It has been owing mainly to the little attention bestowed on the subject, both by those who are now the successors in belief of the Church of England since the American Revolution, and those of the dissenting ecclesiastical organizations. The few writers who have referred to the subject at all, have taken for granted, and honestly believed, that no such establishment ever existed, and, of course, have written in that belief and with that idea. But some attention to the Authorities, and the then law, bearing upon the subject, will show that the current popular opinion is not as well founded as has been supposed.

The question is a purelj' historical one. And only in an historical point of view can, and will, it be con- .sidered here.

From and after the English conquest of New York in 1664, excepting only the fifteen months that the Dutch reconquest of 1673 lasted, under all the English Governors, their Chaplains maintained the services of the Church of England and performed all i clerical duties in the chapel in the Fort in New York.

By the several "Commissions" and "Instructions" to the Governors under the signs-manual of their Sovereigns, and their several oaths of olBce, the different Governors were commanded and compelled to maintain and support the Church of England in the Province of New York. This was the exercise in New York of a power which was legally vested in the Sovereign of England by the law of England, and which by his coronation oath he was bound to exercise. Although so strictly commanded, the Governors were unable to carry out their Instructions in any other way than in the King's chapel in the Fort, as above stated, for twenty-nine years. This was owing to the fact that the English speaking people in the