Colonial days in old New York

by Alice Morse Earle

Another time the contumacious Van der Veen called the Secretary a rascal. Thereat, the latter, much aggrieved, demanded “honorable and profitable reparation” for the insult. The schout judged this epithet to be a slander and an affront to the Secretary, which “affected his honor, being tender,” and the honor of the Court as well, since it was to a member of the Court, and he demanded that the notary should pay a fine of fifty guilders as an example to other slanderers, “who for trifles have constantly in their mouths curses and abuses of other honorable people.”

Another well-known notary and practitioner and pleader in the busy little Court held in the Stadt Huys was Solomon La Chair. His manuscript volume of nearly three hundred pages, containing detailed accounts of all the business he transacted in Manhattan, is now in the County Clerk’s Office in New York, and proves valuable material for the historiographer. He had much business, for he could speak and write both English and Dutch; and he was a faithful, painstaking, intelligent worker. He not only conducted lawsuits for others, but he seems to have been in constant legal hot water himself on his own account. He was sued for drinking and not paying for a can of sugared wine; and also for a half-aam of costly French wine; and he was sued for the balance of payment for a house he had purchased; he pleaded for more time, and with the ingenuous guilelessness peculiar to the law said in explanation that he had had the money gathered at one time for payment, but it had somehow dropped through his fingers. “The Court condemned to pay at once,”—not being taken in by any such simplicity as that. He had to pay a fine of twelve guilders for affronting both fire inspector and court messenger. He first insulted the brandt-meester who came to inspect his chimney, and was fined, then he called the bode who came to collect the fine “a little cock booted and spurred.” The Court in sentence said with dignity, “It is not meet that men should mock and scoff at persons appointed to any office, yea a necessary office.”

He won one important suit for the town of Gravesend, by which the right of that town to the entire region of Coney Island was established; and he received in payment for his legal services therein, the munificent sum of twenty-four florins (ten dollars) paid in gray pease. He kept a tavern and was complained of for tapping after nine o’clock; and he was sued by his landlord for rent; and he had a yacht, “The Pear Tree,” which ran on trading trips to Albany, and there were two or three lawsuits in regard to that. He was also a farmer of the excise on slaughtered cattle; but, in spite of all his energy and variety of employment, he died insolvent in 1664. The last lawsuit in which Lawyer Solomon had any share was through a posthumous connection,—the burgher who furnished an anker of French wine for the notary’s funeral claimed a position as preferred creditor to the estate.

A very aggravated case of scorn and resistance of authority was that of Abel Hardenbrock against the schout de Mill. And this case shows equally the popular horror of violations of the law and the confiding trust of the justices that the word of the law was enough without any visible restraining force. Hardenbrock, who was a troublesome fellow, had behaved most vilely, shoving the schout on the breast, and wickedly “wishing the devil might break his neck,” simply because the schout went to Hardenbrock’s house to warn his wife not to annoy further Burgomaster De Peyster by unwelcome visits. Hardenbrock was accordingly seized and made a prisoner at the Stadt Huys “in the chamber of Pieter Schaefbanck, where he carried on and made a racket like one possessed and mad, notwithstanding the efforts of Heer Burgomaster Van Brught, running up to the Court room and going away next morning as if he had not been imprisoned.” It was said with amusing simplicity that this cool walking out of prison was “contrary to the customs of the law,” and a fine of twenty-five florins was imposed.

For serious words against the government, which could be regarded as treasonable, the decreed punishment was death. One Claerbout van ter Goes used such words (unfortunately they are not given in the indictment), and a judgment was recorded from each burgomaster and schepen as to what punishment would be proper. He was branded, whipped on a half-gallows, and banished, and escaped hanging only by one vote.

All classes in the community were parties in these petty slander suits; schoolmasters and parsons appear to have been specially active. Domine Bogardus and Domine Schaets had many a slander suit. The most famous and amusing of all these clerical suits is the one brought by Domine Bogardus and his wife, the posthumously famous Anneke Jans, against Grietje von Salee, a woman of very dingy reputation, who told in New Amsterdam that the domine’s wife, Mistress Anneke, had lifted her petticoats in unseemly and extreme fashion when crossing a muddy street. This was proved to be false, and the evidence adduced was so destructive of Grietje’s character that she stands disgraced forever in history as the worst woman in New Netherland.

Not only were slanderers punished, but they were disgraced with terrible names. William Bakker was called “a blasphemer, a street schold, a murderer as far as his intentions are concerned, a defamer, a disturber of public peace,”—the concentration of which must have made William Bakker hang his head in the place of his banishment. They were also rebuked from the pulpit, and admonished in private.

Perhaps the best rebuke given, as well as a unique one, was the one adopted by Domine Frelinghuysen, who had suffered somewhat from slander himself. He had this rhyme painted in large letters on the back of his sleigh, that he who followed might read:—

“Niemands tong; nog neimands pen,

Maakt my anders dan ik ben.