As we have mentioned, there were many English settlers in the Dutch towns on the western end of Long Island. In some of them it is not improbable that the English element predominated. In the letter sent by the General Court to Governor Stuyvesant, it was stated that Westchester and Stamford belonged to Connecticut; that, for the present, the General Court would forbear from exercising any authority over the English plantations on Long Island; but that, should the Dutch molest the English there, the Connecticut authorities would use all just and lawful means for their protection.
The situation of the Dutch province was now alarming in the extreme, and Governor Stuyvesant was environed by difficulties which no mortal sagacity or energy could surmount. His treasury was exhausted. The English settlers in the Long Island villages, were in determined and open revolt. And his English neighbors, whom he was altogether too feeble to resist, were crowding upon him in the most merciless encroachments.
Under these circumstances, he called a Convention, to consist of two delegates from all the neighboring villages, to meet at New Amsterdam on the 22d of October, 1663. Eight towns were represented.
The Convention adopted an earnest remonstrance to the authorities in Holland, in which the disastrous situation of the province was mainly attributed to their withholding that aid which was essential to the maintenance of the colony.
"The people of Connecticut," the remonstrance stated,
"are enforcing their unlimited patent according to their own
interpretation, and the total loss of New Netherland is
threatened. The English, to cloak their plans, now object
that there is no proof, no legal commission or patent, from
their High Mightinesses, to substantiate and justify our
rights and claims to the property of this province, and
insinuate that through the backwardness of their High
Mightinesses to grant such a patent, you apparently intended
to place the people here on slippery ice, giving them lands
to which your honors had no right whatever."
Governor Stuyvesant sent with this remonstrance a private letter to the home government, in which he urged that the boundary question should be settled by the national authorities of the two countries. "It is important," he said,
"that the States-General should send letters to the English
villages on Long Island, commanding them to return to their
allegiance. And that the objections of Connecticut may be
met, the original charter of the West India Company should
be solemnly confirmed by a public act of their High
Mightinesses, under their great seal, which an Englishman
commonly dotes upon like an idol."
Scarcely were these documents dispatched when new and still more alarming outbreaks occurred. Two Englishmen, Anthony Waters of Hempstead, and John Coe of Middlebury, with an armed force of nearly one hundred men, visited most of what were called the English villages, convoked the people, told them that their country belonged to the king of England, and that they must no longer pay taxes to the Dutch. They removed the magistrates and appointed their own partisans in their stead. They then visited the Dutch towns and threatened them with the severest vengeance if they did not renounce all allegiance to the Dutch authorities, and take the oath of fealty to the king of England.
Only four weeks after this, another party of twenty Englishmen from Gravesend, Flushing and Jamaica, secretly entered Raritan river, in a sloop, and sailing up the river several miles, assembled the chiefs of some of the neighboring tribes, and endeavored to purchase of them a large extent of territory in that region. They knew perfectly well not only that they were within the bounds which had been the undisputed possession of New Netherland for nearly half a century, but that the Dutch had also purchased of the Indians all their title to these lands.