"Smith, describing the disposition and temper of the inhabitants of the colony at the time, shows that, notwithstanding the personal popularity of the governor, the increase of Catholics was looked upon with a suspicious eye. 'A general disaffection,' he says,'to the government prevailed among the people. Papists began to settle in the colony under the smiles of the governor. The collector of the revenues and several principal officers threw off the mask, and openly avowed their attachment to the doctrines of Rome. A Latin school was set up, and the teacher strongly suspected for a Jesuit; in a word, the whole body of the people trembled for the Protestant cause.' The news of the revolution in England, and the subsequent proceedings under Leisler, probably caused such Catholics as were in a situation to get away, to withdraw at the same time with the governor. The documents connected with Leisler's usurpation of authority, as published by O'Callaghan in his Documentary History of New York, show how studiously he appealed to the religious prejudices of the people, in order to excite odium against the friends of the late governor, and establish his own claims. The 'security of the Protestant religion,' and the 'diabolical designs of the wicked and cruel papists,' are made to ring their changes through his various proclamations and letters. Depositions and affidavits were published, in which it was sworn that Lieutenant-Governor Nicholson had been several times seen assisting at mass; that the papists on Staten Island 'did threaten to cut the inhabitants' throats,' and to come and burn the city; 'that M. De La Prearie had arms in his house for fifty men; that eighty or a hundred men were coming from Boston and other places, that were hunted away, (no doubt, not for their goodness,) and that there were several of them Irish and papists; that a good part of the soldiers that were in the fort already were papists,' etc. Among other depositions, is one of Andries and Jan Meyer, in which they declare that, 'being delivered from a papist governor, Thomas Dongan, they thought that the deputy-governor in the Fort would defend and establish the true religion; but we found to the contrary. There was a cry that all the images erected by Col. Thomas Dongan in the fort would be broken down and taken away; but when we were working in the fort with others, it was commanded, after the departure of Sir Edmond Andros, by said Nicholson, to help the priest, John Smith,' (supposed to be a name assumed for the sake of safety by one of the Jesuit fathers of New York,) 'to remove, for which we were very glad; but it was soon done, because said removal was not far off, but in a better room in the fort; and ordered to make all things ready for said priest, according to his will, and perfectly, and to erect all things as he ordered, from that time,'" etc.
Mr. Graham says of the state of public feeling prevailing at this time in New York, that
"An outrageous dread of popery had invaded the minds of the lower classes of the people, and not only diminished real and substantial evils in their esteem, but nearly extinguished common sense in their understandings, and common justice in their sentiments."
Deputy-Governor Nicholson took possession of the government in August, 1688. On the 24th of that month, Governor Andros issued a proclamation for a general thanksgiving throughout the English provinces for the birth of a prince, the son of King James, and heir to the English throne. But by the next mail news of quite a different character arrived: the invasion of England by the Prince of Orange, the flocking of the people to his standard, the abdication and flight of King James, and the proclamation of William and Mary as king and queen of England. Mr. Nicholson and his followers recognized the authority of William and Mary, and, claiming that the commissions issued under James II. still held good, proposed to exercised the functions of the public offices under them, until instructions should be received from the new government at home. They were supported by the more respectable and wealthy part of the citizens. But the popular party took the opposite ground, and contended that all the commissions were now invalid, and that the people should take the government into their own hands until the will of their present majesties should be heard from. They were led on by one Jacob Leisler, a successful merchant, but a bitter bigot and ambitious demagogue, and the leader of such as refused all social intercourse with Catholics. Leisler had been appointed as early as 1683, by Governor Dongan, commissioner of the Admiralty; but, while holding this office, he was deeply disaffected, and had previously gained some notoriety by his opposition to Rensselaer, an Episcopal minister and suspected papist, at Albany, who had been sent to the province by the Duke of York.
The revolution commenced in New York by the refusal of Leisler and others to pay revenue and taxes to Mr. Plowman, the collector, because he was a Catholic. The people of Long Island deposed their magistrates and elected new ones, and despatched a large body of militia to New York, "to seize the fort, and keep off popery, French invasion, and slavery." The public money, amounting to £773 12s., had been deposited, for safe keeping, in the fort which was garrisoned by a few soldiers commanded by a Catholic ensign. In order to secure this treasure, the popular party assembled on the 2d of June, 1689, and seized the fort. Leisler, who had refused to lead them to attack, on hearing of its seizure, went, with forty-seven men, to the fort, was welcomed by the citizens, and acknowledged as their leader. At a meeting of the people, a so-called "Committee of Safety" was appointed for the immediate government of the province, and Leisler was appointed to the chief command. Then followed the reign of terror described by Smith, Graham, and other historians. Catholics were hunted down in every direction, and many Protestants, suspected of being "papists" at heart, were treated in the same manner. Orders were issued for the arrest of Governor Dongan—who, since his retirement from office, had been quietly residing on his estate at Staten Island—and all other Catholics, who were compelled to fly for safety. Governor Dongan and other Catholics took shelter on board of a vessel in the harbor, where they remained for weeks, during the height of the excitement. He probably was obliged to keep himself concealed. He fled to Rhode Island, and soon afterward returned to Staten Island; his servants were arrested, his personal effects—charged, in the frenzy of the hour, to embrace a number of arms—were seized at his mill on Staten Island; and all who pretended to hold commissions under him were ordered to be arrested. So effectually were the Catholics driven from the province that, in 1696, seven years afterward, on a census of Catholics, taken by the mayor of the city by order of Governor Fletcher, only nine names were returned, namely, Major Anthony Brockholes, William Douglass, John Cooley, Christiane Lawrence, Thomas Howarding, John Cavalier, John Patte, John Fenny, and Philip Cunningham.
Whether Governor Dongan returned to England, and again came out to the province after the excitement had abated, or remained concealed in the province or neighborhood, seems not to be clear. It is certain, however, that he was in New York in 1791 [sic]. It need only be added here that the "Charter of Liberties," passed in 1683, under a Catholic governor, was, with all other laws passed by the late general assembly, repealed by the Protestant assembly of New York, in 1691, and a so-called "Bill of Rights" passed, which expressly deprived Catholics of all their political and religious rights. In 1697 this "Bill of Rights" was repealed by King William, "probably as being too liberal," says Bishop Bayley; and, in 1700, an act was passed which recited that "Whereas, divers Jesuits, priests, and popish missionaries have, of late, come, and for some time have had this province, and others of his majesty's adjacent colonies, who, by their wicked and subtle insinuations, industriously labored to debauch, seduce, and withdraw the Indians from their due obedience to his most sacred majesty, and to excite and stir them up to sedition, rebellion, and open hostility against his majesty's priest, etc., remaining in or coming into the province after November 1st, 1700, should be "deemed and accounted an incendiary and disturber of the public peace and safety, and an enemy of the true Christian religion, and shall be adjudged to suffer perpetual imprisonment," that, in case of escape and capture, they should suffer death, and that harborers of priests should pay a fine of two hundred pounds, and stand three days in the pillory. If it is alleged that the law of 1691 was the result of high party excitement and public alarm, what excuse, it may be asked, is to be alleged for the more illiberal and persecuting law of 1700? It is but justice to James II., to point to the "Charter of Liberties" of 1683, passed with his own approbation, and at his suggestion, and then to the laws of 1691 and 1700, passed under William and Mary, and remark that, though the revolution gave the colonies William and Mary in the place of James, it also gave penal and odious laws, and a deceptive "Bill of Rights," in exchange for a "Charter of Liberties" that gave what its title professed to confer. In Maryland, too, whose Catholic founders proclaimed civil and religious liberty as the basis of their commonwealth, the same scenes, on a more extended scale, were at the same time being enacted; the persecutors in New York were in intimate correspondence with their co-laborers in Maryland and New England.
In 1691, when Governor Dongan saw, from the passage of the "Bill of Rights," that Catholics were excluded from the benefits of government, and subjected to persecution, he returned to England.
While he was governor of New York, in 1685, his brother William, who had, in 1661, been created Baron Dongan and Viscount Claine in the Irish peerage, was advanced to the earldom of Limerick, with remainder, on the failure of direct issue, to Colonel Thomas Dongan. On the breaking out of the revolution and the flight of James II., William, Earl of Limerick, adhered to that monarch, and followed him into France; whereupon his estates were forfeited, and granted to the Earl of Athlone, an adherent of William. This grant was confirmed by an act of the Irish parliament, but with a clause saving the right of Colonel Thomas Dongan. Colonel Dongan, on his return to England, made every effort to recover some portion of his brother's estates. His brother, the Earl of Limerick, died at St. Germain in 1698, whereupon Colonel Dongan was introduced to William III. as successor of the late Earl of Limerick, and the new earl did homage to the king for his earldom, and, according to the feudal custom, kissed the king's hand on succeeding to the rank. He was allowed by the government, about the same time, £2500, in tallies, in part payment for advances made by him for public purposes while governor of New York. His persevering efforts to recover the estates of his deceased brother so far finally succeeded as to induce the passage of an act of parliament for his relief, on the 25th of May, 1702. He subsequently offered himself for service in the American colonies, but it does not appear that he was ever in the service of the crown after his return to England. He died in London, on the 14th day of December, 1715, and was interred in the church-yard of St. Pancras, Middlesex. The inscription on his tombstone reads as follows:
"The Right Honble Thomas Dongan,
Earl of Limerick.
Died December 14th,
aged eighty-one years,
1715.
Requiescat in Pace. Amen."