“The troubles accumulating in England found their echo here and the King prohibited the establishing of printing-presses here, and on January 20, 1687, dissolved the popular Assembly. In that year Dongan wrote ‘one of the most careful as well as most honest pictures of his provincial government which an American subordinate ever sent home to his English sovereign.’ In the course of it he says: ‘I believe for these seven years past there has not come over into this province twenty English, Scotch or Irish families.’ “The entire winter of 1687 he spent at Albany, supervising the protection of the colony against the French, and being without financial help from the other settlements, he pledged his personal credit and mortgaged his farm on Staten Island for £2,000 to meet the expenses of the expedition then raised. “On March 23, 1688, he was superseded as Governor by Andros, who was made Governor General of New England in America, comprising all of British North America, except Pennsylvania. Dongan was offered the rank of Major General, which he refused in order to remain in New York. His homestead was at Hempstead, Long Island. He owned a hunting lodge on his estates at Castleton, Staten Island, which were named after his original home; and he had property at Martha’s Vineyard as well. His city residence was on Broadway, between Maiden Lane and Ann Street, where his flower garden was a special feature. Between these places he spent his time, seeking to rebuild his fortune, severely shattered by his expenditures for the protection of the colony he loved, until the reins of power fell into the hands of Jacob Leisler, after the flight of James II to France, when Dongan was hunted as a rebel and enemy of the new régime, and driven to seek refuge on his brigantine, on which he kept in hiding in the lower Bay. The winds being adverse, he was unable to sail away, and flying to New York in secret, thence to New London, to Hempstead, to New Jersey, and to Boston the first advocate of popular rights was finally forced to escape the persecutions of the people, whose liberties he had assured, by sailing to England in 1691. Never repaid any considerable part of the fortune he had spent to defend the honor of his country and the safety of her colony, he died, without issue, December 14, 1715, at the age of eighty-one years. With him the history of Irish activity in New York may well be said to begin. While he came here as an official, he identified himself with the Colony and with the City, and grew so to love it that no honors appealed to him which involved leaving it. To have been the means of assisting in conferring upon a people popular government, civic liberty and religious freedom in an age of despotism and persecution, is an honor which reflects credit upon the race to which he belonged, as well as upon himself. He has been