful and ultimately a successful party. Leisler and Milborne being no more, it was not long before a contest began between the assembly, composed of aristocratic members, and the English monarch, for their rights and privileges as British subjects; and in the meantime the war with Canada went on.
After four months of inefficient and turbulent administration, Governor Sloughter died, and was succeeded by Colonel Benjamin Fletcher, a man as unprincipled and as little fitted for his post as his predecessor. Fletcher revived the old scheme of extending the territory of New York from Connecticut River to Delaware Bay; and by royal commission he had command of the militia of New Jersey and Connecticut. The war with Canada requiring the defence of the frontiers, an address was sent to the king requesting that the other colonies might be compelled to furnish their quota of troops. Parliament attempted to compel this from all the colonies north of Carolina; but several of them refused, as we have already stated, and it was never enforced.
Inadequate as Fletcher was for the office of governor in the then excited state of the colony, he had the prudence to be guided in Indian affairs by Major Schuyler, who possessed great influence over the Iroquois, by whom he was called “Quidder,” they being unable to pronounce his Christian name of Peter. Schuyler was a brave, intelligent, and humane man; and having great influence over the border tribes, was extremely useful to the governor, who had the good sense to admit him to the council. Shortly after Fletcher’s arrival, the French having made an incursion into the Mohawk country and taken captive 300 of their warriors, were pursued by Schuyler from Albany, and by Fletcher, who posted from New York with a body of troops. They did not overtake the invaders; but the Iroquois, greatly pleased by the promptitude of action exhibited by Fletcher, gave him the name of Cayenguirago, or the Great Swift Arrow.
Fletcher, besides his commission for New York, was appointed governor of Pennsylvania and Delaware, this being the time when Penn was deprived of his charter.
In the spirit of the Revolution of 1688, Fletcher was a zealot for the establishment of the episcopal church, and, under the plea of introducing uniformity in the language and literature as well as the religion of the colony, the inhabitants of which were a mixture of Dutch and English, he introduced into the assembly a bill for the settlement of episcopalian ministers of his own selection throughout the province. This bill gave rise to a great deal of party spirit; and finally it was agreed that ministers should be settled in certain parishes, but that the choice should be left to the people.
“New York is the most northern colony which admitted by enactment the partial establishment of the Anglican Church.” The dissenters kept strict watch henceforth that the episcopacy, favoured by England, made no further inroad on their rights.
The peace of Ryswick terminated for the present the war with the French; and the Earl of Bellamont, a man of integrity, and with warm sympathies for popular freedom, arriving as governor in April, 1698, the dawn of a calmer day seemed at hand. The commission of Bellamont embraced the whole of the British northern territory from the confines of Canada to Connecticut and Rhode Island. His kinsman, John Nanfan, who accompanied him, was appointed lieutenant-governor of New York. Bellamont having served on the parliamentary committee which had inquired into the trials of Leisler and Milborne, viewed the aggressions of the opposite party with great disapprobation; and under his administration it was that the stigma was removed from the memory of those injured men, and justice done to their families.
Fletcher, “who was accused of winking at violations of the Acts of Trade, and favouring the pirates who frequented the American harbours,” was removed from his post on this ground, and the Earl of Bellamont was strictly enjoined to their vigilant suppression. The buccaneers, at the remonstrance of Spain, being no longer supported by France and England, had now become sugar-planters, holding large possessions of slaves in Jamaica, Hayti, and St. Domingo, which were now thriving islands through their means. Piracy, however, still remained to a vast and increasing extent, every sea from China to America being infested with these profligate robbers, who were often welcomed to the colonial harbours on account of the wealth they brought and the freedom of their expenditure.
Before Bellamont left England, a company was formed for the suppression of piracy; and it being supposed that great wealth would accrue from the re-capture of the pirate vessels, the king himself, the Earl of Bellamont, the Lord Chancellor Somers, the Earls of Shrewsbury, Romney, and Oxford, all held shares. By the advice of Robert Livingstone, a merchant of New York, then in England, and himself a partner, the command of a vessel fitted out for this purpose was given to Captain Kidd, a ship-builder of New York.
Kidd, duly commissioned, hastened to Plymouth in April, 1696; but turning pirate himself, sailed into the eastern seas, where he carried on great depredations. The wealth he thus amassed was buried, tradition says, on the east end of Long Island, after which, according to the same source, he burned or sunk his ship, the famous Quedah Merchant, and had the hardihood to take up his quarters at Boston, where, in 1698, he was arrested by Bellamont, who also held a commission as governor of Massachusetts, and sent to England for trial. The ship being driven back by the storm, gave rise to a rumour, that the ministry then in power were afraid of having Kidd brought to trial, on account of so many powerful Whig names being implicated in his piracy. This led to an impeachment of several of the adventurers in the House of Lords; but Kidd, and nine of his men, being easily found guilty, were condemned and executed for piracy and murder. The adventures and fate of Captain Kidd form the subject of one of the very few popular ballads which the history of America has given rise to in that country; which shows what hold the deeds of this bold sea-robber took on the public mind.[15]
Bellamont, by his urbanity and integrity, became greatly esteemed and beloved, both in New York and Boston. In the former place he at once obtained the confidence of the people, by acting up to the promise which he made in his address to the first assembly in this mercantile colony:—“I will pocket none of the public money myself, nor shall there be any embezzlement by others; but exact accounts shall be given you when, and as often as, you require.” In Boston he took the direct road to public favour, by paying attention to the ministers and popular teachers; and while he attended the episcopal church on Sundays, he was constant, and, by his own account, an edified attendant of the weekly lecture. The highest salary was voted to him in Boston that had ever been given to the governor; while in New York, spite of his controversies with the merchants regarding the Navigation Laws, a revenue for six years was provided for him.
Unfortunately, death soon closed the administration of this popular governor; and after about a year of violent contentions between the Leisler faction and the opposite party, Lord Cornbury arrived as governor both of New York and New Jersey, as we have already mentioned. Cornbury, though cousin of Queen Anne, was a needy and unprincipled man, and in him the aristocratic faction immediately found an ally. With a powerful majority in the assembly, a revenue was not only voted him for seven years, but £2,000 for the expense of his voyage, and his salary raised to £1,200 per annum.
In April, 1703, war having been proclaimed in England against France and Spain, the assembly met, and £1,500 was appropriated to fortify the Narrows, it being strictly provided that this money should be applied to no other purpose whatever. But the fortifications were not built, and Cornbury, dishonest as he was extravagant, made use of the money for his own necessities; and when the assembly, the following year, expressed their displeasure and refused to make further advances, Lord Cornbury said, “I know of no rights that you have as an assembly but such as the queen is pleased to allow you.”
So zealous was Lord Cornbury for the episcopal church, that he forbade preachers or schoolmasters to exercise their vocations without a licence from the bishop; he commenced also to persecute dissenting missionaries, but was obliged to desist in consequence of the general indignation, the majority of the people being themselves dissenters. Twice had he dissolved the assembly, and the third time “proved only how rapidly the political education had advanced under his administration. Dutch, English, and New England men were now all of one spirit.” The real birth of liberty in the popular heart was owing to the abuses and follies of Lord Cornbury. For some time, we are informed, he endeavoured to maintain his authority by a greater display of imperiousness; but falling deeply into debt, he suffered himself to be humbled by the assembly, whose rights he had so haughtily disputed, and became contemptible in the eyes of the people by parading the fort in the dress of a woman, and by similar acts of folly.
“Disguised alike with his antics and his knavery, the public indignation at length vented itself in clamorous demands for his recall, which was granted in 1709, when he was succeeded by Lord Lovelace. No sooner was Cornbury divested of the dignity of office, than his creditors threw him into prison, from which he was only released by succeeding to the earldom of Clarendon on the death of his father.
Lord Lovelace found the assembly much wiser from the vices of Cornbury, and they refused to advance more money than was necessary for the annual expenditure; but all conflict on this or any other subject was spared by the hand of death, which removed the new governor within a few weeks, Ingoldsby, the lieutenant-governor, succeeded him. During the short time of his administration, another attempt was made by New York and the New England provinces to invade Canada. The design was to co-operate with the British fleet in an attack on Quebec, and troops from Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire assembled at Boston, waiting the arrival of the squadron; while the troops of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, about 1,500 in number, marched to Wood Creek, near the head of Lake Champlain, where fortifications were erected and provisions stored. The British fleet, however, was despatched to the aid of Portugal instead; and, to the mortification of New York, which had incurred for this purpose a debt of £20,000, the levies were recalled and disbanded. Besides the regular troops, the colony had enlisted 600 Iroquois warriors, the wives and children of whom, amounting to about 1,000, they had undertaken to support at Albany. For this reason New York refused to join in an attack upon Acadia, which was soon afterwards made, excusing themselves to the Queen on the plea that their frontiers were left undefended.
The following year Colonel Schuyler proceeded to England to urge upon parliament the conquest of Canada, accompanied by five grand Mohawk chiefs, who produced a vast sensation wherever they appeared. They paraded the streets of London dressed in black clothes, over which they flung scarlet mantles trimmed with gold. On the 19th of April they were introduced to Queen Anne, when one of them, having referred to the scheme for the conquest of Canada, said:—
“We were mightily pleased when we heard our great Queen had resolved to send an army to conquer Canada; and immediately, in token of friendship, we hung up the kettle and took up the hatchet, and, with one consent, assisted Colonel Nicholson in making preparations on this side the lake; but at length we heard that our great Queen was prevented in her design at present, which made us sorrowful, lest the French, who had hitherto dreaded us, should now think us unable to make war against them. The reduction of Canada is of great weight to our free hunting; so that, if our great Queen should be unmindful of us, we must, with our families, forsake our country, or stand neuter, either of which would be against us.”
So saying, he presented belts of wampum, in proof of the sincerity of the Five Nations; and having received a gracious reply from the Queen, withdrew.
In June, 1710, Robert Hunter arrived in New York as governor. The history of Hunter is striking. A native of Scotland, he was in his youth apprenticed to an apothecary, but running away from his master, he enlisted as a common soldier. Gifted with fine talents and address, and handsome in person, he became the friend of Swift and Addison, and the husband of Lady Hay. Military promotion followed his marriage, and in 1707 the appointment of lieutenant-governor of Virginia was conferred upon him. On his voyage to that province he was captured by the French; and, now on his return to England, received a commission as governor of New York and New Jersey.
Three thousand Germans, who had been driven from the Palatine by the devastations of war, and taken refuge in England, accompanied the new governor. Many of these immigrants settled in New York; others on the Hudson, on the manor of Livingstone; and others again in Pennsylvania, as we have already mentioned; and there, finding the country so much to their taste, invited their friends at home to follow them, who accordingly flocked over in great numbers.
Hunter soon came into collision with the assembly on financial questions. The people, now too wise not to keep some power in their own hands, made the post anything but a sinecure. “Here,” writes the governor to his friends, “is the finest air to live upon in the universe; the soil bears all things, but not for me; for, according to the custom of the country, the sachems are the poorest of the people.” And again, after three years’ experience, “I am used like a dog, I have spent three years in such torment and vexation, that nothing in life can ever make amends for it.”
In 1687, Andros, governor of New York, appeared in Connecticut, and under the commission from King James, appointing him governor of all New England, demanded the surrender of the charter from the assembly which was then sitting. This unwelcome demand led to a long discussion, which lasted till night, when the court was thronged with citizens. All at once the lights were extinguished, and though the utmost decorum was preserved under this extraordinary occurrence, yet when the candles were re-lighted, the charter was nowhere to be found. This was a scheme for its preservation. It was secreted by Captain Wadsworth in a hollow tree, which is still standing, and known as the Charter Oak. Andros, nevertheless, assumed the government of the province, which he held till the Revolution.
The news of the accession of William and Mary diffused the utmost joy throughout Connecticut. An address of the most loyal and scriptural character was sent over; in which, however, they took care to make known that their acquiescence to the rule of Andros was an involuntary submission to an arbitrary power, and that, by the consent of the major part of freemen, they had resumed the government.
The administration was restored by the royal sanction. “They elected,” says Bancroft, “their own governor, council, and assembly men, all their magistrates, and that annually. The government of Connecticut was a perfect democracy. It rested on free labour, and upheld equality; the people were the sources of all power.”
During the war which followed the Restoration, Colonel Fletcher, governor of New York, was empowered by his commission to take command of the militia of Connecticut; but this was resolutely resisted. The scene is curious; and again we find that brave patriot, Captain Wadsworth, an actor. Fletcher arrived at Hartford, and ordered out the troops. The troops, with Captain Wadsworth at their head, appeared. Fletcher ordered his commission to be read; Wadsworth ordered the drums to beat. “Silence!” shouted Fletcher; and the drums ceased. Again the reading of the commission commenced, and again the drums beat louder than ever. Again Fletcher commanded silence, and in the silence which ensued, Wadsworth, turning to Fletcher, said, with great emphasis, “If we are interrupted again, I will make the sun shine through you!” Again the drums beat, and Fletcher made no further attempt to command the Connecticut forces.
We have already related how Yale College was founded in 1700. Delegates from the churches of Connecticut met at Saybrook in 1708, and framed a system of church government called the “Saybrook Platform,” which obliged all the clergy of the state to meet annually in each county by rotation, for the consideration of ecclesiastical affairs.
The colonial history of Connecticut contains from this time no events of interest apart from the general history of the colonies. The laws, customs, manners, and religious opinions were similar to those prevalent in Massachusetts.
Rhode Island submitted without opposition to the authority of Andros; but when, on the English Revolution, he was deposed in Boston, the people assembled at Newport and resumed their former chartered privileges, and re-elected the very officers whom Andros had deposed.
“The government was again organised on a free basis, and the old emblem of the state—an anchor with its motto, Hope—became significant of the steadfast zeal and spirit with which Rhode Island has ever cherished religious freedom and civil rights.” “Less liberal, however, than Connecticut,” says Bancroft, “Rhode Island attached the franchise not to the inhabitant but to the soil; and, as a wrong principle always leads to a practical error, it fostered family pride and a distant imitation of the English law of primogeniture.”