The happiest change and perhaps the most startling shock came from the fact that the Duke of York, bigot as he was, broke the tradition of the period and introduced in his province religious toleration.
The English came, but the Dutch remained. The old Holland stock on the bank of the Hudson kept its root in the soil and has made vital contributions to the American hybrid, which have had scant recognition in our popular histories. The fact is, the Dutch were not given to writing books. They had fought for their religion and motherland, and had held them both against the assault of a powerful foe, but the recital of the story they left to the more expert tongues and more eloquent pens of Englishmen. Their type of character and social usage has proved its vigor and worth by its quiet persistence and dominance in New York life of to-day. In old Albany, even under English rule, ideas and customs which had their birth behind the dykes of Holland were conspicuously in the ascendant.
Albany became a city in 1686 by a judicious charter granted by Governor Dongan. A diagram in the Rev. John Miller's Description of the Province and City of New York, published
