The Lawyer and the Fox: A Tale of Tricks and Treachery in New Amsterdam

By Jaap Jacobs

Editor’s Note: In early March 1649, Petrus Stuyvesant, the last director-general of the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam, summoned his councilors to decide the fate of Adriaen van der Donck (the lawyer and landowner for whom Yonkers is named), then being held under house arrest. It seems to have been a fractious meeting, with some calling for him to answer questions at Fort Amsterdam and others calling for him to be interrogated at home to keep him under confinement. The rest seemed intent on refusing to offer an opinion. The conflict has long seemed important to historians, some of whom understood it as part of the first stirrings of American democracy, with Van der Donck cast as a hero seeking to break the autocratic rule of the West India Company under Stuyvesant. Others have argued that it was a clash of attitudes with the liberal Van der Donck challenging the intolerant Stuyvesant. Here Jaap Jacobs sheds new light on this mystery, showing how the standoff between the two men in New Amsterdam was actually part of a much larger argument in the Netherlands over the nature of good governance, one which pitted the merchant regents of Amsterdam against the nobility of the Dutch Republic. His reading of the conflict leads to a new interpretation of the incorporation of New Amsterdam and thus of the founding of the government of New York City.

Title page of Adriaen van Der Donck’s Beschryvinge van Nieuw-Nederlant, 1656
Image from Library of Congress

Adriaen van der Donck is best known as the writer of A Description of New Netherland. Born in Breda, a few years before that city was conquered by Habsburg forces in 1625, he and his parents fled northwards, only able to return after the city’s recapture in 1637. A year later, Van der Donck matriculated at Leiden University to read law, and subsequently served as chief judicial officer at Rensselaerswijck in New Netherland, before leaving and starting his own patroonship, Colendonck, just north of Manhattan. He subsequently entered politics, then rife with conflict after the utterly devastating Kieft’s War, with the Lenape, for which many in the colony blamed the West India Company.  In 1649, he traveled back to the Dutch Republic to present a remonstrance to the States General, which criticized the Company’s governance, returning to New Netherland only in 1653. Thereafter, he stayed out of public life until his death at the hands of Native Americans, two years later.

Historians of New Netherland have largely viewed Adriaen van der Donck positively, portraying him as a conduit for enlightened Dutch tolerance into North America. But this image of Adriaen van der Donck is hard to reconcile with the historical record. In fact, many aspects of his life point the other way. Van der Donck’s exile from Breda, his marriage to a daughter of a puritan minister from England, and his continuing membership of the Calvinist church suggest that his engagement in colonial projects stemmed from religious motives very like other New England colonists: the desire to create a safe haven overseas, free from persecution. If so, Van der Donck entertained religious ideas quite similar to those of Petrus Stuyvesant.

Petrus Stuyvesant, the Franeker Fox, requires only a brief introduction. Born into an orthodox Calvinist family in the early 1610s, in Peperga, Friesland, a province in the north of the Dutch Republic, he enrolled as a student at the University of Franeker in 1630. He later served the Dutch West India Company on the Brazilian island Fernando de Noronha, and on the Caribbean island of Curaçao, where he was in charge of the stores in 1639 and became director in 1642. He returned to the Netherlands after losing his right leg at the Spanish-held island of St. Martin, but was subsequently, and most famously, appointed by the West India Company as director general of New Netherland, the Dutch colony that stretched from the Delaware River to the Connecticut River, with Manhattan and the Hudson River as its backbone.

If Van der Donck and Stuyvesant had a similar religious outlook, what then lies at the root of their conflict?

In order to answer that question, I reconstructed the struggle between Van der Donck and Stuyvesant and their networks in New Netherland and the Dutch Republic as they evolved from 1649 – when Stuyvesant and van der Donck’s conflict began – to 1653 – when the conflict concluded.  Between the conclusion of Kieft’s War in 1645 and 1649, New Netherland was riven by conflict over the conduct of the war.  Adriaen van der Donck, however, had hardly played a part, even though he was a member of the colonial advisory council, the “Nine Men.” By late summer 1649, however, relations between Stuyvesant and Van der Donck had deteriorated into open conflict, which had to be resolved by authorities in the Dutch Republic. So Van der Donck made the transatlantic journey and then used several means to further his side’s case that New Netherland’s government should be restructured. For instance, he produced an inflammatory pamphlet, entitled Broad Advice. The anonymous pamphlet blames the mercantile inclinations of the directors of the West India Company for their failure to properly govern the colonies. In October 1649, Van der Donck submitted several documents, including the Remonstrance, to the States General. These were turned over to its committee for West Indian affairs for further perusal. Most importantly, through his network Van der Donck had become affiliated with a political faction in the Dutch Republic that supported the stadtholder, Willem II, in his struggle with Amsterdam. The faction included two brothers, Alexander and Hendrick van der Capellen, who both played an important role in the States General and its committee for West Indian affairs. Another member was Johan van Reede van Renswoude, who often chaired the plenary meetings of the States General.

Portrait of Willem II (1626-1650), Prince of Orange by Gerard van Honthorst, 1651
Image from Rijksmuseum

Alexander van der Capellen assumed the chair of the committee for West Indian affairs in 1650, which allowed Van der Donck the opportunity to press his case. In April 1650, the committee sent the plenary session a “provisional order” with sweeping measures to restructure New Netherland’s government. If implemented, this would radically change the composition of the colony’s government, which then consisted of a director general and his council.  The new government would be composed of a director and vice director and three members, one of whom would be jointly appointed by the West India Company and the States General. The other two would be nominated by an assembly consisting of representatives of the patroons and the colonists. Second, Stuyvesant would be recalled. Third, a city government would be instituted in New Amsterdam, consisting of a schout (Sheriff), two Burgomasters, and five schepenen (Aldermen).

The delegates of New Netherland reacted enthusiastically to these proposals, of course, especially as Van der Donck (one of the very few non-absentee patroons) would be an obvious candidate for a council seat.  But there was immediate opposition from the Amsterdam chamber of the West India Company. In their reply, the Company’s directors proposed a number of changes to the governmental reforms. They also objected to the recall of Stuyvesant. The proposed format for New Amsterdam’s new city government was not controversial; there was no reason for the Amsterdam directors to object to it. Far more important was what the powers of a New Amsterdam city government might be, and who would be appointed as Burgomasters and schepenen.

With political tensions between the stadtholder and Amsterdam reaching a boiling point in the summer of 1650, the Dutch Republic on the brink of civil war, and the reforms of New Netherland lost urgency. The tension subsided when stadtholder Willem II suddenly died, in November 1650. As a result, Alexander and Hendrick van der Capellen were unable to help Adriaen van der Donck for much of 1651. After months of being absent, Hendrick van der Capellen returned to The Hague, in early 1652. There is no doubt that Van der Donck had kept in close contact with the Van der Capellens during their absence, for the very same day that they returned he entered another petition, urging a final decision of the previously submitted plans to change New Netherland’s government. As he planned to return to New Netherland shortly, he asked for a speedy decision.

West India House at Amsterdam by Claes Jansz. Visscher, 1623-1626
Image from Rijksmuseum

As soon as this news reached the Amsterdam chamber of the West India Company, the directors informed the Amsterdam city government. There was still time to block pending resolutions. On the 27th of April, the committee for West India affairs submitted a draft resolution for the recall of Stuyvesant to the plenary session. The chair that week was Johan van Reede van Renswoude, who managed to get the job done: Stuyvesant was ordered to return immediately. Van der Donck was granted a letter to that effect, which he was to hand to Stuyvesant personally. The chamber of Amsterdam would be informed of the resolution by letter.

Joannes de Reede
Image from Folger Shakespeare Library

The plan could have worked, if Van der Donck had been able to arrive in New Netherland before any counter-orders reached the colony. The Amsterdam chamber needed to be kept in the dark as long as possible. Johan van Reede van Renswoude drafted a short letter to the Amsterdam Directors, with a copy of the resolution. Usually, a letter from The Hague to Amsterdam took no more than two or three days. In this case, the letter, signed by Johan van Reede van Renswoude and dated April 27th, did not arrive in Amsterdam until two weeks later. Clearly, Van Reede van Renswoude or someone else had deliberately delayed it. The directors in Amsterdam immediately took countermeasures. First, they tried to block Van der Donck’s return to New Netherland. Second, they sent a letter to Stuyvesant, informing him that he should not make haste in returning to the Dutch Republic.

The third countermeasure was to dispatch Company director Jacob Pergens to The Hague. Van der Donck submitted a final request to the States General on May 13th, asking for some last safeguards. But after this request was read in the plenary session, the delegates of Holland requested a delay. This was an ill portent for Van der Donck. He decided to leave without the requested papers, but still had time to go to a notary and obtain a proxy from Alexander van der Capellen to represent him in the founding of a new patroonship on Long Island. Then, he left for Amsterdam, where on May 15th he hired a few servants for the estate. But it was already too late. After arriving in The Hague, Pergens had contacted several members of the States of Holland. The next morning, May 16th, the Amsterdam Burgomaster Cornelis de Graeff, the former Burgomaster Cornelis Bicker, accompanied by six or seven delegates to the States of Holland went over to the plenary session of the States General and announced that the decision to recall Stuyvesant required the approval of the States of Holland. As a result, the resolution was withdrawn and Van der Donck was ordered to return the letter. It was a powerplay by Amsterdam and Holland that thwarted Van der Donck’s last chance.

Meanwhile, Stuyvesant had acted decisively in New Amsterdam. In December 1650, he appointed new members of the Nine Men, more favorable to the West India Company. None of the members from 1647 through 1650 were still in office by 1652. This purge resulted in the opposition becoming divided: many former supporters of Van der Donck gradually dropped their hostility towards the West India Company and Stuyvesant. Meanwhile, the hardcore members of the patroon faction were marginalized. This made it safe to grant New Amsterdam city rights, as Stuyvesant and his council suggested to the Amsterdam chamber in late 1651.

After permission had been granted in early 1652, Stuyvesant proceeded to install the city government of New Amsterdam on February 2, 1653, the customary day to install new Burgomasters in Amsterdam, a tradition dating back to the late fourteenth century. Five of the members of the purged Nine Men were appointed to the city government, none of them enemies of the Company, thus providing the foundation for a good relationship with director general and council. Rather than a victory for Van der Donck and a colonial drive for self-government, the incorporation of New Amsterdam provided the West India Company with an institutional instrument to keep discontents at bay.

Nieuw Amsterdam ofte Nue New Iorx opt' t.Eylant Man" [View of New Amsterdam/New York]
Image from Nationaal Archief, den Haag

Putting the struggle between the Leiden Lawyer and the Franeker Fox within its Dutch context yields a revised interpretation of the role of participants, events, and decisive factors in New Netherland. The conflict may have found its starting point in colonial events, but its trajectory was determined by the shifts in the balance of power overseas in Europe. It was a transatlantic struggle for power between the Amsterdam Chamber and its officers in New Netherland, on the one hand, and the patroons supported by the stadtholder faction in the States General, on the other. Due to the First Anglo-Dutch War, Van der Donck could not return to New Netherland. He spent his time in the Dutch Republic writing his Description of the colony, and obtaining his doctorate in law at Leiden. Before he returned, Van der Donck had to promise not to meddle in politics any more. He probably intended to make Colendonck, his patroonship, a success. But he was never able to do so, and died in the Native American war. There is no reason to doubt that Stuyvesant and Van der Donck both wanted the Dutch colony to grow and prosper, however. And that gives a tragic tinge to this tale of the Leiden Lawyer and the Franeker fox.

Jaap Jacobs is an Honorary Reader in the School of History at the University of St. Andrews. He is currently working on a biography of Petrus Stuyvesant.

* The article is based on a lecture given for the New Amsterdam History Center on October 3, 2019. A slightly different version appeared in the New Amsterdam History Center Newsletter, New Amsterdam Yesterday and Today, vol. II, no. 2 (Fall 2019) (http://newamsterdamhistorycenter.org/news/). For more, see Jaap Jacobs, “‘Act with the Cunning of a Fox’: The Political Dimensions of the Struggle for Hegemony over New Netherland, 1647-1653,” Journal of Early American History 8, no. 2 (2018), 122-52.