146 Heraldry in England and America. 



in coat armor, and to preserve their proper and relative proportions. 



sculptured and as they are engraved on bookplates, or blazoned in 

 works of heraldry. The carving, so far as a good field glass enables 

 one to inspect it, appears to be admirably well done. 



The names of the families that have been thus commemorate 1 in the 

 lofty court of the capitol are Stuyvesant, Schuyler, Livingston, Jay, 

 Clinton and Tompkins. Members of three of these families, the Clin- 

 tons, Jays, and Tompkins have filled honorably the hi hest Stite 

 office in the gift of the people. The Clinton family gave New York 

 her first governor who had the helm of State in the stormy period of 

 the revolution. A brother of the governor was also a major-general 

 in the same war, and to a son of this military leader, De Witt Clinton, 

 the State of New York is mainly indebted for her system of canals 

 which have brought to her seaboard cities the wealth and the produce 

 of the west. All through the struggle for our independence John Jay 

 was one of the foremost men in the formation of the State government 

 and in the councils of the Nation. He was a member of the first 

 American congress in 1774-5, of the State legislature. 177«>, chief jus- 

 tice of the State, 1777-9, then successively president of the federal 

 government, chief justice of the United States and governor of New 

 York. Governor Tompkins will be remembered not as vice-president 

 of the United States, but as the New York State war governor, during 

 the war with Great Britain in 1812. With all New England apathetic 

 and the federal government dilatory or inefficient, it was our sturdy 

 governor who more than all others defended our northern frontiers 

 from the attacks of the enemy. The Livingstons gave the State its 

 first chancellor, the Schuylers one of the most efficient generals of the 

 revolutionary war, and the Stuyvesant arms fitly represented the lead- 

 ing character of the early Dutch period in the history of the State. 

 Had there been one more window we doubtless would have seen over 

 it the arms of Hamilton, to whom perhaps, more than to any one man, 

 we are indebted, for the strength of the form of our National govern- 

 ment. Of the first five of these there is no doubt that the arms here 

 sculptured more or less correctly, were actually used by the several 

 families in this country. There is some doubt, however, whether 

 Governor Tompkins ever used, or ever claimed the right to use the 

 arms credited to the family of that name in England by Burke in his 

 General Armory, and which have been (with a difference) sculptured 

 above one of the dormer windows. 



