262 THE FEENCH BLOOD IN AMEKICA 



Edmiiud Burke, but which met with the contemptuous 

 indifference of that body. With a view to impressing 

 the needs of pacifying the colonies upon the English gov- 

 ernment, he went to London in 1775, but was unsuccessful 

 in his efforts. While engaged in this business actual 

 hostilities broke out in America. De Lancey remained 

 faithful to the king and saw the confiscation of his vast 

 estates. In our day, so far removed from the bitterness 

 of the revolutionary struggle, we may frankly admire the 

 loyalty of a man who preferred to lose a great fortune 

 rather than prove a rebel to that power which had be- 

 friended so many of his persecuted Huguenot brethren. 

 While we must disagree with his view of the situation, 

 we must, nevertheless, give him all honour for his self- 

 sacrifice and devotion to his principles. 

 William • William Heathcote De Lancey, nephew of James, was 



De Lancey ^ i i. 7 



Bishop born in Mamaroneck, N. Y., in 1797. He graduated 



from Yale in 1817, went to Philadelphia and took orders 

 in the Episcopal Church. In 1827 he was persuaded to 

 become provost of the University of Pennsylvania, which 

 at that time had become greatly run down. There were 

 twenty-one students in the institution when De Lancey 

 accepted the provostship, but when he came to leave it 

 in 1836 to become rector of St. Peter's Church, Phila- 

 delphia, he had raised the number to one hundred and 

 twenty -five. After serving as rector of St. Peter's for 

 three years, De Lancey was made bishop of Western New 

 York on the creation of that diocese in 1839. He was an 

 eloquent speaker and a man of excellent judgment and 

 tact, and living at a time when the Episcopal Church in 

 America was in a formative condition he was able to 

 exercise a generous influence in shaping its policy. He 

 was the first, for example, to propose the "provincial 

 system" in the American Church, and it was Bishop De 

 Lancey who laid out the lines along which the General 

 Theological Seminary should work. The two most last- 

 ing monuments of his energy and devotion are Hobart 



