A Century Too Soon: The Age of Tyranny

by John R. Musick

After the surrender of New York to the English, in the year 1665 Peter Stuyvesant went to Holland to report to his superiors. In order to shift the responsibility from their own shoulders, they declared that the governor had not done his duty, and they asked the States-General to disapprove of the scandalous surrender of New Netherland. Stuyvesant made a similar counter-charge and begged the States-General to speedily decide his case, that he might return to America for his family. The authorities required him to answer the charges of the West India Company. He sent to New York for sworn testimony, and at the end of six months he made an able report, its allegations sustained by unimpeachable witnesses. The company made a petulant rejoinder, when circumstances put an end to the dispute. War between Holland and England then raging was ended by the peace concluded at Breda in 1667, when the former relinquished to the latter its claims to New Netherland. This brought to an end the controversy between Stuyvesant and the West India Company.

Stuyvesant went to England and obtained from King Charles permission for three Dutch vessels to have free commerce with New York for the space of seven years. Then he sailed for America, with the determination of spending the remainder of his life in New York. He was cordially welcomed by his old friends and kindly received by his political enemies, who had learned by experience that he was not a worse governor than the Duke had sent them. Stuyvesant retired to his bowerie or farm on East River, from which the famous Bowery of New York City derived its name, and in tranquillity passed the remainder of his life.

The people of New York soon discovered that a change of masters did not increase their prosperity or happiness. Brodhead says: "Fresh names and laws they found did not secure fresh liberties. Amsterdam was changed to New York and Orange to Albany; but these changes only commemorated the titles of a conqueror. It was nearly twenty years before the conqueror allowed for a brief period to the people of New York even that partial degree of representative government which they had enjoyed when the tri-colored ensign of Holland was hauled down from the flagstaff of Fort Amsterdam. New Netherland exchanged Stuyvesant and the West India Company and a republican sovereignty for Nicolls, a royal proprietor and a hereditary king. The province was not represented in Parliament, nor could the voice of its people reach the chapel of St. Stephen at Westminster as readily as it had reached the chambers of the Binnenhof at the Hague."

Nicolls was succeeded by Francis Lovelace in 1667. Lovelace was a quiet man, unfitted to encounter great storms, yet he showed considerable energy in dealing with hostile Indians and French on the northern frontier of New York. He held friendly intercourse with the people of New England, and in the summer of 1672, when a hostile squadron of Dutch vessels of war appeared before his capital, he was on a friendly visit to Governor Winthrop of Connecticut. War had again broken out between England and Holland, and the Dutch inhabitants of New York had shown signs of discontent at the abridgment of their political privileges and a heavy increase in their taxes without their consent. Personally, they liked Lovelace; but they were bound to consider him as the representative of a petty tyrant. When, in menacing attitude, they demanded more liberty and less taxation, the governor in a passion unwisely declared that they should "have liberty for no thought but how to pay their taxes." This was resented, and when the Dutch squadron came, nearly all the Hollanders regarded their countrymen in the ships as liberators. When Colonel Manning, who commanded the fort, called for volunteers, few came, and these not as friends but as enemies, for they spiked the cannon in front of the statehouse.

The fleet came up broadside to the fort, and Manning, sending a messenger for Lovelace, opened fire on the enemy. One cannon ball passed through the Dutch flagship from side to side; but the balls from the fleet began pounding against the walls of the fort. Six hundred Holland soldiers landed on the banks of the Hudson above the town and were quickly joined by four hundred Dutch citizens in arms urging them to storm the fort.

With shouts and yells of triumph the body of one thousand men were marching down Broadway for that purpose. They were met by a messenger from Manning proposing to surrender the fort, if the troops might be allowed to march out with the honors of war. The proposition was accepted. Manning's troops marched out with colors flying and drums beating and laid down their arms. The Dutch soldiers marched in followed by the English troops, who were made prisoners of war and confined in the church. It was the 9th of August, 1672, and the air was quivering with heat, when the flag of the Dutch Republic once more waved over Fort Amsterdam, and the name of the city of New York was changed to New Orange, in compliment to William Prince of Orange.

The Dutch had taken New York.

The New Netherland and all the settlements on the Delaware speedily followed the capture of New York. The other English colonies near the province were amazed and prepared to defend their own domains against the encroachments of the Dutch, and Connecticut foolishly talked of an offensive war. Anthony Clove, the governor of reconquered New Amsterdam, was wide-awake. He kept his eye on the movements of the savages and Frenchmen on the north, watched every hostile indication in the east, and sent proclamations and commissions to towns on Long Island and in Westchester to compel hesitating boroughs to take the oath of allegiance to Prince William of Orange. His forts about New Orange were strengthened and mounted with one hundred and ninety cannon. A treaty of peace between the Dutch and English, however, made at London in 1674, restored New Netherland to the British crown. Some doubts arising as to the title of the Duke of York after the change, the king gave him a new grant of territory in June, 1674, within the boundary of which was included all the domain west of the Connecticut River, to the eastern shores of the Delaware, also Long Island and a territory in Maine. King Charles had commissioned Major Edmond Andros to receive the surrender of this province of New Netherland (New York) to which he was appointed governor. The final surrender was made in October, 1674, by the Dutch governor, who delivered up the keys of the fort to Major Andros, and the English never lost possession of the colony and city, until the united colonies gained their independence.

The political changes in New York had its effect on the settlements to the west and south. Eastward of the Delaware Bay and River (so called in honor of Lord De la Warr) lies New Jersey. Its domain was included in the New Netherland charter. So early as 1622, transient trading settlements were made on its soil, at Bergen and on the banks of the Delaware. The following year, Director May, moved by the attempt of a French sea-captain to set up the arms of France in Delaware, built the fort called Fort Nassau at the mouth of Timmer Kill or Timber Creek, a few miles below Camden, and settled some young Walloons near it. The Walloons (young couples), who had been married on shipboard, settled on the site of Gloucester. This was the first settlement of white people in New Jersey that lived long; but it, too, withered away in time. It was seven years later when Michael Pauw made his purchase from the Indians of the territory extending from Hoboken to the Raritan River and, latinizing his name, called it Pavonia.

In this purchase was included the settlement of some Dutch at Bergen. Though other settlements were attempted, it was forty years before any of them became permanent. Cape May, a territory sixteen miles square, which Captain Heyes bought of the Indians, all the time remained an uncultivated wilderness, yielding the products of its salt meadows to the browsing deer.