70 DUTCH AND ENGLISH ON THE HUDSON

and also by the fact that he was the subject of
bitter attack in the Representation by Adrian Van
der Donck, who accused Van Tienhoven of con-
tinually shifting from one side to another and
asserted that he was notoriously profligate and
untrustworthy. One passage in his reply amounted
to a confession. Who, he asks, are they who have
complained about the haughtiness of the Director,
and he answers that they are "such as seek to
live without law or rule." "No one/* he goes
on to say, "can prove that Director Stuyvesant
has used foul language to or railed at as clowns
any respectable persons who have treated him
decently. It may be that some profligate person
has given the Director, if he has used any bad words
to him, cause to do so/'

It has been the fashion in popular histories
to allude to Stuyvesant as a doughty knight of
somewhat choleric temper, "a valiant, weather
beaten, leathern-sided, lion-hearted, generous-
spirited, old governor"; but I do not so read his
history. I find him a brutal tyrant, as we have
seen in the affair of Kieft versus Melyn; a narrow-
minded bigot, as we shall see later in his dealing
with the Quakers at Flushing; a bully when his
victims were completely in his power; and a loser