chief magistrate bowed his head, and sighed, "What then am I sent here for?" to which there was no response.

Immediately after the inauguration dinner, while the other guests still remained at the table, Sir Danvers had asked to be excused on the ground of indisposition. On the next day (the 11th) he dined. quietly at an early hour at the home of his host. Still complaining of illness, Mr. Murray proposed to him to take the air, either in a carriage or a ride on horseback. This being declined and his guest's depression of spirits appearing to increase, the best physician in town, Dr. Magraw, was summoned; but his prescription was disregarded, and the governor retired early to his chamber ordering some broth to be prepared. It was the last time that he was seen alive. Early the next morning, Friday, October 12, the body of the unhappy Sir Danvers was found suspended from the fence in Mr. Murray's garden.

It is not difficult to imagine the consternation that must have seized upon the little colonial capital, as the news of this dreadful occurrence was noised abroad. Several governors had died in office and some suddenly; but none of these deaths had been of this character, after a rule of but two days and apparently by suicide. The heat and bitterness of party spirit did indeed dare to broach the suspicion that the adherents of the lieutenant-governor had sought this execrable means of placing their favorite in power. But this charge was too monstrous to be seriously or long entertained even in that day. Yet it led to careful depositions regarding the attending circumstances, which were sent to England to convince the lords of trade that there had been no foul play, but that Sir Danvers had died by his own hands. The funeral occurred on the next day (October 13), and as the Rev. Henry Barclay, rector of Trinity, had felt some scruples about consigning his Excellency's remains to the grave with the usual ritual, the unhappy fact (which, however, lessened the horror of the deed) was clearly brought out by other depositions, that insanity had before visited the heart broken. baronet for a brief period since his wife's death, and that he had even

Smith, Hist. N. Y., 2: 185.

"All the papers and chronicles of the time are very precise about the new governor's movements, and particularly how and where he dined and supped. Mr. Murray, in a

deposition taken under oath by order of the council to be sent to England, states that the physician ordered 'sack whey.' Sir Danvers declined, and ordered his servant to bring broth' instead. Mr. Murray seems to have thought this fact of importance, and that the most skeptical lord of trade of the last century world be convinced that a man who preferred broth to sack-whey must be mad indeed." Mr. Fowler's MS.

attempted his life before. By the testimony of his private secretary* and other companions on the voyage, and of close observers of his

This was Thomas Pownall, Esq., who remained in the colonies after Sir Danver's death, and by his intelligence and industry raised himself finally to a high rank in their service. He was an author before he left England, having published a work on the philosophy of political institutions. In 1757 he was appointed governor of Massachusetts, served three years with ability, and having solicited his own recall from that government, he was at once made governor of South Carolina, a post which he held for 10 years. He had been offered the governorship of New-York, but declined it. He died at Bath, in 1805, at the age of 85 years.

actions throughout the inaugural exercises, it was proved that the change from England to America, and the assumption of new and untried activities, so far from affording the hoped-for relief from the threatened malady of heart and brain, had really only aggravated it and hastened the fatal result.*

It must be confessed that the political opinions or at least affiliations of the prominent New-York personages and their families in the middle of the eighteenth century, present many puzzling complications. By a most arbitrary exercise of power, at the mere nod of Governor Cosby, Chief Justice Lewis Morris, the favorite of Robert Hunter, had been removed from his high office, and James DeLancey, not yet thirty years of age, appointed in his place. That De Lancey heartily acquiesced in this infringement upon colonial liberties was shown not only by his acceptance and retention of this office, but in a marked degree by his conduct at the Zenger trial. On a previous page have been described his contentions with the two great jurists William Smith and James Alexander; they calling in question the validity of his appointment, whereby he was compelled to disbar

Then De Lancey was the stanch champion of the governor and of the prerogatives of the crown; while Smith and Alexander having fomented the opposition against the governor in the very newspaper that appeared in the libel suit, continued after their legal victory to agitate in favor of popular rights. During the next administration there was a complete change of base. The animosities awakened by the trial continued the same, but they led the combatants to an interchange of camps. Governor Clinton claimed that De Lancey remained friendly toward him only until by this dissembling conduct he had induced his Excellency to change the tenure of his office of chief justice from one at "pleasure" to one on "good behavior." As soon as the latter had been effected, making De Lancey independent of the governor, it was charged that he threw himself into the ranks of the opposition, determined to render Clinton's position as unpeasant as possible. But we may well look for some other cause than mere caprice, as De Lancey's support of the governor was in entire accord with his course during the incumbency of Cosby and Clarke, a period of nearly eleven years. There no doubt was a quarrel, and hence it is equally certain that the governor gave De Lancey some reason to be offended. It is also to observed that there appears to be no rupture between these high

*Fowler MS. notes.

functionaries till three or four years after Clinton's assumption of the government. But after that there is scarce a letter written by the governor to the lords of trade, or to individual members of that board, or to private correspondents, that does not reiterate with painful monotony the story of the evil conduct of the chief justice. He regrets that he has made his appointment to depend on good behavior, and actually discusses the question whether that step on his part could not be annulled at home.*

His complaints, bitter and unending, against De Lancey (as has already been more fully related in the preceding chapter), were met by the authorities in England in a most startling manner, exceedingly humiliating to the governor. While seeking to lower him in the esteem of the lords of trade, Clinton, on the other hand, sounded the praises of Cadwallader Colden, and recommended that the latter be appointed lieutenant-governor. He descanted on the advantages of creating such an office at the present juncture, when matters were fast ripening toward the breaking out of the French and Indian war, and when the governor had to be absent from the capital so frequently to adjust relations with the Indians and the other colonies. The ministers at home saw the cogency of his recommendation so far as the office was concerned, but passing by the gentlemen whom he named as peculiarly fitted for it, they conferred the honor

On the death of Sir Danvers Osborn, the lieutenant-governor, by virtue of this same commission of 1847, was duly invested with

*Doc. rel. Col. Hist. N. Y., 6: 356, 357

+ Ib., 6: 313.

Ib., 6: 416.

the government of the province. From his own account we learn that on the morning of the inauguration the retiring governor handed this commission to De Lancey in council before Sir Danvers read his. On the fatal Friday, the council having been hastily summoned, De Lancey read the document only in the presence of the members and the officer of the guard, as anything more public would have been inappropriate. The acting governor's first care was to appoint a committee consisting of James Alexander (the oldest councilor present), John Chambers (second justice of the Supreme Court), and Mayor Holland, to make an investigation into the cause of Governor Osborn's death. The. assumption of the government, however, placed De Lancey in a very curious, if not anomalous position. He had devoted all his talents and energies to oppose and harass Governor Clinton. But the royal governors stood for the royal prerogative, and the burden of its demands was limited to one cry: a permanent revenue without specific appropriations. De Lancey had, therefore, been the advocate of the opposite policy annual grants, definitely appropriated. That was the popular cry, and Cosby's chief justice, and Zenger's very partial judge, must perforce take up that cry, and identify himself with the popular party. Aside from legislative difficulties, the times were trying, for the French and Indian war was impending, and, indeed, hostilities had already begun. There were men to be enlisted, military stores provided, and money to be raised for defense and attack. Through all this the New-York assembly kept a keen and wakeful eye upon its rights. But De Lancey's neutrality or impartiality between the two contending forces was really an advantageous circumstance. In all his letters he points out the obstinacy of the assembly, but also the danger of unwisely provoking it on the part of the home government. He wishes to remain true to unwise instructions, but in one instance boldly transgresses them and writes: "I hope the necessity of securing the Province and of obtaining money for the use of the king's troops will plead for my excuse in breaking through my instructions by giving my assent to a Law for a paper Emission without a suspending clause; I could not get money in any other way, as your LordPPs. may be convinced of from what passed between me and the Assembly on this subject last fall.”* The lords of trade must have been more than ordinarily blind not to have commended his independent judgment and action in this emergency. In fact it

*Doc. rel. Col. Hist. N. Y., 6: 941.