titutions should take on the character of the environment.

The other factors of the religious life of New York require only brief
mention.

There were considerable Quaker communities, especially on western Long
Island, in Flushing and its neighborhood. But before the year 1730 the
fervid and violent and wonderfully brief early enthusiasm of this
Society had long been waning, and the Society, winning no accessions and
suffering frequent losses in its membership, was lapsing into that
"middle age of Quakerism"[139:1] in which it made itself felt in the
life of the people through its almost passive, but yet effective,
protests against popular wrongs.

Inconsiderable in number, but of the noblest quality, was the
immigration of French Huguenots, which just before and just after the
revocation of the Edict of Nantes brought to New York and its
neighborhood a half-dozen congregations, accompanied by pastors whose
learning, piety, and devotion to the work of Christ were worthy of that
school of martyrdom in which they had been trained. They were not
numerous enough, nor compactly enough settled, to maintain their own
language in use, and soon became merged, some in the Dutch church and
some in the English. Some of their leading pastors accepted salaries
from the Propagation Society, tendered to them on condition of their
accepting the ordination and conforming to the ritual of the English
church. The French Reformed Church does not appear organically in the
later history of the colony, but the history of the State and of the
nation is never largely written without commemorating, by the record of
family names made illustrious in every department of honorable activity,
the rich contribution made to the American church and nation by the
cruel bigotry and the political fatuity of Louis XIV.[139:2]

The German element in the religious life of New York, at the period
under consideration, was of even less historical importance. The
political philanthropy of Queen Anne's government, with a distinct
understanding between the right hand and the left, took active measure
to promote the migration of Protestant refugees from all parts of
Germany to the English colonies in America. In the year 1709 a great
company of these unhappy exiles, commonly called "poor Palatines" from
the desolated region whence many of them had been driven out, were
dropped, helpless and friendless, in the wilderness of Schoharie County,
and found themselves t