USA > New York > History of the state of New York Vol I > Part 15
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Historians have reiterated a tale that the Mayflower was taken to Cape Cod through the treachery of Jones, her 5 master. The story was first broached by Nathaniel Mor- Morton's ton, secretary of the New Plymouth colony, who, in his slander. Parthian " Memorial," alleging " late and certain intelligence," charges " some of the Dutch" with having "fraudulently hired the said Jones * * * to disappoint" the Pilgrims in their intention to go "to Hudson's River." Morton was not a passenger by the Mayflower in 1620. He came to New Plymouth in 1623, when he was a boy only eleven years old. He did not publish his " Memorial" until 1669, nearly half a century after the alleged "plot," when most of the passengers in the Mayflower were dead, and when the coveted territory of New Netherland had been for five years subjected to British rule. If the secretary's "intel- ligence" had been early, instead of "late," it might, per- haps, have been called "certain." The Mayflower does not appear ever to have been in Holland ; nor do Jones, her master, nor Coppin, her mate and pilot, seem to have had any communication with the Dutch. But Coppin had certainly been on the coast of New England at least once
* Bradford, in Young, 121 ; Morton's Memorial, 37; Bancroft, i., 309.
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HISTORY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK.
CHAP. IV. before ;* and in navigating the Mayflower by the northern 1620. passage, toward Cape Cod, he only followed his former track, and adhered to the usual English practice since Gosnold's time. Neither Bradford nor Winslow, in their contem- porary histories, question the fidelity of the master or the pilot of the ship, both of whom seem to have been English- men, in the interest of their London employers; and the si- lence of Bradford and Winslow ought to be conclusive on a point which, if true, must unquestionably have had a con- spicuous place in every faithful account of the "old colony." No allusion is made to the story in the early correspondence between New Netherland and New Plymouth in 1627. Dudley, in his letter to Lady Lincoln in 1631, is silent. If the tale had been true, the Dutch would assuredly have been taunted with it in 1633, and afterward, when the New Plymouth colonists quarreled with them about the title to the valley of the Connecticut. In short, Morton's Parthian " calumny" seems to be a sheer falsehood, too eagerly re- peated by more recent writers. After a boisterous voyage of more than two months, and "long beating at sea," says Bradford, "they fell in with the land called Cape Cod ; the which being made, and certainly known to be it, they were not a little joyful." A consultation was held, and the ship was tacked to the southward, "to find some place about Hudson's River, according to their first intentions." But they soon fell among the "perilous shoals and break- ers" of Cape Malebarre, which embarrass the navigator to this day ; and they bore up again for Cape Cod. Neither Dutch intrigue nor a bribed pilot had brought the May- flower there-it was the Providence of God.t
The story " a calum- ".עם
9 Nov.
10 Nov.
Finding that they were now far beyond "the northern
* Bradford and Winslow's Journal, in Young, 148, 159. "Robert Coppin, our pilot, made relation of a great navigable river and good harbor on the other headland of the bay, almost right over against Cape Cod, being in a right line not much above eight leagues distant, in which he had been once." Young supposes the " other headland" to be Ma- nomet Point, and the " great navigable river" to be the North River, in Scituate.
t Morton's Memorial, 34 ; Bradford, in Young, 100-103, 117 ; De Laet, iii., cap. iv., p. 80 ; Dudley, in Young's Mass., 308 ; Holmes's Annals, i., 161 ; Moulton, 352-357. Gra hame, in his History of the United States (Am. ed.), i., 194 ; ii., 161, 162, records and em- bellishes the story. See, however, Dr. Young's admirable remarks at the " Old Colony". festival at Boston, December, 1844, in N. Y. H. S. Proc., 1844, App., p. 106.
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THE COMPACT OF THE PILGRIMS AT CAPE COD.
parts of Virginia," and that, consequently, their patent CHAP. IV. from the Virginia Company, under which they had left 1620. Holland, expecting " to become a body politic," was." made void and useless,"* the emigrants, the day before they came to harbor, "observing some not well affected to unity and concord," and " some appearance of faction" among their company, signed an agreement, combining them- Compact at selves together into "a civil body politic," for their " bet- Cape Cod ter ordering and preservation." This instrument, which 11 Nov the pressure of disaffecting circumstances made suddenly expedient, has, by degrees, become magnified into "the birth of popular constitutional liberty," and the exclusive claim is now distinctly set up that " in the cabin of the Mayflower humanity recovered its rights."t
No class of persons in the world has, perhaps, on the one hand, been loaded with more extravagant eulogy, and, on the other, been covered with more undeserved ridicule than the English Puritans, and their descendants in Amer- ica. An incessant repetition of stereotyped panegyric may, indeed, be excused on those periodical occasions when a large posterity is accustomed to commemorate, with filial pride, the many worthy attributes of a devout, active, acute, independent, and resolute ancestry. The honest reputation of that renowned ancestry no candid mind can depreciate ; and the real services which the Puritans ren- dered to the cause of civil liberty it is grateful to ap- plaud. But there is danger lest zeal should outrun knowl-
* It may cause misapprehension to say that the passengers in the Mayflower left Europe " without any useful charter from a corporate body." The only reason why their " large patent" from the Virginia Company, with which they adventured, " was never made use of," as stated by Bradford, was, because they settled themselves-contrary to their inten- tion when they sailed-out of the bounds of Virginia. Several years afterward, they ob- tained a charter from the New England Council, within the limits of whose patent they had accidentally established their plantation.
t Bradford and Winslow, in Young, 95, 120, 121 ; Morton's Memorial, 28, 37 ; Bancroft, i., 308-310. Young, in a note to his " Chronicles of the Pilgrims," p. 120, says, "Here, for the first time in the world's history, the philosophical fiction of a social compact was realized in practice. And yet it seems to me that a great deal more has been discerned in this document than the signers contemplated. It is evident that when they left Holland, they expected 'to become a body politic, using among themselves civil government, and to choose their own rulers from among themselves.' Their purpose in drawing up and signing this compact, was simply, as they state, to restrain certain of their number who had manifested an unruly and factious disposition. This was the whole philosophy of the instrument, whatever may since have been discovered and deduced from it."
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HISTORY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK.
CHAP. IV. edge, and lest ideal pictures, drawn by self-adulatory rhet- 1620. oric, should gradually come to be received as faithful por- , traits of reality. And while naught should be set down in malice, no temptation to flatter self-conceit, nor anxiety to demonstrate hypotheses; no reluctance to oppose the most eloquent ability, nor fear of provoking cherished prej- udice which unwelcome candor may offend, should ever warp those, who assume the responsible task of recording the annals of their race, from the duty of clearly exposing historical truth.
Example of the Dutch republic.
However ample may have been the true scope of their compact on board of the Mayflower at Cape Cod, it can not be denied, and it ought not to be concealed, that the Pilgrims, before they left their asylum in Holland, had seen, in her tolerant government, an early and illustrious , assertion of the rights and the power of the people, and a noble protest against oppression and tyranny. While the fugitive Puritans, unmolested at Leyden, observed the popular principle of majorities triumphant, even in severe ecclesiastical decisions, they found that sublimest element of all in civil liberty-freedom of conscience-more fully realized in the United Netherlands than in any other country in the world. The same immunities which the Dutch had won from Spain were freely granted to the non-conforming refugees from England. In the Batavian Republic, too, they saw the happy working of that Federal system which afterward bound together the American col- onies. And, in the Constitution of self-governing Holland, those refugees had before them the practical example of a representative administration, imperfect, indeed, but nev- ertheless a marvel of the age ; founded on large principles of popular liberty ; maintaining those principles with splen- did success ; and deserving the lasting gratitude 'of man- kind for its earnest, consistent, and magnanimous vindi- cation of the rights of humanity. All this was observed in the United Provinces, at a period when James I. was king of Great Britain, Louis XIII. king of France, and Philip III. king of Spain. Such lessons could not possi-
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THE LANDING OF THE PILGRIMS.
bly have been lost upon the Pilgrims ; to their value they CHAP. IV. had themselves borne testimony, in soliciting encourage- ment to emigrate to New Netherland " under the order 1620. and command" of the Prince of Orange and the States General ; and when they are found affirming, in New En- gland, some of substantially the same principles as those which they had seen operative in the Dutch republic, and which at that time were developed no where else, it can not be just to monopolize for them the glory of having originated " popular constitutional liberty."*
Several weeks were spent by the emigrants in examin- ing the concave shores behind Cape Cod. At last, a more Landing at advantageous harbor than any they had seen was found outh. on the west side of the bay; and an exploring party land- 22 11 Dec. ed at New Plymouth, on the spot which Block and Smith had visited several years before, and marked on their maps, and which Dermer, just five months previously, though without their knowledge, had indicated as a fitting place for " the first plantation."} In a few days the Mayflower 24 Dec. was brought up from the Cape, and the
New Plym-
-" band of exiles moored their bark On the wild New England shore."
Thus the Puritan pilgrims left their home at Leyden, and sought the New World under the banner of Saint George ; and thus they came to plant on the bleak bor- ders of eastern New England the institutions which it had once been their purpose to cultivate, under the protecting flag of Holland, in the genial regions of New Netherland.
* This subject will be further considered in subsequent chapters.
t Morton's Memorial, 56, 57.
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HISTORY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK.
CHAPTER V.
1621-1625.
1621. Dutch Company incorpor ted.
CHAP. V. THE project for a general Dutch West India Company, which Usselincx had so early and zealously, yet unsuc- cessfully, urged upon the attention of the statesmen of West India Holland, at length obtained its accomplishment. It was the age of great monopolies and grasping charters. The East India Company had, since 1602, pursued a prosper- ous career; and its success had provoked emulation. The Twelve Years' truce with Spain had expired in the spring of 1621; and the United Provinces were warned to pre- pare for a renewed struggle with their mighty enemy. The obstacles which had hindered the consummation of Usselincx's views were not only now cleared away, but opposition was succeeded by encouragement ; and the long-pending charter was hurried to completion, within three months after the termination of the Spanish truce.
3 June. Charter.
On the third of June, 1621, the States General passed a formal patent under their great seal, declaring that the welfare and happiness of the United Netherlands depend- ed mainly upon their foreign trade and navigation, and that those great interests could be properly encouraged in dis- tant regions only by the combined and united action of a general incorporated company. For these and other rea- sons, they accordingly ordained that, for the term of twen- ty-four years from the first of July, 1621, none of the in- habitants of the United Provinces should be permitted to sail thence to the coasts of Africa, between the tropic of Cancer and the Cape of Good Hope, nor to the coasts of America or the West Indies, between Newfoundland and
Extent of territory.
135
THE DUTCH WEST INDIA COMPANY.
the Straits of Magellan, except in the name or by the con- CHAP. V. sent of the West India Company, upon pain of forfeiture of ships and cargoes. At the same time, it was provided 1621. that such parties as had, before the granting of the char- ter, been engaged in commerce with those countries, "'might continue their trade for, the sale of their goods," and make their homeward voyages.
The West India Company was invested with enormous Political powers. In the name of the States General, it might make the Compa- powers of contracts and alliances with the princes and natives of the ny. countries comprehended within the limits of its charter ; build forts ; appoint and discharge governors, soldiers, and public officers ; administer justice ; and promote trade. It was bound to "advance the peopling of those fruitful and unsettled parts, and do all that the service of those c untries, and the profit and increase of trade shall re- quire." It was obliged to communicate to the States Gen- eral, from time to time, all the treaties and alliances it might make, and also detailed statements of its forts and settlements. All governors in chief, and the instructions proposed to be given to them, were to be first approved of by the States General, who would then issue formal com- missions ; and all superior officers were held to take oaths of allegiance to their High Mightinesses, and also to the company.
The government of the company was vested in five sep- Chambers. arate chambers of managers ; one at Amsterdam, manag- ing four ninth parts ; one at Middleburg, in Zealand, two ninth parts ; one at Dordrecht, on the Maeze, one ninth part ; one in North Holland, one ninth part; and one in Friesland and Groningen, one ninth part. General exec- utive powers for all purposes-except that, in case of a dec- laration of war, the approbation of the States General was to be asked-were intrusted to a board of NINETEEN dele- College of gates. Of these, eight were to come from the Chamber at the XIX. Amsterdam, four from Zealand, two from the Maeze, two from North Holland, and two from Friesland and Gron- ingen; while one delegate was to represent the States Gen-
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HISTORY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK.
1621. Interest of the States General.
CHAP. V. eral, for the purpose of "helping to direct the affairs of the company to the best advantage in the aforesaid meeting." The States General likewise promised to "defend this com- pany against every person, in free navigation and traffic, and assist them with a million of guilders ;" and also, in case of war, to " give them for their assistance" sixteen ships of war of three hundred tons burden, and four yachts of eighty tons, all fully equipped. These vessels, however, were to be manned and supported by the company, which was also obliged to provide and maintain an equal num- ber. The whole fleet was to be under the command of an admiral appointed by the States General. - All the inhab- itants of the Netherlands, " and also of other countries," might become stockholders of the company during the year 1621 ; after which time no new members were to be admitted .*
erland in- cluded within the charter.
Thus the Dutch government, leaving to the East India Company the consolidation of a magnificent empire in Asia, gave to a new mercantile corporation almost boundless powers to subdue, colonize, and govern the unoccupied re- New Neth- gions of Africa and America. New Netherland, though not specifically named in the charter, was clearly compre- hended within its purview; and though the Dutch gov- ernment did not formally guarantee any absolute title to the territory, it nevertheless expressly bound the compa- ny to promote the colonization of those " fruitful and un- settled parts." The charters of Henry for the colonization of Canada, and the patents of James for the settlement of Virginia and New England, were no more favorable to co- lonial freedom than was the grant of the States General to Powers and the West India Company. While that corporation might duties of ny. the compa- conquer provinces, and form alliances with native princes at its own risk, it was bound to submit the instructions of its governors to the approval of the states ; and the para- mount authority and appellate jurisdiction of the central government at home was affirmed and maintained by the
* See charter at length in the Groot Placaatbook, i., 566 ; De Laet's Jaerlyck Verhael ; Hazard, i., 121; O'Call., i., 399.
(
PRIVATE SHIPS SENT TO NEW NETHERLAND.
137
oath of allegiance to the States General, which was re- CHAP. V. quired from all superior officers of the company.
The leading objects of the incorporation of this armed commercial monopoly were, nevertheless, " the profit and jects of the charter. increase of trade," and the humbling of the power of Spain and Portugal in Africa and America. How suc- cessfully these purposes were accomplished, the annals of the Netherlands proudly tell. Yet triumph eventually led to disaster ; and the intoxication of brilliant success was followed, before long, by the mortification of over- whelming bankruptcy. And it was an evil day for New Netherland, when the States General committed to the guardianship of a close and grasping mercantile corpora- tion, the ultimate fortunes of their embryo province in America.
Various impediments, however, delayed for two years Organiza- the final organization of the West India Company. The D. W. I. original charter was twice amplified in some points of de- Company. tail; and the managers having adopted articles of internal regulation, which were formally approved by the States General on the twenty-first of June, 1623, closed their 1623. books of subscription, and prepared with energy to prose- 21 June .. cute their designs .*
In the mean time, the merchants, who had lately formed Private the United New Netherland Association, continued to send to New Nether- -- separate trading ventures to the North and South Rivers. land. Hendrick Eelkens, Adriaen Jansen Engel, and Hans Joris Houten of Amsterdam, who, the year before, had so stren- uously opposed the grant of any exclusive privileges to May's ship-owners, obtained from the States General a special license to send their vessel, the "White Dove," to 1621. "New Virginia," under the command of Captain Joris 15 Sept. Houten. The next week, Dirck Volckertsen, Doctor Ve- rus, Doctor Carbasius, and others, of Hoorn, in North Hol- land, some of whom were the owners of May's first ship, the Fortune, obtained a similar permission to send a ves- 24 Sept. sel to trade "in the Virginias." A few days afterward,
* De Laet, Jaerlyck Verhael ; Hazard, i., 149, 174, 181 : O'Call., i., 408, 411.
1621. Leading ob-
tion of the
ships sent
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HISTORY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK.
CHAP. V. upon the petition of "Claes Jacobsen Haringcarspel; coun- 1621. selor and former schepen of Amsterdam, Peter Plancius,* minister of the word of God, Lambrecht van Tweenhuy- sen, Hans Claessen and Company, trading to certain lands, coasts, and rivers discovered by them, lying between Vir- ginia and New France, in the latitude of from forty to forty-five degrees, named New Netherland, and also to the adjacent lands and a great river, lying in the latitude of from thirty-eight to forty degrees," the States General authorized them to dispatch two ships, to trade on the North and South Rivers.t These special licenses were . granted under the proviso in the charter of the West, In- dia Company. But in order to prevent any interference with its privileges, the grantees of these special licenses were required to complete their voyages, and have all their vessels back in Holland, by the first day of July, 1622.
28 Sept.
British pat- ent for New England.
3 Nov.
Meanwhile, the King of England, notwithstanding the actual possession of Canada by the French, and New Neth- erland by the Dutch, had, as we have seen, asserted a claim of sovereignty over the regions lying between Vir- 1620. ginia and Newfoundland. The New England patent, by which James granted to the council at Plymouth an ab- solute property in all the American territory extending from the fortieth to the forty-eighth degree of latitude, and · from the Atlantic to the Pacific, passed the great seal about a week before the Mayflower, with the first Puritan emi- grants, arrived at Cape Cod. The monopoly conferred by the charter was immense. "Without the leave of the Council of Plymouth, not a ship might sail into a harbor
* Plancius was an eminent Calvinistic clergyman of Amsterdam, and a member of the famous Synod of Dort, where he was chosen one of the revisers of the new translation of the Bible. (Brandt, xxxiii., 53.) He was no less distinguished as a geographer ; and, as has been stated (ante, p. 23, 45), was an earnest promoter of Dutch maritime enterprise. Plancius constructed the charts by which the first Holland ships sailed to the East Indies ; he also counseled the expeditions to discover a new passage to China by way of Nova Zembla. In 1608 and 1609, Jeannin, the French ambassador at the Hague, wishing to in- duce his king to embark in the East India trade, frequently consulted Plancius, " from whom he procured the most light." (Wagenaar, Hist. Amst., iii., 219.) Witsen, one of the original grantees of the New Netherland charter of 1614, whose coat of arms is paint- ed in a window in the old church of Saint Nicholas at Amsterdam, was no doubt an intimate friend of his liberal-minded pastor, whom we now find associated with Van Tweenhuysen and others, in sending an expedition to the North and South Rivers. Plancius died on the 25th of May, 1622. + Hol. Doc., i., 109-113.
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THE NEW ENGLAND PATENT A "GRIEVANCE."
from Newfoundland to the latitude of Philadelphia; not a CHAP. V. skin might be purchased in the interior ; not a fish might be caught on the coast; not an emigrant might tread the 1621. soil." The only qualification which, even nominally, lim- ited the enormous grant, was the proviso which excepted any territories "actually possessed or inhabited by any other Christian prince or state." But the grant was so sweeping and exclusive, that its very extent impaired its value, by awakening the jealousy of Parliament. The next spring, after the patent was sealed, the House of Com- 25 April. mons turned its attention to the "grievance ;" and Sir Ed- ward Coke, from the chair of the House, informed Gorges of the complaints "in respect of many particulars therein contained, contrary to the laws and privileges of the sub- jects, as also that it was a monopoly, and the color of planting a colony put upon it for particular ends and pri- vate gain." Before its dissolution, the House presented the patent as " the first" of " the public grievances of the kingdom ;" and the French ambassador protested against it, as unwarrantably including Canada within its assigned limits .*
The king, however, determined to maintain the monop- 28 Sept. oly which he had granted ; and, at the solicitation of the traders to Private Plymouth Company, the Privy Council directed the mayors strained. N. E. re- of Bristol, and other sea-port towns in the south and west of the kingdom, to prohibit all persons from attempting to trade to New England " contrary to his majesty's said grant." Domestic interference being thus prevented, the watchful jealousy of the grantees of the charter was awak- ened to the movements of the Dutch in New Netherland. The intelligence communicated by Dermer of what he had observed while at Manhattan, was now confirmed by the news which came from Amsterdam, of the equipment and October. dispatch of several private ships to New Netherland, in an- ticipation of the more definite arrangements of the West
* Parl. Deb., 1620-1, 260, 318, 319 ; Commons' Journal, i., 591, 592, 640-669 ; Chalmers, 83, 100, 101 ; Gorges, Brief Narration, in Mass. Hist. Coll., xxvi., 66, 71, 72 ; Bancroft, i., 272, 327 ; Grahame's Hist. U. S., i., 199; ii., 161, 162, Am. ed .; Chalmers's Revolt of the Colonies, i., 25, 26.
t London Doc., i., 12; N. Y. Col. MSS., iii., 5.
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HISTORY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK.
CHAP. V. India Company .. Notwithstanding the proviso in their pat- 1621. ent, the Plymouth Company resolved to lose no time in vindicating their claim of English title against the Hol- landers, who, they alleged, " as interlopers, fell into the middle between"* Virginia and New England.
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