Volume 1, Chapter 61, The Aftermath of Bellamont
The sudden death of Lord Bellamont in March 1701 ended the liberal interlude in the northern
royal colonies just as it was getting underway. A power vacuum immediately followed in each
of the colonies, and competing groups rushed in to try to fill it. In Massachusetts, Lieutenant
Governor Staunton happily prepared to re-assume power. By this time, ordinary conditions were
reversed in the colony. The council was liberal, while the House of Representatives had a majority
for the royal oligarchy. Staunton tried to dissolve the general court and rule alone,
but the council was able to force him to call a special session quickly. In that session,
The Staunton-dominated lower house voted to ask the king to promote Staunton to governor,
but the council angrily defeated the plan.
By late spring 1701, the succession crisis was becoming ever more acute, for the venerable
Staunton was dying.
Councilor Waite Winthrop, assuming leadership of the liberal camp, was appointed chairman
of a Joint Committee of the General Court. Making a last try for resumption of self-government
unencumbered by the Crown and its oligarchy, Winthrop's committee recommended to the King
a petition for restoration of an elected governor and other elected executive officials to the
colony. The Council warmly approved, but again the House of Representatives rejected the
plan.
When Stoughton died in July, Winthrop, as the senior counselor, functioned as the chief
executive of the colony. The council, moreover, elected him to succeed Stoughton as chief
justice of the superior court. In the council, Elisha Cook was Winthrop's chief supporter,
while former speaker Nathaniel Byfield led the opposition. Massachusetts then decided
to send Winthrop as its agent to England, but when he prepared to ask bluntly for resumption
of the old Massachusetts Charter, the House of Representatives again vetoed the plan.
Wait Winthrop's little moment of glory disappeared all too quickly. A furious struggle raged
in England. Massachusetts agent and friend of Winthrop, the liberal Sir Henry Asherst,
was trying desperately to block Joseph Dudley's appointment as governor. Ashhurst, who had
helped increase Mather try to restore the old charter a decade before, suggested that
Winthrop be appointed to succeed Staunton. Ashhurst, however, was undercut by the unseemly
haste of the general court in dumping him as its agent and naming one of the Jacobite
It is true that the court did this after hearing in September of Dudley's appointment.
Aschurst, though, would have had a good chance of having the appointment cancelled.
Furthermore, Winthrop ruined his chance for a royal appointment by repeating his old call
for resumption of the old charter.
and his friend Asherst, a moderate liberal after all, would not go that far.
As it was, Dudley, backed by the Board of Trade and letters from his Massachusetts supporters,
including the Mathers, now apparently willing to bow to whoever was successfully in power,
finally received the appointment as Governor of Massachusetts and New Hampshire in December
1701.
The collapse of the liberal opposition, particularly in the democratically elected House of Representatives,
and the supine acceptance of the same Dudley, whom the colony had happily imprisoned a dozen
years before, were signs of the new spirit that had come to rule over Massachusetts.
It was a spirit of resignation to the royal oligarchy and placement, and a shift from
Opposition to those attempting to get on the gravy train.
No better sign of this shift was the action of Waite Winthrop, a would-be liberal crusader
in 1701.
The aging Winthrop was happy to become Dudley's pliant henchman in 1708.
But while Dudley was to rule Massachusetts and New Hampshire for over a decade, he did
It succeeded, at least, in reinvigorating a liberal opposition in its traditional home,
the lower house.
The ever despotic Dudley moved determinedly to crush the will of the council and mold
it as his creature.
For example, the secret ballot was now prohibited in council meetings.
Dudley also tried to dictate to and bully the house, but the representatives holding
the purse fought back.
For example, they kept Dudley on an annual salary of less than 300 pounds. There was
thus formed a liberal opposition to the depredations of the royal governor and his allied oligarchy.
The pattern of 18th century politics in the royal colonies in America had been woven in
Massachusetts. In New Hampshire, the hated John Usher was appointed lieutenant governor
The assembly expressed its opposition to Usher by failing to vote him a salary. The Allen proprietary claims were pushed in the courts by Usher. But not only did the juries rule against them, even Dudley threw his weight against the feudal proprietary. Dudley thought it better to throw in his lot with the leading merchant oligarchs of the province, with the Waldrens and the Hinks. The proprietary claims were
to be lost in the courts, and the people of New Hampshire were finally able to get rid
of Osher when he was removed as lieutenant governor in 1715. The death of Lord Bellamont
threw the colony of New York into a turmoil. His lieutenant governor was John Nanfan,
a cousin of Bellamont's wife, who would be expected to carry on the old governor's policies.
But Nan Fan happened to be in Barbados at the time.
The Council was now in charge, and the Council had a Lislarian majority.
But the Senior Councilor, and therefore its President, was William Smith, one of the most
implacable of the anti-Lislarian oligarchy.
Smith now claimed that all the Governor's powers devolved on him alone, rather than
on the Council as a body.
The Lisslerian Council quickly overruled Smith, and the latter had to bow to its decision,
a decision that was later to be vindicated by the Crown.
Their first attempt to take power having failed, the counter-revolutionaries saw that their
only hope for power lay in England, and so they began to pepper the Crown with requests
and advice.
The highly reactionary Nicholas Bayard tried to whip up nationalistic prejudices by complaining
that Bellamont had favored the Dutch element.
Livingston, Smith, and Schuler wrote lengthy letters complaining of the regime.
When Lieutenant Governor Nanfan returned to New York in May, he effectively placed his
prestige on the Leslyrian side.
The heated spring elections of 1701 strengthened Leslyrian control of the assembly, which was
enhanced by the overthrow by the people of Albany of its local oligarchy.
The Leslyrians now passed a bill to compensate Jacob Leisler's son and moved against the
landed monopolist by ordering the payment of taxes and quit rents on all unimproved,
Arbitrarily Granted Land
However, the Lislarians alienated the merchants still further by financing compensations through
raising duties on imports. Some Lislarian leaders also succumbed to the temptations
of power by violating their own principles and granted themselves substantial tracts
The degree of land plunder was, however, very small compared with that of previous grants.
The assembly also proceeded to confiscate the property of Livingston and part of the
estate of Van Cortland for misappropriation of public funds while in power.
Dan Fann cheered the Lycelerian reformers on, and Chief Justice William Atwood, newly
arrived from England, set himself squarely on the Lycelerian side. But this idol of liberal
reform was not to last. By the end of 1701, the New Yorkers heard with dismay of the appointment
of Lord Cornberry as new governor. He was known to be partial to the Tory oligarchy
and was coming over with the hated Richard Ingelsby and with the former private secretary
of Benjamin Fletcher. Rumor had it that the newly appointed councillors were all to be
hard-line anti-Leslyrians. The Tory reaction involved in the choices of Dudley, Usher and
In England, Toryism was again dominant by 1701, and the Tories were able to strengthen
their dominance with the accession to the throne of Queen Anne in 1702. As an English
friend wrote jubilantly to Livingston toward the end of 1701, Most or all of the not of
of Lords, whereof the Lord of Belmont was one, are removed and dead. But the Lycelerians
were determined that if they must go out, they would do so with a bang, not a whimper.
They determined to leave in a blaze of revenge. The arch-reactionary Nicholas Bayard, on hearing
of Cornberry's appointment, was impudent enough not to conceal his jubilation. He promptly
They sent Kornberry a congratulatory address signed by 800 New Yorkers. Bayard's address
contained bitter indictments of the existing government, including charges of corruption,
injustice and, most serious of all, the willingness to grant the vote to non-freeholders and
to attack the foundation's property by annulling the privileged land grants. Now the Lycelerians
Mises had the chance to pay back Bayard with some of his own favorite coin, noting that
many soldiers had been induced to sign the petition. The Council indicted Bayard and
his aide William Hutchins, New York City alderman and tavern keeper, for treason and conspiring
to raise sedition and mutiny. The indictment came under the very law of treason of 1691
Bayard had helped frame and used so devastatingly against the Leslarians. It soon became known,
by the way, that the soldiers knew little of the contents of the petition but were attracted
by free beer or promises provided by Alderman Hutchins. The trial was arranged quickly,
with Atwood as judge and the Leslarian leader, counselor Thomas Weaver, as prosecutor. In
In imitation of the trial of Jacob Laszler, the jury was packed, this time against Bayard.
The foreman, for example, was a brother of Abraham de Peister, a leading leserian. Bayard,
a Dutchman himself, also protested because the jurors were Dutch and relatively poor.
Judge Atwood concluded the trial by virtually demanding a verdict of guilty, which was duly
Convicted of treason, Bayard was sentenced in March 1702 to death. His property was to be confiscated.
John Nanfan, however, did not wish to go too far. Having made his point forcefully, he reprieved Bayard in exchange for the prisoners expressing sorrow for the crime for which he was convicted.
Convicted, a roundabout confession of guilt. Expecting Kornberry to arrive at any time,
Bayard refused to make a direct confession. Hutchins was also tried and convicted for
treason and won his reprieve in the same way. Other leading anti-Leslarians, in a panic,
fled the colony, vowing vengeance against Atwood. Two of the émigrés, Thomas Wenham
and Philip French had been indicted for complicity in treason and were now outlawed. They were
joined in flight by the Reverend Mr. Vessey, who had propagandized widely against the regime,
even though amnesty had been promised to all but one of the exiles. And even Bayard and
Hutchins received the benefit of a letter to the Crown from Nanfan, asking for a royal
The prosecutions were never to go beyond giving Bayard and the oligarchs a sampling of their own medicine.
The last great gesture of the Belomont-Nanfan regime was Nanfan's ouster of Robert Livingston from the Council at the end of April.
The very least punishment, remarked Atwood, that Livingston deserved.
But the shades of night were approaching fast.
Cornberry was to arrive in early May, and the temper of the oligarchy was revealed in such signs as
God Save the King and Hang John Nanfan, and a poem that warned the Leslarians to
wait the approaching change and then lament their fate.
Lord Cornberry did not disappoint the expectations of either side.
Indeed, historians most partial to the oligarchy blanch at Cornberry's record.
Even the arch-tory historian William Smith, son of the anti-Leslarian leader, admitted,
We never had a governor so universally detested, nor one who so richly deserved the public
abhorrence.
His guiding purpose was personal plunder, and it was natural for him, just as it had
previously Benford Fletcher to align himself with that party which needed the most favors
and was in a position to pay the most for them.
Soon after assuming office, Cornberry ousted the Lislarians from council and filled Atwood's
Chief Justice post with William Smith.
He attacked the Lislarians as troublesome spirits and freed Bayard and Hutchins, who
were cleared by the privy council.
After packing the council, Cornberry dissolved the assembly, made many English soldiers freemen
of New York City, and removed all Lislarian sheriffs from office. Having secured a pliant
assembly, Cornberry proceeded to persecute the Lislarians further. John Nanfan was clapped
into jail for years under charge of false imprisonment and misuse of public funds, and
Bayard was kept there despite repeated orders from England to release him.
Fan-Fan finally escaped, but his property had all been confiscated.
Lady Bellomont's estate was confiscated for Cornberry's personal use.
One mercy, though, Bayard was not allowed to wreak full revenge.
His suits against leading Lislarians and his jurors for damages were disallowed by the
of the Crown, and his bill to prohibit any of his judges from holding any government
office was too much, even for Cornberry and the Assembly.
The new Cornberry-dominated Assembly promptly repealed all the Acts of the Nanfan Assembly
and also repealed the Belmont-secured annulment of the enormous land grants of the Fletcher
and while Queen Anne refused to allow this repeal to stand,
Cornberry himself returned to the Fletcher policy of huge land grants to favorite oligarchs.
Large tracts were granted to Reinbeck, Livingston, Phillips, Schuller, Smith, Van Rensselaer and Heathcote
Coat, and the boundaries of the grants were defined so vaguely as to permit the grantees
to stretch the tracts a hundredfold. The old feudal grant of Rensselaerwick was reconfirmed
by Cornberry and a large tract was granted to Cornberry's relative, George Clark, the
new secretary of the colony. Cornberry was more than able to compensate the landed oligarchy
for the setback it had received under Bellamont.
Cornberry also tried to restore the flour monopoly to New York City merchants and to
overlord the city's representation in the assembly.
He also wanted restored the old power to prohibit the export of wheat, thus oppressing the farmers
for the benefit of the flour makers by executive order.
By this time, however, the Slyrians were able to bounce back in the new assembly. The assembly
was in any case disgusted with Cornberry's flagrant appropriation of tax funds for his
personal use. By 1704, it was refusing to vote any more money unless it was allowed
to appoint a treasurer in charge of the public funds. The assembly was able to win its case
in England for extraordinary expenses. Naturally, it then tended to make all grants of money
extraordinary ones. The assembly also denounced Cornberry's practice of charging ruinous
fees to defendants being prosecuted at court. Lord Cornberry was finally removed from office
in late 1708. Characteristically, he then had to flee New York to escape creditors to
to whom he owed several thousand pounds. After very brief terms by Lord Lovelace and Richard
Inglesby, Robert Hunter became governor in 1710. By now twenty years had elapsed since
the Leisler rebellion, and under the lengthy and soothing rule of Hunter, the Leislerian
passions died down and faded away. In one of his first addresses, Hunter warned that
that no faction would receive any encouragement from him. His appointments to the Council
and other offices were consciously designed to be impartial and to allay tempers on both
sides. Furthermore, both factions had already begun to cooperate in asserting the power
of the Assembly as a check against the excesses of Cornberry. Thus Hunter fought the Assembly
New York was beginning to settle down into the Governor versus Assembly structure that
was becoming characteristic of the royal colonies. But even though the Laslerian movement had
faded away, that which had provoked its rise, the quasi-feudal oligarchy, had unfortunately
not faded too. Although the Laslerian Revolution had succeeded in bringing an assembly to
New York which would become the focus of popular opposition to government, it did not succeed
in Destroying the Feudal Oligarchy. Indeed, land monopoly was now aggravated by the grants
of Fletcher and Cornberry. Governor Hunter saw the danger and prophetically warned the
Crown that the owners of the vast estates in New York would cripple the growth of population
in the colony by insisting on renting out instead of dividing and selling their lands.
Retaining the land and renting it out, as under feudalism, will not succeed in America,
Hunter warned, where full ownership of cheap and fertile land can be obtained in all the
other colonies.
But Hunter, alas, was not a crusader.
So while basically opposed to landed monopoly, his policy of balance and moderation only
left the problem of land monopoly and quasi-feudalism a festering sore that would linger in the
New York social and political structure for over a century. Hunter did not add to the
arbitrary land grants in New York, but by pursuing moderation instead of principled
reform, he made no move to remedy the problem. In fact, Hunter even appeased to the landlords
by recommending a waiver of the requirement that a certain proportion of each land and estate be settled within three years of the grant.
Hunter's only long-run achievement was to eliminate the one social movement dedicated to the removal of the feudal land monopoly.