History of New York City (1665–1783) port British ships evacuated in 1783. The English had renamed the colony the Province of New York, after the king's brother James, Duke of York and on June 12, 1665, appointed Thomas Willett the first of the Mayors of New York. The city grew northward and remained the largest and most important city in the Province of New York, becoming the third largest in the British Empire after London and Philadelphia. The Dutch regained the colony briefly in 1673, then finally lost it permanently to the English in 1674 after the Third Anglo-Dutch War. Leisler's Rebellion, an uprising in which
Thomas Atkins (Lord Mayor) a Hosannah on 7 June 1649. He was a "busy stickler for independency and republicanism", and the principal tool by which the Rump Parliament managed the common council of London. Atkkins was knighted by the Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell on 5 December 1657 (the title passed into oblivion at the restoration of the Monarchy in 1660). He was Father of the City in 1658 and was discharged from his position as Alderman on 12 February 1661. Thomas Atkins (Lord Mayor) Thomas Atkins was Lord Mayor of London and an English politician who sat in the House of Commons in 1640