Leisler’s Rebellion occurred when the predominantly Dutch population of New York ousted royal officials during rumors of political troubles in England. The uprising has been attributed to the threat posed to the Dutch community by English rule, fears of a Catholic plot, and class conflict between rich and poor. Its leader, Jacob Leisler (b. 1641), was a German native who came to New Netherland in 1660 as a soldier for the Dutch West India Company; he joined the Dutch Relormed Church in Manhattan a year later. He married the widow of a rich merchant, thus becoming one of the wealthiest men in the colony, and became a trader. Leisler gradually lost both money and influence in the 1680s as trading became more expensive and the English established political dominance.
When the Glorious Revolution (1688) took place, confusion reigned in New York, and Leisler seized the chance to restore his power. In June 1689 he gained military control of New York City by taking over Fort James and exploited the population’s fear of French attack by sending his armed followers to search and detain all suspicious people. Leisler and other militia captains formed a committee of safety, with representatives from Westchester, Kings, Queens, Staten Island, and Manhattan Counties, and the committee proclaimed William of Orange to be king. In December 1689 Leisler assumed the roles of lieutenant governor and commander in chief of New York, while England appointed a new governor who did not set sail for the colony until the end of 1690. The uprising ended on March 20, 1691, when regular troops under the control of the governor marched to the fort to demand its surrender. Most militiamen who relinquished their arms were granted pardons. Leisler and his principal supporters were jailed for treason and murder resulting from a skirmish in which two English soldiers died. By May 32 Leislerians had been arrested, and eight were sentenced to death, including Leisler, who was hanged on May 16, 1691. The rebellion failed because Leisler misread the nature of the revolution, failed to comprehend the complexities of English court politics, and did not understand that New York was relatively insignificant on the English schedule of priorities.
Further reading: Charles Howard McCormick, Leisler’s Rebellion (New York: Garland, 1989).
—Caryn E. Neumann
Lennox, Charlotte Ramsay (1720?-1804) British writer, translator
Heralded as the first American novelist, Charlotte Lennox (birth name Ramsay) was born sometime in the 1720s, although details of her early life are uncertain. Early biographical accounts indicate that she was born in 1720 in New York, the daughter of that colony’s lieutenant governor; however, more recent accounts suggest that she was probably born several years later in Gibraltar, the daughter of James Ramsay, an officer in the British army who was later stationed in America. She lived in North America for only a brief time, probably from 1739 to 1743. She left New York for England in 1743, perhaps because her father died and she became the ward of her aunt, whom Charlotte Ramsay found to be insane on her arrival. Forced to fend for herself, she married Alexander Lennox, a printer, in October 1747. They had two children before separating in 1792.
Lennox turned to professional writing shortly after her marriage, first publishing poetry in Poems on Several Occasions, Written by a Young Lady (1747), and then producing novels. Her first celebrated work was The Life and Times of Harriot Stuart (1750), a semiautobiographical account of a young struggling woman. Together with Euphemia (1790), Lennox offers detailed descriptions of colonial New York life and relationships among the British, Dutch, and American Indians in the colony. In 1752 she produced The Female Quixote, which twists Cervantes’s classic story to create a female heroine, Arabella, whose “madness” is that the romance fiction of the day was an accurate portrayal of society. Once unleashed, Arabella has a series of adventures that mix comedy with astute social criticism. The work was a tremendous success, winning the praise of Samuel Johnson, Henry Fielding, and Horace Walpole. Lennox continued to write, but none of her subsequent publications matched the success of The Female Quixote. She produced translations of French works and a collection of Shakespeare’s plays, and she edited a women’s magazine, The Lady’s Museum. She also tried her hand at the theater, where she met with less success. Her rapid decline in literary circles after the production of her Old City Manners (1775) meant that she was impoverished by the time of her death.
Further reading: Miriam Rossiter Small, Charlotte Ramsay Lennox: An Eighteenth-Century Lady of Letters (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1935).
—Troy O. Bickham
Leverett, John (1662-1 724) educator John Leverett was the first nonministerial president of Harvard College (1707-24). In his youth he attended Harvard College, receiving his B. A. in 1680 and his M. A. in 1683. In 1685 he and William Brattle were hired to serve as resident tutors at Harvard under absentee president Increase Mather. The latitudinarian theological perspective they embraced began Harvard’s shift away from the traditional Calvinism of its early years, through the rationalistic moralism of the 18th century, to the overt Unitarianism of the 19th century. Leverett’s promotion of liturgical worship motivated the entry of many of his students into the Church of England and even the Anglican priesthood. In 1692 Harvard awarded honorary doctorates to both Leverett and Mather, but within a few years Mather had forced Leverett out.
Leverett subsequently developed a legal practice, entering politics, serving a term in the Massachusetts legislature, and winning appointment as a judge. In 1699 he joined with William and Thomas Brattle as well as other progressives to establish the Brattle Street Church as a haven for religious liberalism. In 1707, after Mather and his allies had finally lost control of Harvard’ governing board, Leverett was elected Harvard’s president, serving in that capacity until his death. Under his leadership Harvard continued to broaden its theological perspective. For example, a lavish bequest from Thomas Hollis, an English Baptist merchant, funded the creation in 1721 of a chair of divinity bearing the benefactor’s name and requiring of its occupant no explicit affirmation of orthodoxy.
—George W. Harper
World History
