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hesitated to acknowledge the abdication of James II. When he gave refuge to some soldiers from the Boston garrison, then threatened to “pistol” a Dutch militia officer and “sett the town in fyre” rather than tolerate insubordination, his authority disintegrated. Excited city militiamen poured into the streets, beating drums and calling on Captain Leisler to lead them in preventing a papist rising. On the last day of May, led by Ensign Joost Stol of Leisler’s company, the militia swarmed into Fort James and disarmed the little garrison of regular troops. Joined by a mass of civilians, they declared all laws made under the authority of King James to be null and void and formed an “association” to hold the city for William and Mary. To all intents and purposes, the colony’s government had ceased to exist. Nicholson took the first boat back to England to get help (and in the bargain got himself appointed governor of Virginia, where he founded the College of William and Mary and laid out Williamsburg).

Toward the end of June what Nicholson called “this confused businesse” took another turn when orders at last arrived from England for all public officials to proclaim William and Mary. When Mayor Van Cortlandt and Nicholson’s council continued to stall, their authority too collapsed. Angry crowds drove them out of office, shut the courts, and closed down the customhouse. Van Cortlandt went into hiding. Bayard, having narrowly escaped an armed assault, decided to get out of town.

The insurgents immediately set up a ten-member Committee of Safety (four of whom were Huguenots) to govern both city and province. Over the summer of 1689 the committee reopened courts, resumed the collection of duties and taxes, allocated money for the city’s defenses, and dispatched an emissary to England to tell William and Mary that all was well. The committee also chose Jacob Leisler to command the fort; by mid-August, the committee had become so impressed by Leisler’s zeal and popularity that they made him commander-in-chief of the entire province. When William and Mary finally sent a commission for Nicholson or “such as for the time being take care for Preserving the Peace and administering the Lawes in our said Province of New York in America,” Leisler decided—not unreasonably, in light of Nicholson’s hasty departure—that he should assume the office of lieutenant governor. He began to organize a government, handing out commissions to scores of militia officers, justices of the peace, tax collectors, sheriffs, and notaries throughout the colony. As the year drew to a close his control of New York seemed complete.

LEISLER AND THE LEISLERIANS

Leisler was not unprepared for the work that lay ahead. Born forty-nine years earlier in Frankfurt-am-Main, he came from an illustrious family whose members included well-known Reformed clergymen, wealthy merchants and bankers, and highly placed government officials throughout Germany and Switzerland. After graduating from a Calvinist military academy in Nuremberg, he moved to Amsterdam and got a job as a translator for Cornells Melyn. In 1660, probably with Melyn’s help, he was commissioned an officer in the forces of the West India Company and led a contingent of troops over to New Amsterdam. He stayed on after the English conquest, set himself up in the fur and tobacco trade, and by the mid-1670s had become one of the half-dozen richest men in New York, owning a large town house, a farm on the present site of City Hall Park, and numerous other properties in and around the city. He became even wealthier in 1683, when the courts finally awarded him control over the vast estate of Govert Loockermans, whose stepdaughter, Altye (Elsie) Tymans, he had married some years before. Active as well as prosperous, Leisler was a deacon of the Reformed Church, captain of the militia, justice of the peace, and—thanks to close family and personal connections with the international Huguenot community—a respected figure among New York’s French Protestants. It was largely through Leisler’s efforts, in fact, that a settlement