IVilliam sitwood. determined to make an effort to recover their past influence, and Bayard had addresses to the King, the House of Commons, and to Lord Cornbury, subscribed at the tavern of one Hutchins, an alderman of the city, in which the Leislerians, who then had the control of the House of Assembly, of the Council, and the support of Lieutenant-Gov ernor Nanfan, were charged with enriching themselves by the spoils of their neighbors, and stating that the Assembly had bribed the Lieutenant-Governor and the Chief Justice, the former to sign their bills and the latter to defend their legality; which ad dresses were signed at Hutchins's tavern by a considerable number of the citizens and by many of the soldiers of the garrison, who, it was alleged, were brought there for that purpose. This greatly exasperated the party in power and especially the Lieuten ant-Governor and the Chief Justice. A statute had been passed in 1691 by the As sembly, immediately after the Leislerian in surrection, recognizing the right of William and Mary to the sovereignty of the prov ince, at the end of which was a very loose clause, said to have been inserted by Bayard, or through his influence, declaring that any person who should, by any manner of ways, endeavor, by force of arms or otherwise, to disturb the peace and quiet of their majesties' government as then established, should be esteemed rebels and traitors, and incur the penalties which the laws of England pro vided for such offenses. Nanfan, — no doubt upon the suggestion of Atwood, who, Smith the historian says, " stimulated the prosecu tions that followed " 1 — determined to have the principals in the getting-up of these addresses convicted, under this statute, of high treason, which was drawn up in terms so general that under it an unscrupulous judge might declare that any act or words, intended to be in any way offensive or de rogatory to those in power, was in the formal words of this act an endeavor to disturb 11 Smith History of N. Y., p. 165.
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the peace and quiet of the government, and was therefore, within the meaning of it, high treason. Nanfan accordingly summoned Hutchins to deliver up to him the addresses that had been signed, which Hutchins refused to do, upon which the Lieutenant-Governor had him committed to jail. This aroused Bayard, and he with three associates, on the follow ing day, addressed a written communication to the Lieutenant-Governor expressing their confidence in the legality of the addresses and asking for the release of Hutchins. Nanfan sent their communication to the Attorney-General Broughton for his opinion of it as well as of the addresses and of Hutchins' refusal to give them up, and Broughton returned a written opinion to the effect that there was nothing criminal in the addresses, and that the refusal to give them up was not such a contempt as authorized the commitment of Hutchins. This opinion on the part of the prosecuting officer of the Crown was a serious obstacle; but Atwood was equal to the emergency. He and Thomas Weaver, the collector of the port, who was also a member of the Council, suc ceeded, and, as I infer, with the aid of the sheriff, who was of the Leislerian party, in getting a grand jury together, who found a bill of indictment against Broughton for neglect of duty; that is, for not prosecuting men for an act of high treason, when he had declared in an official communication that the act complained of was not a criminal of fense; and Nanfan followed up this indictment by suspending Broughton from his office, whom he could not remove, as he held his appointment from the Crown, and wrote to the government asking for his removal, a request with which it did not comply. The Council then issued a warrant for the arrest of Bayard and Hutchins for high treason, signed by Atwood, Weaver and two other members of that body, upon which Bayard and Hutchins were committed to jail and a file of soldiers was placed as a guard
