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Bring them in, Captain." "The very same," exclaimed the Captain, approaching, "which I mention in my printed Narrative of Information, lodged before the Honourable House of Commons; they were commissioned from old Vander Huys of Rotterdam, by orders of Don John of Austria, for the service of the Jesuits."
Two others were called burgomasters, and five others were called schepens. The burgomasters and the schepens presided over the trials, in the stone tavern which Governor Kieft had built at Coenties Slip, and which had now become the Stadt Huys or City Hall. With the appointment of these officers, New Amsterdam became a city.
This was called a tavern, and could accommodate all the visitors. In after years it became the first City Hall. If you wish to stand where this building was, you must go to the head of Coenties Slip, in Pearl Street. On the building which is there now you will see a bronze tablet which tells all about the old Stadt Huys. The church that Walter Van Twiller had built was little better than a barn.
The new "Staat Huys," before alluded to, was erected on the corner of Pearl street and Coenties Slip, a locality then considered the most central in the infant town, and as offering the best facilities for securely keeping prisoners.
He was found guilty of cowardice, and his sword was broken in front of the Stadt Huys in the presence of the citizens, and he was declared, on the good authority of King Charles II., unfit ever again to hold public office. Although disgraced, Captain Manning did not seem to care much. He owned a beautiful wooded island in the East River, to which he now retired.
In the first days of its existence, the library occupied tiny quarters, quite large enough for all the books it contained, in a room in the City Hall. This was not in the old Stadt Huys of the Dutch by the waterside, for that was gone now, but in a pretentious building facing the "broad street" that had been made by the filling up of the Heere Graft of old.
It served its double purposes of jail and city hall until 1698, when it was decided by the authorities to build another a larger and more commodious structure; while, in the meantime, the old military block-house in the immediate neighborhood of the Governor's residence was conscripted and made use of, additionally to the "Staat Huys," for the accommodation of the constantly-increasing number of culprits.
It was a tiny town then; picturesque, too, for the houses were low, irregular, with sloping roofs and gable ends to the street. They were built of wood that is, all except the church, the Stadt Huys, the Governor's house, and some few dwellings of colonists who had brought much wealth with them from Holland. These were for the most part of stone.
On his encamping at Kupen, on the 20th, he received an express from Auverquerque pressing him to halt, because Villeroy, who commanded the French army in Flanders, had quitted the lines, which he had been occupying, and crossed the Meuse at Namur with thirty-six battalions and forty- five squadrons, and was threatening the town of Huys.
It was not, however, until some years later, 1642, that the "Staat Huys" was built, a municipal building, with a portion of it erected especially for the housing of dangerous criminals.
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