The exceptionally able Thomas Dongan succeeded Andros, but did not arrive until 1683. He was forced to contend, as will be shown later, with French aggression in the valley of the Hudson; his method being a firm alliance with the Five Nations or Iroquois. They were a wild and dangerous people, and as such have been described by one who knew them well. "They likewise paint their Faces, red, blue, &c., and then they look like the Devil himself ... they treat their Enemies with great Cruelty in Time of War, for they first bite off the Nails of the Fingers of their Captives, and cut off some Joints, and sometimes the whole of the Fingers; after that the Captives are obliged to sing and dance before them ... and finally they roast them before a slow Fire for some Days, and eat them." It is interesting to note that the writer records what must have been a great relief to his readers in the colonies, that "they are very friendly to us."[179] This amicable relationship between the English and the Five Nations was largely due to Dongan's good sense and administrative genius. He persuaded them to become so much subjects of Great Britain as to set up the arms of James II. upon their wigwams. The English king, when he heard of his governor's action, informed Louis XIV. that, as the Iroquois were now true British subjects, he expected them to be treated as such. Dongan's work did not stop here. He was well aware that the Iroquois' friendship was an uncertain prop on which to depend, and therefore palisaded the towns of Albany and Schenectady, thus beginning the famous system of frontier forts. By his actions he gained the goodwill of the New Yorkers, to whom, on behalf of the Proprietors, he granted a charter of incorporation in 1685. But this acceptance of the views of the people was only very temporary, as it was reversed in the next year, while at the same time all rights of legislation were vested in a Council appointed by the Crown.
As has already been shown, James II. amalgamated the colonies in 1685 under Sir Edmund Andros and New York became part of New England. The Governor was kept far too busy in Massachusetts to pay any attention to New York, which was placed under a deputy-governor, Colonel Francis Nicholson, with three Dutch councillors. Nicholson was a clearheaded, observant man, who had had colonial experience, and would have been a success except for the fact that he lacked moral force. His position soon became a very awkward one, for in 1689 he heard that William III. was all-powerful in England, while he held his commission from Andros, the Stuart governor, who was in captivity at Boston. At the same time France had declared war and the Canadians might invade the colony at any moment. Unfortunately for Nicholson, although he summoned the authorities, he quarrelled with his subordinate Cuyler, and things were at a deadlock. At this point the people, seething under the restraints and burdens which had been placed upon them during the reign of James II., rose in open revolt, led by a German brewer, Jacob Leisler. Nicholson was immediately deposed; a convention met, and ten out of the eighteen representatives invested Leisler with dictatorial authority. He was a man of some cunning, and under the pretence of possessing a commission, by intercepting letters and by maltreating their writers, he succeeded in keeping himself in office for very nearly three years. His period of government was distinguished by the first Colonial Congress at Albany, to which he summoned representatives from all the colonies to discuss definite and united action against the French. Leisler himself proposed a joint invasion of Canada, and it is probable that it was only his own arrogance that prevented it. His followers soon came to be as much hated as their leader, and one indignant citizen wrote in January 1690, "never was such a pack of ignorant, scandalous, malicious, false, imprudent, impertinent rascals herded together, out of hell."[180] Careful though Leisler had been to search letters and prevent the news of his usurpation reaching England, he was unsuccessful. In 1690 the English Government dispatched Colonel Slaughter to take Leisler's place. The usurper was first met by a force under Major Ralph Ingoldsby, second in command to the new Governor; a slight resistance was offered, and Leisler "fired a vast number of great and small shot in the City, whereby several of his Majesty's subjects were killed and wounded as they passed in the streets upon their Lawful Occasions."[181] But Leisler had lost his former following and he was captured and hanged, together with his chief supporter Jacob Millborne.
As James II. had left New York without a constitution, a representative assembly was called in May 1691, and a declaratory act was passed which annulled Leisler's proceedings. It required that all elections in the future should be annual, that the franchise should belong to the 40s. freeholders only, and that the colony itself should be apportioned into constituencies. At the same time it laid down liberty of conscience except for Papists, allowing a declaration instead of an oath to please the Quakers. But above all it declared that no tax was to be imposed unless it was voted by the colony. The act seemed satisfactory enough, except the important reservation with regard to taxation; a reservation which was sufficient to cause the Crown to veto the whole document, and New York was again without a true and defined constitution. Such a state of affairs was particularly bad when the colony in 1692 passed under the rule of the notoriously corrupt Benjamin Fletcher. There are, however, two things to be said for this man, whose work has been spoken of as full of deceit, fraud, and subterfuge. In the first place it has been proved that in military matters he showed considerable skill and activity; while in the second he undoubtedly realised before many men of his day the danger of disunion. In May 1696 he wrote, "The Indians, though monsters, want not sense, but plainly see we are not united, and it is apparent that the stronger these colonies grow in parts, the weaker we are on the whole, every little government setting up for despotic power and allowing no appeal to the Crown, but valuing themselves on their own strength and on a little juggling in defeating all commands and injunctions of the King."[182] On the other hand it must be allowed that Fletcher's methods were particularly scandalous, for not only did he practically license smuggling and piracy by levying blackmail upon those who carried on these lucrative trades, but he made personal friends of them, as for example Captain Tew, "a most notorious pirate," with whom, to the scandal of the inhabitants, he occasionally dined.
As has been shown in another chapter, the Earl of Bellomont was made governor in 1698 to prevent these nefarious undertakings, and as ruler of New York, New Jersey, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts he did such good work that he was universally and sincerely regretted when he died in 1701. He was succeeded by Lord Cornbury, who was a profligate in character and overbearing in manner. His rule was one of petty spite and conflict, and having won the especial hatred of the dissenters and generally alienated popular support, his recall in 1708 was as much a cause of rejoicing as Bellomont's death had been of lamentation.
Map of North America, 1755
The first sixty years of the eighteenth century were to the inhabitants of New York years of anxiety and peril, for there was the ever present danger of the French to the north and west. The story of these years will be told elsewhere, and here only a rapid sketch can be given of the domestic history of the colony. Four governors or deputy-governors attract particular attention during this period. The first was Governor Burnet,[183] son of the celebrated Bishop, who made himself conspicuous in 1724 by writing a pamphlet in defence of paper money. The governorship of William Cosby was not without a constitutional interest, ten years later, in the prosecution of John Peter Zengler, publisher of the New York Weekly Journal, for criticising the government. He was described as a "seditious Person, and a frequent Printer and Publisher of false News and seditious Libels."[184] The same Governor had also a hard struggle with his people, which caused him to write to the home Government for more power and patronage, for "ye example and spirit of the Boston people begins to spread amongst these Colonys In a most prodigious maner, I have had more trouble to manige these people then I could have imagined, however for this time I have done pritty well with them; I wish I may come off as well with them of ye Jarsys."[185]
It is evident that as late as 1740 the position of governor was one of lucrative importance; in that year George Clarke, junior, offered the Duke of Newcastle £1000 if he would appoint Mr Clarke, senior, governor, instead of lieutenant-governor as he then was. But this must have been almost the last case that the post was financially desirable, for it was clearly the reverse between 1743 and 1753, when George Clinton was governor. He himself writes, "The Govern^t of New York will not be near so valuable to Gov^r Clinton as it has been to his predecessors.—The Province of New Jersey having always till now been united with New York, and under the same government, and the salary paid by New Jersey has always been £1000 besides other considerable advantages, so that the making New Jersey a separate and distinct govern^t makes New York at least £1000 a year less in value to Gov^r Clinton than it was to his predecessors."[186] There were, however, other reasons which in the near future would make the financial position of the Governor still more precarious, and Clinton could hardly be expected to foresee that the advantages gained over the French during his lifetime would in later years be one of the main causes of entire independence of official governors sent from England.