(1629) it attempted to encourage agriculture in other parts of
the province (see New York State) it reserved to itself the whole
island. In 1633 New Amsterdam received a grant of “staple
right” by which it could compel any vessel passing the port
either to offer its cargo for sale or pay a duty; in 1638 the Company
extended to all friendly European countries the privilege of
trading with the province, and about this time it opened town
lots for sale. The town rapidly assumed the cosmopolitan
character for which it has ever since been noted, there being,
according to a contemporary report, eighteen languages spoken
by its 400 or 500 inhabitants in 1643. In 1641, to gain the
necessary support to fight the Indians, Kieft had to yield to the
demand for a popular voice in the government, and permitted the
heads of families to choose a board of Twelve Men to confer
with him. In 1643 he permitted the choice of a board of Eight
Men, and when he refused its demands it was largely instrumental
in effecting his recall. Under his successor, Peter Stuyvesant,
a board of Nine Men was chosen, and this body, objecting to
the customs duties which he imposed, sent three of its number
with a petition to the States-General with the result that in
1653 New Amsterdam was made a city with a government
administered by a schout, two burgomasters and five schepens.
Chiefly with a view to protection from roving traders the great burgher-right and the small burgher-right were established in 1657; the great burgher-right being conferred on all who had been magistrates as well as on those then in office, on clergymen, on militia officers and on the male descendants of all such persons; and the small burgher-right being conferred on all native-born citizens, on the husbands of native-born women and on all who had been residents of the city for a year and six weeks. Other persons approved by the magistrates were allowed to buy the great burgher-right for 50 guilders ($20) or the small burgher-right for 20 guilders ($8). Only burghers and employees of the West India Company could engage in commerce, work at a trade or practise a profession, and only great burghers could hold the more important offices. Originally Stuyvesant appointed the city officers, but in 1658 he permitted them to nominate their own successors. Besides engaging in the fur trade, the city was now exporting considerable timber and food-stuffs; in the coast trade it was beginning to reap the advantages of its situation on the coast route through Long Island Sound; and its trade with the Dutch West Indies was of some importance. But the city and the Company were always at odds. The duties exacted by the Company were a heavy burden and yet the Company did not keep the fort in good repair. Stuyvesant’s arbitrary rule primarily in the interests of the Company was another grievance, and when in August 1664 there appeared in the harbour an English fleet sent by the duke of York for the conquest of the province, the city was in a defenceless condition. Richard Nicolls, the representative of the duke, easily won over the burgomasters and other prominent citizens; Stuyvesant, practically deserted, was driven to a formal surrender on the 8th of September; and New Amsterdam became New York.
In June 1665 Nicolls reorganized the government, vesting it in a mayor, aldermen and sheriff, to be appointed by the governor of the province for a term of one year; and extended the city’s limits to include the whole of Manhattan Island. In 1666 he granted to New Harlem, founded in 1658, a charter which gave to it the status of a town within the city. Nicolls’ successor, Governor Francis Lovelace, established a post-route from New York to Boston in 1673. On the 30th of July 1673 the city was surprised and captured by a Dutch fleet under Cornelis Evertsen and Jacob Binckes. The captors renamed the city New Amsterdam and in January 1674 Anthony Colve, the newly appointed governor of the province, re-established the Dutch city government, but under the treaty of Westminster the English again took possession in November. In 1678 Governor Edmund Andros gave the city practically a monopoly within the province of commerce “over seas” and ordered that flour should be inspected nowhere else; two years later he required that all flour for export should be bolted and packed within the city. The duties established by order of the duke of York were still a grievance, and when, in 1681, Governor Andros had sailed for England without renewing the ordinance imposing them, the merchants refused payment and demanded that they should thereafter be imposed by a representative assembly. The duke yielded and the first New York Assembly, called by Governor Thomas Dongan, met in the city on the 17th of October 1683. Less than three years later, on the 20th of April 1686, Dongan gave the city its first real charter, which is a historic instrument in the city government; it was superseded only to a very small extent as late as 1830 (when there was a revision of the charter) and on it as a basis the later charters have been framed.
New York City with its numerous artisans, small traders, sailors and common labourers, such as usually compose the party of discontent, was the centre of the Leisler uprising (see New York State) incited by the English Revolution of 1688, and it was here that Leisler in the spring of 1690 called the first intercolonial assembly to plan an expedition against Canada. During Leisler’s rule, too, the freeholders of the city were for the first time permitted to elect their own mayor, a privilege not subsequently granted until 1834. Before the close of the 17th century New York had become a favourite haunt of pirates; leading merchants assisted pirates as well as privateersmen in fitting out their vessels and shared in their plunder or at least welcomed them with their rich cargoes, and public officials, including one or more governors, were also implicated. The home government finally appointed Richard Coote, earl of Bellomont (1636–1701), governor with explicit instructions to suppress the evil. Before he received his commission he and Robert Livingston sent out William Kidd (d. 1701) with a frigate to capture the pirates. Kidd himself turned pirate, but was arrested in Boston in July 1699, was sent to England for trial and was hanged in May 1701. Bellomont met determined opposition among New York officers and merchants; but by the close of his brief administration (1698–1701) he had caught a number of the pirates and broken up the corrupt system by which they had been protected. The importation of negro slaves was begun in 1725 or 1726 and was somewhat encouraged by the States-General. Becoming prized as household servants they so increased in number in the city that during the first half of the 18th century they were not greatly outnumbered by the whites; the whites early began to fear a slave insurrection, and ordinances were passed forbidding negroes to gather on the Sabbath in groups of more than four, or to carry guns, swords or clubs; but one night in April 1712 some slaves met in an orchard near Maiden Lane, set fire to a building and killed nine men besides wounding several others who came to put out the fire. Soldiers then captured all the insurgents except six, who committed suicide, and after trial twenty-one were executed. When early in 1741 nine fires broke out within a few weeks and a negro was seen running from the last, the belief became general that the negroes had formed a plot to burn the town. A reward of £100 was offered for information exposing the plot, and the testimony of an indentured servant-girl, Mary Burton, that her master, mistress, a few other whites and a number of negroes were implicated in such a plot threw the city into a panic. Other confessions were extorted by threats, and on such worthless testimony four whites were executed, fourteen negroes were burned at the stake, twenty were hanged and seventy-one were transported. The frenzy was checked when Mary Burton began to accuse persons of consequence and above suspicion. The New York Gazette, the first newspaper of New York, established by William Bradford in 1725, was a semi-official organ. For criticizing the government in the New York Weekly Journal, which he established in 1733, John Peter Zenger was charged with libel in 1734, and by securing his acquittal in the following year the popular party established the freedom of the press (see New York). At the beginning of the Stamp-Act controversy John Holt’s New York Gazette and Weekly Post-Boy, the successor of Bradford’s Gazette, was the medium through which the popular leaders stirred the
