Morris, Lewis, 1671---1746, , New York 1671 1746 Male Chief Justice New York Governor New Jersey chief justice of New York and governor of New Jersey, was the first lord of the manor of Morrisania in New York His father, Richard Morris, after service in Cromwell's army had become a merchant in Barbados, where he married Sarah Pole, a lady of substantial fortune.
On Nov. 3, 1691, he married Isabella, daughter of James Graham, attorney-general of the province of New York, and established a home at "Tintern" (later corrupted to "Tinton"), N. J. , named in honor of the ancestral home of the Morrises in Monmouthshire.
Career
The sense of being a man of property seems to have sobered Lewis Morris.
During the following year he was appointed a judge of the court of common right of East Jersey and was named a member of Gov. Andrew Hamilton's council.
He vigorously supported Hamilton [q. v. ], but in 1698 he opposed the appointment of Gov. Jeremiah Basse [q. v. ] on the ground that the choice had been made by only ten of the required sixteen proprietors.
Ambitious to be the first royal governor of the province, he was keenly disappointed when the ministry named Lord Cornbury [q. v. ] to be governor of both New York and New Jersey.
As a member of Cornbury's council for New Jersey, Morris became an outspoken opponent of that unscrupulous official.
Dismissed from the council, he was elected in 1707 to the assembly, where he collaborated with Samuel Jennings in formulating the protest to Queen Anne against Cornbury's reprehensible conduct, which was largely responsible for the governor's removal from office.
After 1710 Morris supported the admirable administration of his friend Robert Hunter [q. v. ].
He continued, however, to serve upon the governor's council for New Jersey under Burnet and Montgomerie.
With the administration of Gov. William Cosby [q. v. ] the lord of Morrisania found himself once more at odds with the representative of the Crown.
When Cosby sought to establish a court of chancery to hear his suit against Rip Van Dam, chief-justice Morris pronounced the whole proceeding illegal, whereupon the governor removed him and appointed James De Lancey, 1703-1760 [q. v. ], in his place (Aug. 21, 1733).
In 1734 he presented the assembly's grievances in London, where he failed to secure the removal of Governor Cosby but won a vindication of his own conduct as chief justice.
When the political connection between New York and New Jersey was severed, he became governor of the latter province (1738).
Though he had challenged the royal prerogative as represented by Cornbury and Cosby, he permitted no questioning of his own authority.
In 1702 he suggested to the Society that New York, as the center of English America, was a proper place for a college and that Queen Anne might be persuaded to grant her farm in New York toward the project.
His enemies accused him of inordinate vanity, and no doubt he was fully conscious of his talents, which were great.
He was buried at Morrisania with simple rites in accordance with the terms of his will.
["The Papers of Lewis Morris, Governor of the Province of New Jersey, " N. J. Hist.
Soc.
Colls. , vol.
IV (1852); Robert Bolton, A Hist.
of the County of Westchester (2 vols. , 1848); William Smith, The Hist.
of the Late Province of N. Y. (1829); Archives of the State of N. J. , 1 ser.
IV-VII (1882 - 83); E. B. O'Callaghan, Docs.
Rel.
to the Col. Hist.
of the State of N. Y. , vols.
IV-VI (1854 - 55); E. M. W. Lefferts, Descendants of Lewis Morris of Morrisania (1907).
A portrait of Morris, done by John Watson in 1715, may be a copy of an earlier portrait. ]
Religion
For many years Lewis Morris was an active churchman, serving from 1697 to 1700 as a vestryman of Trinity Church and encouraging the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in its missionary enterprises.
Politics
Although Governor Fletcher had issued royal letters patent in May 1697 erecting Morris' New York estate into the manor of Morrisania, the new lord was less interested in his manorial grant than in the politics of New Jersey.
Connections
The elder Lewis Morris, having assumed his responsibilities at Bronck's land in 1675, was greatly disturbed because young Lewis developed into a headstrong boy who resented the discipline of the Society of Friends upon which his uncle insisted and defied his guardian's authority.
Brother:
Richard
In 1670 Richard and his brother Lewis, also a merchant of Barbados, purchased a tract of five hundred acres, known as Bronck's land, just north of the Harlem River in New York.
Uncle:
N.
The youth mended his ways sufficiently to warrant forgiveness, however, and in 1691 inherited not only his uncle's equity in the Bronck's land estate, which had been increased to almost two thousand acres, but also 3,500 acres in Monmouth County, N. J.
Uncle:
Richard
There Richard and Sarah Morris died in 1672, leaving their infant son, Lewis, as the ward of the uncle for whom he had been named.
