Colonial days in old New York

Sunday was not observed in New Netherland with any such rigidity as in New England. The followers of Cocceius would not willingly include Saturday night, and not even all of the Sabbath day, in their holy time. Madam Knight, writing in 1704 of a visit to New York, noted: “The Dutch aren’t strict in keeping the Sabbath as in Boston and other places where I have been.” This was, of course, in times of English rule in New York. Still, much respect to the day was required, especially under the governing hand of the rigid Calvinist Stuyvesant. He specially enjoined and enforced strict regard for seemly quiet during service time. The records of Stuyvesant’s government are full of injunctions and laws prohibiting “tavern-tapping” during the hours of church service. He would not tolerate fishing, gathering of berries or nuts, playing in the street, nor gaming at ball or bowls during church time. At a little later date the time of prohibition of noise and tapping and gaming was extended to include the entire Sabbath day, and the schout was ordered to be active in searching out and punishing such offenders.

Occasionally his vigilance did discover some Sabbath disorders. He found the first Jew trader who came to the island of Manhattan serenely keeping open shop on Sunday, and selling during sermon time, knowing naught of any Sunday laws of New Amsterdam.

And Albert the Trumpeter was seen on the Sabbath in suspicious guise, with an axe on his shoulder,—but he was only going to cut a bat for his little son; and as for his neighbor who did cut wood, it was only kindling, since his children were cold.

And one Sunday evening in 1660 the schout triumphantly found three sailors round a tap-house table with a lighted candle and a backgammon-board thereon; and he surely had a right to draw an inference of gaming therefrom.

And in another public-house ninepins were visible, and a can and glass, during preaching-time. The landlady had her excuse,—some came to her house and said church was out, and one chanced to have a bowl in his hand and another a pin, but there was no playing at bowls.

Still, though he snooped and fined, in 1656 the burgomasters learned “by daily and painful experience” that the profanation of “the Lord’s day of Rest by the dangerous, Yes, damnable Sale or Dealing out of Wines Beers and Brandy-Waters” still went on; and fresh Sunday Laws were issued forbidding “the ordinary and customary Labors of callings, such as Sowing, Mowing, Building, Sawing wood, Smithing, Bleeching, Hunting, Fishing.” All idle sports were banned and named: “Dancing, Card-playing, Tick-tacking, Playing at ball, at bowls, at ninepins; taking Jaunts in Boats, Wagons, or Carriages.”

In 1673, again, the magistrates “experienced to our great grief” that rolling ninepins was more in vogue on Sunday than on any other day. And we learn that there were social clubs that “Set on the Sabbath,” which must speedily be put an end to. Thirty men were found by the schout in one tap-huys; but as they were playing ninepins and backgammon two hours after the church-doors had closed, prosecution was most reluctantly abandoned.

Of course scores of “tappers” were prosecuted, both in taverns and private houses. Piety and regard for an orderly Sabbath were not the only guiding thoughts in the burgomasters’ minds in framing these Sunday liquor laws and enforcing them; for some tapsters had “tapped beer during divine service and used a small kind of measure which is in contempt of our religion and must ruin our state,”—and the state was sacred. In the country, as for instance on Long Island, the carting of grain, travelling for pleasure, and shooting of wild-fowl on Sunday were duly punished in the local courts.

I do not think that children were as rigid church attendants in New York as in New England. In 1696, in Albany, we find this injunction: “y^e Constables in eache warde to take thought in attending at y^e church to hender such children as Profane y^e Sabbath;” and we know that Albany boys and girls were complained of for coasting down hill on Sunday,—which enormity would have been simply impossible in New England, except in an isolated outburst of Adamic depravity. In another New York town the “Athoatys” complained of the violation of the Sabbath by “the Younger Sort of people in Discourssing of Vane things and Running of Raesses.” As for the city of New York, even at Revolutionary times a cage was set up on City Hall Park in which to confine wicked New York boys who profaned the Sabbath. I do not find so full provisions made for seating children in Dutch Reformed churches as in Puritan meeting-houses. A wise saying of Martin Luther’s was “Public sermons do very little edify children”—perhaps the Dutch agreed with him. As the children were taught the Bible and the catechism every day in the week, their spiritual and religious schooling was sufficient without the Sunday sermon,—but, of course, if they were not in the church during services, they would “talk of vane Things and run Raesses.”

Before the arrival of any Dutch preacher in the new settlement in the new world, the spiritual care of the little company was provided for by men appointed to a benign and beautiful old Dutch office, and called krankebesoeckers or zeikentroosters,—“comforters of the Sick,”—who not only tenderly comforted the sick and weary of heart, but “read to the Commonalty on Sundays from texts of Scripture with the Comments.” These pious men were assigned to this godly work in Fort Orange and in New Amsterdam and Breuckelen. In Esopus they had meetings every Sunday, “and one among us read something for a postille.” Often special books of sermons were read to the congregations.

In Fort Orange they had a domine before they had a church. The patroon instructed Van Curler to build a church in 1642; but it was not until 1646 that the little wooden edifice was really put up. It was furnished at a cost of about thirty-two dollars by carpenter Fredricksen, with a predickstoel, or pulpit, a seat for the magistrates,—de Heerebanke,—one for the deacons, nine benches and several corner-seats.

The first church at Albany, built in 1657, was simply a block house with loop-holes for the convenient use of guns in defence against the Indians,—if defence were needed. On the roof were placed three small cannon commanding the three roads which led to it. This edifice was called “a handsome preaching-house,” and its congregation boasted that it was almost as large as the fine new one in New Amsterdam. Its corner-stone was laid with much ceremony. In its belfry hung a bell presented to the little congregation by the Directors of the Amsterdam Chamber of the West India Company. The predickstoel was the gift of the same board of West India Directors, since the twenty-five beavers’ skins sent for its purchase proved greatly damaged, and hence inadequate as payment.

This pulpit still exists,—a pedestal with a flight of narrow steps and curved balustrade. It is about four feet in height to its floor, and only three in diameter. It is octagonal; one of the sides is hinged, and forms the entrance door or gate. All the small trimmings and mouldings are of oak, and it has a small bracket or frame to hold the hour-glass. It stood in a space at the end of the centre aisle.

From the ceiling hung a chandelier, and candle-sconces projected from the walls. There were originally two low-set galleries; a third was added in 1682. The men sat in the galleries, and as they carried their arms to meeting, were thus conveniently placed to fire through the loop-holes if necessity arose. The bell-rope from the belfry hung down in the middle of the church, and when not in use was twisted round a post set for the purpose.

This church was plain enough, but it was certainly kept in true Dutch cleanliness, for house-cleaners frequently invaded it with pails and scrubbing-brushes, brooms, lime, and sand. Even the chandelier was scoured, and a ragebol, or cobweb-brush, was purchased by the deacon for the use of the scrubbers. The floor was sanded with fine beach-sand, as were the floors of dwelling-houses. I find in the records of the Long Island churches frequent entries of payments for church brooms and church sand,—in Jamaica as late a date as 1836. In 1841 the deacons bought a carpet.

In 1715 the second Albany church was built, on the site of the old one. As Pepys tells of St. Paul’s of London, so tradition says this Albany church was built around the first one, that the congregation were only three weeks deprived of the use of the church, and the old one was carried out “by piece meal.” At any rate, it was precisely similar in shape, but was a substantial edifice of stone. This building was not demolished until 1806.

The sittings in this church sold for thirty shillings each, and were, as it was termed, “booked to next of kin.” When the first owner of a seat died (were he a man), the seat descended to his son or the eldest of his grandsons; if there was no son nor grandson, to his son-in-law; this heir being in default, the sitting fell to a brother, and so on. When the transfer was made, the successor paid fifteen shillings to the church. A woman’s seat descended to her daughter, daughter-in-law, or sister. Sittings were sold only to persons residing in Albany County. When a seat was not claimed by any heir of a former owner, it reverted to the church.

This church had some pretence to ornamentation. The windows were of stained glass decorated with the coat-of-arms of various Albany families. The panes with the Van Renssellaer and Dudley arms are still in existence. Painted escutcheons also hung on the walls, as they did in the church in Garden Street, New York. This was a custom of the Fatherland. A writer of that day said of the church in Harlem, “It is battered as full of scutcheons as the walls can hold.”

The meeting-house sometimes bore other decorations,—often “Billets of sales,” and notices of vendues or “outcrys.” Lost swine and empounded swine were signified by placards; town meetings and laws were posted. In the Albany church, when there was rumor of an approaching war with France, “powder, bales,” and guns to the number of fifty were ordered to be “hung up in y^e church,”—a stern reminder of possible sudden bloodshed. “Y^e fyre-masters” were also ordered to see that “y^e fyre-ladders and fyre-hooks were hung at y^e church.”

In 1698 a stone church was built in Flatbush. It cost nearly sixteen thousand guilders. It had a steep four-sided roof, ending in the centre in a small steeple. This roof was badly constructed, for it pressed out the upper part of one wall more than a foot over the foundation, and sorely bent the braces. The pulpit faced the door, and was flanked by the deacons’ bench on one side and the elders’ bench on the other.

Of the seating arrangement of this Flatbush church Dr. Strong says:—

When the church was remodelled, in 1774, there were two galleries, one for white folk, one for black; the benches directly under the galleries were free. In the centre of the main floor were two benches with backs, one called the Yefrows Bench, the other the Blue Bench. The former was for the minister’s wife and family; the other was let out to individuals, and was a seat of considerable dignity.

Many of the old Dutch churches, especially those on Long Island, were six-sided or eight-sided; these had always a high, steep, pyramidal roof terminating in a belfry, which was often topped by a gilded weerhaen, or weathercock. The churches at Jamaica and New Utrecht were octagonal. The Bushwick church was hexagonal. It stood till 1827,—a little, dingy, rustic edifice. This form of architecture was not peculiar to the Dutch nor to the Dutch Reformed Church. Episcopal churches and the Quaker meeting-house at Flushing were similar in shape.

When the bold sea-captain De Vries, that interesting figure in the early history of New Netherland, arrived in churchless New Amsterdam, he promptly rallied Director Kieft on his dilatoriness and ungodliness, saying it was a shame to let Englishmen see the mean barn which served Manhattan as a church; and he drew odious comparisons,—that “the first thing they build in New England after their dwelling-houses is a fine church.” He pointed out the abundant materials for building creditably and cheaply,—fine oak wood, good mountain stone, excellent lime; and he did more,—he supported his advice by a subscription of a hundred guilders. Director Kieft promised a thousand guilders from the West India Company; and Fortune favored the scheme, for the daughter of Domine Bogardus was married opportunely just at that time; and as has been told in Chapter III., according to the wise custom of the day in Holland, and consequently in America, a collection was taken up at the wedding. Kieft asked that it be employed for the building of a church; and soon a stone church seventy-two feet long and fifty-five feet wide was erected within the Fort. It was the finest building in New Netherland, and bore on its face a stone inscribed with these words: “Anno Domini 1641, William Kieft, Director-General, hath the Commonalty built this Temple.” It was used by the congregation as a church for fifty years, and for half a century longer by the military as a post-building, when it was burned.

There was no church in Breuckelen in 1660. Domine Selyns wrote, “We preach in a barn.” The church was built six years later, and is described as square, with thick stone walls and steep peaked roof surmounted by a small open belfry, in which hung the small, sharp-toned bell which had been sent over as a gift by the West India Company. The walls were so panelled with dark wood, the windows were so high and narrow, that it was always dark and gloomy within; even in summer-time it was impossible to see to read in it after four o’clock in the afternoon. Services were held in summer at 9 A. M. and 2 P. M., and in the winter in the morning only. The windows were eight feet from the floor, and were darkened with stained glass sent from Holland, representing flower-pots with vines covered with vari-colored flowers. This church stood in the middle of the road on what is now Fulton Street, a mile from the ferry, and was used until 1810.

These early churches were unheated, and it is told that the half-frozen domines preached with heavy knit or fur caps pulled over their ears, and wearing mittens, or wollen handt-schoenen; and that myn heer as well as myn vrouw carried muffs. It is easy to fancy some men carrying muffs,—some love-locked Cavalier or mincing Horace Walpole; but such feminine gear seems to consort ill with an Albany Dutchman. That he should light his long pipe in meeting was natural enough,—to keep warm; though folk do say that he smoked in meeting in summer too,—to keep cool. By the middle of the eighteenth century the Albany and Schenectady churches had stoves perched up on pillars on a level with the gallery,—in high disregard or ignorance of the laws of calorics; hence, of course, the galleries, in which sat the men, were fairly heated, while the ground floor and the vrouws remained below in icy frigidity. It is told of more than one old-time sexton, that he loudly asserted his office and his importance by noisy rattling-down and replenishing of the gallery stoves and slamming of the iron doors at the most critical point in the domine’s sermon. Cornelius Van Schaick, the Albany sexton, made his triumphant way to the stoves, slashing with his switch (perhaps his dog-whip) all the boys who chanced to be in his way.

The women of the congregation carried foot-stoves of perforated metal or wood, which were filled with a box of living coals, to afford a little warmth to the feet. Many now living remember the scratching sound of these stoves on the boards or the sanded floor as they were passed from warm feet to cold feet near at hand. Kerck-stooven appear on the earliest inventories, were used in America until our own day, and still are used in the churches in Holland. In an anteroom in a Leyden church may be seen several hundred stooven for use in the winter.

It is stated of the churches in New York City that until 1802 services were held, even in the winter-time, with wide-open doors, and that often the snow lay in little drifts up the aisles,—which may have been one reason why young folk flocked to Trinity Church.

One very handsome church-equipment of the women attendants of the Dutch Reformed church was the Psalm-book. This was usually bound with the New Testament; and both were often mounted and clasped with silver. Sometimes they had two silver rings at the back through which ribbons could be passed, to hang thereby the books on the back of a chair if desired. Sometimes the books had silver chains. Rarely they were mounted in gold. The inventory of the estate of nearly every well-to-do Dutch woman, resident of New York, Albany, or the larger towns, shows one, and sometimes half-a-dozen of these silver-mounted Psalm-books. Elizabeth Van Es had two Bibles with silver clasps, two Psalm-books, and two Catechisms. These books were somewhat dingily printed, in old Dutch, on coarse but durable paper; the music was on every page beside the words. The notes of music were square, heavily printed, rough-hewn, angular notes,—“like stones in the walls of a churchyard,” says Longfellow of the Psalm-book of the Pilgrims. The metrical version of the Psalms was simple and impressive, and is certainly better literary work in Dutch than is the Bay Psalm-book in English.

The services in these churches were long. They were opened by reading and singing conducted by the voorleezer or voorzanger,—that general-utility man who was usually precentor, schoolmaster, bell-ringer, sexton, grave-digger, and often town-clerk. As ordered by the Assembly of XIX., in 1645, he “tuned the psalm;” and during the first singing the domine entered, and, pausing for a few moments, sometimes kneeling at the foot of the pulpit-stairs, in silent prayer, he soon ascended to his platform of state. The psalms were given out to the congregation through the medium of a large hanging-board with movable printed slips, and this was in the charge of the voorleezer. Of course the powers of this church functionary varied in different towns. In all he seems to have had charge of the turning of the hour-glass which stood near the pulpit in sight of the domine. In Kingston, where the pulpit was high, he thrust up to the preacher the notices stuck in the end of a cleft stick. In this town, at the time of the Revolution, he was also paid two shillings per annum by each family to go around and knock loudly on the door each Sunday morning to warn that it was service-time. In some towns he was permitted to give three sharp raps of warning with his staff on the pulpit when the hour-glass had run out a second time,—thus shutting off the sermon. The voorleezer is scarcely an obsolete church-officer to-day. In 1865 died the last Albany voorleezer, and the Flatbush voorleezer is well remembered and beloved.

The clerk in New Amsterdam was a marked personage on Sunday. After he had summoned the congregation by the sound of drum or bell, he ceremoniously formed a pompous little procession of his underlings, and, heading the line, he carried with their assistance the cushions from the City Hall to the church, to furnish comfortably the “Magistrate’s Pew,” in which the burgomasters and schepens sat.

The deacons had full control of all the funds of the church; they collected the contributions of the congregation by walking up and down the aisles and thrusting in front of each “range” of seats in the face of the seated people small cloth contribution-bags, or sacjes, hung on a hoop at the end of a slender pole six or eight feet in length,—fashioned, in fact, somewhat after the model of scoop-nets. This custom—the use of so unfamiliar a medium for church-collecting—gave rise to the amusing notion of one observant English traveller that Dutch deacons passed round their old hats on the end of a walking-stick to gather church-contributions.

Often a little bell hung at the bottom of the contribution-bag, or was concealed in an ornamenting tassel, and by its suggestive tinkle-tinkle warned all church-attendants of the approach of the deacon, and perhaps aroused the peaceful church-sleepers from too selfish dreams of profitable barter in peltries. In New Utrecht the church sacje had an alarm-bell which sounded only when a contribution was made. A loud-speaking silence betrayed the stingy church-goer. The collection was usually taken up in the middle of a sermon. The sacjes stood or hung conveniently in the deacon’s seat. In Flatbush and other towns the deacons paused for a time in front of the pulpit—sacje in hand—while the domine enjoined generosity to the church and kindly Christian thought of the poor. The collection-bags in Flatbush were of velvet.

It is said that stray Indians who chanced to wander or were piously persuaded to enter into the Fort Orange or Albany church during service-time, and who did not well understand the pulpit eloquence of the Dutch tongue, regarded with suspicious and disapproving eyes the unfailing and unreasonable appearance of the karck-sacje; for they plainly perceived that there was some occult law of cause and effect which could be deduced from these two facts,—the traders who gave freely into the church-bags on Sunday always beat down the price of beaver on Monday.

The bill for one of these karck-sacjes was paid by the deacons of the Albany church in 1682. Seven guilders were given for the black stuff and two skeins of silk, and two guilders for the making. When a ring was bought for the sack (I suppose to hold it open at the top), it cost four guilders. This instrument of church-collection lingered long in isolated localities. It is vaguely related that some karck-sacjes are still in existence and still used. The church at New Utrecht possessed and exhibited theirs at their bicentennial celebration a few years ago. The fate of the sacje was decreed when the honest deacons were forced to conclude that it could, if artfully manipulated by designing moderns, conceal far too well the amount given by each contributor, and equally well concealed the many and heavy stones deposited therein by vain youth of Dutch descent but American ungodliness. So an open-faced full-in-view pewter or silver plate was substituted and passed in its place. In 1813 the church at Success, Long Island, bought contribution plates and abandoned the sacje. Some lovers of the good old times resented this inevitable exposure of the amount of each gift, and turned away from the deacon and his innovating fashion and refused to give at all.

I ought to add, in defence of the karck-sacjes, and in praise of the early congregations, that the amount gathered each week was most generous, and in proportion far in advance of our modern church-contributions. The poor were not taken charge of by state or town, but were liberally cared for in each community by its church; occasionally, however, assistance was given through the assignment to the church by the courts of a portion of the money paid as fines in civil and criminal cases. In New York a deacon’s house with nurses resident, took the place of an almshouse.

Often during the year much more money was collected than was needful for the current expenses of the church. In Albany the extra collections were lent out at eight per cent interest; at one time four thousand guilders were lent to one man. The deacons who took charge of the treasury chest in Albany each year rendered an account of its contents. In 1665 there were in this chest seelver-gelt, sea-want, and obligasse, or obligations, to the amount of 2829 guilders. In 1667 there were 3299 guilders; also good Friesland stockings and many ells of linen to be given to the poor.

In some churches poor-boxes were placed at the door. The Garden Street Church in New York had two strong boxes bound with iron, with a small hole in the padlocked lid, and painted with the figure of a beggar leaning on a staff,—which, according to the testimony of travellers, was a sight unknown in reality in New York at that time.

The “church-poor,” as they were called, fared well in New Netherland. Of degraded poor of Dutch birth or descent there were none. Some poor folk, and old or sickly, having a little property, transferred it to the Consistory, who paid it out as long as it lasted, and cheerfully added to the amount by gifts from the church-treasury as long as was necessary for the support of those “of the poorer sort.” To show that these church-poor were neither neglected nor despised, let me give one example of a case—an ordinary one—from the deacons’ records of the Albany church in 1695. Claes Janse was assigned at that time to live with Hans Kros and his wife Antje. They were to provide him with logement, kost, drank, wassen (lodging, food, drink, and washing), and for this were paid forty guilders a month by the church. When Claes died, the church paid for his funeral, which apparently left nothing undone in the way of respectability. The bill reads thus:—

With a good dry coffin, a good dry grave, and a far from dry funeral, Hans Claes’ days, though he were of the church-poor, ended in honor.

The earlier Dutch ministers were some of them rather rough characters. Domine Bogardus, in New Amsterdam, and Domine Schaets, in Fort Orange, were most unclerical in demeanor, both in and out of the pulpit. Both were engaged in slander suits, the former as libeller and defendant; both were abusive and personal in the pulpit, “dishonoring the church by passion.” The former was alleged by his enemies to be frequently drunk, in church and abroad; and, fearless of authority, he seized the pulpit as a convenient and prominent platform from which he could denounce his opposers. From his high post he scolded the magistrates, called opprobrious names (a hateful offence in New Amsterdam), threatened Wouter Van Twiller that he would give “from the pulpit such a shake as would make him shudder.” He even arbitrarily refused the Communion, thereby causing constant scandal and dissension. The magistrates doubtless deserved all his rebukes, but in their written admonition to him they appear with some dignity, expressing themselves forcibly and concisely thus: “Your bad tongue is the cause of these divisions, and your obstinacy the cause of their continuance;” and it is difficult now to assign the blame and odium of this quarrel very decidedly to either party.

The domine did not have everything his own way on Sundays, for the Director drowned his vociferations by ordering the beating of drums and firing of cannon outside the church during services; and denounced the sermons in picturesque language as “the rattling of old wives’ stories drawn out from a distaff.”

The Labadist travellers thus described the Albany domine:—

In turn the Lutheran minister was dubbed by the Dutch domines “a rolling, rollicking, unseemly carl, more inclined to pore over the wine-kan than to look into the Bible.” And we all know what both Lutherans and Dutch thought of the Quaker preachers; so all denominations appear equally rude.

The salaries of the ministers were liberal even in early days; that of Domine Megapolensis (the second minister sent to New Netherland) was, I think, a very fair one. He agreed to remain in the colony six years, and was given free passage for himself and family to the new world; an outfit of three hundred guilders; a salary of three hundred guilders a year for three years, and five hundred annually during the three remaining years; and an annual tithe of thirty schepels of wheat and two firkins of butter. If he died before the term expired, his wife was to have a pension of a hundred guilders a year for the unexpired term. The first revenue relinquished by the West India Company to the town of New Amsterdam was the “tapster’s excise,”—the excise on wine, beer, and spirits,—and the sole condition made by Stuyvesant on its surrender, as to its application, was that the salaries of the two domines should be paid from it.

As time passed on, firewood became one of the minister’s perquisites, in addition to his salary, sixty or seventy loads a season. We find the Schenectady congregation having a “bee” to gather in the domine’s wood; and the Consistory supplied plentiful wine, rum, and beer as a treat for the “bee.”

What Cotton Mather called the “angelical conjunction” of piety and physic sometimes was found in the person of the ministers of the Dutch Reformed church, but not so constantly as among the Puritan ministers. Domine Rubel, sent out by the Classis of Amsterdam, was settled over the churches in Kings County. He was more devoted to the preparation of quack medicines than to the saving of souls. One of his advertisements of March 28, 1778, reads thus:—

This does not let us wonder that after a while his parish became dissatisfied with his ministrations, and that he ended his days in dishonor.

The employment of the Dutch language in the pulpit in New York churches lasted until into this century. Naturally, Dutch was used as long as the Classis at Amsterdam supplied the churches in America with preachers. In 1744 Domine Rubel and Domine Van Sinderin were sent to Flatbush, the last ministers sent from the Classis of Amsterdam to any American church; but at their death the Dutch tongue was not silent in the Flatbush church; for their successor, Domine Schoonmaker, lived to be ninety years old, and never preached but one sermon in English. With his death, in 1824, ceased the public use of the Dutch language in the Flatbush pulpit. Until the year 1792 the entire service in his church was “the gospel undefiled, in Holland Dutch.” Until the year 1830 services in the sequestered churches in the Catskills were held alternately in Dutch and English. Until 1777 all the records of the Sleepy Hollow church were kept in Dutch; and in 1785 all its services were in Dutch. In September of that year, a little child, Lovine Hauws, was baptized in English by the new minister, Rev. Stephen Van Voorhees. This raised a small Dutch tempest, and the new domine soon left that parish.

In New York City the large English immigration, the constant requirements and influences of commerce, and the frequent intermarriages of the English and Dutch robbed the Dutch language of its predominance by the middle of the eighteenth century. Rev. Dr. Laidlie preached in 1764 the first English sermon to a Dutch Reformed congregation. By 1773 English was used in the Dutch school, and young people began to shun the Dutch services.

The growth of the Dutch Reformed church in New York was slow; this was owing to three marked and direct causes:—

First, from 1693 until Revolutionary times Episcopacy was virtually established by law in a large part of the province,—in the city and county of New York, and in the counties of Westchester, Richmond, and Queens; and though the Dutch Reformed church was protected and respected, people of all denominations were obliged to contribute to the support of the Episcopal church.

Second, the English language had become the current language of the province; in the schools, the courts, in all public business it was the prevailing tongue, while the services of the Dutch Reformed church were by preference held in Dutch.

Third, all candidates for ministry in the Dutch Reformed church were obliged to go to Holland for ordination; this was a great expense, and often kept congregations without a minister for a long time. The entire discipline of the church—all the Courts of Appeal—was also in the Fatherland.

In order to obtain relief from the last-named hampering condition, a few ministers in America devised a plan, in 1737, to secure church-organization in New York. It took the slow-moving Classis of Amsterdam ten years to signify approval of this plan, and a body was formed, named the Cœtus. But this had merely advisory powers, and in less than ten years it asked to be constituted a Classis with full ecclesiastical powers. From this step arose a violent and bitter quarrel, which lasted fifteen years,—until 1771,—between the Cœtus party, the Reformers, and the Conferentie party, the Conservatives. The permission of the Classis of Amsterdam for American church independence was finally given on condition of establishing a college for the proper training of the ministry of the Dutch Reformed church. The Cœtus party obtained a charter from George III. for a college, which, called Queens College, was blighted in its birth by the Revolution, but lived with varying prosperity until its successful revival, under the name of Rutgers College, in 1825.