Financial Woes
Income ceases.
With Daniel’s death and no one to deal with creditors as he had done, and with the estate in debt to the amount of 6,000£, rents of about 500£ per year were siphoned off.
Dorothy tried desperately to clear up the uncertainties that surrounded her property on Long
Island and perhaps receive some sort of compensation.34
We may conjecture that William Fisher
might have gone there to find his son, whom Scott had sold into servitude in Maryland.
Perhaps Jane Brymington and her son went there to claim their 3,000 acres.
In any case Matthew Prior may well have sent word that the houses and cattle were nowhere to be found.
Among these conjectures one demonstrable fact is that in the following March Matthew Prior took possession of land that was on record in Daniel’s own name at Oyster Bay.35
Dorothy contacted John Scott, who was busy in another scam working for the government in Holland, but his promises were empty.
On November 2, 1667, Dorothy, upon the appointment of Francis Lovelace as Governor of New York, gave him a power of attorney to discover what could be gotten of John Scott’s property there.36
She promised the settlement of a small colony of Quakers, if he could find them a place there.
When he arrived in New York he deputed a commission of three men (all captains) to investigate.37
They found that during Col. Nicholls’ term as governor he had given the materials of the houses that were removed from the land to Katherine, John Scott’s wife, whom he had abandoned there.38
Thomas Lovelace, the governor’s brother, was going to New York in 1668, and promised to return for his family in the same year,
so Dorothy asked him to make inquiry about the status of the land.39
(In those days the common year did not end till March 25.)
In February Dorothy went to London to await his arrival from New York.
She sent inquiry at Butcher’s Arms every day by means of her daughter to see if he had arrived, but after three weeks she could wait no longer.
She left a letter for him and returned home to Eggarton.40
An appeal to the King.
With the news of what had happened under Governor Nicholls, in May, 1669, Dorothy gained an audience with King Charles II.
She explained the matter to him in a petition which he read and they discussed her plight for about half an hour.41
The King told her that it would not be proper for him to address the governor in writing and referred her to the Duke of York (his brother),
who was just then passing through the drawing room, just adjacent to the King’s chamber.
The Duke suggested that since Col. Lovelace was on his way to New York, he could handle her case, and told his secretary to draft a letter of introduction to the governor.
The king’s secretary told Dorothy that it would be a good idea for her to spell out the details of her case in her own handwriting.
Gov. Francis Lovelace’s options.
There were two things Dorothy thought the governor could do:
1) see about what could be had for the 100£ that had been given Richbell for his deed, and
2) let her know about the between 200£ and 300£ debt
(to Daniel Gotherson from a certain Scott, that the government had hanged) that had been assigned to the governor to support the education of Daniel Jr. in New York.
The Duke’s secretary didn’t want this to reflect badly on the governor.
They thought things would have been handled long ago if they had only known about it.
So now that they knew about the situation, they might be able to allow her something.
Dorothy replied to the question from the King’s secretary about possible collusion with John Scott by assuring him that she had not seen Scott for nearly six years,
since the time he returned from New York in 1664 with the news that the boys were safely delivered there.42
Thomas Lovelace’s kindness.
In June when Col. Thomas Lovelace was taking his family to New York, he took with him the papers in Dorothy’s case to deliver to his brother, the Governor of New York.
With him he had: 1) the letter of introduction from the King’s secretary,
2) a copy of her petition to the King, 3) the letter explaining her desires.
Upon his arrival in New York he inquired concerning the fate of Daniel, Jr., whom he finally traced to New Haven, where he was in servitude to an innkeeper, rubbing horses’ heels and performing other drudgery in the yard.
He paid 7£ to set the boy free, newly clothed him, and put him in school in New York.43
After all the investigations were complete Thomas Lovelace’s conclusion was to quote from an old proverb:
“where nothing is to be had, the King must loose his right.”
Dorothy’s second marriage.
Dorothy married again before 1674 to a man with the surname of “Hogben.”44
It is possible that he too was a widower with growing children, but this is speculation.45
Final review of the case.
In 1678 a certain London magistrate was murdered.
John Scott, was in London at the time, going about disguised as a Jesuit priest.
The Duke of York immediately suspected him and Samuel Pepys, who was then Secretary to the Admiralty, tried to have him arrested.
For this his enemies (probably taken in by some of Scott’s shrewd deals) succeeded in providing evidence enough to have Pepys committed to the Tower on May 22, 1679.
While there the secretary used his time to collect all the evidence he could against the scoundrel.46
The documents collected include a good number of the documents cited by Mr. Scull in his 1883 biography of Dorothy.47
Pepys in the Tower.
During his time in the tower on January 6, 1679/80 Pepys had one of his agents deliver thirteen queries to Dorothy for more details in her case.
She mentioned that she saw Scott only once in the last 16 years (once in the summer of 1678).48
She had not emigrated in the meantime because of her children, her health, and besides not being able to afford transportation to carry out her plan to settle there,
she could not be sure what would be awaiting her in that country.49
She had also discovered that her son, after being freed from servitude, had been stranded (beached on some shore) on a ship returning (to New York) from the Barbados.50
