CHAPTER V.

THE ADMINISTRATION OF GOVERNOR FLETCHER.

Current Misrepresentations of Fletcher—The Bill for Settling a Ministry—Struggle
between the Governor and the Assembly—Final Passage of the Act—Its Provisions—
Election of the City Vestry—Their Attempt to Call a Dissenting Minister Defeated—■
First Mention of Mr. Vesey—The Managers of the Affairs of the Church of Eng¬
land—Their Petition to Fletcher and its Result—The Call of Mr. Vesey—Grant of a
Charter, and Establishment of the Parish of Trinity Church—Provisions of the
Charter—Ordination of Vesey in England—His Induction, Christmas Day, l6g7.

IT is to be regretted that they who first took in hand
to write the history of the city of New York should
have been under the influence of strong prejudices against
the Church; and still more to be deplored, that false
reports and gossipy stories set afloat long ago should
have been accepted, even down to our own day, as his¬
toric fact. Take, for example, the current account of
Benjamin Fletcher. Whatever his faults—and certainly
he had them—his zeal for the Church and his efforts to
promote her interests should not have made him a mark
for censure; he was sent here with instructions, which it
was his duty to obey. The early annalists, however, inter¬
preted his conduct from a sectarian point of view. Wil¬
liam Smith leads off, describing the Governor as " a man
of strong passions and inconsiderable talents, very active
and equally avaricious," and " a bigot to the episcopal
form of church government"'; and Smith is followed by
a  line of historiographers  all  singing in the same key.'

^ Smith's Llist. of the Late Province of Nevi York, vol. i., 124, 128.

'See Dunlap, Hist, of A^ew York, vol. i., 216; Stone, LList. of New York,
p. 120 ; Mary L. Booth, Hist, of the City of New York, vol. i., 247. All repeat the
slurs of Smith, word for word.

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