136 HISTORY OF BROOKLYN.

Governor and Council that they would pay for him a debt of 100 guilders, alleging as an excuse that lie had been obliged to contract it, inasmuch as lie had only received some fl. 200 out of his fl. 1,000 salary, and had a large family to support.1 The Council kindly allowed him the sum of 60 guilders. In the course of the next month, the court messenger reported “that several of the Breuckelen people were still unwilling to pay their share of the tax.”2 This was followed by several complaints from the minister, in which lie represents that his house had not been finished according to contract, that lie had served as pastor in the three villages from October, 1654, to April 7, 1657, without salary, and as he came to this country “naked,” he has been obliged from time to time to get his supplies from the Company's stores, until his bill amounted to 942 guilders, which he wanted made up. By order of the Council, the sum was granted and his account was balanced.3 Meanwhile, in the midst of this disaffection among the inhabitants of Breuckelen in regard to their minister, a new element of discord had arisen within the jurisdiction of the Dutch Government. The Quakers, banished incontinently from all the self-righteous colonies of New England (except, be it always remembered, from Rhode Island), ventured to find in Now Netherlands the home and the liberty of conscience which was elsewhere denied them. Unfortunately they only stepped from the “frying-pan into the fire.” Heavy fines, scourgings, solitary imprisonments and banishments were the only welcome that met them; and when the people of Flushing nobly protested against such intolerance as totally at variance with the law of Christian love and the rights of their charter, they brought down upon themselves a whirlwind of indignation and summary punishment from Governor Stuyvesant and his clerical advisers. In spite, however, of these severe measures against Flushing, the infection rapidly spread through Long Island. Jamaica, Gravesend, and Hempstead soon developed the germs of Quakerism, which no civil persecution has ever crushed out even to this day. Symptoms of disaffection also appeared at Brooklyn—or, rather, perhaps, as is usual in a disaffected community, the new principle of non-conformity was used

1 N. Y. Col. MSS., viii. 515, 516.

2 Ibid., viii. 563.

3 Ibid., viii. 705.