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 Bell (Mayor of Gloucester) Member of Parliament (MP) for the city (1545–47, 1547–52, 1553 and 1554–55). He was knighted on 27 February 1546/7. He appears to have held orthodox Roman Catholic religious views: in 1537, while mayor, he was accused by leading townsmen John Huggins and John Rastell of calling Bishop Latimer of Worcester a heretic. A portrait of Bell the Elder is in the possession of Gloucester City Council. He is not to be confused with his younger brother (possibly half-brother), also called Thomas, also prominent, Sir Thomas Bell the Younger (d. 1560/1), Mayor of Bristol, who also served as Mayor of Gloucester