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
Lawrie Willett Lawrie Willett Lawrence John "Lawrie" Willett (born 1938) is a former senior Australian public servant and university Chancellor. Willett was born in Brisbane in 1938. He joined the Commonwealth Public Service, in the Department of Customs and Excise, in 1957, after completing his secondary schooling at Brisbane State High School. Willett's early public service positions were in Queensland, before he transferred to Canberra in 1963. Willett worked as a senior Customs representative in Tokyo between 1971 and 1974. Willett was Director-General of the Department of Health between 1983 and 1984. He was the first person with a non-medical background to