"Johannes Van Beeck appeared in cort and requested az before thatt acion maye bee had onn his peticion, offering furthermore iff thort nesary att thee time ande the okeacion too bee readie to affirme under oathe whatt he stated inn his peticion, repeating especially three conversacions hadd with his Excellencie Petrus Stuyvesant."
The subject-matter of the petition was important, and could not be hastily passed upon. The Burgomasters deliberated for three days, and doubtless viewed the subject in every phase and light imaginable. At last they reached a conclusion which cannot be better presented than in the precise language of the decision rendered:—
"Bye the Burgomasters and Shepens of niew amsterdam—having been seen and examined the peticion as presentede too our cort, onn the 10th ande 16th days of this month, tochinge the bonds off matrimonie between Joh Van Beeck and Maria Varleth. Tharefore wee inquire into,
"First—Who frome the beginning was the institutor of marriage, ande also whot the apostels off thee Gentiles teaches thareon.
"Secondly—The proper and attaned age of Johannes Van Beeck ande Maria Varleth.
"Thirdlie—Thee consente off the Fathure ande Mothure off the Dauter.
"Forthly—The distance and remoutnes beetweene this and oure Faderland, together withe thee calamiters relacion betweene Holland and England.
"Fifthly—Thee danegur in such case arisienge ffrom long retardacion, betweene these too younge persons beecominge publick blame being attachede to the fammelys onn either sidde.
"Our Shurlogans ande wise Jurists doo saye korectly onn such mattus, that wee must nott commit any lesser sinns too avoyde grater ones; tharefore wee thinke (with due submission) thatt bye suteable marrage (the apostel inn his epistel to the Heebrues calls the bedd undefiled honurable) both thee lesser ande thee grater crimes are preevented. Tharefor thee Burgomasters and Shepens off the city of Niew Amsterdam doe judge thatt thee afforeseyde younge persons haveing mayde thare proper Ecklisiastical proclamations with the earlyst opportunitie, and that they folloe it upp with thee bonds of matrimonie immediatelie tharafter.
"Done at the Stadt House inn Niew Amsterdam in Niew Netherlands this 19th Feberary, 1654.
"Arent Van Hattan,
P. L. Vandugrist,
Pieter Wolferson,
Martin Krigier,
Wilh. Beeckman,
Josh. P. R. Ruyter,
Oloff Stevensen."
The social life of the New Netherlands was in many respects characteristic of the hard conditions of life in any new country, but in many respects it was peculiarly different from that of New England. "The sharp and strong contrasts in social position," says Mr. Roosevelt,21 "the great differences in moral and material well-being, and the variety in race, language, and religion, all combined to make a deep chasm between life in New Amsterdam and life in the cities of New England, with their orderly uniformity of condition and their theocratic democracy." In fact, democratic as the Dutch theory was, the actual condition of the Dutch colony was aristocratic in its characteristics. "The highest rank was composed of the great patroons, with their feudal privileges and vast landed estates; next in order came the well-to-do merchant burghers of the town, whose ships went to Europe and Africa, carrying in their holds now furs or rum, now ivory or slaves; then came the great bulk of the population—thrifty souls of small means, who worked hard, and strove more or less successfully to live up to the law; while last of all came the shifting and intermingled strata of the evil and the weak—the men of incurably immoral propensities, and the poor whose poverty was chronic."
The picturesqueness of the population was accentuated by the presence of a growing number of negro slaves which a Dutch vessel had been the first to bring to America.22 But, as we shall see later, slavery never was welcomed as an institution in this region, and never gained a firm foothold. Tobacco culture and other causes, which operated to the encouragement of slavery in Virginia and Maryland, did not appear in the northern colonies; where, moreover, the temper and taste of the people were not such as to make easy the development of slavery.
As in early New England, the domestic and social affairs of the Dutch colony were always intimately associated with religious traditions, and, as in New England, the theory of religious liberty found a varying and often a grotesque application.
The early theory of the colony was that of complete religious liberty, and at no time was there an intolerance comparable to that which prevailed among the Puritans, who sought liberty but yielded little; but the laws of the colony favored the Protestant Reformed Church, and it alone. To be sure, the West India Company commended freedom of belief, and the early Governors, partly, doubtless, because they were too busy with other matters, and partly because occasion had not yet arisen, caused little trouble by any attitude toward questions of faith or worship. But when the colony grew to considerable proportions, and the mixture of races brought about by the advertised liberality of the Dutch settlements began to bring up the social and religious questions inevitable in such a community, there were many clashings and disputes and bitternesses.
Stuyvesant was as definite and immovable in his ideas about church-going as about everything else. He believed in established authority, and personally resented the impertinence of people who saw fit to take a position at variance with what seemed to be set forth and settled by the established power. When the Lutherans, in 1654, sought to hold meetings of their own, Stuyvesant reminded them of the duty of attending the good Dutch church, and refused them premises for their meetings.
Appeal to Holland, whose position Stuyvesant's mental methods certainly did not represent in this instance, forced the Director to let the Lutherans alone; and possibly the rebuke was responsible for the fact that the Anabaptists on Long Island escaped serious trouble shortly afterward. But Stuyvesant hated the "cursed Quakers," with whom he had many bitter differences, going so far as to hang up one preacher by the arms and lash him for defying his authority.
Of Catholics Stuyvesant had an even greater horror. In 1654, he passed an ordinance forbidding the keeping of Ash Wednesday and all other holy days, as "heathenish and popish institutions, and as dangerous to the public peace."
To the intermittent religious squabbles brought on by the determination of Stuyvesant to stick to the letter of the law rather than to take the popular Dutch view of moderate leniency, the West India Company finally put a stop by ordering Stuyvesant to "let every one remain free so long as he is modest, moderate, his political conduct irreproachable, and as long as he does not offend others or oppose the Government." These terms, rather than any ever offered by Stuyvesant, represent the real sentiment prevalent among the Dutch people.
In the ship which brought over Governor Minuit, in 1626, came two ziekentroosters, or "comforters of the sick," who were frequently found filling positions as assistants to ordained clergymen. By these two men the early religious services of the New Amsterdam colony were conducted until 1628, when another ship from Holland brought out Jonas Michaelius, who was sent by the North Synod of the Netherlands. It was Michaelius who "first established the form of a church" at Manhattan. He was succeeded five years later by Everardus Bogardus, whose congregation left the upper loft of the horse-mill for a small building dedicated to church service. In 1642, a new stone church was built within the Fort, and in the year of Stuyvesant's coming Bogardus was succeeded by Dominie Johannes Megapolensis, who led the church for twenty-two years.
Meanwhile the Long Island settlers who wished to attend divine service were obliged to cross the river to New Amsterdam. In 1654, however, Midwout (Flatbush), which had begun to assume an importance as a settlement that promised to give it the position that Breuckelen afterward assumed, established a church. An order was issued in February, 1655, requiring the inhabitants of Breuckelen and Amersfoort (Flatlands) to assist Midwout "in cutting and hauling wood" for the church. The Breuckelen people objected to working on the minister's house, but were forced, under the Governor's order, to assist throughout the work.
This first church in Kings County, built