Proprietors, he granted a charter of incorporation in 1685. But this acceptance of the views of the people was only very temporary, as it was reversed in the next year, while at the same time all rights of legislation were vested in a Council appointed by the Crown. As has already been shown, James II. amalgamated the colonies in 1685 under Sir Edmund Andros and New York became part of New England. The Governor was kept far too busy in Massachusetts to pay any attention to New York, which was placed under a deputy-governor, Colonel Francis Nicholson, with three Dutch councillors. Nicholson was a clearheaded, observant man, who had had colonial experience, and would have been a success except for the fact that he lacked moral force. His position soon became a very awkward one, for in 1689 he heard that William III. was all-powerful in England, while he held his commission from Andros, the Stuart governor, who was in captivity at Boston. At the same time France had declared war and the Canadians might invade the colony at any moment. Unfortunately for Nicholson, although he summoned the authorities, he quarrelled with his subordinate Cuyler, and things were at a deadlock. At this point the people, seething under the restraints and burdens which had been placed upon them during the reign of James II., rose in open revolt, led by a German brewer, Jacob Leisler. Nicholson was immediately deposed; a convention met, and ten out of the eighteen representatives invested Leisler with dictatorial authority. He was a man of some cunning, and under the pretence of possessing a commission, by intercepting letters and by maltreating their writers, he succeeded in keeping himself in office for very nearly three years. His period of government was distinguished by the first Colonial Congress at Albany, to which he summoned representatives from all the colonies to discuss definite and united action against the French. Leisler himself proposed a joint invasion of Canada, and it is probable that it was only his own arrogance that prevented it. His followers soon came to be as much hated as their leader, and one indignant citizen wrote in January 1690, "never was such a pack of ignorant, scandalous, malicious, false, imprudent, impertinent rascals herded together, out of hell."[180] Careful though Leisler had been to search letters and prevent the news of his usurpation reaching England, he was unsuccessful. In 1690 the English Government dispatched Colonel Slaughter to take Leisler's place. The usurper was first met by a force under Major Ralph Ingoldsby, second in command to the new Governor; a slight resistance was offered, and Leisler "fired a vast number of great and small shot in the City, whereby several of his Majesty's subjects were killed and wounded as they passed in the streets upon their Lawful Occasions."[181] But Leisler had lost his former following and he was captured and hanged, together with his chief supporter Jacob Millborne.