It is a curious fact that Lewis Morris, whose chief claim to remembrance is his identification with the great popular agitation of a later period, whereof, indeed, he was one of the heroes, was, in this early controversy between the " Court party " and the people, the mainstay of the former. Moreover, the warmth of his advocacy of the governor's cause was such that, on account of violent language in the course of debate, he was expelled from the assembly. He was thereupon re-elected to his seat by his Westchester constituents. Morris was appointed to the office of chief justice of New York by Governor Hunter on the 13th of March, 1715. He still continued to sit for Westchester Borough in the assembly, and did not retire from that body until 1728. His Westchester County colleagues in the assembly during his eighteen years of service for the borough from 1710 to 1728 were Joseph Budd, Joseph Drake, John Hoite, Josiah Hunt, Jonathan Odell, Edmund Ward, William Willet, Frederick Philipse, 2d, and Adolph Philipse. As chief justice he served uninterruptedly until August 21, 1733, when, on account of his attitude in the Van Dam case, he was removed by Governor Cosby, and James de Lancey, the son-in-law of Caleb Heathcote, of Searsdale Manor, was named in his stead. The affairs of the Province of New York moved along smoothly enough, excepting for the differences between the assembly and the executive, from the time of Hunter's appointment as governor, in 1710, until the arrival of Cosby, in August, 1732. Hunter was succeeded by William Burnet, also a highly polished and amiable man, with whom Morris sustained relations quite as friendly and agreeable as with Hunter. Burnet was followed by Colonel John Montgomerie, remembered as the grantor of the Montgomerie Charter of New York City, who died suddenly on the 1st of July, 1731, a victim, as is supposed, of a smallpox epidemic then raging.