[ 136 ] STEVE J. STERN support since 1689, except "from a few special friends" wailed that "Ministers... will have to live on their own fat!' Rev. Godefridus Del- lius of Albany enjoyed more popularity than his counterparts in New York City and on Long Island "because I had to deal with more peaceable people, and they with more opinionated ones!'50 Leislerian divisions dominated provincial politics during the 1690s. Governor Benjamin Fletcher, enthusiastically Anglican but also fiercely anti- Leislerian, helped the Dutch minister Varick regain his salary from Leislerian congregation members. When Fletcher tried to establish Anglicanism in New York, anti-Leislerian Dutch elites found it difficult to unite against him. He had, after all, restored their power and status. Leislerian divisions thus muddled the response even to an old issue of the 1670s. The Dutch, nevertheless, managed to bargain for and receive a charter for the Dutch Reformed Church of New York City before accepting the grant of a similar charter to the Anglican Trinity Church.51 Though the Dutch had prevented Anglican hegemony, they did so with far less unity than had characterized similar activity in the 1670s. New Yorkers had to face the problem of pluralism early in their history. The trouble with New York City, observed Charles Lodwicke in 1692, was that it "is too great a mixture of nations!' So many religions flourished that there seemed "little reall; and how justly might ye Righteous God Pour down his impending Judgments on us!' Yet the disturbing heterogeneity, and the absence of a clear-cut religious establishment was not disastrous, for "God hath blest us with a healthy Climate, a fruitful Soil, plenty of all sorts of provisions needful for y6 support of Mankind!'52 In these words lie much of the history of New York. New York was always a heterogeneous colony, and the conquest of 1664 brought the reality of pluralism to a heightened pitch, as the English rulers and the Dutch majority sought ways of living in peace by rendering their interests compatible. 50Kilpatrick, Dutch Schools of New Netherland, 175-76; Ecc. Rec, II, 1042, 1051, 1087. 61 Ecc. Rec, II, 1051; Edward James Cody, "Church and State in the Middle Colonies, 1689-1763" (Ph.D. diss., Lehigh University, 1970), 65-71; Burr, "Episcopal Church and the Dutch in Colonial New York and New Jersey" 95; Luidens, "Americanization of the Dutch Reformed Church" 80-84. 62 "Letter from Charles Lodwicke to Mr. Francis Lodwicke and Mr. Hooker, Dated May 20,1692;' Collections, NYHS, 1848, II, Part I, 244. UPS