Leisler ascended the scaffold with firm step, and looked at the people he had tried to serve.

“What I have done has been for the good of my country,” he said, sadly.  “I forgive my enemies, as I hope to be forgiven.”

And so he died; believing that he had done his duty.

Milborne was full of hate for those who caused his death.  Close by the scaffold stood Robert Livingston, a citizen who had always been strongly opposed to Leisler.  To this man Milborne pointed, and fiercely cried: 

“You have caused my death.  For this I will impeach you before the Bar of God.”  And so he died.

The bodies of both men were interred close by the scaffold.

Four years later the English Parliament declared that Leisler had acted under the King’s command, and had therefore been in the right, after all.  So tardy justice was done to Leisler’s memory.

After the death of Leisler, there was an end of open revolt, and affairs were reasonably quiet, although it was many a long year before the rancor of the late struggle and the bitter hatred of the friends and enemies of Leisler died out.

Order was restored, and attention was turned to public improvement.  New streets were laid out, and markets were built.  In front of the City Hall, by the water-side of Coenties Slip, there were set up a whipping-post, a cage, a pillory, and a ducking-block; which were to serve as warnings to evil-doers, and to be used in case the warning was not effective.

But Sloughter did not live to see these improvements completed.  A few months after his arrival he died suddenly, so suddenly that there was a suggestion that he had been poisoned by some friend of Leisler.  But it was proven that his death was a natural one, and his body was placed in a vault next to that of Peter Stuyvesant, in the Bouwerie Village church-yard.

CHAPTER XI

Governor Fletcher and the privateers

When Benjamin Fletcher became the next Governor of New York, in the month of August, 1692, the people gave a great public dinner in his honor, and there were expressions of deep joy that so wise and good and pious a man had been sent to rule over them.

But Governor Fletcher soon came to be disliked.  He tried by every means to enrich himself at the public expense.  More than that, he wished to make the Church of England the only church of the province, and to have the English language the only language spoken.  All of which the people did not like, for the majority of them still spoke the Dutch language and attended the Dutch church.

Governor Fletcher had great trouble in getting the Assembly (the body of men who helped him to govern the province) to agree with him, but he finally won them over in the matter of the Church of England.  One of the churches built at this time was Trinity Church.  It was a quaint, square building, with a tall spire—­not the Trinity Church of this day, although it stood on the same spot.