ducted; for the commander wasted, in vainglorious salutes at sea, nearly all his powder before he reached the fort; and when he raised the siege, which he had not ammunition enough to go on with, he left behind him, not only his leg but much property, especially cannon. But as the leg was really lost, it seems hardly probable that its owner had acted the part of a coward, and other stories against him on the same authority may be as little likely to be true.1

At any rate the enthusiastic people of New Amsterdam, when they welcomed with shouts and all their powder this successor to Kieft, were so full of pleasant excitement and hopeful anticipations of a happy and prosperous future, that they failed to call to mind, if they had ever heard of, any moral delinquencies of which the man might have been guilty in far-off Holland, or of military failures which had befallen him in the West Indies.

This popular enthusiasm, however, hardly outlasted the ceremony of reception. Stuyvesant was a man of haughty as well as violent temper; more imperious in presence and in manners than Kieft whom he came to displace, he was quite as despotic, and the more to be feared for his ability and strength of purpose. When he landed he marched into the town "like a peacock, with great state and pomp.' Some of the principal citizens met him bare-headed, and bare-headed "he let them wait for several hours, he himself keeping his hat on his head as if he was the czar of Muscovy; nobody was offered tion. a chair, while he seated himself very comfortably on a chair, the better to give the welcomers an audience."2 The picture is not drawn by friendly hands, but it is not out of keeping with what we know of Peter Stuyvesant.

His recep

But he did better presently when Kieft came forward to surrender the government into the hands of his successor. As the retiring governor stood for the last time before his fellow-citizens in his official capacity, he wished, perhaps, to bury the memory of past animosities; at any rate he must have been anxious to step down gracefully from his elevation, as he yielded the place to another. He thanked his fellow-citizens with a natural if not pardonable exaggeration for the fidelity they had shown him during his administration of affairs, hoping, no doubt, that he would be met in a like conciliatory and compliant mood, and his services acknowledged in terms that would be complaisant if insincere. But the sturdy Dutchmen were not to be cheated out of their resentments by any momentary enthusiasm or

1 Translations from The Breeden Raedt, in Documentary Hist. of New York.

2 The Representation of New Netherland (1650). By Adrian van der Donck. Translated by Henry C. Murphy. N. Y. Hist. Soc. Coll., Second Series, vol. ii. The Breeden Raedt. Documentary Hist. N. Y.

1647.]

STUYVESANT'S PROMISES.

117

ceremonial proprieties. On all sides went up a shout of loud dissent; as spokesmen for the rest, Joachim Kuyter and Cornelis Melyn, who were of the old Board of " Eight Men," and had otherwise been conspicuous as opponents of Kieft, declared boldly that they had nothing to thank him for and no approval to give. Such unexpected candor marred the harmonies of the occasion, and might have led to even more significant demonstrations of popular feeling, had not Stuyvesant stepped forward and stilled the growing excitement by

declaring that "every one should have justice done him. I shall govern you," he said, "as a father his children, for

the advantage of the chartered West India Company, and these burghers and this land." 1

The crowd dispersed, quieted if not satisfied with these assurances of the paternal intentions of the new governor, and almost forgot how long they had stood bare-headed in the sun.

1 Breeden Raedt and Albany Records, cited by Brodhead, History of New York, vol. ii., p. 433.

The citizens'

Kieft.

66

There was not much delay, however, in testing his sincerity. Before many days had passed Kuyter and Melyn brought a formal complaint against Kieft, and asked that a rigid inquiry be made complaint of into the alleged abuses of his government, and especially of his treatment of the Indians which had led to the war. The answer was as unexpected as it was unwelcome. Was it to be accepted as his opinion that it was treason to petition against one's magistrates, whether there was cause or not? The denials of Kieft, he considered as of more weight than any evidence his antagonists could bring to substantiate their charges. He would not, he declared, recognize them officially as members of the late Board of Eight Men," nor as representatives of the citizens at large; but only as "private persons." He looked upon them, he said, merely as "perturbators of the public peace," hardly worthy of a hearing. In all this he was mindful of the force of precedent. "If this point be conceded," he said to his council, "will not these cunning fellows, in order to usurp over us a more unlimited power, claim and assume, in consequence, even greater authority against ourselves and our commission, should it happen that our administration do not quadrate in every respect with their whims?" His despotism was not without Stuyvesant. forethought. The council had no will and no opinions of their own; all its members, Van Dincklage, Van Dyck, Keyser, Captain Newton, La Montagne, and Van Tienhoven the provincial secretary, hastened to agree with him, and the petition of Kuyter and Melyn was not granted.1

Policy of

The wily Kieft saw his opportunity in this unexpected turn of affairs, and embraced it promptly. The defendant became plaintiff, and brought charges against Kuyter and Melyn, who, he declared, were the authors of that appeal of the "Eight Men" to the chamber of Amsterdam;2 that they had induced their colleagues, against their better judgment, to join in that petition, all whose statements, he affirmed, were false. The ex-governor was listened to where the "private persons" had no standing in court. They were ordered to answer the accusations within twenty-four hours.

Stuyvesant was only the more enraged when that answer was an offer to produce the evidence of the truth of all the charges sent to Amsterdam against Kieft, and to bring forward the four survivors of the Eight Men to testify that they had voluntarily signed the documents containing those charges. It was only an aggravation of the

1 See Stuyvesant's address on this subject in O'Callaghan, vol. ii., pp. 24, 26.

2 See vol. i., p. 462.

3 The Breeden Raedt says that these survivors were induced by threats and promises to testify that they had been bribed to sign the letters sent to Holland containing the charges against Kieft.

H

1647.]

TRIAL OF KUYTER AND MELYN.

119

offence, on the part of the accused, to propose thus to show their innocence. The Director General ordered that they be at once indicted; a speedy trial followed, and a prompt conviction waited on the trial.

Both were found guilty. Kuyter was condemned to three years' banishment and to pay a fine of one hundred and fifty Arbitrary guilders. The sentence of Melyn was more severe. Per- treatment of the popular haps there were additional charges against him; perhaps the leaders. enmity of Kieft, who, says one authority, had resented Melyn's refusal some time before to give him a share in the manor of Staten Island, was more bitter. The patroon was at any rate declared guilty of treason, of bearing false witness, of libel and defamation; was sentenced to forfeit all benefits of the Company, to pay a fine of three hundred guilders, and to be banished for seven years. The Director was in favor of severer punishment, but even his pliant council dissented from his judgment, though he supported it by a violent speech, in which he appealed to Scripture and the authority of the learned in civil and criminal law with many a text and quotation.

When it was suggested to the triumphant Kieft that the result of the trial might have been different in Holland, "Why should we,' said he, exultingly, "alarm each other with justice in Holland? In this case I consider it only a scarecrow." Stuyvesant was even more emphatic. Melyn, he thought, deserved death, and was threatened with it by the Director. 66 If I was

Cornelivo moky

Signature of Cornelis Melyn.

persuaded," he said, "you would appeal from my sentences or divulge them, I would have your head cut off, or have you hanged on the highest tree in New Netherland." To another person he said, "If any one, during my administration, shall appeal, I will make him a foot shorter, and send the pieces to Holland, and let him appeal in that way."

These servants of the West India Company had little fear, probably, of their masters, who cared little and did less for New Netherland, and who, already in a condition of bankruptcy, had neither the power nor the will to regulate the affairs of the distant colony.1 Had it been otherwise, however, Stuyvesant would not have been likely to put a bridle upon his tongue, for so transported was he with rage at these daring attacks upon prerogative, that "the foam hung on his beard" as he roared and raged against their perpetrators. "These 1 The West India Company: in Bibliographical and Historical Essays on the Dutch Books and Pamphlets relating to New Netherland. By G. M. Asher.

brutes," he said, "may hereafter endeavor to knock me down also, but I will manage it so now, that they will have their bellies full for the future." The people of New Amsterdam had good reason to be amazed and alarmed at the words of this impetuous and irascible gentleman, as well as at these first acts of the administration of a governor who not long before, had declared "under the canopy of heaven," that justice should be done in all New Netherland, and that he was to rule over them as a father over his children.

Kieft's de

But there was one man, at least, who was thankful for such a Director; and that was Kieft. Had he been the benefactor instead of the oppressor of New Netherland he could hardly have retired from its government with more triumphant complacency than that with which he now hugged himself. On the 17th of August, less than three months after the coming of Stuyvesant, Kieft embarked parture. for Holland in the ship Princess, carrying with him an ample fortune, and taking on board with him, "like criminals torn away from their goods, their wives, and their children," the "two faithful patriots," Kuyter and Melyn, who had ventured to impeach his administration, and who for their temerity were thus punished by banishment, with the added humiliation of going as the prisoners of the man they had hoped to humble.

But their humiliation and his triumph were not to last long. It was on this voyage there came that "observable hand of God," of which Winthrop speaks, and which he interpreted as "against the Dutch at New Netherlands," and showing "so much of God in favor of his poor people here [in New England] and displeasure toward such as have opposed and injured them." For Kieft, he adds, "had continually molested the colonies of Hartford and New Haven, and used menacings and protests against them upon all occasions, and had burnt down a trading-house which New Haven had built upon Delaware River."

Wreck of the Princess.

Therefore it was that the hand of God was heavy upon him ; so that when the Princess approached the English coast she lost her reckoning, ran upon the coast of Wales, near Swansea, instead of up the English Channel, and was lost. Many saw in it a judgment, who did not agree with the Massachusetts governor that Kieft was "a sober and prudent man," and who believed that the providence of God sometimes had other purposes than the punishment of the enemies of the Puritans of New England. "I told Wilhelm Kieft," - De Vries had written four years before, "that I doubted not that vengeance for the innocent blood which

"De

1 This is the testimony of the Breeden Raedt, a little colored, perhaps, by partisanship, as it is certain that Melyn took a son with him.