1649.]

MELYN'S RETURN.

131

Stuyvesant's

the matter.

condition of the colony, whether it would approve of sending a delegation to Holland, and to provide means to defray the expenses. The Director refused permission, saying that any such communication with the people must be made through him, treatment of and his directions followed. The next best thing the Nine Men could do was to go from house to house to consult with their constituents privately, and Van der Donck was appointed to keep a record of the result of these private conferences. Stuyvesant, exasperated at this defiance of his authority, went to Van der Donck's chamber, in his absence, seized all his papers, and the next day arrested and imprisoned their author. That he might not be, however, without some show of popular support he called a meeting of delegates of the militia and the burghers. From these he secured an approval of his course, and Van der Donck was expelled from the board of Nine Men, and the demand that his papers be returned to him refused.

Melyn re

Holland.

While this struggle was going on between the Director and the party opposed to him, Melyn returned from Holland, not only with the sentence, pronounced against him by the Coun- turns from cil of New Amsterdam, reversed by their High Mightinesses, but bringing with him a mandamus requiring the Director to appear at the Hague, either in person or by attorney, to answer to the charges which Melyn and Kuyter had brought against him. The Patroon was by no means disposed to carry his triumph meekly. He declared that the decision in his favor ought to be pronounced as publicly in New Amsterdam as, two years before, he had been publicly condemned. This he demanded in a public meeting in the church soon after his arrival. At this bold step the whole assembly was ablaze with exciteAn excited and vehement debate followed; but the motion to read the mandamus was carried, and Van Hardenburg, one of the board, was about to obey, when Stuyvesant, declaring that a copy ought first to be served upon him, snatched the document from the hands of the councilman.

ment.

General's

All dignity and reserve were thrown aside at this violence of the governor. The disputants forgot where they were and who Excitement they were; an unseemly struggle followed, in which, if the at the Statesburghers did not knock each other down, they showered orders. hard and angry words upon each other. One party tried to retain, the other to regain possession of the paper, and in the snatching and re-snatching the seal was torn from it. The tumult was at length quelled by the intercession of some of the cooler and wiser by-standers, and the Director was persuaded to return the document, on Melyn's promise that a copy should be given him. When the manda

mus was read, Stuyvesant said in answer, "I honor the States, and shall obey their commands. I shall send an attorney to sustain the sentence that was pronounced." Melyn demanded that a written reply should be given, but this Stuyvesant refused.

The popular feeling was evidently in Melyn's favor, but that was of no personal advantage to him, as Stuyvesant let no chance escape him which could be used to annoy his enemy. But the governor's conduct in this affair, his imprisonment of Van der Donck, and the strong suspicion that he used his office to promote his own interests, in shops which he owned and others kept for him, in farms cultivated, in breweries carried on, in ships sailed wholly or in part on his account, and in a monopoly of the sale of arms to the Indians, all these charges, true or untrue, combined at this time to so arouse the public indignation, that he did not venture to continue to throw obstacles in the way of a popular delegation to Holland.

strance fin

A memorial was prepared and signed by eleven persons who were members of the second, or had been members of the first Board of Nine Men, asking that the States-General would take the colony under its own care; that they would establish in it a Burgher Government, as much as possible like that of Holland; that there should be free trade, colonial commerce, with the encouragement of the fisheries; that the boundaries of New Netherland should be definitely and definitively determined, all for the "peace and quietness," and the "liberty" of the people. In the Remonstrance, or Vertoogh, which The Remon- accompanied the memorial and which was signed by the same men, the gravest charges were brought against the adpatched. ministrations of Kieft and Stuyvesant, and it was declared that the colony could never flourish if left longer in the hands of the West India Company. And this was not done in a corner, but in the light of day. The haughty and irascible Director was brought by the popular clamor to unwonted submission. He permitted the departure of three of the signers of these documents, Van der Donck, Couwenhoven, and Bout, as delegates to the States-General, one of whom he had, not long before, imprisoned, partly because he was the author of this very Remonstrance. He dispatched Van Tienhoven, the provincial secretary, however, to Holland, to meet his

ally dis

accusers.

Van der Donck was zealous and able, and his efforts on behalf of his constituents were well supported not only by his colleagues, but by Melyn, who went out to Holland with them, and the Dominie BackEfforts of its erus, the clergyman of New Amsterdam, who left the colony supporters. not long before. A strong popular feeling was soon aroused in favor of the colony, for Van der Donck appealed to the people of

1649.]

THE REMONSTRANCE IN HOLLAND.

133

Holland by publishing the Remonstrance, as well as to the States General by his earnest representations. "The name of New Netherland," wrote the Amsterdam Chamber to Stuyvesant, "was scarcely ever mentioned before, and now it would seem as if heaven and earth were interested in it."

holding the administrations of Kieft and Stuyvesant, denying, and, if he spoke the truth, sometimes disproving the charges brought against them, but resorting to the common line of defence, where the defendant's cause is a weak one, of abusing the plaintiff's attorney. And this he did with a good deal of bitterness and some humor. "Those," he said, "who complained about the haughtiness of Stuyvesant are such as seek to live without law or rule;" those indebted

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 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

Losit love hermant

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

States.

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

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

action.

seized for violation of a regulation of the company in trading without a license, and brought Melyn to trial as her owner. He Stuyvesant's was only so far interested in her voyage that she brought a 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.