USA > New York > New York City > History of the city of New York in the seventeenth century. Vol. I > Part 31
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GORGEANA (AGAMENTICUS) : Hazard, Historical Collections; J. A. Fairlie, Municipal Corporations in the Colonies, in Municipal Af- fairs, 1898 [periodical]; W. D. Williamson, Hist. of the State of Maine, Hallowell, Me., 1832; G. Sewall, Topographical Description of York, Maine, Appendix, in Mass. Hist. Soc. Collections, 1st. Series, III.
CITY COURT: Records of New Amsterdam, I; Brooks, Court of Common Pleas of the City and County of New York (144) ; Hoffman, Estate and Rights of the Corporation of the City of New York (136) ; Daly, Judicial Tribunals of New York (146) ; Street, New York Council of Revision (143).
STADT HUIS: Gerard, Old Stadt Huys of New Amsterdam (481) ; Earle, Stadt Huys of New Amsterdam (482) ; Innes, New Amsterdam and its People (357).
KUYTER CONTRACT: MS., State Library.
BURGHER GUARD: Scisco, The Burgher Guard of New Amsterdam (318).
- LIST OF MEMBERS, 1653, in O'Callaghan, Hist. of New Nether- land, II, Appendix.
CITY WALL: Records of New Amsterdam, I.
FIRST PUBLIC DEBT: Records of New Amsterdam, I; Col. Docs., XIV ; Durand, Finances of New York (186), and City Chest of New Am- sterdam (359); Valentine, Financial History of the City of New York (187).
DE PEYSTER : Anon., De Peyster (152) ; Anon., The De Peyster Family (153).
STEENDAM: see POETS in Reference Notes, Chap. XIV.
ENDICOTT TO WINTHROP: in Winthrop Papers in Mass. Hist. Soc. Collections, 4th Series, VI.
ALLEGED PLOT WITH INDIANS: Correspondence in Hazard, Historical Collections, and in extracts from Hazard in N. Y. Hist. Soc. Col- lections, 1809. - WALLER, Hist. of Flushing (295).
SALE OF ARMS TO INDIANS: Records of Massachusetts-Bay (312) ; Haz-
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REFERENCE NOTES
ard, Historical Collections; Hutchinson, Original Papers (311); Winthrop, Hist. of New England (368). - ROGER WILLIAMS' LETTER : in Hazard, Historical Collections. - BRADFORD (quoted) : A Descriptive and Historical Account of New England, in Verse, in Mas8. Hist. Soc. Collections, 1st Series, III.
UNDERHILL ON LONG ISLAND: Col. Docs., II; Hazard, Historical Collections; Thompson (291), Flint (287), Furman (285), and other histories of Long Island.
RHODE ISLAND: Records of Rhode Island (458) ; Arnold, Hist. of Rhode Island (459) ; Richman, Rhode Island (460).
UNDERHILL AT HARTFORD : Records of Connecticut Colony (125) ; N. Y. Hist. Soc. Proceedings, 1844 (215); Winthrop Papers in Mos8. Hist. Soc. Collections, 4th Series, VII; J. N. Arnold, The First Commission at Sea from Rhode Island, in Magazine of History, 1908 (304). - His LETTER TO WINTHROP: in Mass. Hist. Soc. Collections, 4th Series, VII.
THOMAS BAXTER: J. R. Bartlett, Nocal History of Rhode Island, in Historical Magazine, 1870 (213).
HOOKE TO CROMWELL: in Thurloe, State Papers (484).
CHAPTER XI
DISPUTES, COMPLAINTS, AND DANGERS
1653-1656
(GOVERNOR STUYVESANT)
We humbly conceive that our rights and privileges are the same, harmonizing in every respect with those of the Netherlands, being a member dependent on that State and in no wise a people conquered or subjugated, but settled here on a mutual covenant and contract entered into with the Lords Masters and with the consent of the natives, the first proprietors of these lands, from whom we purchased the soil with our own funds. - Remonstrance and Petition to the Director-Gen- eral and Council of New Netherland. 1653.
ALTHOUGH Stuyvesant's people supported him loyally when New England accused him they did not long forget their old grievances. Van Dyck sent home a voluminous defence of his own conduct which was in fact another review of the whole colonial situation. The city magistrates declared that the people should not be more heavily burdened to pay for the new fortifications: the Company ought to bear the cost of defending those whom it kept 'altogether in the background' in public affairs. And, as the provincial revenue did not suffice to meet even the regular expenses of the government, once more Stuyvesant was compelled to let the people come into the foreground.
In August, 1653, the magistrates summoned some of 'the principal burghers and inhabitants' to meet with them in the Stadt Huis. They would do nothing, they decided, toward raising the 7000 guilders required for the works of defence unless the governor would surrender to the city the
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proceeds of the excise on wine and beer. The governor said he could not think of such a thing, the burghers refused to think of raising money, and the magistrates, declaring their 'lack of power,' protested that the blame would not be theirs should any mishap occur. In September delegates from the neighboring 'courts' and 'colonies' met with the governor and council and enacted ordinances to regulate trade, to reduce the excessive cost of provisions, and, as had more than once been done in New England, to cut down the current rates of wages. It is not known who appeared at this meeting, the first in New Netherland that could be called a legislative assemblage. In November, some of the principal burghers and inhabitants being again 'legally' summoned by the mag- istrates and twenty-three of them appearing, they were in- formed that the governor had agreed to give up the excise but that little ready money would thereby be provided and other means to get it must be found. Asked whether they would abide by the action of their magistrates they unani- mously pledged themselves in writing to obey them in all things 'as good subjects are bound to do.' At the same time a petition from the citizens was laid before the magistrates urging them to demand a schout of their own. A week later the magistrates, saying that they had had no confirmation of Stuyvesant's promise, which was verbal only, resolved to wait upon him to demand a 'proper grant' and, should they not obtain it, to tender their resignations. Then the governor said that they might have part of the excise money if they would support 'the two preachers, the schoolmasters, and secretary.' This, said the magistrates, could hardly be done with the moneys offered. As they had threatened, they unanimously requested their dismissal, saying it was impos- sible for them 'to continue thus any longer,' but decided not to abandon their offices when Stuyvesant declared that he had no power to dismiss them. Finally he had to consent to surrender the whole excise, stipulating that the magis- trates should farm it out after the manner practised in Holland, and should 'supply subsidies for the maintenance
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[1653-
of the works of this City and its ecclesiastical and civil servants.'
The southern shores of New England were suffering almost as much as Long Island from the Rhode Island marauders with Thomas Baxter at their head, yet the New Englanders forbade the New Netherlanders, who had armed two vessels to pursue the pirates, to follow them into any New England harbor without a special permit in each case. Stuyvesant sent one of the schepens of New Amsterdam to ask for help in Holland; and at the request of Gravesend, Flushing, and Middleburg he summoned a convention to consider measures for putting an end to Thomas Baxter's raids and otherwise insuring the public safety. Accordingly on November 26, the day after the governor had made terms with the citizens about the excise, there gathered in the Stadt Huis two mem- bers of the council, two of the city magistrates, and two dele- gates from each of the three Long Island towns, George Baxter and James Hubbard representing Gravesend. At once the English delegates, led by Baxter, declared that the governor's councillors had no right to be present. The Dutchmen agreed with them, and the councillors retired. Then the English- men declared that they would pay no taxes if they got no protection, and would form a union among themselves if New Amsterdam would not join with them. New Amsterdam declined to join until the other Dutch settlements should be heard from.
This defection of his old supporters, the English settlers, seems to have daunted Stuyvesant for a moment. Only such places, he said, as had local courts of justice were entitled to speak about public matters, but he would incorporate some of the Dutch villages so that the Hollanders might have equal votes with the Englishmen. Without waiting for this the convention proposed that a memorial be sent to Holland. It might be done, the governor declared, if the delegates would meet under the eye of two of his councillors and would draw up a truthful statement. The action of the Englishmen in excluding the councillors, he said, smelt of rebellion, and how,
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he asked, could he protect them from roving marauders, who included land-pirates or outlaws from New England as well as seafaring robbers, when they had scattered themselves far and wide contrary to reiterated orders that they should live in compact villages and, moreover, often gave friendly shelter to the very offenders of whom they so loudly com- plained ?
On November 29 the delegates informed him that they had adjourned until December 10 and asked permission to call others from the Dutch settlements. Those far up the North River could not be reached because of the lateness of the season, yet the convention which in December gathered in the Stadt Huis to represent 'the state of the country' to its rulers could rightly be esteemed a little land-dag or pro- vincial diet. No member of the governor's council appeared at it. It was composed of ten Dutchmen and nine English- men representing four Dutch towns, New Amsterdam, Breuck- elen, Amersfoort (Flatlands), and Midwout (Flatbush), and four English towns, Flushing, Newtown (Middleburg), Graves- end, and Hempstead. The delegates of New Amsterdam were its burgomasters, Cregier and Van Hattem, and three of its schepens.
The Remonstrance and Petition of the Colonies and Villages in this New Netherland Province which the land-dag at once drew up and presented to the governor and council was written by George Baxter but in substance and form was as thoroughly Dutch as the antecedent petitions of the Twelve Men, the Eight, and the Nine. On behalf of the people of 'various nations from different parts of the world,' who at their 'own expense' had left their native shores and put themselves 'vol- untarily' under the protection of the States General in Amer- ica, it expressed the utmost loyalty to the government and the laws of the United Netherlands. Summarizing once more the people's grievances it said that the Indians were restless and dangerous largely because they had not been rightly compensated for their lands; the land patents given by Stuyvesant were of doubtful validity because he had acted
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with an insufficient council and had often granted too much to a single individual; the people were oppressed by old auto- cratic ordinances which they did not understand; officials were appointed without the 'consent or nomination' of the people; and all these grievances formed a solid basis for the main one, which was thus defined :
Our apprehension of the establishment of an arbitrary government among us :
It is contrary to the first intentions and genuine principles of every well-regulated government that one or more men should arrogate to themselves the exclusive power to dispose at will of the life and prop- erty of any individual, and this by virtue or under pretense of a law or order which he or they might enact without the consent, knowledge, or election of the whole Body or its agents or representatives. Hence the enactment, except as aforesaid, of new laws or orders affecting the Commonalty or the Inhabitants, their lives or property, is con- trary and opposed to the granted Freedoms of the Netherland Govern- ment, and is odious to every free-born man.
This, in effect, was a denial of the right of the West India Company to govern the province. It was followed by the first expression framed on Manhattan of the truth that New World were different from Old World communities and might not be adequately served by Old World laws. The denial of the right of self-government, the Remonstrance said, was particularly odious
. . . to those whom God has placed in a free state on newly settled lands which might require new laws and orders not transcending but resembling as near as possible those of Netherland. We humbly sub- mit that it is one of our privileges that our consent or that of our repre- sentatives is necessarily required in the enactment of such laws and orders.
Joined to the paragraph which is quoted at the head of this chapter, these words written in the New Amsterdam of 1653 form a declaration of rights which would have met with approval in the New York of Stamp Act or of Revolutionary days. The Remonstrance that contained them was laid be- fore the governor and council as representing the Company
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1656]
which in its turn was declared to be merely the holder of powers delegated by the States General, the true rulers of all Hol- landers 'within the United Provinces and in the foreign settle- ments thereunto belonging.' The governor was asked to give a 'categorical answer' to each of the six grievances it named. This was too much to demand of Peter Stuyvesant. He pronounced the little congress illegal as containing dele- gates from unincorporated settlements, and called its petition 'a private and obscurely-styled remonstrance' of a few 'un- qualified delegates' from communities some of which had 'no court or jurisdiction.' He taunted his people unfairly with following the lead of 'an Englishman,' meaning George Bax- ter. In answer to the charge that he had prevented them from choosing their own city magistrates he said that those he selected were presented to the people in front of the Stadt Huis and the question was put whether any one objected to them. And he set forth his ideas about popular government in a way that would have pleased the Long Island English- men much better in 1651 than it did in 1653. If popular government were granted, he declared,
. . . if it is to be made a rule that the selection and nomination shall be left to the people generally, whom it most concerns, then everyone would want for a magistrate a man of his own stamp; for instance, a thief would choose for magistrate a thief, and a dishonest man, a drunkard, a smuggler etc. their likes, in order to commit felonies and frauds with so much more freedom.
The convention said that its meeting was legal because the 'law of Nature' authorized all men to associate together in defence of their liberty and property - a form of argument which an Englishman of that time could hardly have phrased, which was not current even among Frenchmen until nearly a century later; and once more it asked for an answer to its petition. Saying once more that only magistrates might assemble to deal with public affairs, the governor ordered the delegates to disperse and not to meet again under penalty of 'arbitrary correction.'
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[1653-
All of them had signed the Remonstrance. Now four of them - Burgomaster Cregier, Paulus Van der Grist a schepen of the city, Lubbertsen of Amersfoort, and Baxter of Graves- end - signed a series of Short Notes explaining the Remon- strance and laying special stress upon Stuyvesant's arbitrary method of ruling without even the advice of his council, and also a letter to the burgomasters of the 'praiseworthy and renowned' mother-city of Amsterdam. In this they explained that the governor had rejected the Remonstrance and de- scribed the 'great and alarming' danger in which the province now stood,
. . . bitter foes without and suspected neighbors round about, within discontented citizens and a government by no means as ample as the present conjuncture of affairs particularly demands.
Furthermore the city magistrates drew up on their own behalf a petition to the Amsterdam Chamber declaring that as the powers conceded to them by the director-general were 'too contracted, too curtailed, and too limited' they were unable properly to govern the body of the burghers, and asking for
. . . an Instruction not so extremely limited but as far as possible in accordance with the form of government of the renowned City of Amsterdam - she who gave the name to this our New Amsterdam.
More specifically they asked for certain powers in taxation and legislation, for a properly inducted city schout, for a city scal different from that of the province, for the Stadt Huis as their own property to be granted by the Company by gift or by sale, for the privilege of farming out the ferry to Breuck- elen, and for the whole of the excise moneys without the need to pay civil and ecclesiastical salaries only one-third of which these moneys would cover. They also asked for a supply of munitions of war including muskets with barrels three and a half feet long as such weapons would not be sold to the Indians who preferred shorter barrels. With the other peti-
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1656]
tions this one was intrusted to a qualified messenger to be duly laid before the authorities in Holland.
Meanwhile the Englishmen of Gravesend wrote to the Amsterdam Chamber, declaring their loyalty to the Company and their friendship for the governor but complaining of many things. One of these was Stuyvesant's failure to keep his solemn promise to enlarge their lands. Another was 'the refusal of the enjoyed freedoms (we mean Dutch freedoms) for which we came' - a grievance that contrasts rather curiously with the sentiments that the same writers had expressed a few years before.
Before the end of the year 1653 the West India Company sent out at his own request Nicasius De Sille, an 'expert and able statesman,' to be Stuyvesant's 'first councillor,' and Cor- nelis Van Ruyven to be secretary of the province. As De Sille's name is unusual it may be assumed that he was of the immediate family of an earlier Nicasius De Sille, the dis- tinguished publicist and diplomat who is believed to have drawn up the articles of union, adopted at Utrecht in 1579, which made of the seven Dutch provinces a nation.
At the opening of the year 1654 the city magistrates asked that they might receive pay for their services and nominate their successors. 'For the sake of peace and harmony' Stuyvesant granted them modest salaries, continued them in office, and gave them the right to impose a 'small or burghers' excise' -a tax, distinct from the tapsters' excise, upon liquors bought at wholesale for private consumption which became the city's chief source of income. Like all other indirect taxes it was farmed out to the highest bidder. Sharply Stuyvesant reproved the magistrates when he heard a report that they meant to exclude from the bidding all employees of the West India Company.
During the spring Governor Stuyvesant, mindful of his promise to incorporate Dutch villages, increased at Breuckelen the number of magistrates named in Kieft's charter and erected for this town, Midwout, and Amersfoort a superior district court which had charge of highway, school, church, VOL. I. - 2 A
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and other local affairs. In the previous year he had given a charter to Middleburg (Newtown), the English settlement planted in Kieft's time by the Reverend Francis Doughty. Here the pastor was now John Moore, a Presbyterian, best remembered as the ancestor of two bishops of the Episcopal Church and two presidents of Columbia College.
On Long Island and along the neighboring coasts the pirates who called themselves privateers continued their maraudings. Again Stuyvesant tried to suppress them, sending envoys to New England to explain that his armed vessels had no designs upon any one else. A greater danger threatened his province from across the sea.
When Connecticut and New Haven asked Cromwell to aid them in attacking New Netherland their story of Stuyvesant's plot with the Indians was believed in the mother-country and supported by a widely circulated pamphlet called The Second Part of the Amboyna Tragedy, or True Account of a Bloody, Treacherous, and Cruel Plot of the Dutch in America. Referring to the fact that in 1623 at Amboyna in the Spice Islands the Dutch had tortured into confession and then executed ten Englishmen and ten Javanese whom they ac- cused of plotting to murder them, it said that their 'treacher- ous cruelty,' spreading from the East to the West Indies and thence to New Netherland, had resulted in a conspiracy to assassinate the New Englanders when gathered in their churches on a Sunday. Of course it brought forth in Holland passionate rejoinders. To affirm such things of Stuyvesant and his people on the strength of an occurrence so remote in time and in place, said the West India Company, was an 'infamous lying libel' which would 'startle the devil in hell.' Scorning to answer the pamphlet the Company simply trans- lated and printed it and scattered it broadcast to show, as it wrote to Stuyvesant when it sent him a manuscript copy, what 'stratagems' the English were willing to employ to irritate 'the whole world against the Dutch.' It was well understood in Holland that the extreme and lasting irritation of the English
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1656]
over the Amboyna affair, fed and fostered during many later years by their poets and dramatists as well as their politi- cians, bore witness to the fact that it resulted in their exclu- sion from the Spice Islands - that group of six islands just under the equator where, and where only, the nutmegs and mace, the allspice and cloves that Europe so greatly coveted could be obtained.
Whether or no Oliver Cromwell believed the slanderous tales about Stuyvesant he despatched to New England four ships with two hundred soldiers, commissioned two Massa- chusetts men, Major Robert Sedgwick and Captain John Leverett, to command an expedition against New Nether- land, and instructed them to ask the aid of the United Colonies in this 'undertaking for vindicating the English right and extirpating the Dutch.' No cruelty, he said, should be used toward the people of 'the Manhattoes'; they should be urged to remain in their homes or permitted peacefully to return to their fatherland. They were so few in number, he added, that the New Englanders ought to have expected a 'comfort- able success' even if they had ventured to deal with them unassisted.
Connecticut, condemning John Underhill's seizure of Fort Good Hope but, on the other hand, ignoring the Hartford Treaty of 1650, now sequestered the fort and its lands. The Dutch never tried to regain them. In the early years of the nineteenth century remains of the fort still existed within the city of Hartford, but the river gradually wore away its site and the only vestige of the little Dutch stronghold that now survives is a single yellow brick preserved in the rooms of the Connecticut Historical Society.
On and near Manhattan apprehension deepened. The city magistrates ordered a levy of sixty men, and the neighboring Dutch towns detailed one-third of their inhabitants as minute- men and promised a general levy in case of need. In May Isaac Allerton, who had removed to New Haven some years before, sent word to Stuyvesant that Cromwell's ships were coming.
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New Amsterdam had no gunners, no musketeers, no sailors, and only sixteen hundred pounds of powder, and its 'naviga- tion,' said the governor, was entirely 'shut off.' Although it had sent out three or four expeditions to drive the pirates from Long Island the Dutchmen there, he knew, would not desert their own homes to come to its aid and, he feared, might not even defend their homes, hoping for security should they not oppose the invaders. Determined nevertheless to put his defences in good condition he declared that soldiers and la- borers must be got by promises of pay. The Company had said that volunteers should not be raised in its province by any such pledges given in its name; but the city magistrates consented to borrow the money, promising to repay it by tax- ing real estate and cattle and laying an impost of one-tenth upon all merchandise exported during the coming year; and to this plan the merchants agreed, with the stipulation that the Company must eventually refund the sums thus gathered.
As for the English of Long Island, they had sworn allegiance but would surely join the enemy; to ask them into the city, Stuyvesant wrote, would simply be 'to drag the Trojan horse within our walls.' In fact, they were growing openly muti- nous. Middleburg proposed that it should begin the war. Gravesend, still inspired by George Baxter and James Hub- bard, now ignored Governor Stuyvesant, chose magistrates without deferring to his confirmatory powers, issued letters- of-marque to would-be privateers, and entered into corre- spondence with the military leaders at Boston. Some of the Englishmen in New Amsterdam itself were writing secretly to Boston, others were preparing to leave the city.
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