MEMOIR

OF THE

HONOURABLE JAMES DE LANCET:

LIEUTENANT-GOVERNOR OF THE PROVINCE OF NEW YORK.

This distinguished man was the oldest son of Etienne or Stephen De Lancey a French Huguenot gentleman of the City of Caen in Normandy, who, driven from France by the persecution of 1681,fled with numbers of his countrymen to the new world. He belonged to an ancient family inPicardy, and on being obliged to fly from France , on account of the religious persecution whichdisgraced those days, he went first to Rotterdam in Holland , and after remaining in that hospitableland for two or three years crossed over to England. There on the 11 th of March 1686, he tookout letters patent of denization under the great seal, and shortly afterwards sailed for New York ,where he arrived on the seventh of the following June 1 .

On the 23 d of January 1700 he married Anne second daughter of the Hon. Stephanus YanCortlandt, an opulent and highly respectable citizen of New York , of which marriage was issueJames De Lancey, the subject of this sketch, who was born in New York city in 1702, and wasthe eldest of seven children ; five sons and two daughters. His eldest sister, Susannah, became the■wife of Capt. afterwards Vice Admiral Sir Peter Warren KB. Anne, the youngest, married the Hon.John Watts of New York . Of his brothers, two, Stephen and John, died unmarried in early manhood ;the other two, Peter and Oliver, became men of note in the colony. The former resided at theborough of West Chester which he represented for years in the Assembly ; Oliver, the youngest ofthe brothers, was most of his life Commander of the forces of the colony, was also a member ofthe Assembly and of the Council, Receiver-General of New York , and the senior LoyalistBrigadier-General in commission in the war of the Revolution.

After having attended the best schools the Colony then afforded, James De Lancey was sent toEngland to prosecute his studies, and entered as a Fellow-Commoner of Corpus Christi college inthe University of Cambridge , on the second of October, 1721. 2 The Master of Corpus at thattime was Dr. Samuel Bradford, afterwards bishop of Carlisle, and next of Rochester , And thegentleman whom young De Lancey chose as his Tutor, was the learned Dr. Thomas Herring , whobecame successively Bishop of Bangor, Archbishop of York, and Archbishop of Canterbury .

This choice proved afterwards of great advantage to James De Lancey , for the master and pupilkept up their intimacy by letter long after the one became primate of all England the other was in

1 N. Y. Ass. Jour. I, 515.

2 Lamb’s Master’s Hist, of Corp. Christ. Coll. Cambridge.