Who was John Ury and why was he hanged in NYC?

John Ury (died 29 August 1741) was a white itinerant teacher who was suspected of being a Roman Catholic priest and a Spanish spy during the New York Slave Insurrection of 1741. His ability to read Latin was cited as proof of this. Under legislation passed in 1700, merely being a Catholic priest was, in New York, a crime punishable by death.^[1]

William Kearns, quoting Flynn's The Catholic Church in N.J. (1904), mentions him as "a Catholic priest, who had exercised unostentatiously his sacred ministry in New Jersey, and had been engaged for about twelve months in teaching at Burlington, New Jersey."^[2] Albert J. Menendez identifies Ury as a High Church Episcopalian opposed to the Glorious Revolution of 1689.^[3] Which denomination he actually belonged to is uncertain.

He was the son of a former Secretary of the South Sea Company. Named by Mary Burton, the prosecution's main witness, as "the real power behind the slave conspiracy", he was taken into custody on 24 June 1741. He was arraigned on 15 and 22 July. Having no lawyer willing to defend him, he defended himself at the trial. Throughout, Ury expressed his innocence. He produced witnesses who testified he was just what he claimed to be, a teacher of ancient languages. He tried to show that he was a dissenter from Anglican Church teachings, but not a papist.^[1] The chief prosecutor was Attorney General Richard Bradley. He was officially found guilty of conspiracy on 29 July 1741 and hanged in New York City on 29 August 1741.