45° HISTORY OF THE COUNTY OF WESTCHESTER. 



selves, and appeared to enjoy the meal and the burning. The house 

 was utterly consumed, with the contents, before the company separated. 

 No effort was made to save an article not required for the better enjoy- 

 ment of their meal. The same evening Col.. Fowler conducted a ma- 

 rauding party into the vicinity of Eastchester, where he was attacked and 

 fell mortally wounded. Being brought back to the house of Cornelius 

 Van Ranc, overseer of Mr. Graham's farm, he expired that night. 



James Graham was a native of Scotland, and is found a resident mer- 

 chant of the city of New York, as early as July, 1678; and a few years 

 later, proprietor of lands in Ulster County, Staten Island, and in New 

 Jersey. He succeeded Mr. Budyard as Attorney General of the Pro- 

 vince of New York on the 10th of December, 1685, and was sworn of 

 the Council on the 8th of October, 1687. " When the government of 

 New England and New York were consolidated by James II., Mr. Gra- 

 ham removed to Boston as Attorney-General to Andros, the odium of 

 whose government he shared, and in whose down-fall he was committed 

 to the Castle. He returned to New York in 1691, where his enemies 

 assert that he insinuated himself into the confidence of Leisler and his 

 friends, so as to procure their interest to be chosen member of the As- 

 sembly, of which he was afterwards elected speaker. He became, soon 

 after, the mortal enemy of Leisler and Milborne, of whose murder he is 

 charged, by his adversaries, with being the principal author. Thomas 

 Newton, Houghten's Attorney-General, having left the Province in April, 

 1 69 1, disapproving, probably, of the harsh measures of the government 

 toward the State prisoners, George Farewell was appointed to act in his 

 place ; but this appointment not being satisfactory to the Assembly, Mr. 

 Graham became again Attorney-General in the following May. He was 

 about nine years speaker of the Assembly, i.e. from 1691-1694, 1695- 

 1698, and a part of 1699, when the friends of Leisler being in a 

 majority, the House voted a bill of Indictment, in the shape of a Re- 

 monstrance against their opponents, and had the cruelty to request their 

 speaker to sign it. To enable him to avoid this unpleasant duty, Mr. 

 Graham was called to the Council in, 1699. His public career may be 

 said to have now closed. He appears to have attended the Council for 

 the last time, on the 29th of July, 1700. He was superseded in Octo- 

 ber, of that year, as Recorder of the city of New York, after having 

 filled that office from 1683, with an interruption of only two years, and 

 was deprived of his office of Attorney-General on the 21st of January, 

 1 701, but a few days before his death, which occurred at his residence 

 at Morrisania. His will bears date 1 2th of January 1 700, and is on record 

 in the Surrogate's Office, New York, Lib. ii., 95. He left all his property, 



