he
passengers were transported to New Amsterdam. There were one hundred
and twenty-five passengers on board the Prince Maurice, seventy-six of
whom were women and children. Another ship, the Gilded Beaver, was
chartered at New Amsterdam which conveyed them all safely, after a
five days' passage, to South river. The other vessels, with soldiers
and a few settlers, also soon arrived.

It is said that at this time the "public," exercises of religion were
not allowed to any sects in Holland except the Calvinists. But all
others were permitted to engage freely in their worship in private
houses, which were in fact, as if public, these places of preaching
being spacious and of sufficient size for any assembly. Under this
construction of the law every religion was in fact tolerated.[9]

The Lutherans in Holland sent a clergyman, Ernestus Goetwater, to New
Amsterdam, to organize a church. The Directors wrote,

"It is our intention to permit every one to have freedom
within his own dwelling, to serve God in such manner as his
religion requires, but without authorizing any public
meetings or conventicles."

This tolerance, so imperfect in the light of the nineteenth century,
was very noble in the dark days of the seventeenth. Upon the arrival
of Goetwater at New Amsterdam, the clergy of the Reformed church
remonstrated against his being permitted to preach. The governor,
adhering to his policy of bigotry, forbade him to hold any meeting, or
to do any clerical service, but to regulate his conduct according to
the placards of the province against private conventicles. Soon after
this the governor ordered him to leave the colony and to return to
Holland. This harsh decree was however suspended out of regard to the
feeble health of Goetwater.

On the 6th of August, 1657, a ship arrived at New Amsterdam with
several Quakers on board Two of them, women, began to preach publicly
in the streets. They were arrested and imprisoned. Soon after they
were discharged and embarked on board a ship to sail through Hell
Gate, to Rhode Island, "where," writes Domine Megapolensis, "all kinds
of scum dwell, for it is nothing else than a sink for New England."

One of the Quakers, Robert Hodgson, went over to Long Island. At
Hempstead he was arrested and committed to prison, and was thence
transferred to one of the dungeons of fort Amsterdam. He was brought
before the Council, convicted of the crime of preaching contrary to