Born in
St. James's Palace,
London,
England, Oct. 14,
[
477]
1633; son of Charles I.; became lord high admiral on the accession of his brother Charles to the throne in 1660.
On March 12, 1664, King Charles II.
granted to James, under a patent bearing the royal seal, a territory in
America which included all the lands and rivers from the west side of the
Connecticut River to the east side of the
Delaware River.
Its inland boundary was a line from the head of the
Connecticut River to the source of the
Hudson, thence to the head of the
Mohawk branch of the
Hudson, and thence to the east of
Delaware Bay.
It also embraced
Long Island and the adjacent islands, including
Martha's Vineyard and
Nantucket; also the “territory of
Pemaquid,” in
Maine.
This granted territory embraced all of New Netherland and a part of
Connecticut, which had been affirmed to other English proprietors by the charter of 1662.
The duke detached four ships from the royal navy, bearing 450 regular troops, for the service of taking possession of his domain.
Col. Richard Nicolls commanded the expedition.
Stuyvesant was compelled to surrender (see
Stuyvesant, Peter), and the name of the territory was changed to New York.
Very soon commissioners appointed by the governments of New York and
Connecticut to confer about the boundary between the two colonies agreed, for the sake of peace and good-fellowship, that the territory of New York should not extend farther eastward than along a line 20 miles from the
Hudson River, and that remains the boundary to this day. In 1673 the
Dutch again became possessors of New York, but the following year it was returned to
England by treaty.
It was decided that these political changes had cancelled the
Duke of
York's title to the domain, and a new one, with boundaries defined as in the first grant, was issued, June 29, 1674, but the line above mentioned was fixed upon as the eastern limit of the province of New York.
In 1665 a meeting was held at
Hempstead, L. I. (Feb. 28), at which thirty-four delegates assembled—two representatives of each of the
English and
Dutch towns on
Long Island and two in
Westchester.
Some of them had been members of
Stuyvesant's last General Assembly of New Netherland the previous year.
The meeting had been called by
Governor Nicolls to “settle good and known laws” in their government for the future, and receive their “best advice and information.”
The governor laid before the delegates a body of general laws, which had been chiefly compiled from statutes then in force in
New England, with more toleration in matters of religion.
The delegates were not satisfied with many of them, and several amendments were made; but when they asked to be allowed to choose their own magistrates, the governor exhibited instructions from the
Duke of
York, his master, wherein the choice of “officers of justice was solely to be made by the governor” ; and he told them decidedly that if they would have a greater share in the government than he could give them, they must go to the
King for it. The delegates found that they were not popular representatives to make laws, but were mere agents to accept those already prepared for them.
They had merely exchanged the despotism of
Stuyvesant for English despotism.
The New York code adopted by that meeting was arranged in alphabetical order of subjects and published, and is generally known as the
Duke's Laws.
The
Duke of
York became
King, under the title of James II.
in 1685.
He died in St. Germain, Sept. 6, 1701.
See
Connecticut;
James II.;
New Netherland;
State of New York.
