“Boundaries,—South, the Sea; West, Delaware; North, to ye Lakes or ffrench; East, Connecticut river, but most usurped and yett posse’d by s’d Connecticut. Some Islands Eastward and a Tract beyond Kennebeck River called Pemaquid.... Principall places of Trade are New Yorke and South’ton except Albany for the Indyans; our buildings most wood, some lately stone and brick; good country houses, and strong of their severall kindes. About twenty-four towns, villages, or parishes in six precincts, divisions, Rydeings, or Courts of Sessions. Produce is land provisions of all sorts, as of wheate exported yearly about sixty thousand bushells, pease, beefe, pork, and some Refuse fish, Tobacco, beavers’ peltry or furs from the Indians, Deale and oake timber, plankes, pipestavves, lumber, horses, and pitch and tarr lately begunn to be made. Comodityes imported are all sorts of English manufacture for Christians, and blanketts, Duffells, etc., for Indians, about 50,000 pounds yearly. Pemaquid affords merchantable fish and masts. Our merchants are not many, but most inhabitants and planters, about two thousand able to beare armes, old inhabitants of the place or of England, Except in and neere New Yorke of Dutch Extraction, and some few of all nations, but few serv’ts much wanted, and but very few slaves. A merchant worth one thousand pounds or five hundred pounds is accompted a good substantiall merchant, and a planter worthe half that in moveables accompted [rich?]. With all the Estates may be valued at about £150,000. There may lately have trade to ye Colony in a yeare from ten to fifteen ships or vessels, of which togeather 100 tunns each, English, New England, and our own built, of which 5 small ships and a Ketch now belonging to New York, four of them built there. No privateers on the coast. Religions of all sorts,—one Church of England, several Presbyterians and Independents, Quakers and Anabaptists of severall sects, some Jews, but Presbyterians and Independents most numerous and substantial. There are about 20 churches or meeting-places, of which about half vacant. Noe beggars, but all poor cared for.”
In 1678, the affairs of the province being everywhere in order, Andros availed himself of the permission given him by the Duke to pay a visit to England. He sailed from New York on the 12th of November, leaving Brockholls to administer the government in his absence, with the commission of commander-in-chief. On reaching London Andros was knighted by the King. His administration was examined into by the Privy Council and approved. In May he sailed for New York with the new commission of vice-admiral throughout the government of the Duke of York. He found the province in the same quiet as when he left it.
The marriage of William of Orange with Mary, daughter of the Duke of York and heiress to the throne of England, in the autumn of 1677, was of happy augury to the New York colony. It gave earnest of a restoration of the natural alliance of the Protestant powers against France, the common enemy. To the Dutch of New York it was peculiarly grateful, allaying the last remains of the bitterness of submission to alien rule. Andros wisely promoted this good feeling by interesting himself in the formal establishment of their religion. Under his direction a classis of the Reformed Church of Holland met in New York for purposes of ordination, and its proceedings were approved by the supreme ecclesiastical authority at Amsterdam. New points in law were now decided and settled; strikes or combinations to raise the price of labor were declared illegal; all Indians were declared to be free.
But Andros was on occasion as energetic and determined as he was prudent and moderate. He dallied with no invasion of his master’s rights or privileges, as he evinced when, in 1680, he arrested Carteret in New Jersey and dragged him to trial[696] for having presumed to exercise jurisdiction and collect duties within the limits of the Duke’s patent.
The position of the Duke of York now became daily more difficult, indeed almost untenable in his increasing divergence from the policy of the kingdom. The elements of that personal opposition which was later to drive him from the throne were rapidly concentrating. His adherents and those who favored a Protestant succession were forming the historic parties of Tories and of Whigs. To avoid angry controversy the Duke ordered the question of his right to collect customs dues in New Jersey to be submitted to Sir William Jones. Upon his adverse decision so far as related to West Jersey, the Duke directed the necessary transfer to be made; and when the widow of Carteret made complaint of his dispossession from authority, the action of Andros was wholly disavowed by the Duke, and his authority over East Jersey was relinquished in the same form. Andros himself, against whom complaints of favoring the Dutch trade had been made by his enemies, was ordered to return to England, leaving Brockholls in charge of the government; at the same time a special agent was sent over to examine into the administration.
SIR EDMUND ANDROS.
[Regarding this portrait, see Memorial History of Boston, ii. 5.—Ed.]
Conscious of the integrity of his service, Andros obeyed the summons with alacrity, proclaimed the agent’s commission, called Brockholls down from Albany to take charge of the government, and took ship for England. The absence of his firm hand was soon felt. The term for the levy of the customs rates under the Duke’s authority had expired just before his sailing, and had not been renewed. Immediately after his departure the merchants refused to pay duties, and the collector who attempted the levy was held for high treason in the exercise of regal authority without warrant. He pleaded his commission from the Duke, and the case was referred to England. The resistance of the merchants was stimulated by the free condition of the charter just granted to Pennsylvania, which required that all laws should be assented to by the freemen of the province, and that no taxes should be laid or revenue raised except by provincial assembly. The Grand Jury of New York presented the want of a provincial assembly as a grievance; a petition was drafted to the Duke praying for a change in the form of government, and calling for a governor, council, and assembly, the last to be elected by the freeholders of the colony. On the arrival of the Duke’s agent in London with his report upon the late administration, Andros was examined by the Duke’s commissioners, whereupon he was fully exonerated, his administration was complimented, and he was made a gentleman of the King’s Privy Chamber. The Duke’s collector, after waiting in vain for his prosecutors to appear, was discharged from his bond, and soon after appointed surveyor-general of customs in the American Plantations.
Notwithstanding his dislike to popular assemblies, the Duke of York saw the need of some concession, and gave notice of his intention to Brockholls. Thus by the accident of the non-renewal of the customs’ term, the people of New York were enabled, in the absence of the governor, to assert the doctrine of no taxation without representation, to which the Duke in his necessity was compelled to submit.