286 



The Correct Arms of the State of Neiu York. 



The mind of Jumes II was full of the thought of perpetuating the 

 name of his family tide in the new world, and in his proprietary 

 province. He, being Duke of York and Albany, calls the chief city 

 as well as the province by the same name of New York instead of 

 New Amsterdam or New Netherland. Fort Orange becomes Albany, 

 Long Island is called Yorkshire, and the region of the Shawangunk 

 Mountains, receives the name of Albania. 



It is very likely that no document exists anywhere with this seal 

 attached to it; the seal itself was broken up in public and no impres- 

 sion of it is known to exist. But it is very easy to account for this 

 fact. In less than a year from the date of its reception, in August, 

 1688, Governor-General Andros defaced this " almost virgin seal " by 

 the order of James II, and its place was supplied by the seal of the 

 7ieiu "New England," (which name was made to cover all the British 

 possessions north of latitude 40°) and of which he had been made 

 governor-general. With the English revolution of 1G88, the next 

 year, all chance of again using the York seal of the sun as an emblem 

 of New York, ceased with the expulsion of James II, and the com- 

 mencement of the reign of William of Orange, or it might have re- 

 mained in use on coins and on our seal until 1776. 



An impression of this seal of New England, which was the only 

 seal in use in New York, from August, 1688, to April, 1689, it may 

 not be inappropriate to observe here, should be included in the collec- 

 tion of the seals of the State in the New York Civil List. No copy 

 of the impression was known to exist at the time of publishing the 

 Documentary History of the State, in 1850-51. One was presented 

 to the New York Historical Society in 1862, being attached to the 

 patent creating Joseph Dudley, first chief justice of New York. 

 {AdlarcVs Sutton- Dudleys of England, Bost., 1862.) It should be 

 brought into its proper relations with the seals of the State, as one of 

 the series, in use for a period of seven months. 



The seal has one peculiar additional item of interest, in that it is 

 the first of that series of seals of the State which continued lo be in 

 use through a period of eighty-eight years, from the year 1688 to the 

 year 1776, having on one side an Indian kneeling before the figure of 

 the sovereign of the day, king or queen, and offering gifts. This first 

 seal differs from all the remainder of the series in having the figure of 

 an Englishman, as colonist, teacher or missionary, kneeling by the 

 side of the Indian. If the figure is that of a teacher, it may explain 

 the selection of the motto from Claudian which is on the seal. 



I have given reasons for believing that the members of the com- 

 mittee of the convention must have been well acquainted with the 



