Printed, and Sold by Andrew Sowle at the Crooked-Billet in Holloway. Lane in Shoreditch, 1691.

TITLE PAGE OF THE PENNSYLVANIA FRAME OF GOVERNMENT

But New York did not know how safe it was; and Leisler had his day. It might have been well enough, had he stopped with thrusting Nicholson aside and assuming to play the new King's partisan and governor till the air should clear. But he did not. For a year and a half he maintained himself as governor, in the new King's name, but without his authority. He even resisted commissioned officers of the King, until a governor sent from England came; and then he was hanged for treason. It was a sad, unjust end. The man had been hot-headed, arbitrary, blind, and wilful, and had done much that the law could not sanction in order to have his own way; but he had done all, even that which was the deepest folly, in good faith. He had meant to serve the community he ruled, and had planned no treason against the King. There had been not a little of the heat of parties at the bottom of the trouble. The greater land owners, the King's officials, and the rich merchants had wished Nicholson to keep the government until the new King should send some one in his stead. The small tradesmen, the artisans, and the sailors of the town heard that there was war with France, and that a French fleet was coming against the place, and believed that the rich men and the officials among them were no lovers of common men's liberties, or of a Protestant church, either; and Leisler was their leader. His condemnation was a thing resolved upon and hurried to its execution in New York, not commanded from over sea; and in 1695 Parliament itself took off the stain of treason from his name.

In Maryland those who were unquiet and did not like the proprietor's government took advantage of the time to overthrow it. There were men enough who

had watched for such a chance. Though discontent with the proprietor's government had met very sharp frustration and rebuke twelve years ago, when Davis and Pate went to the gallows for the treason of emulating the example of Mr. Bacon in Virginia, as many wanted a change now as had wanted it then, and this new opportunity seemed made for any who chose to act upon its invitation. The mere fact of being governed like a private estate and mediæval county palatine was very irksome to the more ambitious spirits of the colony; and the more closely and sedulously the proprietor attended to his government the more irksome did it become. He dealt very harshly with opposition; he openly interfered with elections to the assembly; he disallowed and set aside such legislation as he did not like; he gave the offices of government to men of his own kin or personal following; and the taxes were not always spent for the public benefit. It was like the government of Virginia with a petty king in residence. And that petty king, every one knew, was of the popish party, whose part the great King at home had played to his own undoing. Men fancied they saw new popish plots in every trivial incident or shifting of affairs. If the panic had touched New York and turned her government upside down, it was little to be wondered at that it touched Maryland also. Richard Talbot, Duke of Tyrconnel, the officer who reduced Ireland "from a place of briskest trade and best paid rents in Christendom to ruin and desolation," and who had dared hold it for James Stuart, despite the Parliament in London and the authority of the Prince of Orange, was of Lord Baltimore's kin and his very close friend; and Maryland teemed as no other colony did with Ro