This letter also proves incidentally, that slavery existed in "the Manhatas" at its date, the year before the enactment of the charter of 1629 which provided for their being furnished by the Company to the Patroons, as stated above, and to which has been so often, and so wrongly ascribed their first introduction in New York. Speaking of his fiimily matters, for his wife had died since his arrival leaving him with "two little daughters," Michaelius writes, "maidservants are not to be had, at least none whom they advise me to take; and the Angola slaves are thievish, lazy and useless trash." Evidently slaves had been by no means lately introduced in "the Manhatas " in 1628.

The Canon law and the Roman law came into Holland together, and that country was governed by both until the Reformation. Then the former was overthrown, and the law of the Reformed Church of Holland promulgated in 1521, and confirmed in 1612, went into operation, but the Roman civil law remained as before the law of the land. Under the law of the Reformed Church of Holland, matters ecclesiastical come first before the Consistory, then before the Assembly, and finally before the Synod. There being no Synod in New Netherland, the care of the church there was entrusted to the Assembly or classis of Amsterdam, by whom the Dutch clergymen were approved and ordained, at the request, or with the assent, of the West India Company at Amsterdam. ' Except when as a matter of mere charity on their being driven from New England, the English settlers of the Congregational belief w'ere granted freedom of conscienceand to worship in their own way, and to choose their own civil officers,^ people of other denominations were not allowed to hold ofiice.' This was because the Reformed Religion in accordance with the doctrine of the Synod of Dort was the Established Religion of New Netherland, and the magistrates were bound to maintain it against all sectaries, and therefore they must have belonged, or been friendly, to that faith.*