USA > New York > New York City > An address delivered before the Saint Nicholas society of the city of New York > Part 2
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"Two centuries later," says old Peter Heylin, "Flan- ders was so overflown, in the time of Henry II, about A. D. 1170, that many thousands of people, whose dwellings the sea had devoured, came over into Eng- land. There had already been a swarming over into Yorkshire and Northumberland in the year eleven hundred and eleven. Many had settled in Ross and Pembrokeshire, but most of these refugees sought the marshy country near the Humber." In Lincolnshire, the south-east division, or third, is still called Holland, and its name furnished the title of Baron Holland given in 1763, to Henry Fox, brother of Charles James Fox. The fens of Lincolnshire were dyked and drained by Dutch emigrants from a land which they had been accustomed to protect from the ocean by dykes, and to render fit for tillage by the same methods which they afterwards practised in the eastern part of England.
It is then, a matter of established history, that suc- cessive colonies of Netherlanders had taken refuge, in early days, on the eastern coasts of Britain. They pene-
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trated far inland into Huntingdon and Essex. We shall see that the minds which have directed the growth of English freedom, both religious and civil, had their origin in the eastern shires of England, and were, therefore, formed and nerved by their Hollandish parentage.1
John Bunyan, born in 1628, lived and wrote in Bed- ford, not far from Bedford level, that fenny region of four hundred thousand acres which Dutch industry had long been reclaiming. Bedford level ineludes that por- tion of Lincoln still called Holland. In Bedford jail, where with the Bible and Foxe's Book of Martyrs for his only library, John Bunyan lay twelve years, that im- mortal allegory, the Pilgrim's Progress, was written.
John Foxe, too, the author of that Book of Martyrs, whence Bunyan drew so much of his inspiration, and whence so many arguments for freedom have been derived, was born in 1517, at Boston in Lincolnshire;
1 John Hampden, although born in London, was the son of Elizabeth Cromwell, of Huntingdon, sister of Oliver.
Fairfax, was born in 1611, at Denton in Yorkshire.
Ireton, who married Oliver Cromwell's daughter, was born in Not- tinghamshire, near Lincolnshire, in 1610.
Sir Harry Vane, who visited New England, represented Kingston upon Hull in parliament in 1640, and was beheaded, June 14, 1662, was born in 1612, at Hadlow in Kent.
Lord William Russell, the martyr of English liberty, was born at Bedford in 1639, represented Bedfordshire in Parliament, and was beheaded by Charles II. in 1683.
"Algernon Sidney, of the blood of Sir Philip Sidney, one of the noblest of English patriots and statesmen, who was beheaded, like Lord Russell, for liberty's sake, blameless of crime, and noble in every sense, was also a native of the eastern coasts of England, Penshurst in Kent, born in 1622, the second son of Robert Earl of Leicester.
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the very seat and centre both of the early Dutch settle- ments in Britain, and of the nonconformist agitations which resulted in the colonization of Boston in New England.
Oliver Cromwell, born at Huntingdon, in 1599, in the same north-eastern quarter of England, comes first into notice as a country gentleman opposing certain illegal and oppressive schemes of the king, for draining the fens, with which, on account of his long residence at Ely, on the southerly part of Bedford level, he was familiar.
At Norwich, also near the eastern shores of Britain, - Robert Brown, in 1580, formed a Congregational church, on democratic principles, but was soon forced by re- peated arrests, at the instance of Dr. Freake, bishop of Norwich, to take refuge in Holland. Returning in 1589, he became the founder of the Brownists, who un- der the name of Independents, soon grew into a very numerous and influential body of protestant Christians.
Queen Elizabeth brought over four thousand immi- grants from the Low Countries into Norwich, about the year 1580.
In the famous Domesday Book, which is an inventory of all taxable men and things in England, made by William the Conqueror, in the year 1086, there occur in the eastern shires, bordering upon the North sea, many names familiar in Puritan annals-such as, Pipe- rell, Pomerei, Marshall, Baldwin, Cotham, Warrene, Riviere, Draiton, Coggeshall, and the like. At the end of almost every line in Domesday Book relating to Lin-
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coln, Huntingdon and Cambridge shires, there occurs the explanatory word, marcx, merse, mora, that is to say, marsh or fen, and the rent in that part of the country . is chiefly reserved to be paid in cels.
Lincoln, Huntingdon and Cambridge shires adjoin Yorkshire and Nottingham, and lie together upon the North sea, and along the banks of the rivers Humber and Ouse, which drain the north-castern part of the British island. Here Bancroft fixes the birth place and origin of the Puritans, and tells us that their secret place of meeting was an unfrequented heath in Lincoln- shire, near the mouth of the Humber, whence in 1608, they fled to Holland. The pilgrim fathers were then children of those Netherlandish Northmen,1 who had gone over to eastern Britain; the same Northmen with whom, as we have seen, the native Menapians in the Low Countries had combined and intermingled so as to form one race. The independent courage which led the Puritans to forsake all for the sake of enjoying the liberty of unforced conscience, came not, therefore, from the Anglo-Saxon spirit-a spirit which Hume, himself a Saxon, calls abject-the Puritan daring and enterprise were rather the old Viking fire. The Nor- man race, moulded by the steady industry which con- stant strife against the encroachments of the sea, made necessary to those who dwelt in the Netherlands,
1 " To the Hollandish element we must trace an exploit whose glories are all appropriated by the Puritans of our New England Boston ; yes, it was Hollandish resolution which threw overboard the tea in Boston harbor."- J. Watts de Peyster.
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became plodding and industrious; they ceased, after a while, to rove; instead of piratical .galleys, Northmen in Holland began to build Dutch galliots. In the lapse of generations. as Dutchmen, they have become that remarkable nation whose children have planted letters, liberty and the arts around the habitable earth. Da Costa, an accomplished student of the sagas and litera- ture of the Northmen, denies that we ought to be proud of our Saxon inheritance. To the Northmen he refers that vital energy, freedom of thought, and strength of speech that belong to us.1
Long ago, in the marshy lands of the Low countries among the homes of the men that formed the free state of the Forest People, as they loved to call themselves, fourteen centuries before our times, Northmen, as we have seen, laid the foundations of Holland. These Northmen were not Franks, but were Scandinavian in their origin-a brilliant and vigorous race which con- quered the Franks, and next overcame the English.
But to the Northmen we Americans owe more than we have been accustomed to believe; for, nine hundred years ago, out of Iceland came Eric, who in the year 935, visited Greenland. In the year of our Lord, 1000,
The Northmen .- The world looks upon the English as the most perfect types of the Anglo-Saxon race. The Netherlanders exhibit a much finer combination of the Saxon and Scandinavian or Norman .- History of the Menapii. p. 35, by Gen. J. Watts de Peyster.
It is impossible to admire too highly the ardent patriotism with which Gen. de Peyster, has gathered facts bearing upon the honor of the old fatherland, or to praise sufficiently the admirable learning with which, in his Curausius, Menapii, Dutch at the North Pole, and in many other treatises, he has made good his positions.
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Leif, son of Eric, entered Mount Hope bay, and spent some time in what is now the state of Rhode Island,- so the Icelandic sagas tell us, and their narratives are confirmed and repeated by the Domesday Book of Ice- land, called Landnama Bök. Landnama Bök contains the names of three thousand persons and fourteen hun- dred places; gives an account of the genealogy of the first Icelandic settlers, with brief notices of their history and achievements, and extends from A. D. 1067 to A. D. 1334. It is of the same character and authority as the English Domesday. Palfrey, in his History of New England, says of these Icelandic records, that their an- tiquity and genuineness appear to be well established. Humboldt admits their authenticity. There are monu- uments, too, bearing Runic words still intelligible, which have been found in Greenland, and which curiously preserve the memory of the Northmen. Ove remarkable stone was found by Captain Parry, the English arctic voyager, in the island of Kingiktorsoak, in 1824. Copies of the inscription found upon this stone, were sent to three eminent Danish scholars, Finn Magnusson, Professor Rask, and Dr. Bryniulfson who, without conferring together, separately gave this translation: "Erling Sighvatson, and Biorn Thordar- son, and Eindrid Oddson, on Saturday before Ascension week, raised these marks, and cleared ground, 1135."1
Some interesting corrections of received history have been made necessary by the chronology of the Icelandic
1 Da Costa's Pre-Columbian Discovery of America by Northmen. 4
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annals. It has been claimed, for example, that the first bishop who ever trod the soil of the United States of America, was Fr: Juan Xuarez, who had been conse- crated a bishop at the time of the expedition of Pam- philo de Narvaez to Florida, in 1527. But three distinct series of Icelandic annals relate that Bishop Eric, bishop of Greenland, visited Mount Hope bay in Rhode Island in the year 1121, four hundred years earlier than Fr: Juan Xuarez.
In a miscellaneous collection of Icelandic manu- scripts, called Gripla, there is a geography. After men- tioning Norway and other countries, the manuscript gives this recital, which is in some degree interesting to the St. Nicholas Society: "From Biarme-land lie desert places, all Northward to the land which is called Greenland. Gardar, the Bishop's seat, is at the bot- tom of Eric's fiord. There, is a church consecrated to Holy Nicholas. There are twelve churches in the Eastern settlements, and four in the Western." From these annals it is ascertained that the church at Gar- dar, the cathedral or bishop's seat, was established by . Arnold, successor of Bishop Eric Gnupson, in the year 1126. Seventeen bishops succeeded him, and the last, Bishop Andrew, went thither in 1408, and was never heard of afterwards. The first Christian church, in this western world was, therefore, dedicated to the patron saint of Holland, our good Saint Nicholas. It is fair, also, to claim for Northmen, the honor of having discovered and explored the shores of New England, more than three centuries before Columbus saw the Bahama islands.
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We have compared the fatherland of 1609 with the feeble beginnings of her colonies here at the same period. We have, also, fresh in our memories the present con- dition of the Netherlands. We are conscious of our own national vigor. Perhaps the quick yet solid pro- sperity of this new world, had some root and cause in the example and influence of Holland.
The commerce of New York that began with a single sloop, the little Onrust, has come, within two hundred and fifty years, to be reckoned by thousands of tons. The price once paid for the fee of all Manhattan island (twenty-four dollars), now represents in the number 24 very nearly the number of millions we raise as a yearly tax.
McCormick brings the wheat of all the prairies, by his labor-saving reapers, within reach of our seaboard market. Howe gives cheap clothing to millions of peo- ple, by his sewing machines. The iron railway, after piercing the Isthmus of Darien, has crossed the undis- corcred regions of our school maps, and to-day, brings to Manhattan fresh fruit and the rarities of India, within a weck, from the far Pacific. The wondrous printing press, besides its magical work as the messenger of thought, now, clad in colors, places in beautiful chromos, works of art upon the walls of the humblest cottage.
Architecture, at the same moment, in Holland and in - France, creates the artificial block of stone; huge, Ti- tanic, to beat back the sea storms at Velsem or Suez, or moulds graceful tracery, fit for a gothic chapel, in a single monolith.
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The earth is astir with the hum of busy men; men vanquishing the obstacles which nature seems to have set up only against the happiness of the lazy and igno- rant. The Alps are pierced by vast tunnels pushed far into the bowels of the rock, where no ventilation can come, but by condensed air, which at the same moment drives the engines that work the drills, and gives breath to the workmen. All this is done by Swiss engineers, bred by the same method of public school education which has filled our Patent office with American in- ventions.
Steam navigation, railways, telegraphs, overland and beneath the seas, have been reserved for our days, only because universal education was not sooner accom- plished. An unlettered people could not use or under- stand such things. Who could send telegrams if letters were not taught everywhere? Would cheap postage be possible until everybody had learned to write; or until steam machinery had made paper and steel pens abun- dant? Where could men be found able to construct the locomotives, or to work the railways and the steamers, had not scientific instruction been made accessible to the poorest by common schools?
To Holland we owe the TELESCOPE, an invention which for its influence upon the welfare of mankind, must be ranked next to the printing press. Zacharias Janssens, a Zeelander, gave to Galileo the telescope.1 Its applica-
1 The Telescope .-* If the conquering ships of Holland had not guarded, in the farthest island of Europe, the asylum of human thought, you would have had neither Shakespeare nor Bacon, nor
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tion to meridian instruments has made navigation accurate, and its power over the starry heavens has added a new faculty to the astronomer. Janssens, too, devised for naturalists the microscope, that marvellous application of optics to common things which promises to elevate medicine from an art to the dignity of a science, and imparts confidence and certainty to what had been merely the conjectures of physiology.
Such are a few of the wonderful benefits which the little grammar of Laurence Koster through the common schools created by printing, has bestowed upon the human race. Let us always remember that Holland established the first national schools and has continued to the present hour to develop and improve them, until they hold under instruction one-eighth of the entire population of the country. No narrow sectarianism ever invaded the educational institutions of our father- land.1 No weak mistakes about parochial schools, under . the exclusive management of religious ministers, and maintained at the expense of the state, were made there. Our founders went further; they followed the counsel of the great reformer, and rendered the teaching of children compulsory. "Ah!" said Luther, in 1554,
Harvey nor Des Cartes, Rembrandt, Spinoza. Galileo; yes, I say, Galileo, since the telescope from Holland, opened to him the skies .-. Michelet's Guerres de Religion.
1 John Wier, exposed the delusions of witchcraft, and pointed out that the demon had seized, not the bewitched but the judges. While they were drowning witches in Old and New England alike, the absurdity of the delusion had been thoroughly shown in Holland, where superstition found few votaries.
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"if a state in time of war can oblige its citizens to take up the sword and the musket, has it not still more the power, and is it not its duty to compel them to instruct their children, since we are all engaged in a more serious warfare, urged with the spirit of evil which rages in our midst, seeking to depopulate the state of virtuous men ? It is my desire, above all things else, that every child should go to school, or be sent there by a magistrate."
It has been reserved for our days to discover the evil of free public instruction for all the children of a state. We see in the full light of the brilliant progress the world is making toward universal freedom and happi- ness, by means of popular education, the leaders of a numerous denomination of Christians doing their best to stop our public schools. "We hold," say these modest men, "education to be a function of the church and not of the state, and we will not accept the state as educator." All teaching of youth, except by priests of a sectarian creed, is now condemned and forbidden by the highest ecclesiastical authority; and our free school system is to be broken down, in order that we may go back to the good old monkish days when as yet no grammars or geographies or arithmetics had been printed, to disturb the orthodoxy of an ignorant people.
In a letter sent by MOTLEY to the St. Nicholas Society, explaining his absence from our festival in 1868, the great historian speaks of "Our universal system of edu- cation -the only conceivable basis of democratic government," and says, "It is very pleasant to reflect that the New England pilgrims, during their residence in the glorious
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country of your ancestry, found already established there, a system of schools which John of Nassau, eldest brother of William the Silent, had recommended in these words: 'You must urge upon the States General that they should establish free schools, where children of quality as well as of poor families, for a very small sum, could be well and Christianly educated and brought up. This would be the greatest and most use- ful work you could ever accomplish for God and Christ- ianity, and for the Netherlands themselves. Soldiers and patriots thus educated with a true knowledge of God, and a Christian conscience, also churches and schools, books and printing presses, are better than all armies, armories, alliances and treaties that can be had, or imagined in the world.' This was the feeling about popular education in the Netherlands during the 16th century. Can we wonder that it gave the little Republic strength to battle with despotism, and have not the great 'soldiers and patriots thus educated' in our own Republic, proved the wisdom of John of Nas- sau's advice to the Hollanders?"
The first printed book, Koster's first essay, when he clumsily put together his movable wooden types at Harlem, in 1423, was most appropriately, a grammar --- a book for children. Such was the beginning of that godlike art, which renders thought divine by making it audible to reason's ear, and visible to the mind's eye; which preserves ideas, in spite of time and distance, and places the creations of mortal genius quite beyond the power of death.
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Such was the forging of the lever which has moved the entire world; for the child's grammar was the germ of the common school, and made Martin Luther formida- ble, because his Theses could be read. Then the types gave the BIBLE to cominon men, and bestowed upon whole communities the benefit of clergy.
Holland, a mere corner of a morass, became by the force of intellect and courage, a terror and then a teacher to England and to Europe. God's blessing rested upon our forefathers in their little home, forbidding, and full of hard work, but dear to them because won and kept by honest toil.
From Amsterdam has grown Manhattan; from the seven United Provinces have come our own thirty-six United States of America. In the words of Horace, married to verse no less immortal, by our English Milton :
The power that did create, can change the Scene Of things, make mean of great, and great of mean ; The brightest glory can eclipse with night, And place the most obscure in dazzling light.
Having now given some attention to one of the con- stitutional duties of our society, which is "to collect . and preserve information respecting the history, man- ners, etc., of the city of New York," in the enquiries we have just made as to the founders of New York, we ought not to forget to look into the early practices of our forefathers, in the way of festive meetings. The Dutch-
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men of Manhattan were in the habit of honoring our patron saint, long before the St. Nicholas Society was formed. The first notable gathering on record, is com- memorated in Rivington's Gazettcer of Thursday, Decem- ber 23d, 1773, in the following paragraph :
"New York, December 23d .- Last Monday the anniversary of St. Nicholas, otherwise called Santa Claus, was celebrated at Protestant Hall, at Mr. Wal- dron's; where a great number of the sons of that ancient saint celebrated the day with great joy and festivity." Waldron's, was a noted ferry-house, or tavern, on the Brooklyn side, where New Yorkers were wont to re- sort for good cheer, in those days, and where great doings took place in honor of the repeal of the stamp act.
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In Rivington's Gazetteer of Thursday December 8th, 1774, is a notice, that "Monday next, being the anni- versary of St. Nicholas, will be celebrated by the descendants of the ancient Dutch families." The Ga- zetteer for the next week is unfortunately missing from the file in the Society library, nor is there any report of the dinner of 1774, extant. If these worthy descend- ants of the Dutch, celebrated the 6th of December as their festival day, as we do, it is difficult to understand how the Gazetteer of Thursday, December Sth, 1774, could speak of Monday next, which would be December 12th, as the anniversary of St. Nicholas. But probably Rivington did not pay much attention to chronology, and inserted such notices whenever he had enough of them to make up a column, and not sooner.
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The next festival of which there survives any account, was the remarkable one of December 6, 1810, when the Historical Society, in compliment to the original settlers of this state, selected the festival of St. Nicholas (usually pronounced Santa Claus), the tutelar saint of the Dutch for their anniversary discourse and dinner. It is worthy of remark, that the Historical Society has continued · the discourse, without the dinner; and our St. Nicholas Society, during its more recent history, has adhered to the dinner without the anniversary address. The Histo- rical Society accordingly assembled on Thursday, 6th Dec., 1810, at one o'clock, in the north court room in the City Hall, where they listened to an excellent occasional . discourse by Hugh Williamson, for which he received the thanks of the society, with the request of a copy for publication. At four, P. M., the society reassembled at the Washington Hotel ( Kent's, 42 Broad street), where a table was most sumptuously spread for them, by Kent in his best manner, both as to choice wines and delicate viands. Seventeen toasts were duly honored; Egbert Benson presided, and a full and true account of all the proceedings has been preserved by John Pintard, then librarian of the society, which account has been repro- duced in fac simile by Mr. George II. Moore, his excellent successor. Our St. Nicholas Society, as we have seen, formerly commemorated the day by an address, as well as by a dinner. After a long interval, we renew, to-day, our ancient custom.
Long may the Feast of St. Nicholas live with pleasant memories among all true children of that grand old
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people, whose help timid Britons used to invoke against their foes, and never in vain.1 Whether the Scots and Piets were to be driven back, or the Spanish armada to be kept away from England, Dutchmen were the friends in need, that saved Britain in the day of extremity.2
The Netherlanders have ever been the successful foes of Romanism and of despotism. We now know, that but for the valor and intelligence of our fore- fathers, England would have been a Spanish province, and these United States, French colonies. Therefore, the eye of every one who speaks the English tongue, should kindle with joy and pride whenever he hears
1 Augustin Thierry, History of the Norman Conquest, p. 4.
" The Spanish Armada on the 6th of August, 1588, arrived off Calais to take on board its commander-in-chief, the Duke of Parma, who, with forty thousand soldiers and three hundred transport ships, had long been ready to invade England, as soon as the Hollanders would per- mit him to do it. For the Dutch navy, under Admiral Van der Does, prevented the Spaniards from coming out.
Within two hours sail of Dover, the Armada lay vainly waiting many days, held by the valor of the Dutch, who kept watch between the Spanish fleet, at anchor off the land, and the flotilla of Parma in the harbors, canals and rivers behind Dunkirk and Newport. Van der Does found himself between two great Spanish armaments and suc- cessfully opposed both.
On the 6th of August, 15SS, there was no English army in the field, nor did Queen Elizabeth review her troops, until eleven days after- ward, when, so far from having any thing to fear from the Spanish invaders, they had been tempest-tost fugitives, for a week. On the 6th of August, says Motley, "no army had assembled, not even the body guard of the Queen. On the 6th of August, the Armada was in Calais roads, expecting Alexander Farnese to lead his troops upon London."
The duke of Parma was kept a close prisoner by the fleets of Hol- land and Zeeland, and the great storin of the 14th and 15th August, at last completed the overthrow of the Spaniards. But for the valor
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the name of Holland; remembering that the honest blood of the Dutch sea tamers warms the heart of many a man who ignorantly claims feebler lineage.
of the Netherlanders, which delayed the operations of the Armada until the delay became a defeat, the protestant cause would have been lost. As with the Huguenots in France, the light of the reformed faith would have been put out in England, and that Puritan light to which we owe so much in America, would never have been kindled.
Firmly, steadily, the Dutch mariners held on. Parma had relied upon the Invincible Armada to clear the way for him. "He is," said Admiral Drake, "as a bear robbed of her whelps." His attempts to break through the lines of Zeeland boatmen were frantic, but vain. His forlorn hope was slain to the last man, and soon that storm arose which sent the huge war ships and galleys of Medina Sidonia, " whirling round the Orkneys." The glory of saving Old England, and therefore of giving freedom of conscience to the New World belongs to HOLLAND.
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APPENDIX.
Three remarkable lectures, on the ORIGIN OF THE ENGLISH NATION, by Edward A. Freeman, were read before the Literary and Philosophical Institution at Kingston-on-Hull, in January, 1870. They were thought worthy of being printed in Macmillan's Maga- zine. Mr. Freeman says :
"That great western migration of Low Dutch tribes to the west, which takes up the greater part of the fifth and sixth centuries, gave birth to the English nation.
* * It is the Low Dutch part of us, which gives us our national being; our national character, our national history.
Our relation to the Low Dutch is one of actual brotherhood. They are our bone and our flesh ; their blood is our blood; their speech is our speech, modified only by the different influences which have, in the nature of things, affected the two severed branches of the race, during a separation of fourteen hundred years." -- Macmillan's Magazine, No. 125, March, 1870. Macmillan & Co., 16 Bedford St .. Covent Garden. London and Cambridge.
F 851.08
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