Government

New York was conceived as a proprietary colony and named after James, Duke of York, its initial proprietor. When the Duke succeeded to the thrones of England, Scotland, and Ireland as James II (and VII), in 1685, New York became a Crown Colony. In principle, the form of government was absolute rule by the Duke of York, or later the King. In practice, the Duke of York delegated his authority to a provincial governor whom he had appointed and instructed, and a provincial legislature elected by freeholders.
When the Duke of York succeeded to the throne, he disallowed the charter he had previously granted to the colony and melded it with the super-colony he called the Dominion of New England. This policy was unpopular in New York, as elsewhere. Jacob Leisler led a short-lived rebellion against the Dominion of New England. When William of Orange and his wife Mary, eldest daughter of James II, succeeded to the throne in the Glorious Revolution, they restored New York's charter and elected assembly.
In the decades following the Glorious Revolution, New York's royal governors often found themselves torn between the Crown's instructions and the political pressures exerted by the colony's elected assembly. Since the assembly held the purse strings, most royal governors chose to negotiate with it.
In the 1730s, New York City was the setting for the Zenger case, in which a young printer, John Peter Zenger was accused of libelling Governor Sir William Cosby. The Zenger case established the precedent that if an allegation is true, it cannot be libel, although it was decades before this principle was consistently applied in American courts.
Although colonial New York had a reputation for political conservatism, it suggested the first intercolonial congress, the Albany Congress of 1754. New York also hosted the meeting, where delegates from seven colonies discussed measures to defend themselves from the French and improve colonists' relations with the Iroquois Confederacy.