Wearied of his efforts to coax and threaten the Breuckelen opposition into paying the tax, Stuyvesant at last (in July, 1658) forbade all inhabitants of the three towns to remove grain from their fields until all tithes were taken or commuted. There was no escape from this, and the tax was paid.
Two years later Breuckelen secured a preacher of her own in the person of the Rev. Henricus Selyns,[23] a preacher whose ancestors had been prominent in the earliest days of the Dutch Reformed Church, and who had been reared in the traditions of this flourishing denomination. He engaged to serve Breuckelen for four years.
When, in September, 1660, Dominie Selyns preached his first sermon in the Breuckelen barn which served as a house of worship, the population of the village was one hundred and thirty-four persons, representing thirty-one families. The preacher had been promised a salary of one hundred florins, but when an effort was made to raise funds the magistrates found themselves under the necessity of appealing to the Director for aid. Stuyvesant offered to pay one hundred and fifty guilders, provided Mr. Selyns would also preach every afternoon at his "bouwery" on Manhattan Island. This arrangement was duly made. In 1661, when Breuckelen received from the West India Company, by request of Dominie Selyns, a bell for the church, there were fifty-two communicants. Meanwhile, Mr. Selyns was living at New Amsterdam, and in 1662 an effort was made to induce the preacher to live in Breuckelen, on the theory of the schepens that, if he did so bring himself among them, "the community would be more willing and ready to bring in their respective quotas." It does not appear that the Dominie found it convenient to live in Breuckelen, but there is no doubt of his zeal nor of his popularity. When, in 1664, the Dominie returned to Holland, it was with the regrets and good wishes of the little band of Breuckelen parishioners.
The Dutch attitude toward education was in many respects very different from that which prevailed among the English. At the time of the settlement of New England and New Amsterdam, Holland was far in advance of other European states in ideas of popular education. Mr. Campbell[24] places Holland two hundred years in advance of any other country in Europe at the time of the Puritan emigration. There was, indeed, an extraordinary contrast between "the free cities" of the Netherlands and their neighbors at this time. "The whole population," says May,[25] "was educated. The higher classes were singularly accomplished. The University of Leyden was founded for the learned education of the rich, and free schools were established for the general education." Common schools had, indeed, been founded in the sixteenth century, and in the seventeenth the children of all classes were taught at the public expense.
Such ideas of educational democracy had not appeared in England at the time when education first began to be considered in this country. Mr. Draper[26] notes that there was no school but the Latin school in Boston for thirty-five years after the passage of the so-called compulsory education law of 1647. Nor did the early Massachusetts schools receive all the children of the people. "No boys were received under seven years of age till 1818. No girls of any age were admitted prior to 1789. It was one hundred and forty-two years after the passage of the so-called compulsory school law of 1647 before Boston admitted one girl to her so-called 'free schools,' and it was one hundred and eighty-one years thereafter before girls had facilities equal to those enjoyed by their brothers."
On the other hand, New Amsterdam had a professional schoolmaster as early as 1633, and with him popular common school education began in this country. Prior to 1662, there were as many as ten persons licensed to keep private schools or to teach on their own account, and Furman states that young men from both the New England and the Virginia colonies came to New Amsterdam to be educated. Speaking of the movement of 1658, looking to the establishment of a Latin school at New Amsterdam, and of the comment thereon by Mr. George H. Martin, representing the State Board of Education of Massachusetts, Mr. Draper says:—
"Mr. Martin seems to make much of the fact that the petition for the sending over of a Latin master stated that there was no Latin school nearer than Boston, but overlooks the fact that there had previously been a Latin school at New Amsterdam, and also the other fact that there was no school at Plymouth, and none but a Latin school at Boston, and that it received only a few of the brighter boys of the wealthier families, to prepare them for college and the ministry."
The earliest laws of the colony show that for the support of schools "each householder and inhabitant should bear such tax and public charge as should be considered proper for their maintenance."[27]
The first schoolmaster in Breuckelen made his appearance in 1661, on the 4th day of July, in which year the following petition was presented:—