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held cockfights on Adolph Philipse’s land, where they planned parts of the rebellion. 25
    A revolt would not be likely to spare the Philipses. The grandson of the first lord of Philipsburg, the chief justice had inherited an empire. He was born in Barbados, where his father, Philip Philipse, died while managing the family’s business. To secure his grandson’s future, the elder Frederick Philipse gave his namesake his “Joncker’s” (Yonkers) plantation:
    I give grant devise and bequeath to Fredrick Filipse my grandson born in Barbados … all those lands and meadows called the Joncker’s plantation, together with all and singular houses, mills, mill dams, Orchards, gardens,
Negroes, Negroes children, cattle, horses, swine, and whatever else belongs to me
within that patent. 26
    He also received the family seat in Manhattan, a string of properties and estates stretching north to Putnam County, and the King’s Bridge, a toll bridge that his grandfather had built in 1693 to span Spuyten Duyvil Creek and link Manhattan island to the mainland at the Bronx. Besides the Yonkers slaves, he inherited several of his grandfather’s personal servants: “a Negroe man called Harry with his wife and child, a Negroe man called Peter, [and] a Negro man called Wan [perhaps Juan].” He got the boat
Joncker
and a quarter of his family’s commercial ships. Adolph Philipse acquired a full share of the shipping enterprise and houses, lots, lands, meadows, warehouses, and mills along the Hudson River, including much of Putnam County. His father had also left him numerous enslaved people: “the Negroe man called Symon, Charles, Towerhill, Samson, Claes, Billy, Mingo, Hendrik, Bahynne, and Hector, the Negroe boy Peter, the Indian woman called Hannah and her child, the Negroe woman Susan the younger and the Negroe woman Mary.” Adolph’s sisters, Eva Van Cortlandt and Anne French, took parts of the shipping business, warehouses, Manhattan houses, and lands. 27
    Slave traders controlled the bench and the jury during the 1741 trials, proceedings that they used to calm public outrage and reassert merchant rule. The traders responsible for the colony’s insecuritiesvetted the danger and credibility of those threats. The families who exposed the colony to conspiracies and rebellions directed the legal proceedings. Thirteen enslaved black people were burned and eighteen were hanged. Officials also hanged two white women and two white men. The court exiled a small group of white people and sold dozens of enslaved black men and women out of the colony. 28
ORDINARY HORRIFIC AFFAIRS OF TRADE
    In the aftermath of the proceedings, slaving in the colony receded briefly. The following summer, six slave ships docked in Manhattan, a fraction of the number that arrived before the conspiracy. The trepidation soon eased. On June 18 the brigantine
Ancram
entered New York harbor from St. Kitts, completing a voyage for Robert Livingston Jr. The Cuylers and Crugers had also capitalized on their investments, adding their slave ships to the numerous arrivals of the other merchants. The Cuylers’
Happy
returned to New York City from Jamaica with a cargo of enslaved people, while the Crugers received a shipment of Africans out of St. Christopher on the
Mary
. Henry Cuyler partnered with Philip and Robert Livingston, whose
Oswego
carried fourteen bound people from Jamaica. King George II compensated Governor Clarke for his services and losses with a £4,000 payment drawn from duties on Barbados and the Leeward Islands. In the following decade New York’s leading Atlantic merchants put more ships to sea and fully reestablished the Africa trade. This was more than a normalization of commerce. It reflected the activity of the family networks that undergirded the Atlantic system and the city’s integration into and dependence upon a dangerous and brutal trade. 29
    One of the younger Philip