The first intimation Governor Stuyvesant received of this alarming movement came to him from Boston. A young man, named Ford, brought the tidings to New Amsterdam that a fleet of armed ships had sailed from the naval depot in Portsmouth, England, to enter the Hudson river and take possession of the whole territory. This intelligence created not a little panic. The governor summoned his council, and it was decided to exert every energy in fortifying the city. The hostile fleet might make its appearance any day.
Money was raised. Powder was ordered from the forts on the Delaware. Agents were sent to New Haven to purchase provisions. As it was expected that the fleet would come through the Sound, agents were stationed along the shore, to transmit the tidings of its approach, so soon as the sails should be seen in the distant horizon. Several vessels on the point of sailing with supplies to Curaçoa were detained.
So secretly had the British government moved in this enterprise, that the governmental authorities, in Holland, had not the slightest suspicion of the peril to which their colony in New Netherland was exposed. At the moment when all was agitation in New Amsterdam, and every hand was busy preparing for the defence, Governor Stuyvesant received dispatches from Holland, assuring him that no apprehension of danger from England need be entertained.
"The king of England," it was said,
"is only desirous of reducing his colonies to uniformity in
Church and State. With this view he has dispatched some
commissioners with two or three frigates, to New England, to
introduce Episcopacy in that quarter."
It was supposed in Holland, that this intolerant policy would strengthen the Dutch interests in America; that the religious freedom, which the States-General insisted upon, would invite to New Netherland from all the countries of Europe, those who were not willing to conform to the doctrines and ritual of the Church of England.
Governor Stuyvesant, upon receiving these dispatches from the home government, felt relieved of all anxiety. He had no doubt that the previous rumor which had reached him was false. Neither he nor his council anticipated any difficulty. The whole community indulged in the sense of security. The work on the fortifications was stopped; the vessels sailed to Curaçoa, and the governor went up the river to fort Orange. A desolating war had broken out between the Indian tribes there, which raged with such ferocity that the colonists were full of alarm for their own lives and property.
But the English fleet was rapidly approaching. It consisted of four frigates, containing in all an armament of ninety-four guns. This was a force to which defenceless New Amsterdam could present no resistance.
The fleet put into Boston the latter part of July, and the commissioners applied to both Massachusetts and Connecticut for aid in their military expedition against the Dutch. But the Puritans of Massachusetts found innumerable obstacles in the way of rendering any assistance. They feared that the king of England, having reduced the Dutch, would be induced to extend his arbitrary sway, both civil and religious, over those colonists who were exiles from their native land, simply that they might enjoy freedom to worship God.
Connecticut, however, hoped that the conquest of New Netherland might annex the magnificent domain to their own region. Governor Winthrop, of Hartford, manifested so much alacrity in the cause, that he was invited to meet the British squadron, at the west end of Long Island, to which point it would sail with the first fair wind.