remained loyal to King George to the end of his days. If the Delanceys were not equal to the Newcastles in wealth and finesse, they were at least competent to manage political spoils of no mean proportions.
Even the pocket boroughs of old England had copies on the banks of the Hudson; some of the lordly masters of New York manors were represented in the provincial legislature by delegates of their own choosing—with the assent of their tenants a matter of form. From mansions that were castles, the Johnsons ruled in the Upper Mohawk Valley with a sway that was half feudal and half barbaric, relying on numerous kinsmen, armed negro slaves, trained bands of Gaelic retainers, and savage allies from the dread Iroquois to maintain their sovereignty over forest and plain.
In all the colonies the ruling orders, in English fashion, demanded from the masses the obedience to which they considered themselves entitled by wealth, talents, and general preëminence. At Harvard and Yale, authority, houses, lands, and chattels determined the rank of students in the academic roll. In churches, Puritan and Anglican alike, congregations were seated according to age, social position, and estate. One old Virginia family displayed its regard for the commoners of the vicinity every Sunday by requiring them to wait outside the church until the superiors were duly seated in the large pew especially provided for them. A member of another proud family of the Old Dominion kept the vulgar in their place with such severity while she lived that she felt some atonement necessary in death; so she ordered her body buried under the pavement in that section of the church reserved for the poor—as an act of abasement and reparation. Even the Anglican clergy of the South were sometimes assigned to a lowly rank. When, for example, a parson of quality sought the hand of Governor Spottswood's widow, her family opposed the marriage with a painstaking argument designed to demonstrate the social inferiority of the position occupied by the
