Brutally dictatorial though he may have been, the new governor was earnest nevertheless in all things, reforms included. He took very effective steps, for instance, to check the smuggling of beaver into New England where it could be traded tax-free for European goods. And, while setting up tighter export controls, he also increased the tax on furs. Furthermore, he not only forbade the sale of liquor to the natives but he tried his best to enforce the contraband on firearms for use as trade goods. Naturally, such policies were obnoxious at Rensselaerwyck, where gun-running was popular and company taxes were not. There too the commissary, Brandt van Slechtenhorst, headstrong in pretensions to complete independence of the company, was itching to prove his insubordination. So, when Stuyvesant, with his penchant for issuing autocratic proclamations, decreed a certain fast day not to van Slechtenhorst’s liking, the Commissary of Rensselaerwyck pounced upon it, rejecting it as an invasion of “the right and authority of the Lord Patroon.” When the governor went up the river to challenge his adversary he was met with open defiance. It was Stuyvesant’s edict then that “no new ordinances affecting trade or commerce within the colony were to be made, unless with the assent of the provincial authorities.” Also, with regard to the company’s jealously guarded “precincts” about Fort Orange, no more buildings were to be erected at Beverwyck within range of the guns of the fortifications. Such encroachments on the company’s precincts rendered the fort insecure, the governor claimed. And further, he ordered, the wooden palisades of the fort were to be replaced with a stone wall, the stone to be quarried on an adjoining tract of land. Van Slechtenhorst’s reply to all this was that he would build wherever he pleased because all the land around belonged to the patroon. He noted sarcastically that the patroon’s own trading house had once stood on the very border of the fort’s moat. No sooner had Stuyvesant departed than the wilful commissary went right ahead erecting houses, “even within pistol shot” of the palisades. Furthermore, he forbade the quarrying of stone for new walls to replace the palisades. The feud, continuing unabated, was eventually referred to Holland where the States General sustained the Governor of New Netherland on every point. Although by this action the aspirations of the patroonship for independence were dashed beyond hope, van Slechtenhorst resisted stubbornly until 1652, when he was arrested and transported down to Manhattan. In the end also, the village of Beverwyck was officially declared free, to become a part of the “precincts” of Fort Orange. Meanwhile, for Governor Stuyvesant, there was the more vital problem of the New Englanders who were hungrily gnawing away at Dutch fur trading territory. XVI _The English Close Their Coastal Ranks_