In 1709 another road[40] and landing place had been laid out at or near the mill of John C. Friecke.
Brooklyn's political fortunes were at this period so intimately connected with those of New York city that the political history of one is, in general, the political history of the other; yet Brooklyn and Kings County held sufficiently aloof to justify the omission of any particular chronicle of the administration of Burnet and its quarrels with the French, or the circumstances attending the Governor's transfer to Massachusetts by George II.
The next Governor, John Montgomerie, was instructed to continue the policy of Hunter, but he had not the firmness to do so.
The principal event in Montgomerie's administration, and one which is held in lasting remembrance in New York, was the grant of an amended charter to the city in 1730. This charter, as well as the Dongan charter, of which it was an amendment, is one which has always been of interest to Brooklyn, as it claimed to fix the limits of the city of New York. The limits thus embraced in the charter extended to low-water mark on the Long Island shore.[41]
On the death of Montgomerie, in 1731, the Governorship passed temporarily to Rip Van Dam, senior member of the Council, in whose accession the Dutch elements in New York and Kings County rejoiced greatly.
Colonel William Crosby, who became Governor in 1732, was guilty of infamous tyrannies and usurpations, as in the Van Dam trial, and later in the persecution of John Peter Zenger, publisher of the "Weekly Journal," a newspaper started in opposition to the administration "Gazette" and to voice the popular opposition.
Under Crosby's instigation the Council promulgated an order directing that the papers containing the obnoxious articles should be burnt by the hangman at the pillory. When this order was presented to the Quarter Sessions the Aldermen protested strongly against it, and the court thereupon refused to allow it to be entered on the records. The Recorder, Francis Harrison, was the only one who attempted to defend it, and he based its regularity upon former English precedents. The court also refused to allow the hangman to execute the order, and it was carried into effect by a negro slave, hired for the purpose. The negro did his work in the presence of the Recorder and other partisans of the government. The magistrates, with great and commendable unanimity, refused to attend, and evidently considered that the whole proceeding was but on a par with the former actions of the adherents of the Crown.
The burning of the papers did not satisfy the aristocratic party. They desired to be avenged, and, thirsting for a victim, shortly after caused the arrest of Zenger on the charge that he had been guilty of publishing treasonable and seditious libels against the Government and her representatives. He was imprisoned on this complaint, and, while in jail awaiting the action of the grand jury, was treated in a cruel and inhuman manner by his jailers. The ordinary courtesies usually granted to unconvicted men were denied him. He was even refused the use of pen, ink, and paper. The jail of the city at that time was in the City Hall, in Wall Street. Here Zenger was imprisoned.
Application was made by his friends to have him submitted to bail, and for the purpose of having the amount fixed, he was brought before the court on a writ of habeas corpus. The court required him to give bail in the sum of £400, with two additional sureties in the sum of £200 each. This was virtually a denial of bail, as he could not procure the requisite amount. In his endeavor to get his bail reduced, he swore that he was not worth, exclusive of his trade tools, the sum of £40. On this affidavit he was remanded to his place of confinement.
The trial of Zenger occasioned great excitement on both sides of the East River. The acquittal brought immense enthusiasm and lavish honors on Andrew Hamilton, who brilliantly defended the popular publisher.