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

Province were so few in comparison with the Dutch, and the French, (the latter alone being one-fourth of the City population prior to 1790), that the church in the Fort was suflBcient for their needs in the City ; while those in other jiarts of the Province where there were any English at all were so very few, that it was impossible to act at all in the matter. All this time it must be borne in mind that the Commissions and Instructions of the Governors were continually in force. At length the increase of the English population became sufficient to justifv a movement putting them in operation. On the 28th of August, 1692, Colonel Benjamin Fletcher arrived in New York as Governor in the ship " Wolf," having been appointed by William and Mary on the 18th of the preceding March. ^ He was warmly attached to the i Church of England. Chief Justice Lewis Morris in a judicial opinion in 1701, speaks of him as "Colonel Fletcher (justly styled the great patron of the Church of England here)." ^ At his instance, pursuant to his Commission and Instructions, the Legislature, composed of the Governor, Council, and Assembly, answering to the present Governor, Senate and Assembly, passed on the 24th of March, 1693, seven months only after his arrival as Governor, "An Act for Settling a Ministry and Raising a Revenue for them in the City of New York, County of Richmond, Westchester and Queens Counties."* This act gave an impetus to the Church of England in New York, which it never afterwards lost.