On May 16, 1691, in a drizzling rain, two middle-aged men climbed gallows erected at present-day One Pace Plaza near the Manhattan entrance to the Brooklyn Bridge. Before the largest crowd yet gathered in the small city of 5,000 inhabitants, Jacob Leisler and his newly wed son-in-law, Jacob Milborne, were hung until half-dead then beheaded. Their alleged crimes were “levying war” against King William and Queen Mary, counterfeiting their Majesties’ great seal, murdering one Josiah Browne, and “other high misdemeanors.” The executions traumatized the onlookers. The “shrieks of the people were dreadful, some were carried away lifeless, and some rushing forwards, almost ere the life of their beloved ruler was extinct.” The political repercussions reverberated throughout New York’s colonial period and still echo today. Historians focus on Jacob Leisler as the central figure of the turmoil. Yet, the events that came to be known as “Leisler’s Rebellion” were a result of broader international and local circumstances.