History of Westchester County, New York, Vol. I
Another election was ordered for the next spring, but the Assembly was itself dissolved on the 3d of May.
On the 30th of September, 1701, as signers of a petition to King William from the Protestants of New York, evidently anti-Leislerians, appear the names of Caleb Heathcote, John Horton, Joseph Purdee, John Drake, William Willett and William Barnes, who
* New York Col. Mss., vol. iv. pp. SOT, 810. 5 Journal of New York Assembly.
THE COLONIAL PERIOD.
speak, they say, for themselves and two-thirds of the freeholders and inhabitants of Westchester County. In this paper they complain of unjust proscription and imputations and profess most thorough submission and loyalty.' The same names are found subscribed to an address of welcome to Lord Cornbury, the newly-appointed Governor. This paper is dated October 2, 1702, and in it they again state that they represent two-thirds of the inhabitants and freeholders of the county of Westchester.- We safely gather from these papers, legislative proceedings and elections the high state of political feeling throughout the colony, in which the people of Westchester thoroughly shared. The course of Lord Bellamont and of his temporary .successor, Lieutenant-Governor Nan fan, had been in the interest of the friends of Leisler. Abraham Goverueur, who had married Leisler's widowed daughter, Mrs. Milborne, was the head of the faction, and they had succeeded in placing him in the Speaker's chair. Drake, Purdy,Willett and Heathcote were pronounced opponents of these radicals, whose representative in this county evidently was Henry Fowler, of East Chester. Is it not probable that John Drake, -- Lieutenant of the militia company in East Chester, which went down to aid Leisler, took the gauge of this ambitious and arrogant man from dealings with him at the Fort, and hence easily fell into line with those who made common cause with the friends of law and order, rather to resist the aspirations of the new man, when his claims for consideration above others heretofore leaders were only his own presumption and self-importance ?