Jacob
Leisler 1640 - 1691
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Who Was Jacob Leisler?
Best known as a
leader of a
1689 New York rebellion that came to bear
his name, Jacob Leisler was one of late-seventeenth-century New York's
most prominent merchants, land developers, and foremost exponent of
Reformed religious fundamentalism and Orangist political ideology. He
was intimately bound to the social, economic, and political development
of New Netherland and New York from 1660, when he was sent to the New
World as a soldier by the Dutch West India Company's Amsterdam office,
until his execution for treason in New York City in May 1691.Early History
Jacob Leisler was born in
Frankfurt-am-Main into
a prominent European Calvinist family that
included Dr. Jacob Leisler (shown to the left), his grandfather and
chief councilor to the
Counts of Oettingen, Reverend Jacob Victorian Leisler, his father and
pastor of the Frankfurt-am-Main French Reformed church (shown
above), and the
noted Huguenot theologian Simon Goulart. Leisler's brothers, Johann
Adam and Frantz, were Swiss bankers who financed such Protestant states
as the Duchy of Württemberg. As a member of the Calvinist
elite,
Leisler was connected with such political and intellectual figures of
his day as Dutch artist Henri Couturier, the pro-Orangist Rotterdam
group of English exiles, which included Gilbert Burnet, Charles Talbot,
Earl of Shrewsbury, and Charles Mordaunt, Earl of Monmouth, as well as
with the New England divines Cotton and Increase Mather.Leisler’s Rebellion
In the New World,
Leisler
catapulted to fame in 1689 when, in the wake of England's Glorious
Revolution, he assumed the role of King William III's governor of New
York. He thereupon implemented a program based on direct popular
representation that had, as contemporaries noted, wide impact from the
Chesapeake to New England. The following year he called for and hosted
English America's first intercolonial congress and organized the first
intercolonial military action independent of British authority.
Leisler's administration of New York split the province into two
distinct camps that were closely aligned with the Regent and Orangist
factions in the United Provinces and the Whig and Tory factions in
England, the legacy of which, according to some historians, is
America's unique two-party system. Other historians see in Leisler's
assumption of the New York government a forerunner of the American
Revolution.Remembering Jacob Leisler
Despite Leisler's historic
importance, he has been generally neglected by
twentieth-century American scholars. That Leisler's correspondence is
in Dutch, French, and German, as well as in English, is a primary
reason for this neglect. Another reason is that serious scholarship
into the German-born Leisler, as well as into the largely non-English
population of the middle colonies in general, fell victim to the
anti-German hysteria of World War I. Leisler's papers are widely
scattered. In New York they are found throughout the state from such
local town archives as that of East Hampton to the State Archives in
Albany. Often these papers are found rotting in forgotten boxes in
municipal basements. Outside New York, Leisler's letters exist in
widely diverse archives in Germany, Holland, France, England, the West
Indies, Maryland, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Virginia. The
Notarial Records of the Amsterdam Gemeentearchief, for example, contain
a large selection of Leisler's business correspondence.
The modern neglect of Leisler can also partially be attributed to the political designs and struggles of eighteenth-century New Yorkers. For decades following his execution in 1691, Leisler's government and reforms remained a major source of factionalism within New York politics. Leislerians struggled to preserve Leisler's legacy while anti-Leislerians attempted to eradicate his memory and strike his name from the public record. In addition, the broad notoriety Leisler enjoyed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries resulted in a strong collector's market that further scattered his manuscripts. For each of these reasons, the Jacob Leisler Papers Project is required to search well beyond the government offices and local archives that would logically hold the papers of an important New York figure.
The
only major
published
collections of Leisler's papers appeared in 1849, when approximately
400
Leisler documents for the years 1689-1691 in the possession of the New
York State Archives were printed in Volume II of
the Documentary
History of New-York. Compiled
prior to the imposition
of scholarly standards, the Documentary
History of New York collection,
lacking annotation, chronologically out of order, and poorly
transcribed, nonetheless served as the basis for subsequent
studies of both Jacob Leisler and late seventeenth-century New York. Peter R. Christoph published an excellent revised scholarly edition
of this collection, The Leisler
Papers 1689-1691: Files of the Provincial Secretary of New York
Relating to the Administration of Lieutenant-Governor Jacob Leisler,
in 2001. Another collection of Leisler material, consisting largely of
documents for the months February-March 1691, were published in Volume
I
of the New-York
Historical Society Collections
in 1868.
Other than the Documentary History of New York and New-York Historical Society Collections, English-speaking students of late-seventeenth-century Dutch-speaking America have previously had available only the published papers of such English imperial officials as William Blathwayt, Edward Randolph, and Sir Edmund Andros, and the letters of such New Englanders as Samuel Sewall, and the Increase and Cotton Mather collections, which make only passing reference to events in the former Dutch colony of New Netherland. As a result, there is a large gap in the knowledge of events in New York between the 1664 conquest of New Netherland by the English and the early eighteenth century.
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Images: Frankfurt-am-Main French Reformed church, watercolor by Peter Woltze, 1768 (top right); portrait of Dr. Jacob Leisler, 1592, Jacob Leisler Papers Project collection (middle left); plan of the Bayard Lands, Garden of Johanna Rynders, Jacob Leisler's granddaughter who married Nicholas Bayard the Younger (middle right); "The Trainbands signing Jacob Leisler's Declaration," Jacob Leisler Papers Project collection (bottom left).
The modern neglect of Leisler can also partially be attributed to the political designs and struggles of eighteenth-century New Yorkers. For decades following his execution in 1691, Leisler's government and reforms remained a major source of factionalism within New York politics. Leislerians struggled to preserve Leisler's legacy while anti-Leislerians attempted to eradicate his memory and strike his name from the public record. In addition, the broad notoriety Leisler enjoyed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries resulted in a strong collector's market that further scattered his manuscripts. For each of these reasons, the Jacob Leisler Papers Project is required to search well beyond the government offices and local archives that would logically hold the papers of an important New York figure.
The
only major
published
collections of Leisler's papers appeared in 1849, when approximately
400
Leisler documents for the years 1689-1691 in the possession of the New
York State Archives were printed in Volume II of
the Documentary
History of New-York. Compiled
prior to the imposition
of scholarly standards, the Documentary
History of New York collection,
lacking annotation, chronologically out of order, and poorly
transcribed, nonetheless served as the basis for subsequent
studies of both Jacob Leisler and late seventeenth-century New York. Peter R. Christoph published an excellent revised scholarly edition
of this collection, The Leisler
Papers 1689-1691: Files of the Provincial Secretary of New York
Relating to the Administration of Lieutenant-Governor Jacob Leisler,
in 2001. Another collection of Leisler material, consisting largely of
documents for the months February-March 1691, were published in Volume
I
of the New-York
Historical Society Collections
in 1868.Other than the Documentary History of New York and New-York Historical Society Collections, English-speaking students of late-seventeenth-century Dutch-speaking America have previously had available only the published papers of such English imperial officials as William Blathwayt, Edward Randolph, and Sir Edmund Andros, and the letters of such New Englanders as Samuel Sewall, and the Increase and Cotton Mather collections, which make only passing reference to events in the former Dutch colony of New Netherland. As a result, there is a large gap in the knowledge of events in New York between the 1664 conquest of New Netherland by the English and the early eighteenth century.
_____________________________
Images: Frankfurt-am-Main French Reformed church, watercolor by Peter Woltze, 1768 (top right); portrait of Dr. Jacob Leisler, 1592, Jacob Leisler Papers Project collection (middle left); plan of the Bayard Lands, Garden of Johanna Rynders, Jacob Leisler's granddaughter who married Nicholas Bayard the Younger (middle right); "The Trainbands signing Jacob Leisler's Declaration," Jacob Leisler Papers Project collection (bottom left).