The Leisler Papers constitute the first volume of the Fund Publications of the N. Y. Hist. Society’s Collections, and embrace the journal of the council from April 27 to June 6, 1689 (procured from the English State Paper Office), with letters, etc., and a reprint of a tract in defence of Leisler, issued at Boston in 1698, and called Loyalty Vindicated, being an answer to a late false, seditious, and scandalous pamphlet, entitled “A letter from a Gent,” etc.[525] The Sparks Catal. (p. 217) shows a MS. copy made of a rare tract in the British Museum, printed in New York and reprinted in London, 1690, called A modest and impartial narrative of the great oppressions that the inhabitants of their majestie’s Province of New York lye under by the extravagant and arbitrary proceedings of Jacob Leisler and his accomplices. Sparks endorsed his copy as “written by a violent enemy to Leisler; neither just, candid, nor impartial.”[526] Various papers relating to the administration of Leisler make a large part of the second volume of the Documentary History of New York, showing the letters written by Leisler to Boston, the papers connected with his official proceedings in New York, and his communications with the adjacent colonies; the council minutes in Dec., 1689; proceedings against the French and Indians; the papers relating to the transfer of the fort and arrest of Leisler; the dying speeches of Leisler and Milbourne; with a reprint of A letter from a gentleman of the city of New York to another (New York, 1698). There are a few original letters of Leisler in the Prince Letters (MSS.), 1686-1700, in Mass. Hist. Soc. cabinet.
The career of Leisler is traced in the memoir by C. F. Hoffman in Sparks’s Amer. Biog., xiii. (1844), and in G. W. Schuyler’s Colonial New York (i. 337). Peleg W. Chandler examines the records of the prosecution in his American Criminal Trials (i. 255). Cf. also Historical Magazine, xxi. 18, and the general histories, of which Dunlap’s gives the best account among the earlier ones.[527]
The student must, of necessity, have recourse to the general histories of New York for the successive administrations of the royal governors, and H. B. Dawson, in his Sons of Liberty (printed as manuscript, 1859), has followed the tracks of the constant struggle on their part to preserve their prerogatives.[528] Schuyler (Colonial New York, i. 394-460) follows pretty closely the administration of Fletcher. The chapter on New England (ante, no. ii.) will need to be parallelized with this for the career of Bellomont.
Under Nanfan, who succeeded Bellomont temporarily, Col. Bayard, who had brought Leisler to his doom, was in turn put on trial, and the narrative of the proceedings throws light on the factious political life of the time.[529]
One of the most significant acts of Cornbury’s rule (1702-1708) was the prosecution in 1707 of Francis Mackemie, a Presbyterian minister, for preaching without a license.[530]
J. R. Brodhead, who gives references in the case (Hist. Mag., Nov., 1863), charges Cornbury with forging the clause of his instructions under which it was attempted to convict Mackemie, and he says that the copy of the royal instructions in the State Paper Office contains no such paragraph. “History,” he adds, “has already exhibited Lord Cornbury as a mean liar, a vulgar profligate, a frivolous spendthrift, an impudent cheat, a fraudulent bankrupt, and a detestable bigot. He is convicted of having perpetrated one of the most outrageous forgeries ever attempted by a British nobleman.”[531]
The few months of Lovelace’s rule (1708-9) were followed by a funeral Sermon when he died, in May, 1709, preached by William Vesey (New York, 1709), which is of enough historical interest to have been reprinted in the N. Y. Hist. Coll. (1880).
During 1720-1722, the Shelburne Papers (Hist. MSS. Commission Report, v. 215) reveal letters of Peter Schuyler and Gov. Burnet, with various other documentary sources.