USA > New York > New York City > History of the city of New York in the seventeenth century Vol. II > Part 12
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As soon as news that could not be doubted arrived, first from New England and then from Holland, Colve released the sequestrated property of residents of other colonies and three New England sloops that the Zeehond had recently cap- tured. On July 11 he publicly proclaimed the Treaty of Westminster. In August Governor Winthrop wrote to his son that a person just arrived from England 'certified for a certainty' that 'it is one Major Andrewes who is to come over Governor for New York.' In fact, in March the king had deputed Major Edmund Andros (as the name was much more commonly written) to receive the province on his be- half, and the Duke of York had commissioned him to ad- minister it as his 'lieutenant and governor.'
A frigate sent from Holland to carry home the Dutch officials and soldiers reached Manhattan on October 16, bring- ing instructions how Colve was to surrender and 'vacate' his province. Five persons of his choosing, it was ordered,
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were to administer the government until Major Andros should come. But before Colve was ready to depart Andros arrived, on November 1 on the frigate Diamond in company with another called the Castle, and anchored under the Staten Island shore. At once he sent Colve his credentials from the States General. Colve asked for eight days in which to complete the preliminaries of the evacuation. The city magis- trates and the burgher court martial sent Councillor Steen- wyck and Burgomasters Van Brugh and Beekman to wel- come the new governor and to ask certain securities and privileges for their people. Andros assured them that Dutch- men and Englishmen should be treated alike. On November 3 he wrote the governor that he was sorry to hear that there were disorders in the town, hoped that they would be remedied by the strict measures Colve was taking, and be- sought pardon for some English soldiers whom Colve had ordered under arrest when they were found drunk on the street. On the 6th Colve asked his approval of eleven Articles guaranteeing religious liberty, freedom from impressment, the validity of judgments passed in the courts during the Dutch reoccupation, the maintenance of actual owners in the pos- session of confiscated property, and sundry minor privileges. Andros promised to consider these requests as soon as he should be in office, saying that he had been instructed to act with 'justness and kindness.' Colve gave the consistory of the Dutch church, who feared they might be dispossessed, a deed for the church building within the fort. Assembling the civil officials and militia officers, he absolved them from their oaths and bade them farewell; and the magistrates presented him with two hundred and fifty guilders for his services during his year as governor. The last entry in the court records of New Orange, the last statement ever written by an official of Dutch allegiance in the city on Manhattan, reads :
On the 10th November, Anno 1674, the Province of New Nether- land is surrendered by Governor Colve to Governor Major Edmund Andros in behalf of His Majesty of Great Britain.
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[1672-
On the same day, a Saturday, October 31 according to the English calendar, Colve retired with his troops to the Dutch frigate. On the Monday Andros sent from the fort, named again Fort James, his answers to the eleven Articles, granting most of the requests they embodied; he wished Captain Colve Godspeed, and thanked him for the gift of his coach and three horses.
If New Netherland had not been reoccupied by the Eng- lish at this time it would probably have been conquered by the French. Or, if it had still remained Dutch for a time, it would undoubtedly have been ceded to England before the century closed - when William of Orange, stadholder of Holland, ascended the throne of the Stuarts.
The West India Company had tried to regain a hold upon its former province, demanding that duties should be paid to it upon the cargoes which during the English occupation passed between Amsterdam and New York; and at the re- quest of Charles II it had joined with the government in authorizing Colve to make way for Major Andros although, said the States General, such an order was 'wholly unneces- sary' as the province was now 'wholly beyond' the Com- pany's control. In the very year when the province passed forever out of Holland's control the Company itself, burdened with a hopeless debt of six million guilders, was dissolved. A new West India Company, incorporated in the following year from the wreckage of the old one and given the same exclusive right to trade with America, was always a weakly body but survived, as did the Dutch East India Company, until 1800 when the Republic fell under the power of France. Since the establishment of the present kingdom of Holland its colonies have been administered as national possessions. They are now more extensive and valuable than those of any other state excepting Great Britain while not a single foreign post or plantation remains to the Netherlands' ancient enemy Spain, the first and for a long time by far the greatest European landowner in America.
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As to the way in which Holland has managed its colonies it may suffice to quote the words of, one competent observer, Wallace the English naturalist. Writing from Sumatra in 1861 he said that, contrary to the common English belief, Dutch colonial government in the East had never been worse than English and was then " very much better ";
. . . and what is greatly to their credit and not generally known, they take nearly the same pains to establish order and good govern- ment in those islands and possessions which are an annual loss to them as in those which yield them a revenue. ... Personally I do not much like the Dutch out here, or the Dutch officials; but I can- not help bearing witness to the excellence of their government of native races, gentle yet firm, respecting their manners, customs, and prejudices, yet introducing everywhere European law, order, and industry.
REFERENCE NOTES
PRINCIPAL PUBLISHED DOCUMENTS : Col. Docs., II, III, XII, XIII (398) ; Laws and Ordinances of New Netherland (270) ; Records of New Amsterdam, VI, VII (360) ; Papers Relating to the Restora- tion of New York to the English (415) ; Report of State Historian, 1896, Appendices G, H (454) ; ibid., 1897, Appendix L; Proceed- ings of Burgomasters and Schepens in Valentine's Manual, 1850 (508); Cal. Hist. MSS., English (390); Cal. S. P. Col., 1669- 1674 (485).
GENERAL AUTHORITIES: Brodhead, Hist. of New York, II (405) ; Riker, Harlem (209); histories of Long Island; O'Callaghan, Register of New Netherland (386); Stevens, The English in New York (419) ; Lefèvre-Pontalis, John De Witt (525) ; Lister, Life of Lord Clarendon (100) ; Blok, Geschiedenis van het Nederlandsche Volk, V (348).
PROCLAMATIONS OF VANDERVIN : in Riker, Harlem.
STUYVESANT: Ecc. Records, I (167) ; St. Mark's Church in the Bowery, pub. by the Vestry, New York, 1899; and see Reference Notes, Chap. VIII. - MRS. STUYVESANT'S WILL: in Pasko, Old New York, I (412). - SELYNS' EPITAPH: in Murphy, Anthology of New Netherland (57). - STUYVESANT AND WINTHROP MARRIAGE : L. Rutherfurd, Family Records and Events, New York, 1894. -
BOWERY HOUSE: see Reference Notes, Chap. XIII.
HUME (quoted) : his History of England.
EVELYN (quoted) : his Diary (155).
TEMPLE (quoted) : his Memoirs in Vol. I of Works, Edinburgh, 1754. NICOLLS'S MONUMENT: Notes to O'Callaghan's ed. of Wolley, Two
Years' Journal in New York (256) ; N. Y. Hist. Soc. Proceedings, 1844 (215).
LOVELACE'S LETTERS TO WINTHROP: in Trumbull Papers in Mass. Hist. Soc. Collections, 5th Series, IX.
CLARKE'S LETTER : in New York in 1672-1673 in Historical Magazine, 1860 (213).
LOVELACE TO DELAVALL: MS., State Library, Albany.
EVERTSEN and BINCKES : Col. Docs., II; De Jonge, Nederlandsche
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Zeewezen (350). - 'SECOND SECRET INSTRUCTIONS': in Evertsen Papers (MSS., Moore Collection) in N. Y. Public Library, Lenox Building.
NATHAN GOULD'S DEPOSITION : in Col. Docs., III.
ALLYN TO WINTHROP: in Winthrop Papers in Mass. Hist. Soc. Col- lections, 6th Series, III.
COLDEN (quoted) : his Letters on Smith's History (407).
WINTHROP TO HIS SON ABOUT SHARPE: in Winthrop Papers in Mass. Hist. Soc. Collections, 5th Series, VIII.
LOVELACE TO WINTHROP : in Col. Docs., III.
SHARPE'S NARRATIVE: in Winthrop Papers in Mass. Hist. Soc. Col- lections, 6th Series, III.
EXACT ACCOUNT OF THE SURRENDER: in Papers Relating to the Resto- ration of New York to the English and in Cal. S. P. Col., 1669- 1674.
ACCOUNTS OF SURRENDER BY LEVERETT AND OTHERS: in Col. Docs., III, and in Cal. S. P. Col., 1669-1674.
MINUTES OF COUNCIL OF WAR AND OF COLVE'S ADMINISTRATION: in Col. Docs., II.
OATHS OF ALLEGIANCE: Col. Docs., II; Records of New Amsterdam, VII.
TOWNS: Col. Docs., II; and see Reference Notes, Chap. VIII. BURGHER GUARD: Report of State Historian, 1896, Appendix H.
LONG ISLAND: Col. Docs., II; Records of Connecticut Colony, II, Ap- pendix (125) ; Records of Massachusetts-Bay (312); Records of Plymouth Colony (442) ; Acts of the Commissioners of New Eng- land (364) ; Winthrop Papers in Mass. Hist. Soc. Collections, 3d Series, X, and 5th Series, VIII; Trumbull Papers, ibid., 5th Series, IX.
MATTHIAS NICOLLS TO WINTHROP : in Winthrop Papers in Mass. Hist. Soc. Collections, 3d Series, X, and in Report of State Historian, 1897, Appendix L.
RICHARD WHARTON (quoted) : in G. H. Moore, Work and Materials for American History in Historical Magazine, 1867, and in Cal. S. P. Col., 1669-1674.
CAPTAIN WYBORNE (quoted) : in Cal. S. P. Col., 1675-1676. MOHAWKS : Col. Docs., XIII.
CITY 'CHARTERS': Col. Docs., II; Records of New Amsterdam, VI; Laws and Ordinances of New Netherland; Papers Relating to the City of New York in Doc. Hist., I (397).
TAX LIST: in Col. Docs., II, in Records of New Amsterdam, VII, in Valentine's Manual, 1860, in N. Y. Hist. Soc. Collections, 1841, and in Mem. Hist., I (408).
TRADING SYNDICATE : Records of New Amsterdam, VII.
VOL. II. - K
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SHARPE'S LETTERS TO WINTHROP: in Winthrop Papers in Mass. Hist. Soc. Collections, 3d Series, X.
COUNCIL OF TRADE AND PLANTATIONS: Col. Docs., III; Andrews, British Committees, Commissions, etc. (77).
ADVICE ABOUT NEW YORK: in Col. Docs., III, and in Cal. S. P. Col., 1669-1674.
MAGISTRATES OF NEW ORANGE TO STATES GENERAL: in Col. Docs., II. PETITION OF 'NEW NETHERLAND MERCHANTS': ibid.
SENTENCES OF SHARPE AND MELYN : ibid.
WINTHROP TO HIS SON ABOUT ANDROS: in Winthrop Papers in Mass. Hist. Soc. Collections, 5th Series, VIII.
ANDROS AND COLVE, CORRESPONDENCE: in Papers Relating to the Restoration of New York to the English, in Records of New Amster- dam, VII, and in Brodhead, Hist. of New York, II, Appendix.
WEST INDIA COMPANY: Col. Docs., II, and see Reference Notes, Chap. I.
WALLACE (quoted) : his My Life, a Record of Events and Experiences, Amer. ed., New York, 1905.
CHAPTER XIX
DUTCH AND ENGLISH IN NEW YORK
That I may say, and say truly, that if there be any terrestrial happiness to be had by people of all ranks, especially of an inferior rank, it must certainly be here. . .. Here those which fortune hath frowned upon in England, to deny them an inheritance among their brethren, or such as by their utmost labors can scarcely procure a living, I say such may procure here inheritances of lands and posses- sions, stock them with all sorts of cattle, enjoy the benefits of them whilst they live, and leave them to the benefit of their children when they die. - DANIEL DENTON : A Brief Description of New York, 1670.
CORNELIS VAN RUYVEN seems to have been the only per- son of importance who returned to Holland after the second English occupation. There he continued to serve the province in its church affairs. Martin Cregier removed to the up-river country where he died in 1715. His descendants have been many in the Mohawk valley. Dr. Hans Kierstede died in 1666, Thomas Hall in 1669 leaving no children, Govert Lockermans in 1671, Domine Drisius and John Underhill in the same year as General Stuyvesant, 1673.
Underhill had settled near Oyster Bay, getting wide lands, which in memory of the English neighborhood where he was born he called Kenilworth, from the Matinecock Indians and afterwards protecting the tribe against all covetous white men, several times petitioning the governor or the court of assizes on their behalf. Over his grave in the old burial ground at Matinecock a large monument has recently been erected, rather out of proportion to its rural surroundings and to the rôle he played in the history of New Netherland and New York. For more than two hundred years his lands
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remained in the hands of his descendants. Some of these, who are now numerous, inherit Dutch blood from the wife of his youth. His second wife, Elizabeth Feake whom he married in 1659, was a sister of the wife of John Bowne the Quaker; and in his latter years the old Indian fighter also joined the peace-loving communion of Friends. Family bonds were in those days widely stretched and deeply re- spected. As the first husband of Underhill's mother-in-law Mrs. Feake had been a brother of John Winthrop, Underhill, when writing after his marriage, sometimes addressed Win- throp as his 'dear cousin' or - an interchangeable term at the time - 'dear uncle.'
In Lion Gardiner's History of the Pequot Wars he praises the prowess of 'Captain Undrill,' saying that he was one of the 'right New England military worthies' whose names were ignored by the chroniclers of New England; they had not once mentioned him although their 'twelve-penny chroni- cle' was stuffed with a catalogue of the names of some as if they had 'deserved immortal fame.'
Thomas Willett retired again to Plymouth Colony in the time of Governor Lovelace and died in 1674. In the Little Neck Cemetery at Riverside, East Providence, his modest grave is fortunately undisturbed. His name is cut on a headstone of slate, and on a footstone these words:
Who was ye first Mayor of New York And did twice retain ye place.
He was 'a very able and an honest gentleman,' Colonel Cart- wright once assured Governor Nicolls. His letters show that, whatever his origin, he cannot have been familiar with printed pages, so far beyond the variations in spelling cus- tomary in his time are the anarchical vagaries of his pen. Like John Underhill he spelled by ear, and his ear, like Under- hill's, was bad. In letters to Winthrop, for example, Under- hill invented 'favarabell,' 'considderachonse,' 'menchoned,' and 'linggrin,' wrote that the 'last chip' which had 'arifd'
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from England was 'but nine wicks in her viagse,' and de- scribed John Bowne as a 'jentiele young man, of gud abilliti, of a louli fetture and gud behafior.' And Willett was quite as ingenious, achieving 'operetewnetey,' 'waitey afaiares,' 'pees and tranqueletey,' and explaining that
. . . wampum falenge moar and moar yn vallo and lenengs riseng I thoughte to staey tell et war a beter comodetey bute et stell fell.
Although Willett left children, not from him but from another Thomas Willett - one of the original patentees of the town of Hempstead and high sheriff of Long Island under Governor Andros - was descended the Marinus Willett who was active in the French and Revolutionary Wars and, like his far-back namesake, became mayor of New York.
The three advisers of the English government, Maverick, Baxter, and Scott, who had shown in 1663 how easily New Netherland might be seized, did not profit by its seizure as they undoubtedly hoped they would. Maverick seems to have got little or nothing more than the house on the Broad Way in New York. Baxter and Scott got nothing at all. Trying at New York to recover moneys which he said the West India Company owed him, Baxter was proved to have served the Company treacherously and was fined for using bad language in court. Soon he departed for the West Indies. Scott, disappointed in his scheme to secure the governorship of Long Island, nevertheless returned there and resumed his old traffic in fraudulent land conveyances. Underhill wrote to Winthrop that he had worked much mis- chief at Brookhaven with 'a counterfeit portraiture of the king impressed in yellow wax' and attached to a forged grant of twenty miles square, but was now 'packing' out of the province as the court of assizes had condemned him and had reinstated the townsfolk in their 'ancient possessions.' In fact, a warrant issued in October, 1666, says that at the Hempstead meeting of 1665, when the Duke's Laws were ratified, Scott had been ordered to bring into the next court
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of assizes a certain deed 'with the king's picture on it and a great yellow wax seal affixed to it' with which he had de- ceived many persons, but fearing that his 'counterfeit and deceitful practices' might be discovered had 'privily' with- drawn himself from the province; therefore it was ordered that any property he owned should be seized. In the same month Nicolls wrote home that he had positive knowledge that Scott had stolen from the office of the secretary of state in London papers relating to Massachusetts and delivered them to the governor and council at Boston, told that with the paper bearing 'the king's picture drawn with a pen or black lead' and the forged signatures of the king and Henry Bennett he had 'horribly abused his Majesty's honor in these parts' and then fled to Barbadoes, said that the governor of Barbadoes, Lord Willoughby, had sent word that 'upon this account' he would send Scott a prisoner to England, and added that he was writing what he himself knew so that 'such fellows might have some mark of infamy put upon them.'
Thus, it has usually been thought, Baxter and Scott dis- appeared from history. Palfrey, however, suggested that this Captain John Scott might be identical with the Colonel John Scott who afterwards got Samuel Pepys into trouble; and many existing documents tend to show that such was the case.
Not sent to England by Lord Willoughby but taken into his favor, Scott bore an active part in the war then in progress with the Dutch and the French, commanding an expedition which captured the island of Tobago and certain Dutch stations on the South American coast. A long description of the taking of St. Christopher's from the French, now in the Public Record Office, is indorsed 'Major Scott's Rela- tion' and was written at Willoughby's request. Returning to England at the close of the year 1667 Scott petitioned King Charles, asking that he be reimbursed for the loss of a ship and some £1600 in the royal service. Willoughby praised his conduct as a soldier but wrote to Joseph William-
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son, the under-secretary of state, that he had probably been telling in England 'some truth but not all gospel.' There was much truth in an account of the various American colo- nies that he dictated to Williamson but also some highly dubious statements, like the assertion that Sir Henry Vane was the father of the monstrous infants said to have been borne in the early days of Massachusetts by the heretical Mrs. Hutchinson and Mrs. Dyre.
In 1668 Scott was appointed king's geographer. Soon afterwards the sight of Colonel Nicolls, newly arrived from Manhattan, 'made him forsake Whitehall.' Nicolls himself wrote this to Samuel Maverick explaining, as Maverick re- peated in a letter to Winthrop, that he had told how Scott had behaved on Long Island and had informed the king, queen, and duke of the 'lavish extravagant expressions' he had used concerning each one of them.
Next, Scott spent some time in the Netherlands writing, as parts of an intended book on the coasts and islands of America, a Description of Guiana, now in manuscript in the British Museum, and an unfinished History and Description of the River of the Amazones, one copy of which is among the Pepys papers at Oxford, another among those at Cambridge. Doubtless Pepys acquired these manuscripts while he was making an investigation that proved extremely unfortunate for himself. At some previous time Scott had sold a tract on Long Island which he did not possess to a connection of his own in England, a certain Major Gotherson. Later, Gotherson's heirs, to learn the exact situation of the property, invoked the aid of Governor Lovelace, and when the fraud was thus discovered petitioned the king for redress. The Duke of York then ordered Pepys, as an official in the ad- miralty office, to gather evidence against Scott, and Pepys brought together a great number of depositions regarding his dishonest proceedings in New England, New York, France, Holland, and England, including some which proved that while he was living in the Netherlands he swindled the gov- ernment of the province of Holland out of £7000 and, in
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consequence, was hanged in effigy at the Hague in 1672. All these documents are preserved at Oxford.
In the Public Record Office is a letter written in 1674 to Secretary Lord Arlington and enclosing one sent by Scott's wife from the home of her father, the Reverend Mr. Oxen- bridge, at Boston in Massachusetts. This says that Scott was then in Surinam, where he had helped in the removal of British subjects (the place having been surrendered to Hol- land), and had just written his wife after a silence of three years that he was a 'deep sufferer' from ill-treatment at the hands of the Dutch, had thereby been prevented from writing sooner, and did not know when he would make his way to England. This letter seems to prove that he was not the Colonel John Scott who is known to have acted as an English spy in Holland during the war of 1672-1674. Even- tually he did get back to England. And evidently he nursed his grudge against Pepys; for in May, 1679, in the height of the excitement engendered by the so-called Popish Plot against the life of King Charles which Titus Oates professed to re- veal, on the deposition of 'Colonel Scott and some others' Pepys was committed to the Tower, charged with selling the secrets of the admiralty to the French and plotting as a Catholic to dethrone the king and to extirpate the Protestant religion. After sitting in the Tower for several months he was released on bail for £30,000; his trial was postponed four times; he was not relieved from his bail until February, 1680, and then only because Scott refused to swear to the truth of his original depositions and no prosecutor appeared. Thus, as Pepys wrote to one of his friends, he had suffered for almost a year 'from one villain's practices.'
It seems to have been this same villain whose villainy took a new turn in 1682 when he murdered a hackney-coach- man in a fray in the streets of London and fled to Norway where he remained, an outlaw, until, fourteen years later, he was pardoned by William III and returned to England. And it was certainly the John Scott known in New Nether- land and New York whose memory was revived when the
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boundary lines of Venezuela were being settled in 1897 and 1898. Then his manuscripts, never quite forgotten by students of South American history, acquired practical im- portance. The report of the United States commissioners discredited their statements; but Edmundson, the English scholar to whose studies of Dutch enterprises in South America we owe our knowledge of Jesse De Forest's journal, has since upheld them with convincing clearness.
Nothing can clear or clean the reputation of John Scott himself. But his career, which could be traced much more in detail than has here seemed needful, might form the theme of an interesting and not uninstructive monograph. The seventeenth-century type of globe-trotting, swashbuckling adventurer scarcely ever enlivened with his presence the northern American colonies; and although he frequently ap- peared in the West Indies and, more conspicuously, in the East Indies, he can rarely have taken a hand in such important affairs as did Captain Scott or have left in history such vivid and plentiful traces.
The little book, published at London in 1670, in which Daniel Denton spoke of the horse-races on Long Island was the first English publication relating wholly to the Dutch province. It is fully described on its own title-page :
A Brief Description of NEW YORK : Formerly Called New Nether- lands. With the Places thereunto Adjoyning. Together with the Manner of its Scituation, Fertility of the Soyle, Healthfulness of the Climate, and the Commodities thence produced. Also Some Directions and Advice to such as shall go thither: An Account of what Commodities they shall take with them; The Profit and Pleas- ure that may accrue to them thereby. Likewise A Brief RELATION of the Customs of the Indians there.
Daniel Denton, a son of Richard Denton a Presbyterian minister who had been one of the original patentees of Hemp- stead, was during the Dutch period town clerk of Hemp- stead and of Jamaica. In 1665 he was one of the deputies from Jamaica to the Hempstead meeting and one of the first
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