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Illustrated Episode · Volume I, chapter 39 · 1 January 1646

He would not be silenced

Inside a plain stone church, a dark-gowned minister at a wooden pulpit raises a hand while worshippers turn to the bright open doors, where a soldier beats a drum in drifting smoke.
In the mid-1640s, on a Sunday morning, Domine Everardus Bogardus is preaching in the stone church inside Fort Amsterdam, and Director Willem Kieft's soldiers beat a drum at the open door and fire the fort's cannon to drown him out. Bogardus preaches on. Rothbard says the minister would not be silenced, and the people stood with him until Kieft had to yield. Chapter 39 of Conceived in Liberty.

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Adapted from Murray N. Rothbard, Conceived in Liberty (Mises Institute, 2011), CC BY 3.0.

What happened

Domine Everardus Bogardus, the Dutch Reformed minister of New Amsterdam, had denounced Director Willem Kieft from the pulpit as a plunderer whose whole art of government was to dismiss, to banish and to ship men off to Holland. Kieft's own rule was blunt: "In this country, I am my own master and may do as I please." He stopped going to church, and then, Rothbard writes, he "decided to use the minions of the state to drown out Bogardus' sermons" (CiL, pp. 297-298). The church stood inside Fort Amsterdam, so the noise could be put right at its door. Soldiers beat a drum near the church during the service, and the fort's cannon was fired several times while the people were at worship. A pamphlet of 1649, the Breeden Raedt, adds that Bogardus asked for the drum to be beaten farther off and was told the drummer must keep on there, since the director had ordered it. Bogardus kept preaching. Kieft then summoned him to his own court on charges of scattering abuse, drinking and defending criminals. Bogardus refused to appear, the people stood solidly with him, and Kieft had to back down. In May 1647 Peter Stuyvesant arrived to replace him. Rothbard's point is that the directors of the West India Company ruled New Netherland as arbitrary despots, and this one was worn down by a congregation and a minister who would not stop talking.

Sources

  1. Murray N. Rothbard, Conceived in Liberty (Auburn, Ala.: Mises Institute, 2011 single-volume ed.), vol. I, ch. 39, pp. 288-300. CC BY 3.0. Rothbard
  2. John Romeyn Brodhead, History of the State of New York, vol. I (New York: Harper, 1853): pp. 336-337 (the stone church of 1642 inside Fort Amsterdam), p. 418 (drum and cannon during service), p. 760 note (the Breeden Raedt passage, in translation). Secondary source
  3. [Cornelis Melyn?], Breeden Raedt aen de Vereenichde Nederlandsche Provintien (Antwerp, 1649), p. 22, read in Brodhead's translation (brodhead-1853, vol. I, p. 760 note). Primary source
  4. 'Everardus Bogardus', Wikipedia (accessed 2026-09-29), for his birth (27 July 1607) and death (27 September 1647). Secondary source
  5. '1600-1650 in Western European fashion', Wikipedia (accessed 2026-09-29), 1640s Netherlands sections. Secondary source