As a Royal Province. 1685-1776 83 



for England in October, 1753. Clinton's successor, Sir 

 Danvers Osborn, met with opposition from the Assembly 

 almost from the moment of his arrival, and in a fit of dejection 

 he hanged himself. He had already shown a tendency to 

 mental aberration, due to family loss. 



The governorship therefore fell upon Lieutenant-Governor 

 De Lancey, and so acceptably did he fill the office that the 

 home government made no appointment as Governor until 

 after De Lancey 's death in 1760. He married Ann Heathcote 

 who, with her sister Martha (Johnson), inherited the manor of 

 Scarsdale from their father, Colonel Caleb Heathcote; and 

 De Lancey thus became a great landholder in the county of 

 Westchester. His three sons were all Tories in the subsequent 

 dissensions. The youngest, John Peter, served as a major 

 on the British side, but afterwards established himself at 

 Mamaroneck, where he built a mansion on the site formerly 

 occupied by the manor-house of his grandfather, which had 

 been accidentally burned previous to the Revolution. John 

 Peter's daughter, Susan Augusta, married James Fenimore 

 Cooper, the famous novelist; another daughter married 

 Macadam, the famous road builder. 



A younger brother of the Lieutenant - Governor was 

 Peter De Lancey, who settled himself at West Farms and 

 operated the old Richardson and Byvanck mills. In con- 

 sequence, he was generally known as "Peter of the Mills." 

 He represented the borough-town in the Assembly from 

 1750 to 1768. Of his three sons, John reached high politi- 

 cal office, James was high sheriff of the county from 1770 

 to 1777, but is better known as the famous commander of 

 the regiment of loyalists called the Westchester Light Horse, ' 



1 For a fuller account of this famous corps of Tories, the reader is referred 

 to the author's novel, A Princess and Another. 



