USA > New York > New York City > History of the city of New York in the seventeenth century. Vol. I > Part 5
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Possibly another post was set at this time farther down the river, in the Esopus region where Kingston now stands; and evidently the Hollanders were accustomed to land if not to live on Manhattan, for by order of his employers Christiaensen had brought out some goats and rabbits which it was hoped would multiply on the island. No shred of contemporaneous evidence, however, supports the story that four houses had been built on a certain specified spot near the lower end of
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Manhattan and that their occupants formally acknowledged that the place belonged to the English. These statements were first made in a book published in 1648 which was called a Description of the Province of New Albion, and professed to be written by one Beauchamp Plantagenet of Belvil in that province. Neither Plantagenet nor Belvil existed, and New Albion was merely a province-on-paper defined in a patent for American lands given in 1634 by the viceroy of Ireland, in the name of Charles I, to Sir Edmund Plowden or Ploeyden. The heroes of the story thus fathered, unques- tionably with the wish to bolster up Plowden's claims, are 'Sir Thomas Dale and Sir Samuel Argall, Captains and counsellors of Virginia.' This was the Samuel Argall, after- wards governor of Virginia, who in 1613 saved New England for the English by breaking up the French settlements at Mt. Desert. On his return voyage to Jamestown, says the supposed Plantagenet, Argall and his companion
. . . landed at Manhatas Isle in Hudson's River where they found four houses built and a pretended Dutch governour under the West India Company of Amsterdam share or part, who kept trading-boats and trucking with the Indians; but the said knights told him their commission was to expel him and all alien intruders on his Majesty's dominions and territories; this being part of Virginia, and the river an English discovery of Hudson, an Englishman. The Dutchman contented them for their charge and voyage and by his letter sent to Virginia and recorded submitted himself, company and plantation to his Majesty and to the governor and government of Virginia. . . .
This tale was embodied in the edition of 1669 of Heylin's Cosmography which names the year 1613 as that of Argall's visit, in 1671 in Ogilby's America, in 1747 in Stith's His- tory of Virginia, in 1757 in Smith's History of New York, in 1780 in Chalmers's Political Annals of the colonies. It has since been repeated many times, as, for example, in John Fiske's recent book on the Dutch and Quaker Colonies. Yet its falsity was demonstrated more than half a century ago. In 1613 and for nearly a decade longer there was no West India Company in Holland and no Dutch governor in America ;
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and the records of Virginia contain neither a reference to any act of submission on the part of any Dutch trader nor a sign that in 1613 or any later year Argall visited Manhattan. In a letter written in 1632 to the secretary of state in England Captain John Mason of the Plymouth Company says, indeed, that Argall and some of his friends had intended to start a plantation on the 'Manahata River'; but he gives the date as 1621, he says that at this 'same time' the Dutch had just intruded there, and he explains that their arrival caused a 'demur' in Argall's 'proceedings.' Of course belief in the four houses which Argall was said to have seen on Manhattan topples down in the general destruction of the story.
More and more vessels bound for America were now sailing from English ports, and a few English fishing stations or temporary fishermen's hamlets were scattered, probably, along the coasts of New England. But north of Jamestown, which was the centre of a population of about four hundred souls, Englishmen had not as yet established a colony or even built a blockhouse. Much greater was the activity of the French. They had set posts on the shores of Maine and explored Lake Ontario. Planning to Christianize the Indians, they had sent out missionaries as well as adventurers and traders. In 1611 Montreal was founded. In 1612 Louis XIII granted to Madame de Guercherville, a figurehead for the Jesuits, all the region between the St. Lawrence and Florida. In 1615 Champlain discovered Lake Huron and penetrated within the present borders of New York as far as Oneida Lake.
Soon after the building of the Dutchmen's Fort Nassau far up the Great River three traders, wishing to explore the in- terior country, seem to have pushed their way from this point southward along Indian trails to the banks of the Schuylkill where they were captured by the savages. The news of their mischance reached Manhattan; and, partly to rescue them, partly to gain acquaintance with the region, Cornelis Hen- dricksen was sent in the little Restless to Delaware Bay and
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River. Possibly Cornelis Mey had already explored these parts. More probably Hendricksen was the first white man who sailed up the river as far as its point of junction with the Schuylkill (now the site of Philadelphia) where he found and saved his captive compatriots.
He had gone beyond the limits of the territory assigned for exploitation to the New Netherland Company. Therefore, when he returned in the same year to Holland the Company asked for an extension of its trading grounds, laying Hen- dricksen's report before the States General and with it, prob- ably, another so-called Figurative Map, on parchment, which was discovered in 1841 with the paper map already described and which covers a longer stretch of coast - from the Vir- ginian capes to the Penobscot River. Here we find Man- hattan on too large a scale, Long Island divided by several inlets, the Mohawk as well as the Hudson River, and what appears to be meant for the Susquehanna. There is no hint that a post yet existed on Manhattan although Fort Nassau is marked and named and its dimensions are given. It is possible that this parchment map may be the older of the two Figurative Maps, the one presented in 1614 with Block's report, but the way in which it shows Manhattan and describes Fort Nassau may be held to signify its later date.
Neither of the Figurative Maps was published, for every government interested in transatlantic enterprise was trying to keep its rivals ignorant of its achievements and plans. Yet the English government knew what Dutchmen as well as Englishmen were doing. In 1616 its agents at the Hague informed it that some private persons of Amsterdam had set on foot a trade in North America between forty and forty-five degrees of latitude.
In 1617 Fort Nassau, endangered on its low-lying island by spring floods, was abandoned in favor of a similar post then set about two miles below the site of Albany on the west bank of the river at the mouth of the Tawasentha, a creek which preserves its Dutch name, Norman's Kill.
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At the opening of the year 1618, when the American privileges of the New Netherland Company expired, it asked that its charter be renewed. Instead, its members got only individual licenses covering brief periods of time. In the summer of 1620 Cornelis Mey returned to report upon a voy- age during which he had entered Chesapeake Bay and visited the Englishmen on the James River. His name is still borne by the southern point of New Jersey, Cape May. His request for a license giving him the sole right to trade in the regions he had explored conflicted with so many others of a similar kind that the States General granted none of them. More- over, the States General had a great enterprise in mind which was soon to quash the claims and the schemes of all such private adventurers. They were considering the incorpora- tion of that West India Company which had come near to being established some thirty years before.
To the revival of this enterprise may also be traced, in part at least, the reasons why the first scheme for colonizing New Netherland resulted only in the planting of the first colony in New England.
In 1609 a congregation of English Separatist refugees - 'Brownists' the Dutch commonly called them - migrated from Amsterdam to Leyden. Its pastor was John Robinson, its ruling elder was William Brewster, and two of its leading members were William Bradford and Edward Winslow. At Leyden, as Nathaniel Morton wrote in New England's Memorial, these exiles 'did quietly and sweetly enjoy their church liberties under the States.' Yet there were many reasons why they were not content - why they thought that spiritually and materially it would be for the benefit of their posterity should they establish themselves somewhere in what Bradford called 'those vast and unpeopled countries of America which are fruitful and fit for habitation.' In 1619 they obtained from the London Virginia Company a patent authorizing them to settle on its territories south of the fortieth parallel. Just when they were greatly discouraged by the
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difficulty of arranging for their voyage and settlement 'some Dutchmen,' says Bradford again in his History of Plymouth Plantation, 'made them fair offers about going with them,' but a merchant coming from London after 'much confer- ence ... persuaded them to go on (as it seems) and not to meddle with the Dutch.'
There was more to the episode than this. The Separatists asked aid of some Dutch merchants, and the New Netherland Company petitioned the States General on their behalf. The Company had learned, it said, that King James was 'inclined to people . . . with Englishmen' the American region in which it was interested; it feared that its ships might be sur- prised in distant, unprotected harbors; it wished to establish something more stable than posts that were merely head- quarters for shifting bands of sailors and fur-traders; and it thought that it might turn to profit, for itself and for the Republic, the desires of the Leyden Separatists. The Reverend John Robinson, said an explanatory petition addressed to the Prince of Orange as admiral of the navy of the Republic, was 'well versed in the Dutch language' and 'well inclined to proceed to New Netherland to live.' He asserted that he could induce more than four hundred families to accompany him,
.. . both out of this country and England, provided they would be guarded and preserved from all violence on the part of other po- tentates, by the authority and under the protection of your Princely Excellency and the High and Mighty Lords States-General, in the propagation of the true, pure Christian religion, in the instruction of the Indians in that country in true learning and in converting them to the Christian faith, and thus, through the mercy of the Lord, to the greater glory of this country's government, to plant there a new commonwealth all under the order and command of your Princely Excellency and the High and Mighty Lords States-General.
Therefore the petitioners urged that these Englishmen might be taken under the protection of the Dutch government, and that with them two ships of war might be despatched to secure to this government the aforesaid countries.
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Probably the Reverend John Robinson inspired the phras- ing of this document. With its talk of founding a new com- monwealth and propagating a 'pure' form of faith it has an alien sound among the colonial records of tolerant and com- mercial Holland. At all events, New Netherland was not destined to receive as its first settlers a compact body of Englishmen intent upon governing themselves under whatso- ever potentate they might hold their lands. Twice the States General declined to supply the necessary ships of war. The Separatists fell back upon their patent from the Virginia Company and secured the financial backing of a company of merchant-adventurers formed for the purpose in London. Although John Robinson remained in Holland, in the autumn of 1620 some seventy of his parishioners with a lesser number of emigrants from England set sail for the New World in the Mayflower.
The declared intention was to plant the colony in the neighborhood of the mouth of Hudson's River in the ‘northern parts of Virginia'; and when the Pilgrims understood that the first land they made was the point of Cape Cod, far out- side the territories of the Virginia Company, they resolved, says Bradford, 'to stand for the southward ... to find some place about Hudson's River.' The danger of round- ing the Cape deterred them, and before the end of the year they chose for their settlement the shores of the harbor at the base of the Cape which John Smith had called New Plymouth.
Neither in Bradford's pages nor in any others of contempo- raneous date, Dutch or English, official or unofficial, can a word be found to support the story, long believed, that the merchants of Holland had bribed the Mayflower's skipper not to take its passengers to New Netherland. This idle tale was first put forth by Morton whose book was published in 1669. If intrigue did indeed guide the Mayflower to New England, the intriguers were some of the members of the Plymouth Company eager to begin the settlement of their own territories with so promising a body of colonists.
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The scheme for the creation of a warlike Dutch West India Company, which prevented a favorable consideration of all lesser schemes for Western enterprise, had never dropped out of sight since it was broached by William Usselinx. It could not take shape during the Twelve Years' Truce with Spain, but was one of the many issues involved in a struggle between two great political parties whose dissensions, held in check while the war continued, in the years of the truce almost disrupted the Republic.
These parties were known as the Orangist, led by the stad- holder Maurice of Nassau, the son of William the Silent, and the Arminian or Remonstrant, led by the great statesman John of Barneveld. As the name Arminian shows, their rivalry crystallized around a theological quarrel of a hair- splitting sort that suggests the court of Justinian rather than the forums of a free republic which during the long agony of its war with Catholic Spain had made itself an asylum for schismatics, heretics, and Jews, for the persecuted, oppressed, and distressed of all Europe. Ostensibly the great issue was whether within the bosom of the established Calvinistic Church, the Reformed Church of Holland, it was permissible to deny, not the dogma of predestination in general, for this both parties accepted, but the dogma of 'absolute' predestina- tion. In reality, however, the determination of the orthodox clergy to prevent the tolerance of heresy within their fold was based upon the knowledge that such tolerance would surely lead to the official recognition of many churches, and that if there were more than one recognized church all must be sub- ject to the civil power. The orthodox church was determined to stand alone so that it might rise above the civil power, while Arminius had taught that the clergy should depend upon the state. Here was a highly practical and important issue inextricably entangled with every other major and minor public question of the time. The seemingly Byzantinesque quarrel about man's chances of eternal bliss was really a struggle between sacerdotal tyranny and the demand for freedom in faith and worship; and it was the expression of a
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wider struggle between centralizing and decentralizing ten- dencies in politics, between the military and the civil element for the control of public affairs, between the partisans of the House of Orange and of the municipalities, between Maurice of Nassau and John of Barneveld.
Barneveld had secured the truce of 1609 and, at the head of the decentralizing, anti-military, unorthodox party, he worked to develop it into a permanent peace. He believed that long-continued war would foster in his compatriots a spirit of greed, restlessness, and ambition which would turn friendly powers into enemies and, making the services of the House of Orange indispensable, would lay at home the founda- tions of a military despotism. Although an advocate of free trade and navigation and a hater of monopolies, he had fa- vored as a war measure the establishment of the East India Company. During the truce he became, in 1616, one of the members of the little New Netherland Company whose only object was traffic with the aborigines, but opposed the crea- tion of a West India Company, which Usselinx and others were urging again, for he knew that its chief aim would be plunder, not trade, and its certain result a revival of hostili- ties with Spain. Such a revival was what the Orangists de- sired, partly for commercial reasons, partly for reasons of military ambition, partly because many believed that the independence of the Republic was not yet secure. And there- fore they were bent upon the establishment of a strong and aggressive West India Company.
The great partisan conflict in which this question figured resulted in a triumph for the Orangists. In May, 1619, the international Synod of Dort thrust the Arminians from the established church. In the same month Barneveld died on the scaffold. War with Spain began again when the truce expired, now as a branch of the widespread and terrible struggle called the Thirty Years' War. And on June 3, 1621, the States General bestowed a charter valid for twenty-four years upon the Incorporated West India Company.
This charter when compared with the one that had been
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given in 1602 to the East India Company bears witness, even more in its spirit than in its form, to the growing ambitions of the Republic. The principal aim of the elder association was trade although to defend its merchantmen and its colonial posts it had to keep up a considerable armament. Of course the new company was also to trade; and it was given the exclusive right to do so, and to authorize others to do so, along the American coast from Newfoundland to the Straits of Magellan, along the Atlantic shores of Africa from the Tropic of Cancer to the Cape of Good Hope, in the inter- mediate islands, and in all places from the Cape westward to the eastern end of New Guinea. But its main purpose was to harass and to injure the Spaniard by capturing his ships, by conquering his colonies, by breaking his connections with his American mines.
More as though it were an allied if subordinate power than a mere trading company it was authorized to make, in the name of the States General, contracts and alliances with the rulers of the strange countries its ships might visit. It was permitted - not ordered as some translations of the charter say - by founding colonies to promote the settlement of 'fertile and uninhabited districts,' and was given the right to rule, under the supervision of the States General, all its possible posts and plantations. On the other hand it was to support its own officials, ships, and troops, and to build its own forts and defences. The States General did not guarantee its safe possession of any territories it might acquire, and strictly forbade it to engage in war without permission. But they promised to secure it against all Dutch competitors, to assist it with a million guilders to be paid within five years, in case of war to supply it with sixteen ships of war, to supply troops also if the Company would support them, and to reim- burse it for expenses incurred for the security of the state.
Five chambers of directors were to be formed in different parts of the Republic. Executive power was lodged in a body called the College or Assembly of the XIX, to sit at Amsterdam and to embrace eighteen delegates from the
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chambers with one representative of the States General. The flag of the Company was the national standard - three equal horizontal stripes, orange, white, and blue - charged with its own initials, G.W.C. (Geoctroyeerde Westindische Compagnie).
New Netherland was not named in the charter, which granted no definite areas of soil, but of course was included in the countries that the new-born Company was to colonize and to control should it so desire.
VOL. I. - D
EXPLANATORY NOTE
THE number attached to a work mentioned in the Reference Notes accompanying each chapter indicates its place in the general list of authorities at the end of Vol. II, where the titles are more fully given. The number is not repeated if a book is mentioned more than once in the Notes to a single chapter.
The principal abbreviations used are :
Cal. Hist. MSS. = Calendar of Historical Manuscripts in the Office of the Secretary of State, Albany [now in the State Library] (390). Cal. S. P. Col. = Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, America and West Indies, Preserved in the Public Record Office [London] (485). As the volumes of this series are not numbered, they can be indicated only by citing the years that they severally cover.
Col. Docs. = Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New York [usually called Colonial Documents] (398).
Doc. Hist. = Documentary History of the State of New York (397). Ecc. Records = Ecclesiastical Records of the State of New York (167). Manual of Ref. Church = Manual of the Reformed Church in America (96).
Mem. Hist. = Memorial History of the City of New York, ed. by J. G. Wilson (408).
Narr. and Crit. Hist. = Narrative and Critical History of America, ed. by Justin Winsor (49).
N. Y. Genea. and Bio. Record = New York Genealogical and Bio- graphical Record (199).
Savage, Genea. Dict. = Savage, Genealogical Dictionary of the First Settlers of New England (200).
Valentine's Manual = Manual of the Corporation of the City of New York, compiled by D. T. Valentine (508).
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REFERENCE NOTES
PRINCIPAL PUBLISHED DOCUMENTS : Col. Docs., I (398); Cal. S. P. Col., 1574-1660, and 1675, 1676, Addenda, 1574-1674 (485); Hazard, Historical Collections (102); Hakluyt, Voyages (528); Purchas, Pilgrims (449); Burrage, ed. by, Early English and French Voyages (526).
GENERAL AUTHORITIES : De Laet, Nieuwe Wereldt (427); Van Me- teren, Nederlandscher . . . Oorlogen ende Geschiedenissen (347); O'Callaghan, Hist. of New Netherland, I (382); Brodhead, Hist. of New York, I (405); Narr. and Crit. Hist., III, IV (49); Cheyney, European Background of American History (181); Blok, Geschiedenis van het Nederlandsche Volk (348); other histories of Holland.
411563
REMONSTRANCE OF NEW NETHERLAND (quoted) : Van der Donck, Vertoogh van Nieu-Neder-Land (423).
EARLY EXPLORATIONS : De Costa, Verrazano the Explorer [with bibli- ography] (519), The Letter of Verrazano (520), The Voyages of Verrazano (520), Bibliography of Verrazano (516), and Explora- tions of the North American Coast in Mem. Hist., I (408) ; Brevoort, Verrazano the Navigator (521), and New Light on the Voyages of Verrazano (518) ; Murphy, The Voyage of Verrazzano (522) ; Gravier, Les Voyages de Giovanni Verrazano (517) ; G. Dexter, Cortereale, Verrazano, Gomez, Thevet (138) ; Kohl, Discov- ery of the East Coast of North America (159); Holmes, The Pom- pey Stone (443). - VERRAZANO'S LETTER: trans. in Hakluyt, Voyages, and in N. Y. Hist. Soc. Collections, 1841 (214).
NORUMBEGA : The speculations in Weise, Discoveries of America to the Year 1525 (158) and in Fiske, The Dutch and Quaker Colonies in America, Boston, 1899, should be tested by De Costa, Norumbega and its English Explorers in Narr. and Crit. Hist., III.
HENRY HUDSON : Journals of his early voyages in Purchas, Pilgrims, and in N. Y. Hist. Soc. Collections, 1809. - Original documents relating to him in Asher, Henry Hudson the Navigator (225). -- De Laet, Nieuwe Wereldt ; Van Meteren, Nederlandscher . . . Oorlogen; Asher, Sketch of Henry Hudson the Navigator (228) ; De Costa, Sailing Directions of Henry Hudson (227) ; Murphy,
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Henry Hudson in Holland (224) ; Read, Historical Enquiry con- cerning Henry Hudson (226).
JUET: his Journal in Purchas, Pilgrims, in Asher, Henry Hudson, and in N. Y. Hist. Soc. Collections, 1809 and 1841.
CABOT: Winship, Cabot Bibliography (81).
FRENCH EXPLORATIONS : Œuvres de Champlain (87) ; Champlain's Expeditions into Northern and Western New York [documents] (86) ; De Costa, Jacques Cartier and his Successors in Narr. and Crit. Hist., IV; Slafter, Champlain (85) ; Winsor, Cartier to Fron- tenac (84) ; Parkman, Pioneers of France in the New World (191). ENGLISH VOYAGES AND SETTLEMENTS: Cal. S. P. Col., as above; Purchas, Pilgrims; Hazard, Historical Collections ; Brown, Gen- esis of the United States (202) ; Narr. and Crit. Hist., III.
VELASCO OR SIMANCAS MAP : Original in General Archives, Simancas. - Brown, Genesis of the United States.
UNITED NEW NETHERLAND COMPANY : Original of Charter in Royal Archives, the Hague; facsimile in Mem. Hist., I (408) and in Shonnard and Spooner, Westchester County (538) ; trans. in Col. Docs., I, and in Conquest of New Netherland (380).
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