Volume 1, Chapter 52, New York, 1676, 1686.
Having failed to seize Connecticut in the midst of King Philip's War,
Governor Edmund Andros cemented an agreement with the Iroquois
to continue the old arrangement they had with the Dutch for the fur trade.
He did this particularly because French Jesuit missionaries from Canada
were beginning to dissolve some of the traditional enmity of the Iroquois toward the French.
The furthest white outpost of New York was now Schenectady, a Dutch hamlet founded over
a decade earlier by an agent of Rensselaerwick, the only continuing patron ship which extended
over several counties' worth of area around Albany.
To regularize Iroquois relations, Andros created a Board of Commissioners of Indian Affairs,
stationed at Albany. Appointed secretary was a young Scotsman, Robert Livingston, son of
an eminent Presbyterian minister and secretary of the manor of Rensselaerwick, as well as
of the town of Albany. Albany's vital importance for the fur trade stemmed from its locus at
The junction of the Hudson and the Mohawk rivers. The Mohawk provided the opening to the west,
along which the Iroquois could serve as middlemen by purchasing the furs of the Indian tribes
of the middle west and reselling them to the Dutch or English who would transport them
down the Hudson overseas. The most important citizens of Albany, even
Even after the English reconquest continued to be the Dutch Handlers, the merchants engaged
in fur trading.
The fur trade was crucial to the economy of the northern colonies in this era, and fur
traders were always attempting to opt out of the shifting winds of free competition
by obtaining exclusive monopoly privileges for themselves from the government.
Mr. Andros proved amenable to granting monopolies. In the summer of 1678, he granted a monopoly
of the fur trade to the resident merchants of Albany, reserving the monopoly of the overseas
trade for the merchants of New York City. The privileged monopolist, or oligopolist,
of Albany were, of course, not happy about having to sell their furs to a similarly privileged
set of oligopolists, here defined as several receivers of common grants of exclusive privilege.
The twenty-odd Albany Handlers, however, did manage to get rid of Timothy Cooper, an Albany
agent for the manorial ruler of Springfield, Massachusetts, John Pynchon. Cooper's private
mail was purloined by the Albany magistrates, and on the strength of critical statements
In the same year, Andros took the highly significant step of establishing a monopoly of the important export commodity flour.
By 1680, all bolting and packaging of flour was reserved exclusively to resident merchants of New York City, who also had to be freemen of that city.
This flour monopoly brought about a great deal of money.
This flower monopoly brought in much revenue to the crown. The monopolist paid for the privilege in the form of inspection fees, taxes, and so forth, but it rightly embittered the merchants outside the city who were grievously injured, and the wheat farmers of New York, who saw their prices fall sharply as their market was greatly narrowed to a few privileged people.
The result was the crushing of the successful flour mills already established at such spots as Rensselaerwick, Albany and Kingston, the last town barely escaping fines to punish the vigor of its protest.
The wheat and other grain farmers were further malted by an absolute prohibition on the export of grain in force since 1673.
1973. This ban greatly depressed the price of wheat earned by the farmer while privileging
the New York merchants with an artificial cheap cost for the grain purchased. Grain
prices were further lowered artificially by prohibiting the distilling of liquor in New
York, thus shutting off an important market for local grain. This prohibition privileged
the New York City merchants again by lowering the cost of grain and by choking off the effective
The Duke of York ordered Andros to set up a port monopoly for New York City. All ships bound for any port within the original territory of New Netherland were now compelled to enter their goods at the New York Customs House.
This provided the crown, with assured customs revenue, at a port it could easily watch, and furnished much extra income for the privileged merchants, but again at the expense of greatly crippling trade at such places as Long Island.
The settlers of Suffolk County on eastern Long Island, long accustomed to exchanging their whale oil for the manufactured goods of New England, were now forced into the extra cost of transporting these goods via the long detour of New York City and of paying there the customs duties that they could have avoided at Long Island.
With all these monopolistic privileges granted to the New York City merchants by the government, it is not surprising that their profits often range from 100 to several hundred percent.
The network of monopoly privilege also tightened in all the several towns of New York province.
Each town and village government laid down severe restrictions against competition from outside its locale or from non-resident visitors.
Only qualified freemen of each town enjoyed the freedom of the town, including the right to carry on a trade or craft without hindrance or harassment.
Thus, the bakers of Albany pushed through an ordinance forbidding any transients to bake in the city, and a special tax was levied on seasonal visitors.
and even the relatively liberal town of Huntington forbade any person of any other town upon this island to wail or fish within its jurisdiction.
A particularly important urban monopoly had been granted in the days of New Netherland to the carters of New York City.
Historians have erroneously termed the carters workers in the sense of modern employees, but they were not at all proletarians.
They were, rather, self-employed artisans who sold their wares to the public, therefore monopoly privileges made them, in effect, virtually medieval and mercantilistic guilds.
The very creation of the monopoly introduced a conflict of interest between the privileged carters and the rest of the colony.
The Carters exploited their monopoly fully by working less and charging more, whereas
the colony balked at the obvious shortage of carting service created by the privilege.
During the Dutch Reoccupation, the Carters complained that non-licensed men and boys
were engaged in trucking, that is, taking advantage of the attractive Monopoly 1 conditions,
as well as of the shortage to enter the field.
The court obligingly ordered these boys not to ride a cart anymore.
Negroes, free or slave, had long been prohibited from becoming carters, but in 1674, Governor
Andros suspended the right to cart for one carter who refused to haul cobblestones for
the governor.
Two years later, the city decreed minimum loads that the licensed carters would be forced
to carry.
In 1677, twelve New York City carters were expelled from their occupation, and heavily fined, whereupon the carters submitted and promised not to disobey again. The carters thus found that a monopoly privilege could cut both ways.
In addition to imposing monopoly privileges and crippling Long Island trade, Andros also offended the Dutch citizens by partiality to Anglican practice.
In 1676, Reverend Nicholas van Rensselaer, a protege of King Charles and the Duke of York, came to New York to take up his holdings at Rensselaerwick, the only Dutch patron ship that had withstood the rigors of the year.
Although Van Rensselaer had been ordained by an Anglican bishop and not by the ruling classes of Amsterdam of the Dutch Reformed Church, Governor Ambrose still had the effrontery to appoint Van Rensselaer to the pastoral ministry of the Dutch Reformed Church at Albany.
The Reverend Mr. Van Nieuwenhuisen of New York City protested vigorously and was joined by the young Dutch reformed merchant who had emigrated from Germany, Jacob Leisler, whose wife was related to the leading Dutch families of the colony.
Leisler accused Van Rensselaer of false preaching, but the court found for the patron, and Leisler was forced to pay court costs and imprisoned for a time.
Soon, Andros moved in to compel the virtual separation of the Dutch Reformed Church in
New York from its connection with the classes of Amsterdam. In 1678, the Dutch Church in
Newcastle on the Delaware appointed a young minister and asked for his ordination without
having to send him to Amsterdam. At this point, Andros saw his opportunity and ordered Van
A corollary to the economic tyranny imposed by the Andros regime was the placing of political
public office generally provides a two-fold economic privilege for its holder, the salary, directly attendant on the job, and the additional economic benefits from wielding the powers of office. Generally, both sets of powers are used to the full by the rulers.
From 1664 to 1689, for example, only twenty-one men held office in the appointed governor's
council. Of these, ten were wealthy merchants of New York City, basking in the monopoly
privileges they helped to award themselves. Two were wealthy lawyers of the city connected
with the merchants, and four were high English officials in the bureaucracy. A major economic
Grievance was Andros's imposition of a mass of higher taxes shortly after assuming power
in New York. This included not only the quit rents, property and excise taxes mentioned
above, but also a 2% import duty on English goods, a 10% import duty on non-English goods,
A 3% duty on salt, specific import duties on fur, tobacco and liquor, and an added 3%
duty on goods traveling up the Hudson River.
Added to the New York port monopoly, this was a formidable grievance indeed.
The reimposition in 1679 of the excise tax on liquor, which was canceled in 1676, also
added to opposition to the tax levies. The economic, political and religious grievances
all intensified the New Yorkers' long-standing demand for representative assembly, and New
Yorkers were painfully conscious of the fact that theirs was the only English colony in
America lacking such an assembly. Now the demand had spread from Long Island to the
In 1681 the grievances against the Andros administration came to a head. Numerous charges had piled up against the governor. Twice Andros had been brought into court for appropriating confiscated goods for his own personal use. The court freed him only for lack of jurisdiction. In January, therefore, Andros was recalled to England to answer the charges, which included favoritism,
favoritism in enforcing the Navigation Acts, fraud, private speculation, taxing the people
without their consent and sometimes without the consent of his own counsel, and denial
of the right to jury trial.
There were also charges of favoritism to leading Dutch merchants, particularly the two richest
men in the colony, Frederick Phillips and O.S. Van Cortland.
The Duke's agent sent to investigate the charges found them true, but Andros still managed
to convince the Duke of York of his innocence.
In the meanwhile, however, Andros committed a very costly oversight.
The hated customs duties imposed by Andros had expired in November 1680.
The governor, in the press of preparing for his voyage home, neglected to order them renewed.
This was the only opening that the embittered merchants needed. As soon as Andros left,
with Deputy Governor Anthony Brockles remaining in charge, one merchant after another refused
to pay the duties, claiming rather speciously that Brockles had no power to continue them
in force. Brockles himself was inclined to yield the point, even though Andros had told
William Dyer, the duke's collector of customs at New York, determined to collect the duties
nevertheless. After confiscating goods for non-payment, Dyer was sued by a merchant he
had victimized, and a grand jury indicted Dyer for high treason because he assumed regal
power over the state of New York. The court ruled that Dyer was not allowed to take the
and a grand jury indicted Dyer for high treason because he assumed
regal power and authority by imposing taxes illegally.
Even before Andros' departure, the mayor's court simply and illegally
refused to try a smuggler
and Andros had disciplined that body.
When Dyer challenged the jurisdiction of the court of Assisi's, the court shipped him
to England to stand trial for treason,
where he was, of course, promptly freed. Dyer might be freed, but he was at least temporarily
out of the country, and the citizens of New York for a while had successfully revolted
against payment of the oppressive duties. The revolutionary impetus now pressed on to
a clamor for a representative assembly. The old principle of no taxation without representation
was put forward again. A mass petition was sent to the Duke of York, declaring the lack
of an assembly and intolerable grievance. All this pressure, loss of revenue, turmoil
and virtual rebellion now had its impact. It began to weary the Duke.
Advised by his Quaker friend William Penn to grant New York an assembly, just give itself
The Duke at last agreed. The Duke retired Governor Andros and replaced him with Colonel Thomas Dongan, an Irish Catholic, with instructions to institute an assembly.
Dongan promptly convened the first representative assembly in New York history in October 1683 to the jubilation of the New Yorkers.
The Assembly had the power to levy taxes, though not to appropriate them, and its legislative
acts were subject to the veto of the Governor, Council and the ultimate veto of the Proprietor.
Moreover, the power to convoke and dissolve the Assembly was strictly in the hands of
the Governor.
The Assembly consisted of deputies from New York City, Long Island, Kings, Queens and
The Assembly drew up a charter, which it eagerly sent to the Duke of York for approval, and which provided for regular meetings of the Assembly, trial by jury, due process of law, and the right of habeas
Corpus, Restriction of Martial Law and Religious Toleration of All Christians.
But the New Yorkers were to find, once again, that the parable of being chastised with whips
and then with scorpions could apply particularly well to them.
For one thing, the assembly met only once more the following fall, with the exception
The Excession of James II greatly changed New York's status. In the first place, with New York's proprietor, now the king, it automatically was transformed from a proprietor to an agent.
and, second, the interest of James in the Colony was now revived with a vengeance. As King, he moved steadily toward imposing a highly centralized royal despotism on all the northern colonies. The separate charter for New York was now revoked, and Dongan ordered it voided in 1686. Furthermore, Dongan decreed that the taxing power was to be given to the rich.
was from then on to be lodged in the Governor and Council.
The most precious power of any assembly, taxing power, was now taken away.
In January 1687, Dongan officially dissolved the assembly, which had not met in over a
year.
In protest against this crushing of the stillborn assembly, the militia of Richmond revolted,
and rioting occurred in Jamaica.
Both protests were quickly suppressed.
Apart from the plans of James II and the abortiveness of the assembly, the Dongan administration
proved no great improvement over that of Andros.
In the first place, the various oppressive tendencies of the Andros' regime were continued
in force.
Dongan continued the embargoes on the export of grain in the various monopolies and tightened
The Albany Monopoly of the Fur Trade
Dongan severely tightened the New York City's flower monopoly as well.
When flower makers sprang up outside New York City and
evaded the legal prohibition,
Dongan in 1683 instructed the sheriffs to seize and confiscate
all flower bolted or packed outside the city.
In addition, Dongan added to the exploitation of other groups for the
the benefit of the city merchants by prohibiting tanneries in New York. This forced the cattle
farmers to sell hides to the merchants for export to tanneries. This created extra business
for the merchants at the expense of both the farmers who suffered from the restriction
of their market and the shoemakers who now had to pay a higher price for imported leather.
The result of the continuing governmental oppression of the grain farmers was a one third fall in the price of wheat.
Priced at four shillings, six pence per bushel in 1673, wheat by 1688 had fallen to three shillings a bushel.
This caused a corollary fall in land values in New York.
of New York. Total value of property fell from £101,000 in 1673 to £78,000 in 1688.
The struggle with the carting monopoly continued. Dongan forced the carters to carry over a
hundred loads annually to the fort without compensation. When the carters refused to
To work under Dongan's regulations in 1684, the authorities decided to allow anyone to
enter the trade except the disobeying carters. This double-barreled blow quickly forced the
carters to obey the government decrees. For a short while, Governor Dongan did lessen
the New York City port monopoly a trifle. The Long Island towns were granted port privileges,
but only with those ships posting a 100-pound bond against engaging in smuggling and with
revenue officials stationed on Long Island to enforce the various trade and customs regulations.
The Long Islanders complained, however, of the revenue officers and the high duties while
Dongan chafed at continued smuggling in violation of the Navigation Acts.
By 1688, Dongan had again closed the Long Island ports. One monopoly was relaxed, however,
with the accession of Dongan. New York merchants, in contrast to the New York port, lost their
monopoly of the overseas trade. In addition, New York was still prohibited from trading
with Holland. Dutch discontent continued. The Albany Dutch Reformed Church became the
The Center of Complaint Against Government Interference
In 1684, this church petitioned for permission to select a few of its minor officials rather than have the civil government making the appointments.
The request was refused.
The following year, the Dutch minister of the Albany Church refused to be ousted from his post by a civil court on the grounds that this decision could only be made by the Amsterdam classes.
But Governor Dongan did not simply follow in his predecessor's footsteps. He added more
oppressions and grievances of his own. Most important was his determined drive for the
imposition of quitterance. As soon as he arrived, Dongan decreed the compulsory reconfirmation
of all land titles, including all confirmed previously by Andros, and the use of these
Land Rolls to Exact Higher Quit Rents, out of which Dongan himself received a commission.
Meeting with considerable resistance, Dongan threatened to buy from the Indians all land
within existing townships not yet so purchased and to resell the lands to strangers.
The towns surrendered to this threat, but only with bitterness.
In East Hampton, a Puritan minister was moved to curse anyone, even the governor, who dared to injure settlers by removing their land markers. Dongan promptly arrested the minister and several of his congregation, and only a humble apology won their liberty. Huntington felt it necessary to assure renewal of his position.
of its patents, so made Dongan a gift of land, which the governor cheerfully accepted. Dongan
generally insisted on personal fees for the re-granting of land titles and town patents.
For granting a town charter, the governor exacted 300 pounds from New York City and
also mulched at Albany for a similar service. But even while granting a modicum of self-rule
Also to New York City, Dongan's charter provided for a veto of municipal actions by the governor
and the council, and for the appointment of the mayor by the governor. Dongan was also
accused with some justification of aiding his friends in evading the navigation acts,
of forcing merchants into giving him a share of their enterprises, and of selling land
to his friends.
Dongan not only raised quick rents, but added further injury to a declining economy by increasing
taxation, even though he himself recognized taxation as one of the reasons for New York's
economic decline.
When I come to New York to impose another tax on the people, I am afraid they will desert
the province.
Dongan embarked on a program of tampering with the land that had a long-run impact far more
severe than any of his other policies. The Dutch attempt to engross the land of New York
under a feudal landholding aristocracy had failed. Of all the Patroonships, only the
vast Rensselaerwick had survived. Now Governor Dongan revived the policy of feudal handouts
of Unused Land to Privileged Grantees. Dongan literally created a privileged class of large
quasi-feudal landholders by erecting numerous manors and by other large land grants. Here
was the origin of the long alliance in New York between two privileged ruling castes,
the Royal Bureaucracy and the Great Land Holding Oligarchy, which came to include such old merchant
and here was the beginning of a policy that fastened feudal landholding onto New York for a far longer period than transpired in the other colonies where after a short time feudalistic landholding tended to dissolve into the hands of actual settlers.
The million-acre Rensselaerwick surrounding Albany was reconfirmed as a manor by Dongan in 1685 with the Lord of the Manor obtaining virtually the full feudal powers of the Durham, the Latinate type.
The Manor Lord could appoint manorial courts and impose military burdens. This grant could
be made because the Duke of York decided not to apply the English anti-feudal statutes
of 1660 to his province. The largest new manor created was Livingston Manor, given to the
The ambitious young Scot, Robert Livingston, who had managed to marry into the leading
Schuller, Van Rensselaer and Van Cortland families, Livingston based his claim upon
a fraudulent Indian purchase. After the manner of the day, the location of the purchased
land was kept deliberately vague in the contract, enabling the owner, aided by a friendly governor,
to stretch his land enormously by suitably elastic interpretation of the land area.
In this way, Livingston was able to inflate his manor from 26,000 acres to 160,000 acres,
constituting the southern third of what is now Columbia County. Van Rensselaer was also
able to add nearly 300,000 acres to his manor by similar fraudulent methods.
An excellent extension of an Indian purchase, aided and abetted by the governor.
Another new element of friction, largely introduced by the Dongan administration, was the Roman Catholic issue.
James II was a Catholic king, and this in itself was sufficient to raise the hackles of the ardent English and Dutch Calvinist of New York.
At the same time, Roman Catholic influence was growing in the colony.
The acting governor, Anthony Brockles, was a Catholic, as was Dongan, who brought with him several English Jesuits.
The Jesuit order, the great order of the Catholic Counter-Reformation, had always been held in something akin to superstitious fear,
but this was now enhanced in the minds of the colonists by mounting hysteria over the French Jesuit missionaries to the Iroquois.
The emerging anti-Catholic hysteria over the proximity of French Canada, it should be noted,
had also a hard economic basis, the danger of the Iroquois selling their precious furs
to the French instead of to New Yorkers.
There was also much carping over the new Jesuit Latin school in New York, which proved so
So efficient that a great many children of influential New Yorkers were sent there.
Here too a Catholic plot could be sensed, and rather easily in the area of the Titus
Oats hoax and the resumption of French Catholic persecution of the Huguenots.
And yet so far was Dongan from being involved in a vast Catholic plot that he took it upon
Langen did his best to save the fur trade monopoly and to gain new crown territory by whipping up Indian hatred of, far less populous, New France to the north. Neither did the considerable relative weakness of New France prevent a spread of anti-catholicism, vague but intense fears of a French fifth column of subversive power.
of French Agents, and so forth.
Dungen's tactic in pursuing his designs against the French was to look on benignly while the
Iroquois plundered and ravaged French settlements, and then warned that the Iroquois were British
subjects and their land in New York territory under British protection.
So far did Dongan's Catholicism not influence his behavior toward the French that he tried
to send English and Irish priests to the Iroquois to counter the missionary efforts of French
Jesuits, but to no avail, for the English and Irish priests refused to go into the wilderness
to live with the Indians.
In November 1686, France and England signed a Treaty of Neutrality in London. The treaty
We provided for peace in America and each signatory agreed that neither country would
violate the territories of the other, even if war should break out between them and Europe.
Doubtless the French thought that this would put a stop to Dongan's antics in Iroquois
country and New France proceeded to send an expedition against the Iroquois. But Dongan,
careless of the treaty, countered this by supplying arms and ammunition to the Iroquois
and stimulating them to attack the French. The Indians responded by ravaging and destroying
French settlements in Canada. Louis XIV naturally complained to King James and asked him to
stop Dongan's aggressions. James, however, was influenced by Dongan's pointed reference
to the value of the Iroquois beaver trade and also claimed the Iroquois as English subjects.