The First Church in Albany was founded in 1642. The chancel of that church contains the seventeenth century pulpit and the hour glass that the pastors, who were called “Dominies” used to time their sermons. On the wall there appears a seal with these words: “Like a rose among thorns is my love among the daughters.” Those words, from what seventeenth century Calvinists called the book of Canticles, were chosen as a motto because Albany, in those days, was a tiny enclave of European civilization in what was perceived as a vast wilderness. The words, of course, are not in English, but in Dutch, a reminder that Albany was part of a Dutch colony, which made New York different in important ways from the other twelve original colonies. That fact had consequences for the state, and even for the nation that it became a part of. My purpose tonight is to explore those differences and how they came about.
The first step in understanding this is to review the history of England and the Netherlands in the seventeenth century. The political and religious aspects of that history were so deeply intertwined as to be almost the same thing. Elizabeth I, who had restored the Anglican church in England, died in 1603, and her successor, James I continued this tradition. The Anglican church in those days followed most of the rite and ritual of the Roman Catholic church, rejecting only the authority of the pope.
The Netherlands, along with a good deal of the rest of western Europe, were a part of the Hapsburg empire in the sixteenth century, ruled from Spain. In 1568, a revolt led by William of Orange broke out, and by 1579, the seven northern provinces, of which Holland was the largest, formed a union called the United Provinces of the Netherlands. The government of this new nation was a republic, an unusual form in the sixteenth century. This republic, while nominally Roman Catholic was tolerant of all religions, and this resulted in a huge influx of Calvinist and Lutheran believers, who were generally not welcome in those provinces that remained under Spanish rule.
