New York, in this time that the poet Freneau lay a prisoner, was not as it had been in his college days. The battle of Long Island had been fought, and Washington and his army had been driven from New York. And on the night of the British entry a great fire had started in the lower part of the city, swept away the house where Bradford's press had been, leaped across Broadway and laid Trinity Church a mass of ruins scattered over the churchyard where Freneau's father lay buried.
The British soldiers were quartered in the public buildings; the British officers had taken possession of the houses deserted by wealthy patriots; the Middle Dutch Church, which had been the architectural pride of the city, had become a riding school for troopers.
There was a red-painted wooden building in John Street, a few feet from Broadway, the only theatre in the city. The actors had closed it, and fled at the coming of the British. But the house was open again now, and the British officers played at mimic war between the intervals of real battles.
No one threw himself more heartily into these performances than Major John André, who was so soon to give up his life for his country. He even wrote some of the speeches used by the actors, and one of the poems he wrote for Rivington's Gazetteer was printed while he was away on his last mission, conferring with Benedict Arnold on the banks of the Hudson.
After the treason was discovered, Arnold sought a safe retreat within the British lines at New York, and lived for a time in a solid, picturesque little house by the Bowling Green. It stood on a grassy slope that stretched down to the water's edge a few boat lengths from where the Scorpion lay with the poet prisoner on board.
There was a picket fence, painted white, on one side of the green slope, and Sergeant John Champe once hid his men behind it to carry off Arnold when he should take his nightly walk by the waterside, an attempt that failed through Arnold's changing his quarters on the selfsame day.
When the Revolution was over, Freneau was again in New York, which slowly recovered from the ravages of war. Hanover Square was a favorite haunt of his. He has left the record that he loved to linger in that open space, where might be seen a mingling of business and home life. Freneau liked it, for there books were printed and sold, and, too, it was the "Newspaper Row" of the town. This open space had been at first Van Brugh Street, taking its name from Johannes Pietersen Van Brugh, a wealthy Hollander whose home faced the square for close upon half a century. It bore his name until in 1714, when with the accession of George I. of Hanover it took the name of Hanover Square.
In a house facing this square, Bradford printed the first newspaper, and though in Freneau's time it was still standing, a more stately building was to take its place and bear a tablet telling of the old one. It was here that the other early newspapers came into existence: Parker's Weekly Post-Boy, in 1742; Weyman's New York Gazette, in 1759; Holt's New York Journal, in 1766. It was here, too, that was prominently displayed the "Sign of the Bible and Crown," before the house of Hugh Gaine. Freneau had flayed this man in his verse many a time.