The minister said " that the intention of the Legislature was to raise a maintenance for a dissenting minister, all the Assembly but one being Dissenters, and knowing nothing of the church, and that being the intention of the law-makers, was the meaning of the law, and he hoped the Dissenters might enjoy what was so justly their due, or at least not be deprived of it without due course of law." I told him the Legislature did not consist of the Assembly only, but of the Governor and Council joined with them ; and I believed it was most certain the Governor never intended to settle a dissenting clergy.^

In the spring of 1695, the Assembly, in explanation of the act, declared that churches have power to call a dissenting Protestant minister, and that he be maintained as the act directs ; but the Governor rejected this interpolation of the Assembly, and decided that the act applied solely to the Episcopal ministry.^ Governor Fletcher was so occupied with schemes for money-making that he neglected the afiairs of the church, and in 1698 he was recalled to answer for his misconduct. Fletcher's successor was the kindlier Earl of Bellamont, an Irish i)eer, with a sound heart and honorable sympathies for popular freedom; his death, however, interrupted the short period of harmony in the colony.^

Bellamont was succeeded in 1702 by Lord Corn-

1 3 Bryant, 26.

2 " Doc. History of New York," vol. iii. page 24.5 ; Bolton's " Church History." xvi. ^Bolton's "Church History," xvii.