He was, however, a member of tlie House of Assembly, and held the commisfiion of colonel in the militia. Nor does it seem that, though a friend of existing institutions, and an opposer of the whigs, he was an active partisan. In April, 1775, he went to the ground appointed by the whigs of Westchester county, to elect deputies to the Congress ; and declared that he would not join in the business of the day, and that the sole purpose in going there was, to protest against their illegal and unconstitutional proceedings. On some other occasions, he pursued a similar line of conduct ; but, his name is seldom met with in the documents of the time. Soon after 1771, Colonel David Humphreys, who subsequently became an aid to Washington, and, under the Federal government, minister to Portugal and Spain, and who had just completed his studies at Yale College, became a resident in his family then living on Philipse manor. The late President D wight was well acquainted with him at this time, and speaks of him as " a worthy and respectable man, not often excelled in personal and domestic amiableness, and of Mrs. Philipse, he remarks, that she " was an excellent woman." In the

4r(> ' : , HISTORY OF THE .^

panied his master in all his changes of fortune survived him but one year. They are both interred in the same church yard.

Charley Philips, son of Angevine, still lives on the banks of the Hudson, and was under a succession of dynasties, 45 years sexton of St. John's church, Yonkers.