sembly of New York again voted him its thanks
'for his great service, and singular care of the troops of the colony
while under his command.' In 1760 he was appointed a member of the
Provincial Council, retaining his seat until 1776. In 1763 he was
made Receiver-General, and in 1773 Colonel-in-Chief of the Southern
military district of the province. 'In June 1776,' says the historian
Jones, 'he joined General Howe on Staten Island; and, had that officer
profited by his honest advice, the American War, I will be bold to
say, would have ended in a very different manner to what it did.' In
September of that year he raised three regiments of Loyalists, largely
at his own expense, of 500 men each, known as 'De Lancey's
battalions.' Of these regiments a brigade was formed, and Colonel De
Lancey was commissioned Brigadier-General in the Loyalist service. He
was assigned to the command of Long Island, where he remained during
the war. One of his battalions served in the South with great credit,
under his son-in-law, Colonel John Harris Cruger, doing effective
service in the defence of Fort Ninety-six against General Greene. In
November 1777, his country-seat at Bloomingdale, on the Hudson, was
robbed and burned at night by a party of Americans from the
water-guard at Tarrytown, his wife and daughters being driven from the
house in their night-dresses and compelled to spend the night in the
fields, now the Central Park. Having been attainted, and his immense
estates in New York and New Jersey confiscated, General De Lancey
retired to England, where he resided in Beverley until his death. Of
his four daughters, Susanna married Sir William Draper, while
Charlotte became the wife of Sir David Dundas, K.C.B., who succeeded
the Duke of York as Commander-in-Chief of the British Army."[7]

[Footnote 7: Appleton's _Cyclopaedia_, vol. ii., p. 132.]

In the Life of Van Schaak, his decease is mentioned thus by a
fellow-Loyalist: "Our old friend has at last taken his departure from
Beverley, which he said should hold his bones; he went off without
pain or struggle, his body wasted to a skeleton, his mind the same.
The family, most of them, collected in town (London). There will
scarcely be a village in England without some American dust in it, I
believe, by the time we are all at rest."[8]

[Footnote 8: _Loyalists of the American Revolution_ (Sabine), vol. i.,
365.]

Stephen, the eldest son of Brigadier-General Oliver De Lancey, and
fa