USA > New York > Ecclesiastical records, state of New York, Volume II > Part 55
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OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK.
1329 1699
Gideon arriveing here at Albany went with another Indian to Mr. Dellius's house with the beaver and left it there, and afterwards he went with five or six more, and said: father why do you depart? Mr. Dellius answered My brethren that live here bring many wicked newes into my house, that is the cause of my. goeing away - Gideon asked Mr. Dellius if he went to New York. Mr. Dellius answered that he went over the great sea - Then said Hille the Interpretesse - All people in the town mourn and cry for Mr. Dellius and you must doe the same - Then Gideon took the beaver and said to Mr. Dellius. I am grieved to my soul that you goe away: how shall it bee when you arrive over the great sea; and hear what you goe for thither, will you come againe when this evill is over that is now done to you - Mr. Dellius said he would not forget them - Hille the Interpretesse acknowl- edges that she gave the said Indian the Beaver to greet Mr. Dellius withall who was goeing away, and withall she desired that he should take Captain John Bleeker, Everet Wendel Junr. Abr. Schuyler or any that understood the language to be interpreters between the Indians and Mr. Dellius the Minister .-
(signed) Robert Livingstone,
Secretary for the Indian affairs. - Col. Docs. N. Y. iv. 539, 540, 541.
1699, July 22.
I send your Lordships six months minutes of Council, by this conveyance, and also the transcripts of the laws enacted this last session of Assembly of New Yorke. The Act which breaks some of Fletcher's Extravagant Grants of Land, has much inraged the grantees against me, but I little value that, being satisfied in my own conscience that 'tis honest and just to dissolve and make void grants that have been fraudulently obtained, and, what is more, having had the orders of the Lords Justices of England bearing date the 10th of last November for so doing. Mr. Dellius the Dutch Minister at Albany who had the two largest grants, is gone to England to complain and try to hinder the King's approving that Act, which breaks his and some few other grants. The angry people of New York have made a purse of five hundred pounds for him, and those of Albany two hun- dred pounds, not that he had need of it, for by his penury he has got a good deal of money of his own. He has carried home, I mean to England, certificates of his piety and good life, under the hands of the angry people; and I am told there are counter certificates signing by the Leisler party with four times the number of hands to 'em. If a great liar, incendiary and proud person, make up the character of piety, then Mr. Dellius may pass for a saint.
I sent your Lordships formerly the conferences I had with the Mohack Indians at Albany, and then observed what impudent lyes Dellius told me, in the face of all the Magistrates of that town and many other persons. I since sent your Lordships my Lieutenant Governor's certificate, along with my letter of the 13th April last, to show how quickly Dellius went about to divide my Lieutenant Governor from me, and make him joyne with himself and party against me. Till I went to Albany he always prayed in Church for the Crown of England, but not for King William. I remember the first Sunday after my going to Albany, some of the honest Dutch went to hear him preach, (of those I mean that accompanied me from New Yorke thither), and observing he pray'd not for the King, complained to me of it. I sent for him and reproved him, and his excuse was that it was Sacrament day, and not customary on those days to pray for anybody in the Dutch Churches. I could not believe him then, nor do I yet, but it was a blundering lying excuse like the man that made it. He was one day indeavoring to suborn Henry, a Christian preaching Indian, to swear against two or three of the Magistrates of Albany that are not in his favour, and the Indian came to those Magistrates and told 'em what Dellius
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had been laboring to make him sweare, and cried out with horrour and amazement, Good God! what does Mr. Dellius mean by teaching to lye, and yet pretend to save our souls. This happen'd last summer, and those Magistrates sent me word of it. Dellius has now carried over with him a certificate, or some such instrument, under the hands of four Justices of the Peace at Albany, of a confession made by Henry and some other Christian Indians; but the other Magistrates hearing of it, about a dousen of them examin'd Henry and the rest, and put the examination into writing, which goes (No. 3); by which your Lordship will see that he tampered, and used artifices with them, to get them to lament his leaving the Province; and a good part of what he had set down in writing as a confession of theirs, they positively deny to have said in this paper.
My Lieutenant Governour, hearing what contention and heats Dellius had caused among the people at Albany by his ill practices with those Indians, cited him and them to appear before himself and the Council at New Yorke, there to be fairly and openly examined; but Dellius absconded and would not appear, getting into the Jerseys to be out of my Lieutenant Governor's reach, and from thence he imbark'd for England. His hopes, I understand, are to stir up the Classis of Divines at Amsterdam and those that reside in London, to take his part. Then he thinks he has a sure friend of the Bishop of London by the means of Colonel Fletcher, and I heare Mr. Vesey, the English Minister at New Yorke, has writ large encomiums of him to the Bishop. And my Lieutenant Governor writes to me that Vesey has left me out of his prayers, as Governour, and prays for Dellius by name, both in the Common Prayer and afterwards in the pulpit, desiring God to give him a pros- perous voyage, to deliver him from the violence of his enemies, and send him safe back again to his flock. This is such an insolence, as I must desire your Lordships will please to joine with me, to have this man deprived, for it cannot be thought I will ever go to church while that fellow continues Minister there. What is personall to myself I can forgive, but for him to pray publickly for Dellius and his return to his flock, when he stands deprived by Act of Assembly in such an arraignment of the justice of the Province, that there's an end of government, if such an insolence be suffered to passe unpunished.
To show your Lordships how strangely disingenuous this man's carriage has been to me, he sent me word by Mr. Graham the Attorney, that the angry party at New Yorke led him such a life, for preaching up and exhorting to peace, charity and reconsiliation, (tho' himself medled not with parties), that he should be forced to quit the town and Province; he afterwards came and told me the same thing, and that he looked upon that wicked temper of theirs to be a sure argument of their guilt and of their being in the wrong. The same also he told my Lieutenant Gover- nor, and likewise a story of Colonel Fletcher, that, for the vanity of it, equalls his stiling himself Imperator, in the inscription under his coat of Arms within the Fort. Vesey confessed he had obligations to Colonel Fletcher, yet he could not but own he was an ill man, and he gave the following reason for it; that after I had superceded Colonel Fletcher, he went and read prayers at his house, praying for him as a private person, and leaving out the titles of Governor and Excellency. After prayers Colonel Fletcher called him aside, and asked how he came to leave off praying for him as he used to doe, and whether he had forgot his respects for him. Mr. Vesey made answer that he being no longer Governor, he thought he could not truly nor justly give him the titles belonging to a Governor. Upon which Fletcher with great passion bade him be gone out of his house and never come near him any more, for he would have no more to say to him or his prayers. This I had from the Lieutenant Governor at New Yorke, who is too much a man of honour to forge such a story.
Vesey's father lives near this town, is a most violent Jacobite, and perhaps the boldest and most avowed one that has been known any where. The indictment,
OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK. 1331
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(for he was try'd, convict, and sentenced to stand in the pillory for uttering desperate words against his Majesty), is worth your Lordships reading, a copy whereof goes (No. 4.): tho' it be not a constant rule that the same principles de- scend from father to son, yet it must be granted that where a son is bred up to the age of a man under an ill father, 'tis extraordinary if the son do not imbibe ill principles from the ill man his father; so that extraduce, one would incline to believe Parson Vesey disaffected to the Government; and his behavior at Yorke since my coming away confirms me that he is so. I desire your Lordships will please to prevaile with My Lord of London to send over a good moderate Divine of the Church of England, to supply the cure at New Yorke, in the room of Mr. Vesey; for I take the honor of the government to be concerned in the displacing of that man. And I must further presume to tell your Lordships that if he be not turned out, and Dellius kept out, so as that Act of Assembly that deprives the latter be maintained and approved at home, there will be no business for me at New Yorke, nor indeed for any honest Governour: for the people there being so headstrong and tumultuous as they are already, how much more will they be so, if their party receives countenance and favour from the Government in England.
If your Lordships mean I shall go on to break the rest of the Extravagant Grants of land by Colonel Fletcher or other Governours, by Act of Assembly, I shall stand in need of a peremptory order from the King so to do; which will animate the House of Representatives that sometimes have not courage to go through with a businesse of that kind, unlesse they see they shall be supported by the government of England. The Lords Justices letter, of the 10th of last Novem- ber, is with me a sufficient authority to proceed in that matter; but I know that orders renew'd from Court are more forcible with the people I have to deal with, both in the Council and Assembly of New Yorke. If I may not proceed with the breaking of the remaining Extravagant Grants, then I shall become an humble petitioner that the Act I now send home for breaking Dellius's two grants etc. may not receive the King's approbation, but be rejected; for I should reckon it a great injustice to break some grants and spare others no lesse extravagant than they; and I would by no means be an instrument in such injustice.
By one of the Acts of Assembly of New Yorke now sent, there is a present of fifteen hundred pounds New York money made to me, and five hundred pounds to my Lieutenant Governor. The House of Representatives would have presented me with two thousand pounds, but I refused so great a sum, because I found upon inquiry none of the Governours before me had above fifteen hundred pounds, and I thought it best to walk by precedent. The Act, (as the king's instructions directs), gives the money to his Majesty with an humble desire that his Majesty will be pleased to bestow it on me, and my Lieutenant Governour. I hope your Lordships will procure the King's leave and order, that we may have the advantage of it, and that as soon as conveniently may be, for we stand in need of that benevolence of the countries.
The House of Representatives sent up a Bill to me and the Council for settling a Dissenting Ministry in that Province; but it being contrary to his Majesty's instructions, and besides having been credibly informed that some of those Min- isters do hold strange erronious opinions in matters of Faith and Doctrine, I would not give the assent to that Bill, but rejected it ..
My Lords,
Your Lordships most humble and obedient servant,
Bellomont.
- Col. Docs. N. Y. iv. 533-6.
Boston, July 22nd 1699.
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SYNOD OF NORTH HOLLAND, AT HAARLEM.
1699, July 28-Aug. 6. Article 16.
Extract from letters from New York, of September 14, and December 15, 1698; by Rev. Henricus Selyns.
1. That some disturbances had arisen there, because some members wished to force Rev. Nucella upon that church (New York).
2. That they together with the majority, and those the most prominent members, had called Rev. Verdieren, minister at Bruinisse in Zeeland.
3. That they asked the Rev. Classis, to make this call acceptable to him, and to procure his dismissal.
4. That in case Rev. Verdieren should decline they authorized the Rev. Classis to call a minister.
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5. They send a list of sixty five children all of whom could recite the Psalms without missing. They also presented an In- dian Bible, (Eliot's) to the Rev. Classis, to indicate the zeal felt there for the conversion of the heathen.
Article 44.
Classical changes reported by Amsterdam.
Rev. Gualterus du Bois departed to New York.
CHURCH OF NEW YORK.
1699, Aug. 7.
Communications having come from the Classis of Amsterdam, which represent the person and the call of Domine G. du Bois as minister here, it was resolved to receive him as such and pay the yearly salary. This was signed by all except Deacon Kip, who gave no reason for not signing. Lib. A. 7.
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BELMONT TO THE LORDS OF TRADE.
1699, Aug. 24.
I send your Lordships the Minute of Council of the 20th of July, which relates to the seizing some few bales of East India goods, conveyed into Nassaw Island and Connecticut Government, from on board Kidd's sloop. Also the Lieutenant Governor and Council's convening four Justices of the Peace from Albany, (friends of Mr. Dellius), who had privately, at Mr. Dellius's house, suborn'd two or three of the Maquaes Indians that are Christians, to make a lying declaration in favour of Mr. Dellius, an account of which declaration I gave your Lordships in my former letter of the 22nd of last month. Then there is in the said Minute the thanks of the Mohack or Maquaes Indians for our vacating Mr. Dellius's grant of their land, which I particularly recommend to your Lordships perusall; the said Minute of Council goes (No. 16) .- Col. Docs. N. Y. iv. 555.
ACTS OF THE CLASSIS OF AMSTERDAM.
Rev. Dellius. 1699, Sept. 7th.
Rev. Dellius of Albany, who according to certificate, has fol- lowed the Sacred Ministry very laudably, for xvi years, requests the aid of this Assembly, that he may be again settled in the Sacred Ministry. This was gladly (agreed to). viii. 311; xix. 255.
EARL OF BELLOMONT TO THE LORD BISHOP OF LONDON.
1699, Sept. 11.
My Lord :- You have been pleased to recommend Mr. Vesey to me in one or two letters, which you have done me the honor to write to me since my leaving Eng- land; and I paid such respect to your Lordship's recommendation, that I prevailed with the Council of New Yorke to joyne with me in settling twenty six pounds a year on him to pay the hire of his house. And I resolved to take the Assembly in a good humour and prevail with them, if possibly I could, to settle on Mr. Vesey and all his successors in that cure, a further maintenance of fifty pounds a year, over and above the one hundred pounds a year he has at present. I must observe to your Lordship, that before I got the twenty six pounds a year allowed him by myself and the Council; Mr. Vesey and I had a good correspondence with each other; and I invited him often to dine with me, which commonly passes with men as a token of friendship. And Mr. Graham the Attorney General told me, (as I understood it), from Mr. Vesey, that he was much melted and overcome by my kindness to him; that he could not but be taken with my moderation in the Administration of the Government; that he wondred how any of his congregation could be my enemies; but that he saw plainly their wickedness was such as to make them capable of everything that was base and unchristian; and he told the Attorney that he was weary of his life, and must forsake New Yorke, he was so teased and reproved by the angry party, for preaching up a good life and the fruits of it, vizt. peace, love and charity and the like; that he medled not with parties. This very declaration Mr. Vesey came once or twice and made to me, much lament- ing and decrying the wickedness of the angry men of his congregation. One would think that Mr. Vesey should in common prudence, (if he had not virtue enough), continue his respect to me unless the angry men, (as he call'd 'em), of his con-
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gregation, had become better, and I worse; and that I had done some gross ill thing to disoblige him. But I do verily believe Mr. Vesey wants honesty, and is by the angry party brib'd; and your Lordship, I am perswaded, will be of that opinion, when you have received the papers and evidences I send with this letter, which I desire your Lordship will be at the pains of reading, that being rightly informed, you may judge equitably between Mr. Vesey and me. I shall begin with the father of Mr. Vesey, to let your Lordship see what education he has had, and under what a sort of father.
I send the copy of the record of his father's being try'd, convict, and pillory'd here at Boston, for being the most impudent and avowed Jacobite that has been known in America. Then there goes the certificate of the Lieutenant Governour of New Yorke, and the depositions of Mr. Walters, a member of his Majesty's Council, and of Parson Smith, of his praying publickly in church for Mr. Dellius, deprived by Act of Assembly of his benefice at Albany, for his ill life. In the next place goe the extracts of severall letters from the Lieutenant Governour of New Yorke, to me, about Mr. Vesey's insolence openly in the church, and privately to the Lieutenant Governour; which I recommend to your Lordship's perusal as being extraordinary and needing not any animadversion of mine. Then there goes the depositions of Mary Cross, of John Saunders and Susanna, his owne uncle and aunts, about christening three or four children of incestuous birth, as will appear by the said depositions; and that, notwithstanding the parents continued then at that very time in their wicked incestuous course of life, which I take to be ex- pressly contrary to a cannon of the church, as I have been informed, for I pretend not to be so happy as to be vers'd in that sort of reading. I have figured or numbered the severall papers in the same order I have mentioned them; and now I submit to your Lordship's justice whether such a minister be to be suffered in such a place as New Yorke, where the people for the most part are disaffected to the King's government, and so, apt to faction and sedition. Therefore I expect your Lordship will, without any further solicitation of mine, examine the truth of this charge against Mr. Vesey; and when you are satisfied therein, that you will consent to his being immediately deprived of his benefice at New Yorke. I cannot believe your Lordship will countenance a man, so insolent and wicked, as he is, to fly in the face of government without just cause and provocation.
I come next to give your Lordship a short account of Mr. Dellius the minister of Albany, who is lately gone to England to try to make an interest, to be restored to his late benefice; but rather the two extravagant grants of land by Colonel Fletcher to him. I gave the Lords of the Council of Trade, and the rest of the ministers, formerly, an account of the wickednesse of that man; of being a most impudent lyar in my own hearing; and his being a drunkard and immoral man, as can be proved by the testimony of undoubted credible persons; and his defrauding the Mohack Indians of their land in a clandestine, wicked manner, to the endangering of the losse of that and the rest of the Nations of Indians from their subjection to the Crown. If, (I say), these articles are of force to blacken Mr. Dellius, and make him odious to all men of vertue, I do undertake to prove 'em all undeniably. There is yet a further Article against Mr. Dellius: about a month since there came three or four Frenchmen from Canada to Albany to trade, and one of them brought a letter directed to Mr. Dellius; but he being gone for England, and the Frenchman delivering the letter, (as I guess), to a wrong hand, that was not Dellius's friend, he opened it, and found it to be from a French woman, who had been some months ago a prisoner at Albany, and was set at liberty by my order, and went to Canada; and the woman in this letter laments the disgrace of being with child by Dellius, and desires he will send her some releif for her and the child's maintenance. The letter is fallen into the hands of Mr. Nucella, a Dutch Minister at a towne called Kingstowne, in the Province of New Yorke, and I believe I shall have a copy of it. I have an account of this letter by three or four several hands from New Yorke,
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so that I cannot doubt of the truth of there being such a letter. If Mr. Nucella will part with it, I will send your Lordship a copy of it, that you may be con- vinced of the lewdness of that man, and see how much he is the better, for such vouchers as Mr. Vesey and the rest of those that have a formal and lowd complaint of me, to your Lordship from New Yorke. I cannot but fancie the sons of Eli, that were destroyed by fire from heaven, were a type of Mr. Dellius; his familiarity with the French woman is parallel to the sin committed by those two at the door of the Tabernacle; and his insatiable covetuousness, in procuring two such vast grants of land, bear a resemblance with their taking up, by violence, a double portion, (or what a flesh fork would bring out of the pot at twice), of flesh. Whereas by the Leviticall Law they were to have but one forkful for a priest's share. If Mr. Dellius had been an honest and innocent man, why did he avoid appearing before the Lieutenant Governour and Council of New Yorke, when he was summoned to be confronted with the three Mohack Indians, (he had suborned), and examined with those Indians. But instead of that, abscond and fly out of the country, as your Lordship will see by a Minute of Council of the 21st of June, which I send with the other papers.
Mr. Myles and Mr. Bridge are good preachers, I will give them all the counte- nance and encouragement I can. Our church here is very neat and convenient, but 'tis too small; and Mr. Myles tells me a great many more people would come to our church if there were room for 'em.
I am with respect My Lord,
Your Lordship's most humble and faithful servant,
Bellomont. - Col. Docs. N. Y. iv. 580-2.
Boston, Sept. the 11th 1699.
EARL OF BELLOMONT TO SECRETARY POPPLE.
Boston, September 15, 1699.
I desire you will procure the reading of my letter to the Bishop of London, to the Lords of Trade and the evidences that belong to it, that they may be made sensible of the knavery of Mr. Vesey the Minister of New Yorke and of Dellius .- Col. Docs. N. Y. iv. 586.
GOVERNOR BELLOMONT, AT BOSTON, TO THE CLASSIS OF AM-
STERDAM.
1699, Oct. 13.
It is to be regretted that this letter has not been found. It is frequently referred to in subsequent letters. It was translated into Dutch for the use of Classis, June 1700. It was answered in detail, by Domine Dellius, in an elaborate Defence of himself before Classis, October 21st, 1700. The Classis also replied to this letter of Bellomont's on Dec. 29, 1700. From these two papers the purport of Bellomont's letter is obvious.
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ACTS OF THE CLASSIS OF AMSTERDAM.
Exchange of Revs. Dellius and Lydius, and the Churches of Albany and Antwerp.
1699, Nov. 14th.
There came within the Rev. Dellius, late minister at New Albany, and Mr. Levinus van Schayck. They handed over their instructions from that church, to call, in connection with the Rev. Classis, a minister to Albany, at a salary of one hundred and twenty pounds, with the power to increase it to a thousand guilders. It now came to the knowledge of the Classis that Rev. John Lydius at present minister at the so called Olyfberg (Mount of Olives), at Antwerp, was willing to make a change and go over to Albany, in case the Deputies of Synod would call Rev. Dellius in his place. Of this exchange the Assembly approved, and there- upon called Rev. Lydius to the service of the church at Albany. Notice of this shall be given to Rev. Deputati Synodi, with the expectation that Rev. Dellius also shall ere long be sent to the Olyfberg, as this whole operation depends upon the particular circumstance of this exchange. viii. 313; xix. 256. 1
Rev. Lydius. 1699, Dec. 14th.
Rev. Streso reports that he had received a letter from Rev. Lydius, minister of the Olyfberg, wherein he declared that he accepted, in the fear of the Lord, the call settled upon him by this Classis to the service of the church at Albany. viii. 314.
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