USA > Pennsylvania > Pennsylvania, colonial and federal : a history, 1608-1903, Volume One > Part 11
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Sir Robert Carr assumed also the right to seize and distribute the lands of the Dutch officials-for which Col. Nicolls, in a letter from New York to London, censured him, though it does not appear that the disposition thus made was ultimately disturbed. The land of D'Hinoyossa Carr appropriated for himself; to his brother, Captain John Carr, he gave that of Van Sweringen, the Dutch "schout;" Ensign Stock, besides eleven of the negro slaves. got "Peter Alrich's land," and to the two captains of the ships which had brought the expedition, Hyde and Morley, there was generously granted a "manor," located far up the Delaware, a gift which for a long time to come would not be likely to much enrich a white owner.
Even the little community which Cornelius Plockhoy had be- gun so hopefully the year before, at the Hoorn kill, could not
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be spared by the plunderers. A vessel was sent down from New Amstel to seize it, and the poor colonists were stripped of all they had, "to a very naile," thus ending the enterprise.1
Carr's report to Nicolls, from which a citation has already been made, was dated October 13, nearly a fortnight after the capture of New Amstel. He explained that it had been delayed by the disturbed condition of the Indians east of the Delaware, and further added: "We beg your endeavour to assist us in ye reconciliation of ye Indians called Synekees at ye Fort Ferrania and ye Huskchanoes [evidently Susquehannas] here, they com- ing and doing violence both to heathen and Christian, and leave these Indians to be blamed for it, insomuch that within less than six weeks several murders have been committed and done by their people upon the Dutch and Swedes here." The war of the Iro- quois tribes with the Susquehannocks was still going on.
Colonel Nicolls came soon after to the Delaware, to inspect conditions there. Sir Robert Carr stayed on the river until February following, and then left finally, but his brother, Cap- tain John Carr, remained, and was for several years in command at New Castle. The authority of Colonel Nicolls was exercised over the whole of what had been New Netherland. His residence, like that of the Dutch governors, was at New York. Conditions on the Delaware underwent little change. The Dutch had sub- mitted of necessity, the Swedes no doubt very cheerfully ; it was hardly in human nature for them to mourn the discomfiture of those who had in 1655 upset them so rudely. The policy of Nicolls was conciliatory and liberal. At Manhattan the Dutch, even including Stuyvesant, took the oath of allegiance to the English King, and D'Hinoyossa, who had retired to Maryland after the loss of his fort and government, wrote from St. Mary's a few weeks later, offering to do the same if he might have his New Amstel property restored. This, however, was not done ; D'Hinoyossa remained in Maryland several years, having settled
1For the story of Plockhoy and his un-
fortunate colony, see Judge Pennypacker's
"Germantown" (1899).
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on Foster's island in Chesapeake Bay, now a part of Talbot coun- ty. In 1671 he petitioned the Maryland Assembly for natural- ization for himself, wife and seven children. Later, he returned to Holland, and is said to have died there.
The governorship of Colonel Nicolls continued until mid- summer of 1668. He had found his post a hard one. At the end of July, 1665, he wrote to the Secretary of State at London lamenting the low state of his affairs. There had been, then, though nearly a year was gone, "no ship or the least supplies
Signature of Tamanen, June 23. 1683
since the surrender." The soldiers and planters were in want. On the Delaware conditions were distressing; "all the planters on the river goe naked if not supplyed." Later he wrote that he had wholly exhausted his own means, in providing for the general service. Finally, after the conclusion of peace between Eng- land and Holland by the treaty of Breda (July, 1667), he was given permission to return to England, and was replaced in Au- gust, 1668, by Colonel Francis Lovelace. Colonel Nicolls is praised by all historical writers for his honest and fair adminis- tration ; it may, therefore, be something to the credit of the Duke of York that he should have selected for his first governor in
America so good a man. When he quitted New York Nicolls was escorted to the ship by "the largest procession of military and citizens" that had ever been seen there. On his return to Eng- land he was made a knight, and resumed his position in the Duke of York's household. In 1672, when again England and Hol- land were at war, Nicolls was killed May 29, in the terrific naval battle with DeRuyter, at Solebay, falling, it is said, "at the feet"
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of the Duke of York. In the parish church at Ampthill, Bed- fordshire, the place of his birth, is a white marble monument to him, enclosing the cannon-ball that killed him.
Reviewing briefly those events of Governor Nicolls's three years which affect the Delaware colonists, the total is meagre. One of his first acts had been to establish a code of laws. These, called "the Duke's Laws," were applied first to the New York Colony, but ultimately to that on the Delaware, also, and were in force there when William Penn took possession, in 1681. They
noncres
Signature of Nicholas More, speaker of the Assembly, 1684
had been selected from the codes of the other English colonies by the Governor and his Council, and submitted for approval to a convention of delegates from the New York "towns," held at Hempstead, on Long Island, March 1, 1664-5. On the whole, "the Duke's Laws" were fairly adapted to the place and people. They provided for freedom of religion, trial by jury, and equal taxation, though they recognized slavery, and established a gen- eral liability to military service. They were enforced on the Delaware, when they became operative there, by three "Courts," composed of justices commissioned by the Governor. These courts sat at New Castle, at the Horekill (as it now came to be called, a corruption of Hoorn Kill), and at Upland-later also at St. Jones, now in Kent county, Delaware. The Duke's Laws came slowly into use on the Delaware. In 1668 Governor Nicolls directed that the book be "shewed and frequently com- municated" to the Councillors at New Castle, so as to be enforced "in convenient time." Gov. Lovelace ordered in 1672 that "ye English lawes bee established both in ye towne and all plantations upon Delaware river." Finally, in 1676 (Sept. 22), Gov. An- dros issued an imperative order to put them in force.
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After the first flurry of the change of rule there was little dis- crimination by the English against the old settlers. Peter Al- rich, who had lost his property at the surrender, was licensed by Gov. Nicolls in November, 1665, to trade at the Horekill, "with the Indians or any others," and received a permit at the same time to go from New York to the Delaware, "with his servant and six horses." In February, 1667-8, Governor Nicolls further favored him by the grant of two islands in the Delaware, below the present town of Bristol-long since, by drainage, united with the fast land of the Pennsylvania shore. In May, 1668, Captain John Carr, commanding at the New Castle fort, was directed by Governor Nicolls to call in, "in civil matters, so often as com- plaint is made," the schout (sheriff) and five others, as a Coun- cil, these five being three Swedes, Israel Helm, Peter Rambo, and Peter Cock, and two Dutchmen, Hans Block and Peter Alrich. There were, in fact, so few Englishmen on the river that it was necessary to employ, even in places of trust, the Dutch and Swedes. A letter in March, 1670-71, to Governor Lovelace, al- ludes to the difficulties of "us few English, and none of us able to speake to the Indians."
Nothing of internal trouble had occurred in the colony until 1669, when in the summer one of the Finnish Swedes, probably living about Marcus Hook, where several Finns had located, stirred up a revolt, or attempted to do so. He gave himself out to be a son of Konigsmark, the Swedish general, who twenty years earlier had been renowned in the Thirty Years' War in Germany, but he was commonly known as "the Long Finn." Exactly what he designed or hoped to do is not very clear; the charge in substance was that of stirring up sedition. Gov. Love- lace wrote that he was informed that he "goes up and down from one place to another, frequently raising speeches very seditious and false, tending to ye disturbance of his Majesty's peace and ye lawes of ye Government." Another settler named Henry Cole- man. "one of ye Finns," was charged with complicity, and it was
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said that he had abandoned "his habitation, Cattle and Corne, without any care taken of them, to run after ye other person." Coleman was "well verst in ye Indian language," and he and the Long Finn were reported to be much among the Indians-this fact doubtless increasing the apprehensions of the settlers.
The fraudulent Konigsmark was soon arrested and impris- oned at New Castle. He attempted to escape, but was recap- tured. Gov. Lovelace wrote to keep him "in hold and in irons" until he could be tried. There was some delay; the Governor proposed to come and hold the court, but was detained at New York. He wrote to Captain Carr and the Council to deal sharply with all involved in the threatened disturbance; "those of ye first magnitude" might be imprisoned or held to bail, and "for ye rest of ye poor deluded sort," he said, "I think the advice of their owne Countrymen is not to be despised, who knowing their temper well prescribe a method for keeping them in order, which is severity and laying such taxes on them as may not give them liberty to Entertaine any other thoughts but how to dis- charge them."
Gov. Lovelace censured Madam Papegoia for an alleged sym- pathy with the movement; it was, he thought, ungrateful after the favors that had been shown her; he perceived, also, he said, that "ye little dominie"-Carolus Lock, the Swedish minister- had "played ye Trumpeter to the discord." There is no account of any proceedings against Madam Papegoia, but the minister was subsequently fined 600 guilders.
As to the Long Finn, he was finally tried by a jury at New Castle before commissioners named by the Governor, and-of course-found guilty. He was sentenced to death, but the Gov- ernor and Council at New York modified the sentence, ordering that he "be publicly and severely whipt, and stigmatized or branded in the fface with the letter R"-for rebellion-and then sold "to the Barbadoes or some other of those remoter planta- tions." All of which was strictly carried out; the Finn was
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taken to New York in December, 1669, and confined there in the state-house until January 26, 1669-70, when he was placed on board a vessel, the Fort Albany, and sent to Barbados to be sold.
As for those charged with complicity, fines more or less heavy, ranging from fifty guilders to two thousand, were im- posed upon them. Coleman was fined 930 guilders, and appears later to have been in good standing in the colony.
The service of Lovelace extended to August, 1672-ending then with the advent of hostile Dutch ships. In his five years the Delaware colony slowly extended up the river. Some grants of land were made north of the Pennsylvania line-one of these to Richard Gorsuch in 1670-71 for a large tract on Pennypack and Poquessing creeks, which in 1672 came into the possession of Lovelace himself. The east bank of the river, from "the Falls" down, became well known at every point, for messengers and others passing overland between New York and New Castle often, perhaps usually, took this route. Gov. Lovelace passed by this path, in some state, with a party of soldiers, in March, 1671-2, and in the autumn of that year also, a more famous man, George Fox, the Friend or Quaker preacher.
In Fox's journal we get some descriptions that are of interest. He and his companions had ridden through the New Jersey woods from Shrewsbury. The journal says :
"We went to Middletown Harbour . . . in order to take our long journey . . . through the woods toward Maryland; having hired Indians for our guides. I determined to pass through the woods on the other side of Delaware Bay, that we might head the creeks and rivers as much as possible. On the 9th of the 7th month [November] we set forward, and passed through many Indian towns, and over some rivers and bogs; and when we had rode about forty miles, we made a fire at night, and lay by it. . Next day we travelled fifty miles, as we com- puted ; and at night, finding an old house which the Indians had
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MISSIVE VAN WILLIAM PENN, Eygenaar en Gouverneur van
PENNSYLVANIA, In AMERICA.
Gefchreven aan de Commiffariffen van de Vrye Socie- teyt der Handelaars, op de felve Provintie, binnen London refideerende. BEHELSEN DE:
Cen generale befchiffbinge ban be boomnoembe Probintie : te moeten / ban bare @zonb/Zucht/Water/ Saifoenenen't Product/foo upt be natuur afg baoz het bouwen / nefeng be groote bermeerberinge of meenighbulbin: ge / welke het land albaar uptgebenbeig.
Mid mebe : ban be Maturellen of Anboodlingen bed Hanbts / hacer Caal/ Beloonteng en Manieren / baar Spiffen/ hupfen of migmama / Jilbhept / gemachelfiche manier ban leben / JMedicijnen / manieren ban 2Begraaffenid / @Bobøbienft / @fferbanben en Befangen / baar Looge= feeften / Regeeringe / en ozbe in bare Haben / wanneer fp met pemantt Janbelen ober het berkoopen ban Vanberpen / fc. Debens bare Tufti. tie/ of Recht boen ober quaathornberg.
Ditsgaberg cen Bericht ban be cerfte Cotoniere be Dellanberg / Gc. En ban be tegenwoordige torfrant en belgeftelrbent ban be booznoembe pza bintie en Rechtbanken/ Ec. albaar.
Waar by noch gevoeght is cen Befchrijving van de Hooft-Stadt .
PHILADELPHIA.
Nu onlangs uytgefet, en gelegen tuffchen twee Navigable Rivieren, namentlijk : cuffchen Delaware enSchuylkil.
Enbe een berhaal ban be boorfpoebige en boozbeelige ftanot ban faken batt be booznoembe Societept binnen be booznoembe Stabt en probintie / Ec.
AMSTERDAM,
Gedrukt voor JACOB CLAUS, Boekverkooper in de Prince-ftraat, 1684.
Title page of Dutch Book to influence immigration to Pennsylvania
Under the Duke of York
forced the people to leave, we made a fire and stayed there, at the head of Delaware Bay."
The place thus reached was Jegou's (afterward called Chy- goe's ) Island, a part practically of the New Jersey shore. Here Peter Jegou, a Frenchman, had acquired a right, and had built a log house as a "house of entertainment for ye accommodation of Travelers." It is the site of the present town of Burlington. Governor Lovelace, arranging for his trip of the previous March, had given instruction to Captain Garland : "Go as speedily as you can to Navesink, thence to the house of Mr. Jegoe, right against Mattiniconck island, on Delaware river, where there are some persons ready to receive you." Previous to George Fox's journey it seems that the Indians had driven Jegou away. The journal proceeds :
"Next day we swam our horses over a river, about a mile, at twice, first to an island called Upper Dinidock, and then to the mainland; having hired Indians to help us over in their canoes."
"Upper Dinidock" is, of course, Mattiniconck, mentioned by Lovelace. It is the large island opposite Burlington, usually called Burlington island. This had apparently been in posses- sion of Governor D'Hinovossa, at the Dutch surrender in 1664, and had been seized by Sir Robert Carr. Later, 1668. Governor Lovelace seems to have given it in occupancy, if not ownership, to Peter Alrich. It was an important place, at the crossing of the river, and as a post for the Indian trade up the Delaware. Here, in September, 1671, two white men, servants of Alrich, were killed by Indians. The guilty parties were known, and one of them, Tashiowycan, explained that his sister had died, caus- ing him great sorrow. The act, he believed, was caused by a "manitou," and in redress he had set out to kill the Christians.
Alrich reported the deed to Governor Lovelace and the Coun- cil, at New York. The Indians, he said, disowned and con- demned the act, and proposed to punish the murderers. They
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had suggested a plan for this : that the two be gotten to a "kinte- coy"-cantico: frolic-and that "in the midst of the mirth" one hired for the purpose should "knock them i' the head."
A general attack upon the band, and perhaps on all the neigh- boring Indians, was proposed, but fortunately not undertaken. Peter Alrich gave his counsel. The "propper time," he told the Governor, to attack the Indians, "is within a month from this time"-the end of September-"for after that they'll break off their keeping together in a towne and goe a hunting, [and] soe bee separated."
Lovelace wrote an urgent letter to William Tomm on the subject, expressing the view that "ye vengeance of God will never forsake us till we avenge ye Blood of ye Innocent on ye contrivers' heads." He directed the magistrates to "sell no powder, shott, or Strong waters to the Indians, on paine of death," but keep a fair face toward them, as if no ill feeling exist- ed, waiting a convenient time for the punitive expedition. The magistrates, however, in a meeting at Peter Cock's, earnestly advised a moderate policy. "Wee thinke," they wrote, "that at this time of the yeare itt is too late to begin a warr against the Indyans, the hay for our beasts not being brought to any place of safety, and so for want of hay wee must see them starve before our faces : the next yeare wee can cutt itt more convenient. Wee intend to make Towns at Passyunk, Tinnaconck, Upland, and Verdrieties Hoocke, whereto the out-plantations must retire. Your honor's advice for a frontier about Matinnicunck island is very good, and likewise another at Wicaquake, for the defense whereof your honor must send men. . If possible there [should] be hired fifty or sixty north Indyans, who will doe more than 200 white men in such a warr."
With these views the Council at New York concurred. The season-November-being "not a good time" for war, they de- cided not to begin one. The settlers were urged to organize, and each to provide himself with a pound of powder and two
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James II Duke of York; King of England 1685-1689
1
Under the Duke of York
pounds of bullets. The island, Mattiniconck, was ordered to be fortified-which almost certainly was not done.
The Indians themselves disposed of the case. A meeting with the chiefs was held at Peter Rambo's, and they undertook to bring in, "dead or alive," the two criminals. "Accordingly," says Samuel Smith, "two Indians sent by the sachems to take them, coming to Tashiowycan's wigwam in the night; one of them his particular friend; him he asked if he intended to kill him; he answered 'no, but the sachems have ordered you to die.' He demanded what his brothers-the other Indians of the band -said; being told they also said he must die, he then, holding his hands before his eyes, said 'kill me!' Upon this, the other Indian, not his intimate, shot him in the breast. They took his body to Wickaco [Philadelphia], and afterwards hung it in chains at New Castle. The English gave the sachems for this five matchcoats. The other murderer, hearing the shot, ran naked into the woods, and what came of him after appears not."
The journal of George Fox gives no sign of these or any In- dian troubles. . After his crossing the river at Matinniconck, quoted above, he proceeds :
"This day [November II, 1672] we could reach but about thirty miles, and came at night to a Swede's house, where we got a little straw, and stayed that night. Next day, having hired another guide, we traveled about forty miles through the woods, and made a fire at night, by which we lay and dried ourselves. . The next day we passed over a desperate river, which had in it many rocks and broad stones, very hazardous to us and our horses. Then we came to Christiana river, where we swam our horses, and went over ourselves in canoes. . . Thence we went to Newcastle, . . and being very weary and inquiring in the town where we could buy some corn for our horses, the governor came and invited me to his house, and afterwards de- sired me to lodge there, saying he had a bed for me and I should be welcome."
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Trade on the Delaware, in Lovelace's time, continued much as before. In June, 1671, Captain Carr requested the Governor and his Council to order that no ship be allowed to trade above New Castle, as it would ruin the town's trade, "those that goe up receiving ready payment in peltry or corn for their liquors, which they sell by retaile with ye small measure, or for their petty wares." This request was granted, but a year and a half later the restriction was removed, complaints having been made that some vessels had been allowed to go up, while others were refused, and
Ulm Markham Signature of William Markham, deputy-governor, 1681-1682
the example of the Hudson, open to Albany, being cited. At the same time, June, 1671, it was asked that "ye distilling of Strong Liquor out of Corne, being ye cause of a great consumption of that Graine, as also of ye debauchery and idleness of ye Inhabit- ants, from whence inevitably must follow their Poverty and Ruine, bee absolutely prohibited or restrayned" -- to which the answer was made that a license should be required to distill, and a tax be laid of one guilder per can, the proceeds to go to the build- ing of "ye new block house, or fort, or some other publique building."
At intervals the Maryland Government made demonstrations to maintain their claims within the Delaware colony. The Hore- kill settlement especially drew forth these pressing attentions. In April, 1672, a surveyor came over and ostentatiously surveyed some lands there, threatening the people that if they did not ac- knowledge the authority of Lord Baltimore they would be "sent for into Maryland, there to be punished." In the summer of 1672 a more warlike demonstration was made. "One Jones." a Maryland man, rode into the Horekill town at the head of thirty men, and finding no opposition, "bound ye magistrates, and in-
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George Fox
Founder of the Society of Friends; born 1624; died 1691
1
Under the Duke of York
habitants, despitefully treated them, rifled and plundered them of their goods," and when it was demanded "by what authority" were these proceedings, answered with "a cock't pistol" to the breast of the imprudent questioner. Jones, Captain Cantwell wrote to Lovelace, seized "all Indian goods or skins" he could find, and an order was given "to drive a 20-penny nail in ye touch-hole of ye greate gun, & sees all ye guns and mill-stones."
Lovelace, of course, protested warmly to Governor Philip Calvert at such an outrage, and sent Captain Edmund Cantwell to St. Mary's with the letter. To the Duke of York he reported as well.
In the letter to Calvert, Lovelace added a reproach that deeds so unneighborly should be done "in these portending, boysterous times." He meant by these words the war that had begun in Europe. Then, and for many a long year, as we shall see, the people who were striving to build homes in the New World hung dependent on the politics of the Old. A quarrel there involved them here; whether it was to be peace or war for them they learned by ships which came slowly from Europe. In 1670 Charles II. abruptly changed the policy of England. He had helped to make, a little while before (1668), the Protestant Triple Alli- ance of England, Holland, and Sweden, to resist Louis XIV. of France, the Catholic king; but by the secret treaty of Dover (1670), he joined Louis to crush Holland, and check, if not root up, the Protestant growth.
The consequent war with Holland began in March, 1672. In August of that year Governor Lovelace wrote to Captain Cant- well to proclaim the King's declaration of war there and at Horekill. It was a terrifying time at the Capes, for the Mary- land horsemen under Jones had just made their raid, and a "pri- vateer," or more than one, probably flying the Dutch flag, had visited and plundered the place a few months before
The blow from Europe fell suddenly at New York, and Lovelace was taken by surprise. He was in Connecticut, on a
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visit to Governor Winthrop, when, in August, 1673, a Dutch fleet appeared before the city. It was of overwhelming strength -- twenty-three ships, counting prizes, and sixteen hundred men. Effective resistance, as in 1664, was impossible. The fort capitulated, New York became a Dutch city, and Lovelace re- turned to find himself deposed from office and ruined in estate. The two commanders of the Dutch ships, Cornelius Everts, "the Younger," and Jacob Binckes, settled affairs anew, appointed Captain Anthony Colve Governor, and sprinkled a fresh set of Dutch names liberally on town and country.
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