In 1727 we find Governor Burnet bitterly complaining to the Lords of Trade about some " extraordinary resolves " concerning the Court of Chancery, "which," he says, "was all done at the suggestion their speaker, who had lately lost a cause in chancery." Philipse,of he continues, had "the least reason of any man to disown the Court of Chancery, for he himself was a member of council when that court was established by the council and when the Lords of Trade approved that establishment, and he himself three years ago being cast in a suit at common law brought it into chancery and obtained some relief from it." Burnet intimates that the conduct of Speaker Philipse in this matter was not occasioned by any high sense of principle, but was merely personal; and certainly Philipse had no cause in this connection, or regarding any other question of policy, to make himself specially complaisant toward Governor Burnet, who had procured his dismissal from the council. On the other hand, antagonism to the Court of Chancery was emphatically a popular cause, only less so in degree (because of the less emergent circumstances)

HISTORY

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in Burnet's time than in Cosby- s; and whatever personal motives may have influenced Philipse's course, that course could not be separated from association with the popular feeling. Adolph Philipse, moreover, was never an intense partisan; and his long-continued service as speaker of the assembly is sufficient testimony to the general fairness and acceptability of his political disposition. He always adhered to the simple religious faith in which he had been brought up, that of the Dutch Reformed Church, although the Church of England increasingly claimed the attachment of the rich, powerful, and ambitious; and it occasioned grievous regret to the Episcopalians that a man of his prominence should be so conspicu-