The “church-poor,” as they were called, fared well in New Netherland. Of degraded poor of Dutch birth or descent there were none. Some poor folk, and old or sickly, having a little property, transferred it to the Consistory, who paid it out as long as it lasted, and cheerfully added to the amount by gifts from the church-treasury as long as was necessary for the support of those “of the poorer sort.” To show that these church-poor were neither neglected nor despised, let me give one example of a case--an ordinary one--from the deacons’ records of the Albany church in 1695. Claes Janse was assigned at that time to live with Hans Kros and his wife Antje. They were to provide him with _logement_, _kost_, _drank_, _wassen_ (lodging, food, drink, and washing), and for this were paid forty guilders a month by the church. When Claes died, the church paid for his funeral, which apparently left nothing undone in the way of respectability. The bill reads thus:-- Dead shirt and cap 16 guilders. Winding sheet 14 ” Making coffin 24 ” 1 lb. nails, cartage coffin 3 ” 10 stuyvers. 2 Half Vats good beer 30 ” 6 bottles Rum 22 ” 5 gallons Madeira Wine 42 ” Tobacco, pipes, and sugar 4 ” 10 ” 3 cartloads sand for grave 1 ” 10 ” Gravedigging 3 ” Deacons give three dry boards for coffin and use of pall. With a good dry coffin, a good dry grave, and a far from dry funeral, Hans Claes’ days, though he were of the church-poor, ended in honor. The earlier Dutch ministers were some of them rather rough characters. Domine Bogardus, in New Amsterdam, and Domine Schaets, in Fort Orange, were most unclerical in demeanor, both in and out of the pulpit. Both were engaged in slander suits, the former as libeller and defendant; both were abusive and personal in the pulpit, “dishonoring the church by passion.” The former was alleged by his enemies to be frequently drunk, in church and abroad; and, fearless of authority, he seized the pulpit as a convenient and prominent platform from which he could denounce his opposers. From his high post he scolded the magistrates, called opprobrious names (a hateful offence in New Amsterdam), threatened Wouter Van Twiller that he would give “from the pulpit such a shake as would make him shudder.” He even arbitrarily refused the Communion, thereby causing constant scandal and dissension. The magistrates doubtless deserved all his rebukes, but in their written admonition to him they appear with some dignity, expressing themselves forcibly and concisely thus: “Your bad tongue is the cause of these divisions, and your obstinacy the cause of their continuance;” and it is difficult now to assign the blame and odium of this quarrel very decidedly to either party.