of the French proved ultimately to be fatal. Their
settlements were almost exclusively devoted to the lucrative trade with
the Indians and were not taking root in the soil. With all its
advantages, the Dutch colony could not compete with New England.[70:1]
To meet this difficulty an expedient was adopted which was not long in
beginning to plague the inventors. A vast tract of territory, with
feudal rights and privileges, was offered to any man settling a colony
of fifty persons. The disputes which soon arose between these powerful
vassals and the sovereign Company had for one effect the recall of Peter
Minuit from his position of governor. Never again was the unlucky colony
to have so competent and worthy a head as this discarded elder of the
church. Nevertheless the scheme was not altogether a failure.

In 1633 arrived a new pastor, Everard Bogardus, in the same ship with a
schoolmaster--the first in the colony--and the new governor, Van
Twiller. The governor was incompetent and corrupt, and the minister was
faithful and plain-spoken; what could result but conflict? During Van
Twiller's five years of mismanagement, nevertheless, the church emerged
from the mill-loft and was installed in a barn-like meeting-house of
wood. During the equally wretched administration of Kieft, the governor,
listening to the reproaches of a guest, who quoted the example of New
England, where the people were wont to build a fine church as soon as
they had houses for themselves, was incited to build a stone church
within the fort. There seems to have been little else that he did for
the kingdom of heaven. Pastor Bogardus is entitled to the respect of
later ages for the chronic quarrel that he kept up with the worthless
representatives of the Company. At length his righteous rebuke of an
atrociously wicked massacre of neighboring Indians perpetrated by Kieft
brought matters to a head. The two antagonists sailed in the same ship,
in 1647, to lay their dispute before the authorities in Holland, the
Company and the classis. The case went to a higher court. The ship was
cast away and both the parties were drowned.

Meanwhile the patroon Van Rensselaer, on his great manor near Albany,
showed some sense of his duty to the souls of the people whom he had
brought out into the wilderness. He built a church and put into the
pastoral charge over his subjects one who, under his travestied name of
Megapolensis, has obtained a good report as a faithful min