aster. He thus became a Patroon of Staten Island,
and subsequently a few others obtained the same honor and privileges.
They were all connected with the Dutch Reformed Church, in Holland; and
when they emigrated to New-Netherland, always brought with them their
Bibles and the '_Kranek-besoecker_,' or 'Comforter of the Sick,' who
supplied the place of a regular clergyman. Twice were the earliest
settlers dispersed by the Raritan Indians, but they rallied again, until
their progress became uninterrupted and permanent.

Between the Hollanders and the French Refugees, there existed an old and
intimate friendship. Holland, from the beginning of the Middle Ages, had
been the asylum for all the religious out-laws from all parts of Europe.
But especially the persecuting wars and troubles of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, brought hither crowds of exiles. Not less than
thirty thousand English, who had embraced the Reformed faith, found here
a shelter during the reign of Mary Tudor. Hosts of Germans, during the
'Thirty Years' War,' obtained on the banks of the Amstel and the Rhine,
that religious liberty, which they had in vain claimed in their own
country. But the greatest emigration was that of the _Walloons_, from
the bloody tyranny of the Duke of Alba, and the Count of Parma. For a
long period the Reformed faith had found adherents in the Provinces of
the Low Countries. Here the first churches were _under the Cross_, or
_in the Secret_, as it was styled, and they concealed themselves from
the raging persecution, by hiding, as it were, their faith, under mystic
names, the sense of which believers only knew. We will mention only a
few. That of Tournay, '_The Palm-Tree_;' Antwerp, '_The Vine_;' Mons,
'_The Olive_;' Lille, '_The Rose_;' Douay, '_The Wheat-Sheaf_;' and the
Church of Arras had for its symbol '_The Hearts-Ease_.' In 1561, they
published in French, their Confession of Faith, and in 1563, their
Deputies, from the Reformed Communities of Flanders, Brabant, Artois,
and Hainault, united in a single body, holding the first Synod of which
we have any account. These regions were an old part of the French
Netherlands, or Low Countries; and a small section of Brabant was called
_Walloon_; and here were found innumerable advocates of the Reformed
faith. The whole country would probably have become the most Protestant
of all Europe, were it not for the torrents of blood poured out for the
maintenance of the Roman religi