Bellomont was not allowed to carry out his plans for the internal improvement of the province, for death put an end to his work at the end of the third year of his administration, in 1701. His successor, Lord Cornbury, who entered upon his duties early in 1702 (Lieutenant-Governor Nanfan having had meanwhile a successful contest with the leaders of the still vigorous anti-Leisler party), was sent out as governor by his cousin, Queen Anne, in order to retrieve his shattered fortune. The necessitous condition in which he arrived in New York and his profligate mode of life soon led him to several misappropriations of public funds, which resulted in a law, passed by the disgusted assembly of 1705, taking into their own hands the appointment of a provincial treasurer for the receipt and disbursement of all public moneys. The whole of Cornbury’s administration was occupied with a contest between the assembly and the crown: the former claiming all the privileges of Englishmen under Magna Charta; the latter, through its governor, maintaining its prerogatives, and saying that the assembly had no other rights and privileges “but such as the queen is pleased to allow.” Lord Cornbury’s recall did not mend matters.[472] The assembly of 1708, the last under Cornbury’s administration, had been dissolved, because in its tenacity of the people’s right it had declared that to levy money in the colony without consent of the general assembly was a grievance and a violation of the people’s property; that the erecting of a court of equity without consent of the general assembly was contrary to law, both without precedent and of dangerous consequences to the liberty and properties of the subjects. [Illustration] The term of Cornbury’s successor, Lord Lovelace, was very short, death calling him off within six months, while the lieutenant-governor, Ingoldsby, was a man too much like his friends, Sloughter, Fletcher, and Cornbury, to improve the state of affairs. With Governor Robert Hunter’s commission there came, in 1710, the answer to the declaration of the assembly of 1708. He received thereby “full power and authority to erect, constitute, and establish courts of judicature, with the advice and consent of the council.” The assembly’s remonstrance had been met by ignoring its author, and this treatment naturally incensed the representatives of the people so much that all the efforts of Governor Hunter, a man of excellent qualities, the friend of Addison and Swift, availed nothing in the way of settling the existing differences. [Illustration: GOVERNOR HUNTER. Follows an engraving in Valentine’s _N. Y. City Manual_, 1851, p. 420. Cf. on the seals of the colonial governors, _Hist. Mag._, ix. p. 176.]