USA > New York > New York City > History of the city of New York in the seventeenth century. Vol. I > Part 41
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The records of the burgomasters' court are complete enough to give, in conjunction with the governor's correspond-
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ence and ordinances, a fair idea of the moral condition of his city. Plainly, it was much higher than that of Kieft's scat- tered community had been. It could well stand comparison with the condition of the English colonies, and it might shame many of the settlements which in modern days have been planted far from the mother-country of their founders. To the sins of the flesh, indeed, New Amsterdam was prone; but the devil as the father of violence found few recruits among its people, and the world in the sense of material gain did not appeal to them more strongly than to their neighbors.
Writing in 1664 Thomas Mun declared that the Dutch had 'well-near left' the 'swinish vice' of drunkenness while the English, who were said to have learned it of them, had fallen into a 'general leprosie of . piping, potting, feasting, fashions, and mis-spending of our time in idleness and pleas- ure.' In New Amsterdam drunkenness was still common but was no longer a cause for complaint against high-placed personages. The records of New Haven say that a Dutch- man, bearing witness for a comrade who had been arrested there, explained that
. . . at the Mannadoes they were not punished for drunkenness but used after they had been drunk to say, God forgive us, or be mer- ciful to us, and that was enough.
On the other hand, drink was declared by the court to be a 'frivolous excuse' for the transgressions to which it led; and the authorities did all they could to limit the sale of intoxi- cants to white men and to prevent it altogether in the case of red men.
Abusive and slanderous language and insignificant acts of offence, like cutting trees on leased land, allowing pigs to damage fences, and attacking a neighbor with a slipper or a 'peach-tree twig,' were still the most common charges upon which men and women were brought into court, a fact that bears witness not to an especially quarrelsome but to a very simple-minded community in which the custom of settling small private quarrels by official arbitration always prevailed.
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Once when Jan Vinje was sued for assault the court decided that the plaintiff had 'well deserved the beating he got.'
While quarrels like this one and broils in the public streets were not infrequent, burglaries were almost unknown and the many thefts referred to in the court records were pickings rather than stealings and, according to modern ideas, were very severely punished. Other recorded crimes include forgery very rarely, smuggling very often, and false entries at the custom-house; fraud in regard to the size of beer barrels, the purity of flour, and the weight of bread; the 'deceitful' packing of tobacco, the selling of 'measled hogs,' the robbery of Indians, and the shooting of pigeons in the forests on Sunday. With few exceptions these were small transgressions. In their larger dealings with one another the men of New Amsterdam seem to have been honest; and if they defrauded the West India Company whenever they could there were nowhere many persons in that age who con- sidered smuggling a crime. So frequent was the 'corruption' of the officials who tried to collect the hated customs dues on Manhattan that at last the governor set 'faithful soldiers' to watch the discharge of freight, changed them daily, and promised a third share of the fine to any one who would report an attempt at smuggling. In 1661 he put a vessel in com- mission as a revenue cutter. Bakers were licensed quarterly ; as their bread was exported their honesty was a commercial asset.
As in Kieft's time, sins of sensuality in varying degrees of shamefulness were frequent but even some that the courts do not recognize to-day were regarded as offences against public decency and were severely punished. Domine Polhe- mus wrote to the classis of Amsterdam, however, that one such case had been hushed up. This was undoubtedly be- cause the woman was an unmarried daughter of Domine Schaats of Albany. Her fellow-sinner was Arendt Van Corlaer who was a married man. Stuyvesant wrote bitterly about the matter, saying that the child that had been christened Benoni, Son of Grief, ought to have been called
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Barrabas. In early English days his own half-sister, Margriet Stuyvesant, then the widow of Jacobus Backer, had a child by a wealthy bachelor to whom she was betrothed but whose sudden death prevented their marriage. This seems to have involved her in no disgrace for she soon married another man.
Village life in the neighborhood of Manhattan was not much troubled by malefactors. Of New Utrecht it is written that nearly a year after its incorporation Nicasius De Sille, learning as schout-fiscal of the province that some one had 'done amiss in the village,' sent it 'half-a-dozen shackles with an iron rod and a good lock' in order 'to punish evil doers, frighten the vicious, and produce tranquillity for the good.'
In 1648 a tavern in New Amsterdam was closed because a man had been murdered there. In 1650 Hendrick Van Dyck, who had been schout-fiscal for five years, asserted that only two cases had occurred in his time deserving 'corporal punish- ment,' which must have meant capital punishment as physi- cal chastisement was inflicted for many minor transgressions. But, if we may believe the Breeden Raedt, Van Dyck was not a conscientious officer, more than once failing to arrest deep- dyed criminals and once drinking with an imprisoned mur- derer until he got so drunk that the man escaped up the chimney. All in all, however, criminal cases were few, death sentences were very seldom pronounced, and were still more seldom carried out. Once the sentence of a soldier condemned to death for robbery was commuted to perpetual banishment in answer to the 'urgent solicitations' of the people at the place of execution. At another time a negress who had set fire to her owner's house was condemned to be bound to a stake and strangled and her body burned; then, after all the grisly preparations were made, at the last moment she was pardoned and returned to her master. Persons accused of grave crimes were occasionally threatened with the rack to extort confessions, and once or twice appear to have been subjected to it. The last recorded case of the use of torture in England occurred in 1640, but it was used in Virginia and, in the case of Indians, in New England. It is perhaps not
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fanciful to divine a greater cheerfulness in the tone of life in New Netherland as contrasted with New England from the fact that the first recorded suicide in the Dutch province ap- pears in the records of the year 1663, three years after the general court of Massachusetts thought it needful to pass a law saying that the bodies of all self-murderers should be buried in the common highway.
There was no regular prison in New Amsterdam - only a jail in the fort and detention rooms for temporary use in the Stadt Huis. The stocks, the pillory, and the wooden horse, working 'at the wheelbarrow' with the Company's slaves, whipping, branding, and the piercing of tongue or ears with hot irons (cruel punishments common in other colonies also), fines and temporary or permanent banishment - these served instead of our modern terms of imprisonment. A negro filled the office of executioner and whipper. Arrested debtors were permitted to live at a tavern if they would pay the bill; otherwise they languished in the Stadt Huis.
When a litigant ordered by the city court to pay a sum of money did not do so his goods were levied upon and, if not redeemed within a week, were sold in a curious way. The court officer lighted a candle, bidding proceeded as long as it held out to burn, and as its light expired the highest bidder secured the goods.
The minutes of the city court dealing with minor offences show, like the scanty remaining evidence in regard to the · crimes judged by the higher tribunal, that mercy very often tempered justice after justice had pronounced its fiat. A case typical of many in the manner of its conclusion, re- corded in the minutes of the year 1653, was that of a tapster named Jan Peck, or Peeck, - the same person who chanced to bequeath his name to Peeck's Kill, a creek flowing into the North River from the east, and thus to the village of Peekskill. The first entry reads :
Cornelis Van Tienhoven as Sheriff of this city, represents to the Court that he has found drinking clubs on divers nights at the house of Jan Peck, with dancing and jumping and entertainment of disor-
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derly people; also tapping during Preaching, and that there was a great noise made by drunkards, especially yesterday, Sunday, in this house, so that he was obliged to remove one to jail in a cart which was a most scandalous affair. He demands, therefore, that Jan Peck's license be annulled and that he pay a fine according to the ordinance and placards of the Rt. Hon'ble Director General and Council. The Worshipful Court having seen the remonstrance of the Sheriff against Jan Peck, who being legally summoned did not appear, decided, on account of his disorderly housekeeping and evil life, tippling, dancing, gaming, and other irregularities, together with tapping at night and on Sunday during Preaching, to annul his license and that he shall not tap any more until he shall have vindicated himself.
At the next session of the court Jan Peck 'by petition' re- quested leave to tap as the court officer had executed judg- ment. Decision was then postponed, but later it was written:
On the instant request both oral and written, of Jan Peeck to be allowed to pursue his business as before inasmuch as he is burthened with a houseful of children and more besides, the Court having con- sidered his complaint and that he is an old Burgher, have granted his prayer on condition that he comport himself properly and without blame, and not violate either one or the other of the placards, on pain of having his business stopped without favor and himself punished as he deserve, should he be found again in fault.
At a later time, after Peeck's death, his wife was banished for repeating the old offences. Typical records of civil suits, all brought during the year 1653, read as follows :
Roelof Jansen, pltf., v/s Philip Gereardy, deft., complains that defts. dog has bitten him in the daytime, as may be seen by the wound, and he claims for loss of time and surgeon's fees 12 fl. [florins or guilders]. Deft. says pltf. may kill said dog and that pltf. has not lost any time or work on that account; he, deft., has already sent pltf. by his wife 4 lbs. of butter and is still willing to give him as a charity 4 fl. more. The demand of pltf. is therefore denied:
Auken Jansen, pltf., v/s Augustyn Heermans, deft., demands pay- ment of a balance of one hundred guilders in beavers according to contract for building deft's house. Deft. says that pltf. has not ful- filled his contract; secondly, that he has spoiled his timber and the work; thirdly, that now, in short, to prevent all disputes, it was agreed at pltf's request that he should give pltf. one beaver more, and
.
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if pltf. will not accept this, then he claims damages sustained by him. Pltf. denies such agreement; says he will not be satisfied with one beaver. The Court do hereby appoint Pieter Wolfersen and Frans Jansen, both house-carpenters, to inspect work and if possible to effect a settlement, or otherwise to report their opinion in writing to the Board.
Thomas Schondtwart, pltf., v/s Antony Jansen, deft., says that deft. whose daughter he has married refuses to give him what he had promised and is therefore, according to the written demand, due him. Burgomasters and Schepens having heard the demand and answer concerning the father's promise, refer the same to David Provoost and Hendrick Kip to examine into the dispute, its origin and progress, and the same by all practicable means to settle and finally decide, and the said arbitrators are empowered, if necessary, to associate a third person with them to whose award parties shall be obliged to submit without power to institute any further suit.
Elsie Hendrickx, pltf., v/s Jacob Backer, deft. Deft. in default. Pltf. demands, as deft. fails to prove according to order of 8th Decem- ber last that the 2 beavers which he received for the soap were returned, that the rendered judgment may be put in execution. The Court having heard the pltf's request, which consists with law and equity, do order and authorize the Officer to levy execution either on soap or anything else to the satisfaction of the pltf. with costs of suit.
The desire to gain or to retain a less than honest penny was a much more prolific source of small transgressions in New Amsterdam than idleness or sloth. All the people of the province, as the West India Company once remarked, under- stood that they must be 'inclined to work' if they expected to become 'great lords' or even to put bread in their mouths. According to their own witness the earlier immigrants had come 'naked and poor' from Holland, and this was well, for the best pioneers were 'farmers and laborers, foreigners and exiles, men inured to toil and poverty.' Prosperous though many grew before the Dutch days of the province came to an end, their wills and inventories indicate no large fortunes. Probably not one New Netherlander had reached a point where, had he so desired, he could have supported his house- hold on the garnered fruits of antecedent industry. The
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burgomasters and schepens whose prayer for salaries the governor granted in 1654 were, he said in justification of the act, 'for the most part persons who must maintain their houses and families by trade or farming or mechanical labor.' Indeed, in the city as in the villages and on the farms every- body labored, man and woman, gentle and simple, the richest and the poorest; and no kind of toil was thought derogatory. A soap boiler, as the records show, could obtain the Great Burgher-Right if he had fifty guilders to pay for it.
After the Indian raid of 1655, when Stuyvesant lost his temper trying to get enough money to redeem the unfortu- nate captives, he averred that taxes might easily be increased,
as the sumptuous dress, the profuse consumption of strong drink, with the consequent laziness rendering it difficult to procure laborers for reasonable wages, do not suppose inability to contribute to the public burdens; rather, a malevolent unwillingness arising from an imaginary liberty in a new and, as some pretend, a free country.
In such a country there are always those who declare that others will not work for 'reasonable' pay. It is well to set against Stuyvesant's charges the plea put forth by the citi- zens when, after the first Esopus war, they asked for an enlargement of their burgher-right. They had suffered much, they said, through their 'voluntary services against enemies at divers times for the public service,' a task from which 'all surrounding places' had been exempt. But the main cause why they were not more prosperous was the aid they had to give to the many people who, losing their prop- erty and fearing to lose their lives, had fled penniless to New Amsterdam. In this work of mercy they had contracted debts larger than they could discharge. The whole burden now came upon those who had still 'any means,' and it was heavy for, they said,
. .. we are bound in conscience not to see any one of our Nether- land nation perish through poverty but constantly to sustain and aid him, whether by disbursement of money, provisions, or by new ad- vances of goods, which they so doing cannot pay - now nor never.
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Stuyvesant's description of his people was evidently the out- burst of a would-be autocratic governor whose power they had effectually curtailed; yet the fact that even he could speak such words shows the extent of the difference in well- being between his little city and the rough village that Van Twiller and Kieft had ruled.
During the latter years of New Netherland a number of burgher families arrived from Holland bringing property with them. Like the humblest agricultural laborers they repre- sented the industrial classes of Europe. New Netherland's tinge of aristocratic blood has often been exaggerated. Only three or four scions of the old Netherland aristocracy ever saw its shores. Its proportion of those who would have been called gentlefolk by Englishmen was not larger than that of Connecticut where the distinctive 'Mr.' was prefixed to only eight on a list of two hundred and thirty-one names of those who between 1650 and 1660 took the freeman's oath. It is the eye of fancy not of history which, looking back to Stuy- vesant's province, sees a little forest of family trees trans- planted from the choicest corners of the social soil of Holland and France. The plebeian shoots that were brought instead were better fitted for New World planting. At once they developed into wide-branched family stocks many of which still bear good fruit.
Of aristocratic feeling there was still no deeper tinge than of aristocratic blood. In official circles, of course, ranks and degrees were respected, and outside of them personal force, shown in the accumulation of wealth or otherwise, won per- sonal distinction. But the social soil was still unstratified, and the failure of the attempt to establish the Great Burgher- Right proves that the people were content to have it so. Even Stuyvesant did not think of framing sumptuary regula- tions while in Massachusetts they grew stricter as the years went on; in 1651, for example, the general court expressed its 'utter detestation and dislike' of the 'intolerable' fact that people of 'mean condition, educations, and callings' took upon themselves 'the garb of gentlemen,' and under penalty
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of presentation by the grand jury forbade all persons, except those who belonged to magistrates' families or whose 'visible estates' amounted to £200, to wear certain articles of dress and adornment which the statute carefully listed.
Elsewhere in the Dutch province conditions were the same as in its little capital or even simpler. It is a curiously false tradition that still leads many writers to reiterate such statements as we find, to take only two among many recent examples, in James K. Hosmer's History of Anglo-Saxon Freedom and Goldwin Smith's United States. Hosmer says, with astonishing inaccuracy, that the Dutch were long enough in possession in New York 'to stamp upon the settlement an impress not at all democratic,' and that 'along the Hudson the patroons . . . had set up a feudalism as marked as that of the seigneuries which the French at the same time estab- lished on the St. Lawrence.' And Goldwin Smith declares that New Netherland was 'dominated by the patroons, mag- nates invested with vast grants of land, who exercised seign- iorial sway and lived in seigniorial state.' Vast grants of land in New Netherland had meant merely vast grants of the wilderness where, by the year 1664, only a few hundreds of acres had been reclaimed. Only some nine patroonships had been established; only one, Rensselaerswyck, had suc- ceeded; and all the others had ceased to exist before the English came in except Van der Donck's which was moribund and possibly the one west of the Hudson between Achter Kol and Tappaen of which very little was ever said. Moreover, the patroons of Rensselaerswyck had remained in Holland. The relatives who managed their American property gathered but a small revenue and did not live in a way that even remotely resembled seigniorial state. If they exercised seign- iorial sway over a shifting, troublesome body of tenants it was in a very modest and democratic New World fashion and, in Stuyvesant's later years, under his supervision. And, apart from the influence which by mere personal force of character some of the authorities at Rensselaerswyck ex-
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ercised over the Indians, neither they nor any patroon, not even Captain De Vries, helped to dominate the province. It was not until English days that great landed estates, barring Rensselaerswyck only, began to assume any importance in the Dutch province, not until the eighteenth century that they played any conspicuous part in its history.
When, however, it is said that gentlefolk were few in New Netherland and New England it must be remembered that the defining line was then drawn in Europe according to mere facts of birth, not of education or refinement; and also that everywhere in America the proportion of educated, well- bred people was larger, the general average of intelligence much higher, than in European lands. If social pinnacles were lacking, so was that great solid, stolid, sodden sub- stratum of hopeless, helpless ignorance and indigence upon which in the Old World the successive strata of class and caste reposed. The constant lament of all the colonies that white servants and laborers could not be obtained proves, not merely the breadth of New World opportunities for the poor, but also a much larger proportion of intellectual capacity than any European land could show.
Again, though Holland did not send to New Netherland what England sent to New England - thousands of its best in a truer than the old feudal sense - neither did it send thousands of its worst as England did to its more southerly colonies. Mixed though the population of New Netherland was in respect to nationalities, it was not nearly as mixed in other ways as that of Virginia. In Virginia, as the writings of the time declare, during the first half of the seventeenth century sons of great families, hot-brained adventurers seek- ing for gold, and 'unruly gallants packed thither by their friends to escape ill destinies ' mingled with many reprieved prisoners, young women 'pressed' and transported willy- nilly, and bands of boys and girls shipped from London be- cause they 'lay starving in the streets.' In 1670 the assembly protested against the 'great numbers of felons and other desperate villains' then being sent over, said that the 'horror'
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still remained of the 'barbarous designs' with which 'those villains' had attempted in 1663 to subvert the government, and prohibited for the future the landing of any 'jail-birds.' People of these sorts were never shipped from Holland to its province.
For all its democratic temper and its simple ways of life New Amsterdam, as its English invaders found it, was not an illiterate or unmannerly place. This might be premised from a knowledge of its fatherland. In Holland university education was not only better but much more general than in other countries, birth into the middle classes was much more certain to insure a liberal upbringing, and larger numbers of the poor received elementary instruction. Moreover, com- mercial life, which involves not merely varied interests and intercourse with other lands but also a concentration of the people in cities, is more humanizing, liberalizing, civilizing than agricultural, pastoral, or military life. In mediæval times the lamps of learning, art, and manners were kept alight in the great commercial cities of Germany, not in its princes' courts and camps. In the Netherlands during the same period the burgher was the chief figure as the landowner was in England, the feudal baron in France; and many of the members of the feudal aristocracy also lived in the cities, which meant both that they too grew civilized and that class lines were less strictly drawn than in other lands. Then as time went on and commercial Holland, shaking off the fetters of Spain, grew free, tolerant, and hospitable, its sons became wider in sympathy and more receptive in mind than others, better acquainted with foreign places, men, and ideas, more accustomed to the unhampered discussion of all kinds of sub- jects, more advanced in their habits of life, more skilled in the amenities of living. So unrivalled, in fact, was the progress made by these people whose wit, as Temple explains, had been 'sharpened by commerce' and the 'conversation of cities,' that Holland not only stood far in advance of the rest of the world in the higher branches of intellectual en-
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deavor and in the degree of material comfort its people en- joyed but was also several generations ahead as regarded the average of intelligence and mental cultivation.
With a large contingent from the well educated burgher classes of Holland New Netherland received many Huguenots of a similar kind. A number of its inhabitants are known to have been university graduates, more may be thought such upon the witness of their accomplishments, and many others had had, like Governor Stuyvesant, that Latin school train- ing which in Holland meant a real knowledge of mathematics and the classics. Some of the New Netherlanders wrote Latin as readily as the most cultivated New Englanders; it was the language employed in drawing up some of Governor Kieft's land patents as well as letters; and the domines of Manhattan spoke it with a fluency that amazed their Eng- lish associates in the early days of New York.
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