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By Root 7386 0

of the burgomasters and schepens “in all things as good subjects are bound to do.” Then, early in December, they invited delegates from the Long Island towns to a second meeting in the Stadhuis. Nineteen men, all of New Amsterdam’s burgomasters and schepens among them, signed a “Humble Remonstrance and Petition” that described their “apprehension of the establishment of an Arbitrary Government among us.” It was, they declared, “one of our privileges that our consent or that of our representatives is necessarily required in the enactment of . . . laws and orders.” Stuyvesant curtly rejected the petition and ordered the “so-called delegates” to disperse at once “under pain of our extreme displeasure and arbitrary correction.” They sent the petition to the West India Company and went home.

The company sided with Stuyvesant. In the spring of 1654 it rebuked the magistrates for allowing themselves to become “stirred up by the disaffected,” for holding “an independent Assembly without authority,” and for drawing up “inexpedient” petitions containing “forged pretexts for an imminent factious sedition.” Yet Stuyvesant didn’t win everything. The company allowed the magistrates to have the wine and beer excise and authorized them to collect “any new small excise or impost with consent of the Commonality . . . unless the Director General and Council have any reason to the contrary.” The magistrates also received a city seal for registering deeds and mortgages on municipal real estate and were given permanent occupation of the City Hall.

The summer of 1654 brought news that the war between England and Holland had ended with the signing of a formal treaty of peace. Although neither side had won, New Amsterdam at least was safe—for the time being. “Praise the Lord!” Stuyvesant exclaimed in his official proclamation of the event. “Praise the Lord!” In mid-August the town celebrated its deliverance with a giant bonfire and free beer supplied by the magistrates.

Over the next decade, Stuyvesant and the magistrates jointly ran the town, constantly bickering over precedence and maneuvering for petty advantages with no clearcut division of duties between them. On one important measure, however, they managed to cooperate without apparent difficulty, and that was the creation, in 1657, of a two-tiered system of municipal citizenship. Any native-born resident of the town, anyone who had lived there (“kept fire and light”) for at least one year and six weeks, or anyone willing to spend twenty guilders for the privilege was eligible for the common or small burgher-right. This provided full freedom of New Amsterdam and the all-important right to practice a trade or carry on business. For fifty guilders, city residents, ministers of the gospel, and military officers could purchase the great burgher-right, qualifying them to fill all “offices and dignities within this City, and consequently be nominated thereto.” Both the great and small burgher-rights were open to women.

Stuyvesant and nineteen others immediately had themselves enrolled as great burghers. Their ranks included one woman, Ragel (Rachel) van Tienhoven, wife of Cornelius. An additional 238 persons subsequently received the small burgher-right, among them ten carpenters, six shoemakers, five tailors, four coopers, two masons, two smiths, two sawyers, one pot baker, one chimney sweep, and one carter.

IMPERILED PERIPHERY

In 1650 Stuyvesant journeyed up to Hartford to resolve the long-standing boundary dispute between New Netherland and the New England colonies. The resulting Treaty of Hartford recognized English control over all of Connecticut east of Greenwich and over Long Island east of Oyster Bay. It wasn’t a bad deal, since the English had previously claimed sovereignty over the whole of New Netherland, but New Amsterdam’s resurgence underscored the need for settlements on western Long Island and upper Manhattan—both to provision its growing population and to create a buffer against the English and Indians. For obvious reasons, Stuyvesant hoped that their inhabitants would be