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 288 with artillery.

The Green Bag Big guns were trained

on the fort and a pitched battle seemed imminent. The dull, heavy atmosphere was rent

by the detonation of a single shot. Who ﬁred it was never determined. But a general engagement followed in which several men were killed and more wounded. Leisler, during the uncertain months

in which William and Mary were settling themselves on the English throne in place of James II, had put himself at

the head of the totally disorganized government of New York and by sheer force of his own personality had held the exciting and disrupting elements in hand pending the determination of his authority by the Crown. Finally the King appointed Col. Henry Sloughter Governor of New York. And it boded ill for Leisler that Major In goldsby, the Governor's subordinate, who

had reached the colony before Sloughter

immediately afterwards brought before theGovernor who allowed (having spoken but a very few words to him) that he was spit in the face, and that he was robbed of his wig, sword and sash, and

of a portion of his clothes which were torn from him, and that they abused

him like raging furies, putting irons on his legs and throwing him into a dark hole underground full of stench and ﬁlth. His council and burghers were treated in the same way." Highly colored and partisan this may be; but it conveys something of the spirit which put Leisler, who had struggled so hard to keep some vestige of government in the almost disrupted colony during the long months it seemed to have been entirely forgotten by the home authorities, on trial for his life,

accused of high treason. The trial of Leisler and his companions was one of the most peculiar combina

himself, immediately invested Leisler’s

tions of the just and the unjust, of the legal and the farcical, of the trivial and

own stronghold in an out and out siege.

the tragic in recorded law cases.

When Sloughter himself appeared in

New York, Jacob Leisler immediately surrendered his authority as, indeed, he maintained he had always intended

The

grand

jurors were sworn

March 31, 1691. They immediately brought two indictments against Leisler and his associates, Milborne, Delanoy,

to do upon the arrival of a duly ac credited representative of the King. He and his three hundred adherents laid down their arms and left the fort. This was followed by a scene of peculiar

Gouverneur and Beekman.

violence, according to an old account.

for murder and felony.

“The men thus coming out in their side-arms were at once attacked by the

outstanding crowd, scolded as being villains and traitors, and robbed of everything, and that with such fury as if they wanted to kill them, the officers

meanwhile shouting and screaming— ‘Rob them! Rob them, and take their

guns away from these rascals; they will otherwise murder our wives and chil dren! . . .’ Commander Leisler was

on

The ﬁrst

count was for treason and felony, men

tioning speciﬁcally the conflict on the 17th of March. The second part of the indictment against these men was

A second group

of Leislerians, Coerten, Williams, Ver

milye and Brasier, were indicted for treason alone. Immediately afterward Leisler was taken before a hostile court, presided over by Joseph Dudley, to stand trial for his life. Well realizing the nature of political trials and the determination of his enemies to secure his conviction at any cost, Leisler refused to acknowl edge the jurisdiction of the court.

~". h‘ 11 nm-.-.