USA > New York > New York City > History of the city of New York in the seventeenth century. Vol. I > Part 14
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detained ten ships bound for America until their passengers took the oath of allegiance and promised to conform to the Prayer-Book. In the same year the king created the first board specially empowered to supervise and regulate the affairs of the colonies, a Commission for Foreign Planta- tions composed of twelve members of the privy council with Archbishop Laud at their head. In 1635 the Council for New England resigned its charter to the crown, and the charter of Massachusetts Bay was by process of law attacked. That these steps were not followed up, that New England was not then consolidated and, like Virginia, transformed into a royal province, was due in part to the difficulty of serving writs with legal promptness at so great a distance, in part to the disturbed condition of England and Scotland. It is probable that but for the progress in these kingdoms of the rebellion that was to bring Charles I to the scaffold the New Englanders would have lost at this time the liberties of which Charles II and James II deprived them half a century later.
REFERENCE NOTES
PRINCIPAL PUBLISHED DOCUMENTS : Col. Docs., I (398) ; Cal. Hist. MSS., Dutch (390); Van Rensselaer Bowier Manuscripts (513) ; Cal. S. P. Col., 1574-1660 (485).
GENERAL AUTHORITIES : De Vries, Voyages (527) ; O'Callaghan, Hist. of New Netherland, I (382) ; Brodhead, Hist. of New York, I (405).
REMONSTRANCE OF NEW NETHERLAND (quoted) : Van der Donck, Vertoogh van Nieu-Neder-Land (423).
Pos's LETTER : in Van Rensselaer Bowier Manuscripts.
MICHAELIUS LETTERS : see Reference Notes, Chap. III.
TRADE STATISTICS [from De Laet]: in Hazard, Historical Collec- tions (102), and in N. Y. Hist. Soc. Collections, 1841 (214).
ENGLISH IN CANADA : Parkman, Pioneers of France (191); Slafter, Sir William Alexander and American Colonization (44).
DOWNING TO WINTHROP : in Winthrop Papers in Mass. Hist. Soc. Collections, 4th Series, VI.
GORGES TO MASON and MASON TO SECRETARY OF STATE: Col. Docs., III; Cal. S. P. Col., 1574-1660.
WINSLOW IN ENGLAND: Hutchinson, Hist. of Massachusetts-Bay, II, Appendix (313) ; Cal. S. P. Col., 1574-1660.
AFFAIR OF THE SHIP EENDRAGHT: Col. Docs., I.
MONOPOLIES AND COLONIZATION: Osgood, The American Colonies in the Seventeenth Century (116), and The Corporation as a Form of Colonial Government (137) ; Price, English Patents of Monop- oly (325) ; Kaye, The Colonial Executive Prior to the Restora- tion (182) ; Haynes, Representation and Suffrage in Massachusetts (496) ; Egerton, British Colonial Policy (108); Cheyney, Euro- pean Background of American History (181); Beer, Origins of the British Colonial System (110).
WEST INDIA COMPANY (quoted) : Col. Docs., I.
WASSENAER (quoted) : his Historisch Verhael (216).
ROELANTSEN'S SCHOOL, Dunshee, Hist. of the School of the Collegiate
Reformed Church (462) ; Pratt, Annals of Public Education in New York (171).
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HISTORY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK
DE VRIES : his Voyages; Col. Docs., I.
SHIP WILLIAM : Col. Docs., I; De Vries, Voyages.
DUTCH AND ENGLISH ON THE CONNECTICUT: Col. Docs., I; Records of Connecticut Colony (125) ; Records of Massachusetts-Bay (312) ; Hazard, Historical Collections; Bradford, Hist. of Plymouth Plantation (441); Winthrop, Hist. of New England (368); Morton, New England's Memorial (367) ; Hutchinson, Hist. of Massachusetts-Bay, II, Appendix ; Trumbull, Hist. of Connecticut, I, Appendix (124) ; Johnston, Connecticut (123) ; De Forest, Hist. of the Indians of Connecticut (237). - VAN TWILLER TO WIN- THROP : in Col. Docs., III.
PLOWDEN : see Reference Notes, Chap. I.
COMMODITIES OF THE ISLAND CALLED MANATI (284).
STIRLING : Slafter, as above.
RIGHTS OF THE DUTCH IN AMERICA: Compare Arnoux, The Dutch in America (162), and Pirsson, Dutch Grants (207), with Brod- head's Oration in Conquest of New Netherland (380) and Kaye, English Colonial Administration under Lord Clarendon (103).
COMMISSION FOR FOREIGN PLANTATIONS: Andrews, British Com- mittees, Commissions, etc. (77).
CHAPTER V
BETTER PROSPECTS
1632-1642
(GOVERNOR VAN TWILLER, GOVERNOR KIEFT)
Now the main cause of all these differences is the trade in furs or peltries found in that country and the question by whom it shall be conducted. - Kiliaen Van Rensselaer to the Assembly of the XIX. 1633.
IN the spring of 1633, just after the affair of the ship William, Captain De Vries prepared to take his own ship home and to send his yacht 'toward the north by way of Hell Gate.' Van Twiller delayed him, beginning 'again to juggle as if he were drunk,' insisting upon searching the yacht, and when De Vries objected ordering 'the guns at the angles of the fort' to fire upon it. Whereupon, the captain continues,
I ran to where he stood at the angle with the secretary and one or two of his council and told him the land was full of fools; if they wished to shoot anything they should have shot at the Englishman who was violating their river in spite of them.
Then Van Twiller wished to search the ship, for contraband furs of course. When it had got as far as Sandy Hook, Notel- man and Van Remund, coming with despatches from Van Twiller for the Company in Holland and seeing a few skins, threatened to send the Soutberg in pursuit. And then, says De Vries,
I said to the secretary that we were surprised that the West India Company should send such fools into this country who knew nothing except to drink; that they could not come to be assistants in the
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East Indies; and the Company by such management must come to naught. In the East Indies no one was appointed governor unless he had first had long service and was found to be fit for it . . . but the West India Company sent in the first instance as superior officers persons who never had command in their lives, for which reason it must come to naught.
When De Vries. reached Amsterdam toward the end of July he soon found that his partners were disputing with the other directors about a few pelts that he had brought back :
On this account our business of making colonies must be suspended in places still uninhabited. ... As we could not agree with the Company, and my partners at Amsterdam were all directors and were continually at variance with their associates on account of trifles, I separated from them. The rest I will leave unwritten.
Part of 'the rest' was told from another point of view by one of the partners, Van Rensselaer, in a very long letter to his nephew Van Twiller. Writing in April, 1634, he said that 'David Pietersen,' meaning De Vries, was turning out worse - more slim is the Dutch expression - than Van Twiller had predicted and was railing 'stoutly' against him. So many other people were also railing against the governor that had it not been for his uncle's influence he would already have been summoned home 'with an affront.' Such a 'shameful pot' had been brewed for him that one could hardly believe men could be found base enough to invent it; and so many knew about it that the selection of another director-general was publicly discussed while the opposite party in the Com- pany was secretly trying to put Isaac De Rasières in the place. Van Remund was working against Van Twiller as he had worked against Minuit, hoping to put on his head the same 'crown of thorns.' He was inciting against him all the directors opposed to colonization, prompting Domine Bogar- dus to complain of him as he had prompted Domine Michaelius to complain of Minuit, and sending home slanderous stories to his wife who spread them abroad. Crol was likewise bringing charges, saying that Van Twiller would not let him
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have his books. In fact, there were so many charges that Van Rensselaer summed them up as a warning to the gov- ernor. Those coming 'from the outside' said that he was 'proud and puffed up,' that he was 'inimical to the minister and no defender of religion,' and that he was 'always drunk as long as there is any wine,' a failing which once at least had delayed the despatch of a ship to Holland. The 'inside' charges were that he wrote too seldom to the Company, did not keep his books properly, and lacked prudence and judg- ment for the discharge of his duties. Therefore his uncle advised him to report more frequently and to forget and for- give past injuries. Furthermore he drew up for him a table of eight duly numbered precepts counselling him to be dili- gent, faithful, cautious, sober, religious, patient when in- jured, and trustful in God when chastised. All of which should he do and be, 'a curse will change to blessing and slanders bloom to honor'; and, could he once clear himself of the charges against him, such 'venom' would be impotent to affect him again.
De Vries and Van Rensselaer both earnestly favored coloni- zation although they fell out with each other and although to De Vries the free colonist, to Van Rensselaer the patroon, seemed the best hope of the province. And both found fault with the Company on the same grounds : it wanted premature profits and it thought the only way to get them was to permit no individual to profit by trafficking in furs. After it came into possession of the enormous booty captured by Pieter Heyn from the Spaniards, wrote De Vries at a later day, it bestowed no thought upon its 'best trading post at Fort Orange' but allowed a few persons (meaning the owners of Rensselaerswyck) to take it from the 'greater number' who should have shared with them. On the other hand many persons who would have taken up patroonships were prevented by the quarrelling among the directors; and the directors would do nothing for the settlers already in the province because they coveted 'the profits of all the trade before they are grown.' They
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. .. would rather see booty arrive than to speak of their colonies; but had the land been peopled the fruit thereof would have been long continued while their booty has vanished like smoke.
It appears, moreover, that the Company hampered the patroons in all possible ways. Especially it objected to transporting the goods that they needed for barter with the Indians and tried to prevent its colonists from exchanging such goods for the products of Van Rensselaer's farms - not only fearing to lose the fur trade but hoping, probably, to force the patroons to buy from its own warehouses on Man- hattan all that their people required. It was also evident, said Van Rensselaer, that many persons wished patroons to found colonies only in order that the Company might send a commissary who 'under the sheltering wings of the patroon's protection' might secure furs and thus deprive him of his just gains.
In spite of these hampering disputes the agents of Michiel Paauw had begun to develop Pavonia and Van Rensselaer had done his utmost to strengthen Rensselaerswyck. By circumstance as well as by exceptional energy Van Rensselaer was better fitted than the other patroons for his difficult task. He had had experience in reclaiming waste lands near his estate in Guelderland, he could draw colonists from this un- fruitful neighborhood, and in New Netherland he had the help of his nephews, Van Twiller and Notelman. In his case the Company's charge that the patroons intended nothing but to trade in furs was certainly unfounded. He had as good a right as others to the trade, he explained, but wished to avoid disputes with the Company; and his correspondence shows in every line his determination to develop an agri- cultural colony. It also shows that there was no limit to the meticulous care he bestowed upon the estate or to his knowl- edge of its minutest affairs - the site and condition of every farm and house, the character and conduct of every settler, the worth of every individual horse and cow, the disposition that was made of every bushel of grain.
In 1632 he established a judicial system for his colony,
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appointing officers called a schout and schepens who were to administer the law according to the customs of the Republic and especially of the province of Holland. The schepens formed the court. The chief duty of the schout or sheriff was to see that the patroon's orders were obeyed. It is probable that these first officials never qualified, that the court was not actually set up until 1634. Even so it was the first local court established in the province.
When Minuit returned to Holland he sold to Van Rensselaer the cattle on his farm on Manhattan; so did one of the council- lors recalled at the same time; and Van Twiller took over the two farms. One of Van Rensselaer's own colonists, by his direction and with his money, leased another of the Com- pany's bouweries and paid in full for the live stock; and a free colonist engaged to live part of the year at New Amster- dam, part at Rensselaerswyck, and to buy all the cattle offered for sale on Manhattan. Thus the patroon managed to stock his farms, not dishonestly yet in ways that cannot have com- mended him to any one interested in the progress of the Company's colony on Manhattan. He and his partners, wrote De Vries a little later, had 'helped themselves by the cunning tricks of merchants.' They had put their patroon- ship in good condition 'at the Company's cost,' for the Com- pany had sent out cattle at great expense and now it had nothing up the river except an empty fort while the patroons had the farms and the trade round about it. By this time Godyn was dead and Van Rensselaer, buying out his heirs, had a controlling three-fifths interest in the patroonship. Blommaert retained his share, and Burgh's soon passed into the hands of three persons one of whom was the historian De Laet.
In 1633, intent upon making New Amsterdam the emporium of trade for the province, the Company formally granted it 'staple-right,' a privilege, enjoyed in Europe by a number of river cities, which meant that all vessels passing the place must discharge their cargoes and pay duties or else pay cer- tain stipulated 'recognitions.'
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It was proposed at this time in the Amsterdam Chamber to repeal those articles of the Charter of Freedoms and Exemp- tions which granted the fur trade, under restrictions, to the patroons and promised them the Company's protection. It was to protest against such changes that Van Rensselaer prepared his Memorial to the Assembly of the XIX recounting the efforts of the patroons and the damages they and the Company had suffered from the Company's slackness. The Freedoms, he said, must be not only maintained but 'enlarged and improved'; otherwise New Netherland would be wholly lost, for it was already coveted by other nations who had settled near it 'on the east, south, and north.' For its own sake the Company, instead of proceeding 'blindly as hereto- fore,' must establish the 'fundamental government' which it had promised to set up and be more particular to appoint no 'passionate persons' to office but 'only reasonable men who are in sympathy with the work and understand their busi- ness.' The result of its management thus far was that, in- stead of the sheep being sheared when they had wool,
. . . they were skinned at birth when they had no wool, and all under pretext that the patroons had no other design than to deprive the Company of the fur trade and charge the expenses to it. .
The 'contrary minded,' said Van Rensselaer, thought that the Company should exclude from the trade all patroons, colonists, and others, while the patroons maintained that the trade could be carried on with less expense and more profit to the Company by their servants than by its own. If colo- nists multiplied, the Company would not have to supply them with food, nor would they be in danger of starving should a supply-ship perish on the way. The fur trade was not con- centrated on one river as in Canada but was spread along many rivers and coasts far distant from each other, and the best time to prosecute it was in winter; therefore the Company would need many small vessels if it were to conduct the traffic itself. Colonists with families were more bent upon keeping the peace with the Indians than mere traders. If
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1642]
there were many settlers they might persuade or compel the Mohawks to do what now they would not do - permit the Canada Indians to pass through their country; and from these Indians more furs could be got than in all New Nether- land. But only by supporting its patroons could the Com- pany hope for strong settlements. Poor people by themselves could accomplish nothing in the province and the rich and well-to-do would not go there; but
. . . just as the blind can carry the crippled and the crippled can point the way to the blind, so the rich could stay at home and send their money while the poor could go and perform their work on the money of the rich.
Sound for the most part, this argument of Van Rensselaer's had two weak points: in a virgin country where land was plentiful 'poor people by themselves' could accomplish much, and in such a country they were not content to work for the rich in Europe.
The Assembly of the XIX sustained the validity of the Charter of Freedoms but could not come to terms with the patroons who thought that they were not bound to obey any of the Company's regulations. They had a right, they said, to the internal as well as the coastwise fur trade wherever the Company had had no commissary at the time the Charter was granted; therefore no commissary should be sent into a patroonship to collect the stipulated duty on skins; and, moreover, the Company should make good the losses they had suffered by its failure to afford them protection. At last it was decided to submit the questions at issue to the States General. After considering the arguments of both parties the States General postponed a decision. The war- ring factions patched up the dispute themselves and, as the advocates of colonization now got the upper hand in the Am- sterdam Chamber, for a time no more obstacles were thrown in the path of the patroons.
Van Twiller kept his place but a doctor of laws, Lubbertus Van Dincklagen, was sent out to take Notelman's place as
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HISTORY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK
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schout-fiscal. By the ship Eendraght on which he sailed in April, 1634, Van Rensselaer sent his long monitory letter to Van Twiller. Van Twiller, he thought, could trust Van Dincklagen who, as he had 'studied,' ought to prove a good adviser, 'for such people can see deeper into a matter than those who have not studied.' By the Eendraght Van Rens- selaer also sent a stock of merchandise, farm implements, and weapons, and some colonists for whose placing at Rens- selaerswyck Van Twiller was to care. The great ship New Netherland, he wrote, had been taken by the 'Dunkirkers,' Dunkirk being then a notorious nest of pirates. It was un- fortunate, he added, that the English were beginning to get a foothold on the Fresh River. Its advantages were under- stood at Amsterdam but every one was afraid to venture there.
Meanwhile Van Twiller had been improving the outward aspect of his little town. Fort Amsterdam, which had not yet been finished, he repaired or rebuilt with earthen walls and at least one stone bastion. Inside its walls stood his own house and a guard-house and a barrack for the troops he had brought, and close by two or three windmills. Not far away, probably on the Strand (Pearl Street) between the Broad and Whitehall streets of to-day, the governor built a little wooden church for the congregation which had hitherto worshipped in the loft over the horse-mill, and a house and stable for Domine Bogardus. He also built a new bakery, a house for 'the cooper, the smith, and the corporal,' and another for the midwife - all servants of the Company - and a stable for the goats that the governor of Virginia had sent him. A bridge which has left its name to Bridge Street was thrown across the creek that formed the com- mercial centre of the town.
Fort Amsterdam, the Company declared in 1634, had cost it 4172 guilders and the province as a whole 412,800, while the patroons declared that they had spent 'not far from one ton of gold cash down' in trying to people and to improve their estates. In 1633 the Company received from its prov-
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1642]
ince products to the value of 91,375 guilders, in 1635 to the value of 134,925, then getting 14,891 beaver skins and 1413 pelts of other sorts. In 1634 it shipped for sale to the settlers goods to the value of 29,560 guilders, and in 1635 to the value of 28,875.
In 1635 the borders of New Netherland were first threat- ened at the south. Then the Virginians who, beginning to explore the bay and river they called Delaware, had found the Dutch trading post, Fort Nassau, deserted and empty, sent a certain George Holmes with fourteen or fifteen men to occupy it. Informed of this by one of the party, a runaway bond-servant named Thomas Hall, Van Twiller decided that the intruders must be turned out and the fort reoccupied. A ship which he at once despatched brought the Englishmen to Manhattan. Here Captain De Vries was tarrying again after an unsuccessful attempt to plant a colony on the coast of Guiana; as he was about to sail for Virginia, on his ship Van Twiller sent the captives home; and De Vries landed them just in time to prevent the sending of a second party to the Delaware. Thomas Hall, however, remained with the Dutch, the first Englishman who is known to have settled among them. Finding work at first as a farm-hand he soon became and long remained a prosperous, respected, and loyal New Netherlander.
When Van Rensselaer wrote by the Eendraght in 1634 he acknowledged the receipt of several letters showing that ships had sailed from Manhattan in March, May, and July of the previous year while later despatches had been sent by way of New England. Communication was not always so frequent. Writing again to his nephew in May, 1635, the patroon said that he had not yet heard of the arrival of the Eendraght although a full year had elapsed, and was greatly worried lest it had been wrecked on the outward voyage when it carried his colonists and goods, or on the homeward voyage when 'many returning people' must have gone down with it. The directors were also much alarmed. They did not know .
VOL. I. - L
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what might be the state of affairs in the province for the governor had not even written by way of Virginia or New England. All work in Holland was 'entirely unsettled' and rumors of misconduct in New Netherland multiplied. The Company had by this time bought out the owners of Swan- endael and Pavonia, paying for Pavonia 26,000 guilders; but Van Rensselaer held on to his patroonship and, he wrote, was determined to carry on the work more courageously than ever if, indeed, the colony still lived. The directors were still trying to prevent all private trading in furs, and in gen- eral they were taking such a 'strange course' regarding the province that they would soon be forced to resign it to those who might regulate it better, or see everything run to ruin. A year later he wrote:
If they wish to keep it to themselves with few people, which is most profitable to them, they cannot defend the country, and with many people they suffer loss; and others will not care to populate the country unless they have the free trade.
The Company was complaining much because Van Twiller wrote so seldom, not even mentioning Captain De Vries who had recently sailed from Manhattan.
In 1634 the patroon had sent out one Jacob Planck as com- missary for Rensselaerswyck charged with the varied duties of schout, steward (rentmeester), precentor or reader for the local congregation, and brandy distiller. It was he, most probably, who actually established the local court. Writing to him in 1635 the patroon advised him to get on Manhattan animals and people for Rensselaerswyck as the leases of the Company's farms were expiring and the soil of the island was 'for the most part exhausted' while that of his own colony was 'still fresh.' He and his partners were equipping a ship, called the Rensselaerswyck, largely for the service of the patroonship, but as the expense proved great he had admitted Gerrit De Forest to a half share in it 'aside from the goods and people of the colony.' This Gerrit (Gerard) was the brother of Jesse De Forest.
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1642]
Planck's instructions bade him consult Van Twiller about the affairs of the patroonship; and at a score of points Van Rensselaer's letters show that the governor was supervising the farms on Manhattan of which the patroon now had pos- session and in other ways was protecting his interests. Van Rensselaer charged him not to neglect his duty to the Com- pany; on one occasion Van Twiller interfered, as Crol had done, with the shipment of cattle from Manhattan while sev- eral times his subordinates at Fort Orange confiscated for the Company's benefit grain grown on the farms of the patroon; yet naturally it was said, whether justly or not, that the governor favored his uncle too much. It was also said that he did not keep order in New Amsterdam and on certain con- vivial occasions, which Captain De Vries describes, was present himself at disorderly scenes. While he fraternized with Eng- lish skippers who now and then visited the bay he did not report about them to the Company. He left the harbor un- watched at night so that any one could sail up to the fort who chose, as De Vries discovered when he returned from Virginia early in 1636. He did not properly care for the buildings he had put up in his little capital. At Pavonia, at Fort Orange, and on the South River he ordered the erection of others unduly expensive. Although he had a good brick house in the fort he built another for his own use on the Company's Bouwerie No. 1. This farm he cultivated for his own benefit. On the Bossen Bouwerie he started a private tobacco planta- tion which the Company's negroes tilled. And without the Company's sanction he bestowed upon himself and others lands in various quarters.
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