When news of the Revolution of 1688 in England reached New York, Andros was in Boston. Nicholson, Lieutenant-Governor, being a Catholic and an absolutist, and the colony now in horror of all Catholics through fear of French invasion from Canada, Jacob Leisler, a German adventurer, partly anticipating, partly obeying the popular wish, assumed to function in Nicholson's stead. All the aristocracy, English or Dutch, and nearly all the English of the lower rank were against him. Leisler was passionate and needlessly bitter toward Catholics, yet he meant well. He viewed his office as only transitory, and stood ready to surrender it so soon as the new king's will could be learned; but when Slaughter arrived with commission as governor, Leisler's foes succeeded in compassing his execution for treason. This unjust and cruel deed began a long feud between the popular and the aristocratic party in the colony. [Illustration: Sloughter signing Leisler's Death Warrant.] [1700] From this time till the American Revolution New York continued a province of the Crown. Royal governor succeeded royal governor, some of them better, some worse. Of the entire line Bellomont was the most worthy official, Cornbury the least so. One of the problems which chiefly worried all of them was how to execute the navigation acts, which, evaded everywhere, were here unscrupulously defied. Another care of the governors, in which they succeeded but very imperfectly, was to establish the English Church in the colony. A third was the disfranchisement of Catholics. This they accomplished, the legislature concurring, and the disability continued during the entire colonial period. Hottest struggle of all occurred over the question of the colony's right of self-taxation. The democracy stood for this with the utmost firmness, and even the higher classes favored rather than opposed. The governors, Cornbury and Lovelace, most frantically, but in vain, expostulated, scolded, threatened, till at last it became admitted by law in the colony that no tax whatever could, on any pretext, be levied save by act of the people's representatives. Dutch America, it will be remembered, had reached southward to the Delaware River, and this lower portion passed with the rest to the Duke of York in 1664. The territory between the Hudson and the Delaware, under the name of New Jersey, he made over to Lord Berkeley and Sir George Carteret, proprietaries, who favored the freest institutions, civil and religious. The population was for long very sparse and, as it grew, very miscellaneous. Dutch, Swedes, English, Quakers, and Puritans from New England were represented. [Illustration: Seal of the Carterets.]