Secretary of Duke of York's commissioners, First secretary of the English province of NY, mayor of NYC, speaker of the General Assembly

Part of the expedition of Governor Richard Nicolls, probably a kinsman in spite of their use of quite different coat-armor, Captain Mathias Nicolls at once became Secretary of the newly-named Province, and, being an able lawyer, at once compiled the famous "Duke's Laws," which were promptly adopted by an assembly of delegates convened at Hempstead, Long Island, early in 1665. Captain Nicolls had been secretary of the commission which received the surrender of the Dutch, and he not merely gave laws to the conquered colony, but became their interpreter, putting his legal training as barrister to use by serving as Clerk of the Court of New York, Presiding-Justice of the Court of Assizes, Judge of the Court of Sessions, first Judge of the Court of Common Pleas, and Justice of the Supreme Court. In 1672 he was Mayor of New York City, and in 1683 Speaker of New York's first Provincial Assembly. Proprietor of "Plandome," an estate of two thousand acres at Great Neck and Little Neck, Long Island, he became the ancestor of a rapidly increasing wave of descendants which has carried his blood into nearly all the old patrician families of New York. A well-known descendant, Mr. De Lancey Nicoll, has in our days been District Attorney of the City of New York, while to the generosity of another descendant, Mrs. Erastus Gaylord Putnam, a Vice-President of The National Historical Society.