COKTLAXDTS

of Cortlandt Manor, and Jacobus (who married Eva, stepdaughter of the first Frederick Philipse) the founder of the younger or Yonkers branch. Stephanus, a native-born Dutch-American, received an excellent education under the direction of the scholarly Dutch clergymen of New Amsterdam. He had just become of age when the English fleet, in 10(34, in the name of the British king and of James, Duke of York, demanded and received the submission of New Netherland. His first public employment was therefore under English rule. He was a member of the original Court of Assizes created by the duke's laws, and thereafter was constantly engaged in official service, holding practically every position of importance in the province except that of governor. His career was probably the most conspicuous and creditable of that of any inhabitant of New York in the seventeenth century, and " undoubtedly the first brilliant career that any native of New York ever ran." In 1077, at the age of thirty-four, he was appointed mayor of New York, being the first native American to hold that office, in which he continued with hardly an interruption until his death. He was, with Philipse, one of the original members of the governor's council, and served in that body without any intermission to the end of his life. At the time of the Leisler regime, the responsibility for the government of the province was temporarily committed to him and Philipse by the departing lieutenant-governor, Nicholson, and, although a kinsman of assumption of authority, an Leisler's, he firmly resisted the hitter's act which for a time endangered his life, so that he was obliged to flee from the city. He was later one of the justices of the Supreme Court of the province, and for several months previously to his death was its chief justice.