Opposition to the Company were "angry and insolent" if payment was demanded, and "would be right glad to see that the Company dunned nobody, nor demanded their own, yet paid their creditors; many of them had been provided with provisions and clothing on arriving from Holland, and "now when some of them have a little of Van Tien- more than they can eat up in a day, they wish to be rehoven. leased from the authority of their benefactors, and without paying if they could; a sign of gross ingratitude;" the place of Dominie Backerus was now "supplied by supplied by a learned and godly minister who has no interpreter when he defends the reformed religion against any minister of our neighbors, the English Brownists;" Van der Donck had been in the service of the proprietors of Rensselaerwyck, and there is the sting of an insinuation in the comment that he did not remain long in that service; Stevensen, another signer of the Remonstrance, had "profited in the service of the Company, and endeavored to give his benefactor the world's pay, that is, to recompense good with evil;" Elbertsen was indebted to the company, and "would be very glad to get rid of paying;" Loockermans, who from a "cook's Lodi Love Romant Signature of Govert Loockermans. mate" had become a prosperous trader, "owed gratitude to the Company, next God, for his elevation, and ought not advise its removal from the country;" Kip was a tailor who had never lost anything, which was only another way of saying he had nothing to lose; and Evertsen's grievance was that he had lost a house and barn in the war with the Indians, though the land on which they stood, and which cost him nothing, he had sold for a great price. In short, the secretary, though he undertook to show that the indictment of the Company and its servants could not be sustained, hoped to strengthen his arguments and his assertions by showing or insinuating that those who brought the charges were either interested witnesses or not worthy of belief. It was unfortunate for his own case that he proposed to test the truth of alleged facts by the character of those who stated them, for soon after making this appeal he was brought to trial in Amsterdam and found guilty of seducing a young woman under promise of marriage, he having a wife and children residing in New Netherland. Provisional Redress did not come immediately for the grievances comorder of the plained of, though some promise of relief was given in a provisional order of their High Mightinesses containing some. wise measures for the government of the colony, and commanding States. 1650.] PERSECUTION OF MELYN. 135 Stuyvesant's return to Holland. It was not accepted, however, by the Amsterdam Chamber of the Company, and, when sent to New Netherland, Stuyvesant refused to obey it. "He should do as he pleased," he said, and in all such matters he was quite as good as his word. In two successive years the board of Nine Men added fresh delegates to their deputation in Holland, moved thereto, the second year, by the Director's refusal to nominate new members to the board, thus virtually dissolving it. In nothing would Stuyvesant abate the arrogance of his temper, the rigor of his rule, or the bitterness of his resentments. No sooner, for example, was Melyn again within his reach than the Director subjected him to new persecution. The Patroon returned in Stuyvesant's seized for violation of a regulation of the company in trading without a license, and brought Melyn to trial as her owner. He was only so far interested in her voyage that she brought a action. number of settlers for his manor of Staten Island, and though the ship and cargo were confiscated, there was no evidence that could hold him responsible. Failing in this Stuyvesant brought new charges against. the patroon, confiscated his property in New Amsterdam, and compelled him to confine himself to his manor of Staten Island. Melyn surrounded himself with defences, and establishing a sort of baronial 1 The Company was subsequently compelled to pay heavy damages to the owners of this vessel for this arbitrary act of the Director. O'Callaghan, vol. ii., p. 157. court contrived for a while to live till Stuyvesant's persecutions drove him, at length, out of the colony. With Melyn, on Staten Island, Van Dincklage, the vice-director, also found a refuge from the violence of Stuyvesant. The vicedirector busied himself in preparing a new protest to the States-General on behalf of the colony, when Stuyvesant ordered that he be expelled from the council. Van Dincklage refused to be thus disposed of, on the plea that he held his commission not from the Director but from Holland. Stuyvesant arrested and imprisoned him for some days, and he felt that his life was not safe on Manhattan Island. Persecution ular leaders. Other leaders of the popular party were subjected to treatment hardly less vindictive and arbitrary. "Our great Muscovy of the pop- Duke (noster magnus Muscovi Dux)," Van Dincklage wrote to Van der Donck, "goes on as usual, resembling somewhat the wolf, the older he gets the worse he bites. He proceeds no longer by words or letters, but by arrests and stripes." Van Dyck, the fiscal, or attorney-general, who, with Van Dincklage, was detected in drawing up the protest, was excluded from the council, and his duty reduced to that of a mere scrivener. Sometimes he was "charged to look after the pigs and keep them out of the fort, a duty which a negro could very well perform ;" and if he objected the Director "got as angry as if he would swallow him up;" or if he disobeyed, " put him in confinement or bastinadoed him with his rattan."1 Finally he was charged with drunkenness, and removed from office. The secretary, Tienhoven, was appointed in his place; -the "perjured secretary," wrote Van Dyck, "who returned here contrary to their High Mightinesses' prohibition; a public, notorious, and convicted whoremonger and oath-breaker; a reproach to this country, and the main scourge of both Christians and heathens, with whose sensualities the Director has been always acquainted." "The fault of drunkenness," he adds, "could easily be noticed in me, but not in Van Tienhoven, who has frequently come out of the tavern so full that he could go no further, and was forced to lie down in the gutter." While the Director was thus making life a burden to his enemies, he had, under the pretext that his own person was in danger, four halberdiers to attend him whenever he walked abroad. 1 1 Albany Records and Holland Documents, cited by O'Callaghan and Brodhead. CHAPTER VII. THE DUTCH AND THEIR NEIGHBORS. THE HARTFORD BOUNDARY TREATY OF 1650. ACTION OF THE STATES-General on -- BY THE Negotiation STUYVESANT had a leaning toward the English, notwithstanding his quarrels with Governor Eaton, of New Haven, and his altercations with others of the New England colonies. Of all the people of New Netherland, the English on Long Island were treated with the most consideration, and in return they gave him the weight of their support against the opposition party among his countrymen. This was not the smallest among the causes of his unpopularity, and it gained new intensity and bitterness when in the midst of all these other troubles the Director concluded an agreement with of the New England in regard to the boundary. The two com- treaty of missioners appointed by him to conduct the negotiation were both Englishmen, Thomas Willett, a merchant of Plymouth, and George Baxter, employed by Stuyvesant as his secretary. His opponents exclaimed at this loudly and vehemently, as treacherous to the colony and an insult to the Dutch. boundary 1650. The Willett Signature of Thomas Willett. The articles of agreement between the contracting parties left the question of jurisdiction on the South River, the Delaware, undetermined; but the boundary line on Long Island was fixed to run from. the westernmost part of Oyster Bay straight to the sea, east of that line to belong to the English, and west of it to the Dutch; on the mainland the point of departure was on the west side of Greenwich Bay, about four miles from Stamford, the line to run thence up into the country twenty miles, provided it did not come within ten miles of the Hudson River, the Dutch agreeing not to build within six miles of such line. The inhabitants of Greenwich were to remain under the Dutch till some other arrangement was agreed upon which agreement by a subsequent article of the treaty was modified by transferring them to the jurisdiction of New Haven, and the Dutch were to retain only such lands in Hartford as they were in actual possession of.1 Here was ground for fresh complaints with the popular party of New Amsterdam, inasmuch as the Director had first outraged his own. countrymen by intrusting so important a negotiation to Englishmen on his behalf, and then by consenting to give away enough territory, which the Dutch claimed as theirs, to make fifty plantations each four miles square. It was the resignation of more than half of Long Island, and nearly the whole of the present States of Connecticut and Rhode Island, even if the Dutch claim was limited to Point Judith. Stuyvesant reported to his masters in Holland that he had made this treaty with the English, and it did not meet with their approval; but as he sent no copy its precise terms were probably unknown there. It was plain at last to the States-General that temporizing measures with a man of Stuyvesant's despotic temper, unscrupuGeneral act lous will, and fearless disposition, were altogether useless,— Netherland they only made him worse. Hitherto all the complaints of the colonists, backed by the energetic efforts of Van der Donck and his colleagues, were incapable of overcoming the influence of the Amsterdam Chamber of the West India Company. But the Chamber yielded in the spring of 1652, when it was evident that if the desired reforms in New Netherland were not made with their consent, they would be made without. The States on the New appeal. Their order. After three years of delay the prayer of the people was listened to in earnest. It was decreed that a "burgher government should be established; that the citizens of New Amsterdam should have the right to elect their own municipal officers; that those officers should constitute a court of justice, with appeal to the supreme court of the Director and Council; that the export duty on tobacco should be abolished; that emigration should be encouraged by a reduction in passage-money; that the importation of negro slaves, hitherto a monopoly of the Company, should be now free to all citi 1 Hazard's State Papers, vol. ii. |