Laus Deo, Ship De Waegh (The Balance),
The 31st October, 1655.
Hon. Mr. Schepen Bontemantel,
Director of the Chartered West India Company,
at Amsterdam.
(1) The house of Cornelis Melyn, on Staten Island.
LETTERS OF THE DUTCH MINISTERS TO THE CLASSIS OF AMSTERDAM, 1655-1664
Reference material and sources.
Johannes Megapolensis, Samuel Drisius, and Henricus Selyns,
Letters of the Dutch Ministers to the Classis of Amsterdam,
1655-1664. In J. Franklin Jameson, ed., Narratives of New
Netherland, 1609-1664 (Original Narratives of Early American
History). NY: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1909.
INTRODUCTION
THE Dutch clergy of the Reformed Church, as has already been mentioned in a previous introduction, were men whose observations we must value because of their intelligence and their acquirements; and they also had a point of view which was to a large extent independent of the Director General and other civil officials. Hence the series of their reports to the Classis of Amsterdam is worthy of much attention. In the absence of a continuous narrative of high importance for the years from 1655 to 1664 it has been deemed best to make use for those years of certain of these clerical letters.
Of their authors, Domine Megapolensis has been already treated, in the introduction to his tract on the Mohawks. He remained at New Amsterdam through the period of the English conquest, and died there in 1669. The Reverend Samuel Drisius (Dries) was born about 1602, of Dutch parents, but was throughout his earlier life a pastor in England, until the troubles in that country caused him to return to the Netherlands. Since he was able to preach not only in Dutch but also in English and even in French, it was natural that the Classis should send him out to New Netherland in response to the urgent requests made for assistance to Megapolensis, especially in dealing with the non-Dutch population at New Amsterdam. He began his pastoral service there in 1653, and continued throughout the remainder of the period represented by this book. In 1669 he is reported as incapacitated by failing mental powers, and he died in 1673. Domine Henricus Selyns was examined as a candidate for the ministry in 1657, ordained by the Classis in 1660, called to Breukelen and inducted there in that year. He returned to Holland in 1664, before the surrender, but came back to New York in 1682 as minister of the Collegiate Church, and died there in 1701.
John Romeyn Brodhead, at the time of his remarkable mission to the Netherlands (1841), included in his endeavors a search for Dutch ecclesiastical papers bearing on New Netherland. The letters which follow were among those which he found in Amsterdam, in the archives of the Classis. In 1842 they were Lent, in 1846 given, by the Classis to the General Synod of the Reformed Dutch Church in America. To this material large Additions were made by a further search carried out in 1897-1898, by the Reverend Dr. Edward T. Corwin, acting as agent of that church, who is responsible for the translations which follow. An account of all this ecclesiastical material, under the title "The Amsterdam Correspondence," was printed by him in 1897 in the eight volume of the Papers of the American Society of Church History. He edited the material for publication in the first volume of the series called Ecclesiastical Records, State of New York, published by the state in 1901. The letters which follow are taken, with slight revision, from various pages (from page 334 to page 562) of that volume.
LETTERS OF THE DUTCH MINISTERS TO THE CLASSIS OF AMSTERDAM, 1655-1664