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gro slaves.
. Hutchinson's Massachusetts, 1., 111, 510; Sarage's Winthrop, il., 240-243 ; Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., xxxvi., 506-544; Palfrey's New England, li., 431 ; John Adams's Works, x., 320 ; Pepys, L, 264, 265; Evelyn, ii., S; Burnet, 1., TUS ; Lister's Life of Clarendon, ii., 231 ; D'Es- trade's Letters, il., 363, 364; N. Y. Col. Doc., il., 416-418 note; ante, vol. i., p. 500. There is a curious narrative of an interview between Charles the Second and Downing at the Hague, while the latter was Cromwell's ambassador, in the Antiquarian Repertory, and in the Universal Magazine for November, 1779, vol. Ixv., p. 245.
EUROPEAN COLONIES IN NORTH AMERICA.
even Downing could not make out a fair case against them. CuAr. I. Nevertheless, Sir Robert Holmes was secretly dispatched with a squadron to the coast of Guinea, where he seized the Dutch fort of Cabo Corso, and committed other acts of aggression, which Lord Clarendon afterward admitted were "without any shadow of justice."*
Another motive influenced the mind of James, and even- tually governed the action of Charles. This arose out of the condition of affairs in North America. There, for nearly half a century, England, France, and Holland had European each, with various success, endeavored to appropriate terri- North tory and plant and rear dependent colonies. France, the America. pioneer, had first pushed her adventurous way through the valley of the Saint Lawrence, and had set up the emblem of her national faith beside the banner of her king among the savage tribes which inhabited its borders. Thus arose her dominion over New France, or Canada and Acadia. Canada. Farther south, England had clung to the sea-coast, the clear waters of which were alive with the finest fish, and where commodious harbors invited her emigrants to linger near those crystal waves which could roll unbroken to Land's End. Yet England had not explored nor. occupied the whole of that more southern coast. Midway between Vir- Virginia ginia and New England-in a region, the most of which no Enghat. and New European eye had seen before-colonists from Holland, following the track of the Half Moon of Amsterdam, planted themselves, without question, among the native Americans, from whom they bought the soil, and thus add- New Neth- ed a NEW NETHERLAND to the Dutch Republic. erland.
The progress of the various enterprises by which these several territories were first colonized has already been minutely traced. Each has its own peculiar history, event- ful, romantic, and instructive. Of none of them were the motives of the projectors or the views of the promoters ex- actly alike. Canada was peopled by Europeans, speaking the French tongue, and professing the Roman faith. New
. Pepy., il., 63, 128; Clarendon's Life, li., 232-234; Lister's Clarendon, if., 241, 231, 253- #62; ili., 299, 220, 301, 302, 347; Basnage, i., 711; Aitzema, iv .. 579; D'Estrades, il. 364, (35; Lingard, xil., 165-168; Rapin, il., 636; Davies's Holland, ifi., 19, 20, 25; Ander-on's CAonial Church, ii., 279, 280 ; Cobbett's Parliamentary Hi-tory, iv., 232, 293; ante, vol. i., p. 134% Anderson. in his Origin of Commerce, ii., 473, 526, seems to think that guineas were Ent coined in 1673. But Pepys, il., 4:3; iv., 26, alludes to them, in 1606 and 1ccs, as al- raly at a premium in London.
1664. February.
colonies in
TH02 21 8812010
STORU
8
HISTORY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK.
CHAP. I. Netherland was colonized by Protestant emigrants from 1664. Motives of coloniza- tiou. a fatherland which had conquered in the most glorious strife for civil and religious liberty that the world has ever witnessed. Virginia was occupied by loyal Englishmen who admired the hierarchy ; New England chiefly by Pu- ritans who abhorred prelacy ; Maryland by larger-minded Roman Catholics. But all these were Britons, who spoke the tongue of Shakspeare and Milton; who, much as they differed among themselves respecting creeds or fashions, were the subjects of one common sovereign ; and who, ar- rogant and exclusive by nature, looked upon other races as their inferiors, and willingly combined against them as national foes. Their hereditary hatred of foreigners ac- · companied the English emigrants across the Atlantic, and even burned more brightly in some parts of the wilder- ness. There was a constant tendency on their part, and English in- especially among the New England Puritans, to quarrel with and overbear both their neighbors, the Roman Cath- olic French of Canada, and the Protestant Dutch of New Netherland. This tendency had already resulted in the conquest of Acadia, or Nova Scotia, from the French, by order of Cromwell, in 1654. That acquisition the Pro- tector declined to restore, and made it a British province. His design to reduce the Dutch possessions, which were the more coveted because they were so advantageously situated, was abandoned in his' treaty with De Witt, by which England virtually conceded New Netherland to Holland .*
solence.
Cromwell's recognition of New Nether- land.
situation of New Nether- land.
The Dutch province was indeed the most admirably sit- nated region in North America. Its original limits in- cluded all the Atlantic coast between Cape Henlopen and Admirable Montauk Point, and all the inland territory bounded by the Connecticut Valley on the east, the Saint Lawrence and Lake Ontario on the north, and the affluents of the Ohio, the Susquehanna, and the Delaware on the west and south. Within those bounds is the only spot on all the continent whence issue divergent streams which find their outlets in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, the Atlantic Ocean, and the Gulf of Mexico. Diagonally across its surface runs a
* Charlevoix, IL, 190-204: Chalmers's Political Annala, i., 197; Pepys, ill., 126, 344; Wil- Liamson's Maine, 1., 361 : Palfrey's New England, il., 872; Proud, 1 , 251; Grahame (ed. 1945), i., 406 ; Smith, L, 387 ; ante, vol. i., p. 586.
9
ADMIRABLE CHARACTERISTICS.OF NEW NETHERLAND.
chain of the Alleghanies, through which, in two remarka- CHAP. I. ble chasms, the waters of the Delaware and the Hudson flow southward to the sea. At the head of its tides, the 1664. Hudson, which its explorers appropriately named "The Its physic. Great River of the Mountains," receives the current of the teristics. al charac- Mohawk rushing in from the west. Through the valleys of these rivers, and across the neighboring lakes, the savage natives of the country tracked those pathways of travel and commerce which civilized science only adopted and im- proved. Along their banks grew up flourishing villages, all contributing to the prosperity of the chief town, which, with unerring judgment, had been planted on the ocean-washed island of Manhattan. In addition to these superb geo- graphical peculiarities, every variety of soil, abundant min- eral wealth, nature teeming with animal and vegetable life, and a climate as healthful as it is delicious, made New Netherland the most alluring of all the European colonies in America. From the first, it was always the chosen seat of empire .*
It was an admirable decree of Providence which or- dained that this magnificent region should first be occu- pied by the Batavian race. If originally as homogeneous Influence as the English, that race had certainly become less selfish founders. and exclusive. The well-considered policy of Holland at- tracted to her shores many of whom their own lands were not worthy. This magnanimity was rewarded by almost unexampled national prosperity. After achieving their own independence and establishing a republic on the basis of religious toleration, the Dutch colonized the American province which they had discovered, and at the same time invited strangers of all races to come and find homes along with themselves in its temperate and attractive territory. The Batavian emigrants brought with them the liberal maximş of their fatherland. Soon, eighteen different lan- guages were spoken in New Amsterdam ; Thus, by de- grres, grew up the germ of a mighty cosmopolitan state. In spite of the stunting mismanagement of the West India Company, to which its government had been unwisely in- trusted, New Netherland gave early promise of coming . Incture on the "Topography and History of New York," by Governor Horatio Sey- 2 . ur, l'aica, 1550 : also Colden, in Col. Doc., VL, 122 ; Doc. Ilist., iv., 112.
I Anz, vol'L, p. 374.
of its Dutch
.
10
HISTORY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK.
4
CHAP. I.
1664.
grandeur. The fatherland scarcely appreciated the trans- Atlantic dominion which its emigrants had founded. But the growing greatness of that dominion, which had long excited the jealousy of its New England neighbors, at length moved both the pride and the cupidity of the En- glish court to seize it as a royal prize.
To estimate properly the course which Charles the Sec- ond now pursued, we must consider the irreconcilable views of title to American territory which the English and the Dutch severally maintained. They may be stated thus : As Columbus had discovered the New World, which should have borne his name, in the service of Spain, the Pope granted it to the Spanish sovereigns. A few years after- ward the Cabots, under commissions of Henry the Seventh of England, discovered Newfoundland, and sailed at a dis- tance along the North American continent as far south as the latitude of Gibraltar. By virtue of these discoveries, the English sovereigns claimed dominion over all that part of North America along the coast of which the Cabots had sailed. But, as the previous sweeping title of Spain was in the way of the English claim, Queen Elizabeth, in 1580, announced the principle that "prescription without possession is of no avail ;" or, in other words, that actual oc- cupation must follow discovery in order to confer a valid right. Accordingly, England did not question the title of France to Canada and Acadia. But, as the discoveries of Verazzano and of Gomez, farther to the south, did not lead to French or Spanish colonization, James the First granted a patent in 1606, under which the English asserted an ex- clusive right to colonize all the Atlantic coast between Cape Fear and Acadia not " actually possessed by any Christian prince or people." Under this patent no English mariner had searched the shore between Buzzard's Bay and the Chesapeake, when Henry Hudson, in 1609, in the service of the Dutch East India Company, explored " the great River of the Mountains." This gave the Hollanders an unques- tionable title by discovery, which they soon fortified by far- ther visitation and actual occupation. In 1614, the States General granted a trading charter which recognized "New Netherland" as a Dutch territory. Six years afterward, James the First granted, in 1620, a second patent for "New
The terri- torial ques- tion in North America.
11
THE QUESTION OF TITLE IN AMERICA.
England in America," which included all the region be- CHAP. I.
and New herland not in the
tween the fortieth and the forty-eighth degrees of latitude, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific. But his patent ex- 1664. pressly provided that no territory was intended to be grant- ed which was " actually possessed or inhabited by any other Christian prince or estate." This proviso clearly excepted Canada New France and New Netherland. Nevertheless, from the time of the landing of the first Puritan emigrants on new New En- Plymouth beach, the English pertinaciously insisted on sland Pat- styling the Dutch occupants of New Netherland "intrud- ers" into New England. With inconsistent logic but char- acteristic assurance, they maintained their own title under the patent of James, while they denied that of the Hol- landers, which was recognized in its proviso. This they continued to do, although the House of Commons in 1621 confirmed Queen Elizabeth's doctrine, and insisted that "occupancy confers a good title by the law of nations and nature." In 1635, the grantees of the New England pat- ent conveyed to the Earl of Stirling the territory of Pema- quid, between the Saint Croix and the Kennebeck in Maine, and the island of Matowack, or Long Island. The Dutch, however, utterly denied the English claim to any part of Conflicting, Long Island, and expelled Lord Stirling's agents. At length English Dutch and Peter Stuyvesant, the director of New Netherland, by a claims. treaty made at Hartford in 1650, surrendered to the En- glish all the territory south of Oyster Bay on Long Island, and east of Greenwich on the continent. This treaty was mtified by the States General in 1636, but no reciprocal action was taken by the British government. Cromwell, however, after directing an expedition to take New Nether- land, recognized the Dutch title by the treaty of 1654; and no demonstration was afterward made against what New England men pertly considered "a thorn in the side."#
Thus stood the question when Charles the Second was restored to the throne. The antipathy of the Puritan colo- nists of New England against their Dutch neighbors in New Netherland, which to some extent seems to have moved the
* . Anty, vol. 1., pages 4, 11, 36, 63, 64, 96, 139, 950, 232, 519, 582, 583, 556, 621, 025, 613, 653, 42, Themona State Papers, 1 .. 364, 721, 722; ii., 419; Masa. II. S. Coll., xxxIi., 230-932; Naarbury's Calendar, 1., 204; Chalmers's Political Annals, i., 6, $2, 83 ; Kennett's England, $1 , 4-48; Parliam. Debates, i., 250, 251; Smith, i., 387 ; Proud, i., 281; Palfrey, il., 371, 372. Ast 1. 1. 7. erre in attributing to Richard Cromwell the instructions given by Oliver in Feb- fat 7, 154 ; and Grahame, i., 400, follows Smith ; see ante, vol. 1., p. 553.
12
HISTORY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK.
CHAP. I. Protector, had no similar influence on the king. Charles
1664. had no sympathy with the likes or the dislikes of his New
England subjects. His restoration had been a sore disap-
Policy of Cha pointment to them. They had received the tidings with Second. " scrupulous incredulity." They had acknowledged him as king with a very grim austerity. Constant complaints were preferred against them at Whitehall. In the sum- mer of 1661, Henry, the fourth Earl of Stirling, complained to the king of the " intrusion" of the Dutch upon Long Island, and petitioned that they might be subdued or ex- pelled. Lord Stirling's petition was referred to the Coun- cil of Plantations, at the head of which was Clarendon. But before any action was taken, the king granted to John Winthrop a charter for Connecticut, which appeared to cover a large part of New Netherland, together with "the islands thereunto adjoining." The charter, however, was violently opposed ; and it finally passed the great seal in April, 1662, with the understanding that the king would "send Commissioners into those parts, who upon the place should settle all differences and pretences upon the bounds of each colony." In the following September, Clarendon declared in the Plantation Committee that the king would dispatch commissioners, and the Duke of York was re- quested "to consider of the choice of fit men." Charles himself, in April, 1663, announced to the Privy Council that he intended to send commissioners speedily to New England, " to see how the charter is maintained on their part, and to reconcile the differences at present among them."*
The En- glish Navi- gation Ac
There was another subject which was now pressed upon the king's attention. The Navigation Act of 1660 had been openly disregarded or clandestinely evaded in the British American plantations. One of the chief obstacles to its execution was charged to be the existence of the Dutch province. The trade carried on between New Netherland and New England on the one side, and Maryland and Vir- ginia on the other, was alleged to be " very much to the prejudice of England, and to the loss of his majesty, in re-
* Chalmers's Pel. Ann., i., 249, 950, 253, 256, 257, 203, 386, 432; Col. Doc., ii., 350; iii., 32, 42, 43, 55 ; vii., 431; Mass. IL S. Coll., xxxii., 264; Duer's Life of Stirling, 31; Trumbull's Connecticut, i., 523 ; Col. Rec. Conn., 1., 251; ii., 3-11 ; Palfrey, ii., 540-545, 574, 575; ante, vol. i., p. 150, 7:2, 720 ; N. Y. H. S. Coll. (1509), 1-57.
i
13
NEW ENGLISH NAVIGATION LAW.
spect to customs, many thousand pounds yearly." Lord CHAP. I. Baltimore, the Proprietary of Maryland, promised to " do his best to prevent" this trade; and Sir William Berkeley, 1664. the royal governor of Virginia, was ordered to enforce the law. Still, the intercolonial traffic was continued. Parlia- New navi- ment accordingly enacted a new law in 1663, which pro- hibited the importation of European commodities into the English plantations, except in English vessels from En- gland. In June of the same year, the Privy Council or- dered all the American governors to enforce this act, which the king was determined to have "very strictly observed, in regard it much concerneth the trade of this kingdom." At last, in December, 1663, the farmers of the customs, who were paying the king nearly four hundred thousand rounds a year for their monopoly, demanded redress for the " great abuses committed and done as well by the in- habitants and planters on, as by the masters, mariners, and traders to, Virginia, New England, Maryland, Long Island, vtc., who, under pretence of furnishing some of those plan- tations and other his majesty's dominions, do both, by land und water, carry and convey great quantities of tobacco to the Dutch, whose plantations are contiguous, the custom whereof would amount to ten thousand pounds per annum or upward, thereby eluding the late Act of Navigation and defrauding his majesty." This brought the question to a crisis. The Navigation Law, meant to cripple the commerce of the Dutch and foster that of the English, must be main- tained. It could be enforced, and it was enforced in En- gland. It was evaded, and it could not be enforced in America as long as New Netherland existed as a Dutch plantation. New Netherland, therefore, must no longer exist .*
This convenient and characteristic logic was exactly adapted to the situation of Charles the Second. The read- England jest way to sustain it was to insist that New Netherland size New was " the true and undoubted inheritance of his majesty," land. and to subject it accordingly to English rule. It so hap- pened that three persons had just before this time come
* [YExtrades, IL., 312 ; Chalmers's Pol. Ann., i., 243, 260, 261 ; Holmes, i., 330; Anderson ++ +emnene, il., 473; New Haven Rec., ii., 510-512; Col. Doc., iii., 40. 41, 30, 200, 210; ! det Tarersten. H., 456; ill., 308 ; Statute 15 Ch. IL .. cap. xvii. ; Grahame, i., 92; Bancroft, *** 3: InMey, IL, 500 ; ante, vol. L, CS5, 702, 725, 735 ; N. Y. I. S. Coll. (1900), 1-51.
+ to
gation law.
1
14
HISTORY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK.
CHAP. I. over to London, who were admirably qualified to stimulate English animosity against the Dutch colonists in America.
Scott, Bax- ter, and Maverick testify.
1664. These persons were John Scott and George Baxter, who cherished no " good opinion of the law" under which they had smarted in New Netherland, and Samuel Maverick, a zealous Episcopalian who had formerly lived in tribulation in Massachusetts. All the three made universal profes- sions of loyalty. Scott, especially, was clamorous for a roy- al grant to him of the government of Long Island, nearly the third part of which he pretended to have purchased. But Lord Stirling's claim, which had not yet been acted on by the Council for Plantations, stood in his way. The three American witnesses, however, were called before the board, and ordered to draw up a statement of "the title of his majesty to the premises; of the Dutch intrusion; of their deportment since and management of that possession, and of their strength, trade, and government there; and of the means to make them acknowledge and submit to his majesty's government, or by force to compel them there- unto or expulse them." The result of these witnesses' la- bors and of Downing's arguments from the Hague was to satisfy Lord Clarendon that New Netherland belonged to the king, and that it had been " only usurped" by the Dutch, who had " no colour of right to pretend to" its possession. The chancellor's opinion, although it was utterly inconsist- ent with truth and reason, was conclusive. The difficult point was that the Dutch were, and for half a century had been, in uninterrupted possession of the Valley of the Hud- son and its neighborhood. How the English could best gain possession became the question .*
Claren- don's opin- ion.
It was certain that the government at the Hague would not acknowledge any English pretension of right to Dutch New Netherland. The States General had, indeed, just directed their ambassador at London to insist on " the de- termination of the boundary line" between the English and Dutch possessions in North America. They also requested * 33 Jan'ry. the king to issue orders " for the immediate restoration of the towns and places in New Netherland invaded by his subjects within the aforesaid limits, and for the cessation
The Dutch maintain their rights.
* Col. Dec., iii., 46, 48, 105; Liste:'s Clarendon, ill., 276, 345 ; Hutchinson's Massachusetts, i., 145; Collection, 380, 381; Palfrey, 1., 564-5.5, 583; Aspinwall, in Mass. II. S. Proceed- inga, 1802, 06-72, note ; N. Y. II. S. Coll. (1800), 19-CT ; ante, vol. 1, 579, 620, 671, 725.
ΙΟ ΥΠΟTeHI
15
ENGLAND RESOLVES TO SEIZE NEW NETHERLAND.
of all further usurpations." Of this action Clarendon was CHAP. I. promptly informed by Downing, to whom De Witt had also spoken about the "encroaching" of the English upon the 1664. Dutch in New Netherland. "It would be good, I think," 15 Janua- was the crafty envoy's advice to the chancellor, "after" ry. three or four months' delay, to give them for answer that his majesty will write into those parts, to be informed of the truth of the matter of fact and right on both sides." The next month, referring to the complaints of the West 12 Febru- India Company against the aggressions of the English, he ary. suggested " if his majesty think fit to leave that matter to me, I shall deal well enough with them.""
Yet Charles and his ministers were for some time per- Flexed whether they should view the Dutch " intruders" as subjects or as aliens. At length the king's course was de- termined. In spite of treaties, at the risk of war, it was English resolved that the principle announced by Queen Elizabeth ordered. and affirmed by Parliament in 1621 should be repudiated and reversed. New Netherland must be seized at all haz- ard, and the English claim by "prescription" must be main- tained against the Dutch title by actual discovery and con- tinuous occupation. An expedition "against the Dutch in 29 Febre- New England" was ordered. But this was kept profoundly ary. secret, lest the States should send a squadron to aid the weak garrison at Manhattan. A quiet grant to the king's own brother would be both the readiest assertion of title and the best apology for any consequences. This, indeed, had been decided upon before Scott returned to America with the royal orders to enforce the navigation laws. Its execution was perhaps hastened by his report to Under Secretary Williamson of the condition of affairs at the western end of Long Island.t
Lord Stirling's interest was accordingly purchased by Clarendon for his son-in-law, who promised to pay for it three thousand five hundred pounds. Long Island, of The Duke which the greater portion was already subject to the crown, paten !. of York's being thus secured to the Duke of York by a color of title,
· Col. Inc., if., 201-200 ; Aitzema, v., 64, 65; Holl. Merc., 1004, 13-15 ; Lister's Claren- ¿ n. f1, 276, 277, 275; ante, vol. i., $30.
" Ogilby's America, 179; Chalmers's Rev. Col., i., 116: Col. Doc., ii , 302, 824, 325, 332, ** 2. 2-0. 400, 807 ; HE . 47, 48; New Haven Rec., il., 510, 515: ante, vol. i., 725, 326. On the :: 4 Til ruary, 1004, a warrant for £4000 was issued on account of the expedition against Ikke Netherland : Am. and W. I. (S. P. O.), 372.
expedition
16
HISTORY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK.
CHAP. I. the rest of New Netherland was added by the mere word of the king. The Connecticut charter was entirely disre- 1664. garded. . A patent to James was prepared, to which his father-in-law hastened to affix the great scal. The descrip- tion of the premises conveyed was framed in part from Lord Stirling's original grant, which Clarendon borrowed 12 March. for the purpose. By his patent, Charles the Second grant- ed to his brother, and to his heirs and assigns, the territory of Pemaquid, in Maine, between the Saint Croix and the Kennebeck, " and also all that island or islands commonly called by the several name or names of Matowacks or Long Island, situate, lying, and being towards the west of Cape Cod and the Narrow Higansetts, abutting upon the main land between the two rivers there called or known by the several names of Connecticut and Hudson's River; together, also, with the said river called Hudson's River, and all the land from the west side of Connecticut to the east side of Delaware Bay, and also all those several islands called or known by the names of Martin's Vinyard, and Nantukes, otherwise Nantuckett." The inland boundary most con- the Duke's sistent with this description was " a line from the head of Connecticut River to the source of Hudson's River, thence to the head of the Mohawk branch of Hudson's River, and thence to the east side of Delaware Bay." The grant "was intended to include all the lands which the Dutch held there." These territories were to be held of the king in free and common soccage, and under the yearly rent of forty beaver-skins, when demanded. The patent invested the Duke of York and his heirs, deputies, and assigns with "full and absolute power and authority to correct, punish, pardon, govern, and rule" all British subjects inhabiting the territory, according to such laws as he might establish, and The duke's in cases of necessity according to the "good discretions" of powers of guvern- ment. his deputies, provided that such laws should be, not contra- ry, but agreeable to the statutes of England. It granted him authority to appoint and discharge all officers, execute martial law, regulate trade and the tenure of lands, send out emigrants " not prohibited or under restraint," expel all persons living under his government without his license ; and it declared that, notwithstanding any uncertainty or imperfection, or any former grants to any other persons,
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