complainants. [Illustration: FIRST REFORMED (DUTCH) CHURCH.] In 1664, two years after the first settlement, the province and its government passed by conquest from the Dutch to the English. This made but little change at Schenectady. The system of government already begun was continued. The manor of Rensselaerswyck was confirmed to the patroon with some change in the sovereignty, but none in his property rights. Beverwyck became Albany, the county of Albany was established, and embraced Schenectady. The court at Albany took jurisdiction of such larger causes as the “Duke’s Laws,” conferred upon it, and the minor ones remained as before within the jurisdiction of the local magistrates. There were but few ministers of the gospel in the province, and it was not until 1684 that the Reverend Petrus Thesschenmaecher, a graduate of the University of Utrecht, was installed as their first resident pastor or domine. It was a memorable day, when that pious man, in his black silken robe, ascended the high pulpit of the church edifice which, loopholed for musketry together with his dwelling-house, awaited his coming, and in the deep solemn guttural of his Nether Dutch speech, led the worship of his dutiful flock. These Dutch Protestants did not agonize about God’s wrath like the Puritans; they assumed His loving care, as a child does its father’s. The ordinances and forms of worship prescribed by the Church were regarded as duties to be observed as well as privileges to be enjoyed, and the higher the social or official state of the individual, the more prominent and circumspect must he be in his religious observances. One of the documents of that day opens in these words: “We, the justices, consistory, together with the common people of Schanegtade, conceive ourselves in duty bound to take care of our reverend minister.” It is signed by the justices, elders, deacons and many others who, we must assume, were “common people.” There remains a marriage contract in which a widower and a widow recite how much property each brings to the marriage state; the widow enumerating among other property three slaves, for whose freedom upon her decease, however, she provides. No doubt the justices, the consistory, the freeholders and the common people observed this order of precedence on this and all like occasions; the widow being preceded by a slave bearing a warming-box for her feet, a metrical version of the Psalms, and the book of devotion containing the liturgy, the _Heidelberg Catechism_, the _Confession of Faith_ and the canons of the Church, as all these had been approved by the Synod of Dordrecht in 1619.