20    THE DUTCH AND QUAKER COLONIES
these last pleasant scenes the upright governor made his way back to England. He was soon to die a soldier's death. In the third naval war between the English and Dutch he served on the fleet and was killed at the battle of Solebay, May 28, 1672, at the early age of forty-seven.
Nicolls's successor, Francis Lovelace, a man of far less distinction for character and ability, was nevertheless a Francis worthy person, and New York was prosperous Lovelace under his rule. The year of his arrival is memorable for the abolition of the two classes of "great burghers" and "small burghers," introduced by Stuyvesant in 1657. The distinction was imitated from the custom in Amsterdam and other Dutch cities. Members of the council, burgomasters and schepens, officers of the militia, and ministers of the gospel, with their descendants in the male line, were enrolled as great burghers; and other persons and small could be admitted to that class on payment of urg en     ^Q g^^ers jnto tne cjty treasury.   These great
burghers were eligible to public offices, and in case of conviction for a capital offence were exempt from confiscation or attainder. The class of small burghers comprised all other persons born in the city, or who had dwelt there for a year and six weeks; all men who were married to the daughters of burghers; all salaried servants of the West India Company; and all persons who kept a shop or permanently transacted business in the city. Strangers temporarily in the city could be enrolled in this class by paying a fee of 25 guilders. The privileges pertaining to it scarcely extended beyond sundry facilities for trading.1 This division into classes proved very unpopular, and it was abolished in 1668 with general satisfaction.
Several families from Boston now bought estates in New York and came there to live, willing perhaps, like Maverick, to escape from the saintly rule of the "lords brethren." The most important and memorable act of Lovelace's administration was the establishment of a regular monthly 1 O'Callaghan, History of New Netherland, ii. 341.