Gotham_ A History of New York City to 1898 - Edwin G. Burrows [96]
“TRUMPET AND DRUMMS”
The anglicization of New York also meant the closer synchronization of provincial “heats and animosityes” with the rhythms of party politics in England. Within a year of Leisler’s execution, his son, Jacob Leisler Jr., and his old friend Abraham Gouverneur were in London, lobbying members of Parliament, cabinet officers, and other highly placed government officials to clear his name. The complexion of affairs in London was changing rapidly, and powerful Whigs agreed to help.
By 1694 King William had become impatient with the Tories who remained in his cabinet after the Glorious Revolution. They criticized the war with France as excessively expensive and complained when the Whigs set up the Bank of England to stabilize government finances. Before the year was done, the king had forced them all out of office, leaving the Whigs in complete control of the machinery of state. Moving swiftly to strengthen the government’s hand abroad, the Whigs established a new Board of Trade, adopted the first comprehensive Navigation Act, announced a full-scale crackdown on piracy and illegal trade, and poured money into the Royal Navy.
For New York’s Leislerians, the Whig ascendancy was a new beginning; for Governor Fletcher, it spelled disaster. In 1695 Parliament declared that both Leisler and Milborne had been unjustly convicted. Robert Livingston, one of Fletcher’s keenest enemies, rushed to London bearing lurid testimonials, largely accurate, to Fletcher’s corruption. As the protege of certain Tories no longer in the king’s favor, Fletcher was helpless. In 1697, after a lengthy investigation that focused on his relations with pirates, the Board of Trade ordered him home.
Fletcher’s successor was Richard Coote, the earl of Bellomont, a gouty Irish peer with impeccable Whig credentials. Bellomont reached New York in the spring of 1698 and found that “there are parties here as in England.” The local Tories included Bayard, Philipse, and other anti-Leislerians—disgraceful “vermin,” Bellomont called them, who with former governor Fletcher’s backing had turned New York into “a sink of corruption.” He promptly brought the leading anti-Leislerians up on charges of smuggling, graft, landgrabbing, election fraud, and piracy. He started legal action to recover the millions of acres of prime land they had obtained from Fletcher, including the property occupied by Trinity Church. He gave the job of mayor back to Peter Delanoy and ordered customs officers to enforce the new Navigation Act with utmost vigor.
With Bellomont’s help, the Leislerians soon regained control of the Assembly and began to settle old scores—granting pardons to Leisler’s followers, canceling punitive lawsuits, restoring illegally seized property, voiding Fletcher’s most excessive land grants, and writing new legislation to protect the livelihood of city artisans. They broadened the suffrage for Assembly elections (Catholics excepted, of course). But nothing gave the Leislerians greater satisfaction than the day in October 1698 when the bodies of Leisler and Milborne were exhumed and reburied in the Dutch church on Garden Street amid the “sound of trumpet and drumms.” Despite a “rank storm,” an estimated fifteen hundred people took part, many coming in from Long Island, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania for the occasion. Excited spectators reported seeing “Leisler’s apparition in a Coach” near the church.
The anti-Leislerians were meanwhile actively scheming against