# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Nicolls, Mathias

​NICOLLS, MATHIAS (1630?–1687), jurist, born about 1630, was eldest son of Mathias Nicolls, ‘preacher to the town of Plymouth’ (Brooking-Rowe, Eccl. Hist. of Old Plymouth, pt. ii. p. 33). He was called to the bar, but not from Lincoln's Inn, as has been erroneously stated, and was appointed in 1664 secretary of the commission and captain in the forces despatched to America under the command of Colonel Richard Nicolls [q. v.] On the surrender of New Netherlands on 8 Sept., Nicolls was made the first secretary of the province, and subsequently became a member of the governor's council.
In October he attended at Hempstead, Queen's County, the promulgation by the governor of ‘the Duke's Laws,’ the first code of English laws in New York, and signed them in his capacity of secretary. This code, mainly the work of Nicolls, was compiled from the law of England, the Roman-Dutch law of New Netherlands, and the local laws and regulations of the New England colonies, and is described as a ‘liberal, just, and sensible body of laws.’ After being submitted to James, duke of York, and his council in England, the code was printed there, and copies sent out by the duke, with orders to establish it as the law of New York. In the court of assizes established under the code Nicolls sat as presiding judge, and he also sat with the justices in the minor courts of session. In 1672 he was chosen the third mayor of New York, where he was the first judge of the court of common pleas. Upon the remodelling of the courts under the act of the legislature of 1683 he was made one of the judges of the supreme court of the colony; he also acted continually as secretary of the province, and occasionally as captain of the militia. Having bought land on Little Neck and Great Neck in Queen's County, he formed on Little Neck a fine estate of upwards of two thousand acres, called Plandome, where he died on 22 Dec. 1687.
Nicolls married in England, and left a son, William, and a daughter, Margaret (b. 1662), who became the wife of the second Colonel Richard Floyd of Suffolk county.
His son, William Nicolls (1657–1723), jurist, born in England in 1657, was also a lawyer, and in 1683 became clerk of Queen's County. In 1688 he removed to New York, where for opposing the usurpation of Jacob Leisler he was imprisoned. On regaining his liberty in March 1691 he was forthwith appointed a councillor of the province. In 1695 he was sent by the assembly as agent of the province to England to solicit the crown to compel the other American colonies to contribute to the defence of the country against the French, the cost of which had been hitherto borne by New York. In 1698 Governor Bellomont, a member of the Leislerian faction, suspended him from the council. In 1701 Nicolls, having been elected to the assembly from Suffolk county, was disqualified on the ground of non-residence. But having in 1683 purchased land from the natives on Great South Bay in that county, he built a house there, called Islip Grange, and that estate, along with other property in the neighbourhood, was granted to him by royal patent in 1697. In 1702 he was again chosen member for Suffolk County, and was elected to the speakership of the house, an office which he only resigned through ill-health in 1718, though he still retained his seat in the assembly. In his professional capacity Nicolls was engaged in the prosecution of Jacob Leisler in 1691, in the defence of Nicholas Bayard in 1702, and in that of Francis Makemie in 1707. He died on Long Island, New York, in May 1723. By his wife, Anne, daughter of Jeremias Van Rensselaer, and widow of Kilian Van Rensselaer, her cousin, he left three sons and three daughters.
G. G.