Gotham_ A History of New York City to 1898 - Edwin G. Burrows [83]
This bloodless coup, hailed by Whig apologists as the Glorious Revolution, proved to be a turning point in Anglo-American history. It secured the Protestant succession. It laid to rest the theory of royal absolutism in England. It established the supremacy of Parliament. In time, too, as Whig propagandists like John Locke labored to justify what had taken place, it would alter, fundamentally, the structure and vocabulary of Anglo American political discourse. Natural rights, popular sovereignty, constitutionalism, the inherent tendency of power to encroach upon liberty—these and other Whig commonplaces would become the conventional wisdom on both sides of the Atlantic, so broadly accepted as to seem self-evident and timeless, a national creed rather than sectarian dogma.
“THIS CONFUSED BUSINESSE”
Secret dispatches at the beginning of March 1689 brought the first sketchy reports of “a total Revolution att home” to Lieutenant Governor Nicholson in New York. Uncertain of his own authority and unwilling to act without further information, Nicholson sat on the story for the next six weeks. His anxiety increased toward the end of April when word came down from Boston that Governor Andros and other dominion officials were under arrest. The dominion had been extremely unpopular in New England, where attempts by Andros to reorganize local government aroused exactly the same kind of discontent that he and his predecessors in New York had stirred up on Long Island. When word of James IPs abdication reached Boston, an angry mob clapped Sir Edmund and other dominion officials in jail. They were later shipped back to England in chains.
By mid-April (if not earlier) everybody in New York as well knew of the Glorious Revolution—that an English king after whom the city was named had been replaced by a Dutch prince after whom the city had previously been named (during its brief incarnation as New Orange), that Andros was finished, that the Dominion of New England had collapsed. Then came news that England had joined the League of Augsburg against Louis XIV and that a declaration of war against France could be expected momentarily. Rumors may also have reached the city around this time that Louis XIV had ordered the governor of Quebec to attack New York in the autumn of 1689 and drive out all the Protestants.
Nicholson and his council (Stephanus Van Cortlandt, Frederick Philipse, and Nicholas Bayard), together with the captains of the city’s six militia companies (among them Abraham De Peyster, Nicholas Stuyvesant, and one Jacob Leisler), took steps to fortify the city and strengthen the garrison in the fort. The governor said nothing, however, to indicate that he would accept the accession of William and Mary, and more rumors now began to fly around town—that Nicholson, Irish Roman Catholics (including former governor Dongan), renegade Jacobites (supporters of the deposed king), the French, and Iroquois befriended by Andros were planning to seize the city for James II.
The English towns of Long Island responded to the alleged Catholic-Jacobite-French threat by electing new magistrates and calling out their militias to march against New York City. As the militias advanced slowly westward, Nicholson reported, they were assisted by “some ill affected and restless spiritts amongst us” who “used all imaginable meanes to stirr up the Inhabitants of this Citty to sedition and rebellion.” Nicholson, his council, and the the city’s militia captains reiterated their determination to defend New York against foreign enemies and to suppress “mutinous persons nigh us.” The Long Island militiamen went no further than Jamaica and dispersed, but apprehensive merchants, Captain Leisler among them, began withholding payment of customs duties until the legitimacy of the government had been clarified and the customs collector, a Roman Catholic, was removed from office.
Nicholson still