The Dutch Government in Europe called Peter Stuyvesant there to explain why he had surrendered his colony. He went to Holland and made his acts so clear to the States-General that they held him guiltless of every charge against him. Then he returned to New York and settled down at his bouwery, where he lived comfortably and well, like most of his Dutch neighbors, unvexed by the constant troubles he had known when he was the governor.
The colony of New York grew and prospered. The patroons lived on their big estates, rich, hospitable families, much like the wealthy planters of Virginia. The Dutch people in the towns were a thrifty, peaceable lot, glad to welcome new settlers, no matter from where they came. Most of the settlers came now from England, very few from the Netherlands; and in time there were more English than Dutch in the province. By the time of the Revolution the people of the two nations were practically one in their ideas and aims. Dutch and English fought side by side in that war, and helped to make the great state of New York. But the Dutch blood and the Dutch virtues persisted, and many of the greatest men of the new state bore old Dutch names. And so, though Peter Stuyvesant and his neighbors had to haul down their flag from their primitive ramparts at Fort Amsterdam, they and their descendants left their stamp upon that part of the New World they had been the first to settle.
III WHEN GOVERNOR ANDROSS CAME TO CONNECTICUT
(Connecticut, 1675)
One of the most interesting stories in the history of the American colonies is that of the adventures of the judges who voted for the execution of King Charles I of England and who fled across the water when his son came to the throne as Charles II. They were known as the regicides, a name given to them because they were held to be responsible for the king's death. When Charles II came back to England as king, after the days when Oliver Cromwell was the Lord Protector, he pardoned many of the men who had taken sides against his father, but his friends urged him not to be so generous in his treatment of the judges. So he issued a proclamation, stating that such of the judges of King Charles I as did not surrender themselves as prisoners within fourteen days should receive no pardon. The regicides and their friends were greatly alarmed. Nineteen surrendered to the king's officers; some fled across the ocean; and others were arrested as they tried to escape. Ten of them were executed. Two, Edward Whalley and William Goffe, reached Boston Harbor in July, 1660. Another, John Dixwell, came afterward.
Governor Endicott and the leading men of Boston, not knowing how King Charles intended to treat the judges, welcomed them as men who had held posts of honor in England. They were entertained most hospitably in the little town, and they went about quite freely, making no attempt to conceal from any one who they were.
Then word came to Boston that the king regarded the escaped judges as traitors. Immediately many of those who had been friendly to the regicides slunk away from them, avoiding them as if they had the plague. The judges heard, moreover, that now Governor Endicott had called a court of magistrates to order them seized and turned over to the executioner. So, as they had fled from England before, the hunted regicides now fled from the colony of Massachusetts Bay.
At the settlement of New Haven there were many who had been friends and followers of Oliver Cromwell, and the regicides turned in that direction. They reached that town in March, 1661, and found a haven in the home of John Davenport, a prominent minister. Here they were among friends, and here they went about as freely as they had done at first in Boston; and everybody liked them, for they were fine, honorable men, who had done their duty as they saw it when they had decreed the execution of King Charles I.