This was no new policy. It had been that of Cromwell, the most sagacious of English rulers, and was only abandoned by him because of the more immediate advantages secured by his treaty with the Grand Pensionary, a statesman only second to Oliver himself. The expedition which Cromwell had ordered was countermanded, and the Dutch title to the New Netherland was formally recognized by the treaty of 1654. It seems rational to suppose that the English Protector foresaw the inevitable future fall of the Dutch-American settlement, hemmed in by growing English colonies fostered by religious zeal, and that he was willing to wait till the fruit was ripe and of easy grasp to England.
It is the fashion of historians to ascribe the seizure of the New Netherland to the perfidy of Charles; but the policy of kingdoms through successive administrations is more homogeneous than appears on the surface. The diplomacy of ministers is usually traditional; the opportunity which seems to mark a change is often but an incident in the chain. That which presented itself to Clarendon, Charles’s Lord Chancellor, was the demand made by the States-General that the boundary line should be established between the Dutch and English possessions in America. Consent on the part of Charles would have been a ratification of Cromwell’s recognition of 1654. This demand of the Dutch Government, made in January, 1664, close upon the petition of the farmers of the customs of December, 1663, precipitated the crisis. The seizure of New Amsterdam and the reduction of New Netherland was resolved upon. Three Americans who happened to be in London,—Scott, Baker, and Maverick,—were summoned before the Council Board, when they presented a statement of the title of the King, the intrusion of the Dutch, and of the condition of the settlement. The Chancellor held their arguments to be well grounded, and on the 29th of February an expedition was ordered “against the Dutch in America.” The demand of the Holland Government was no doubt stimulated by the intrigues of Sir George Downing, who had been Cromwell’s ambassador at the Hague, and was retained by Charles as an adroit servant. A nephew of the elder Winthrop and a graduate from Harvard, Downing appears to have determined upon the acquisition by England of the Dutch provinces, which were held by the New England party to be a thorn in the side of English American colonization. The expedition determined upon, Scott was sent back to New England with a royal commission to enforce the Navigation Laws. The next concern of the Chancellor was to secure to the Crown the full benefit of the proposed conquest. He was as little satisfied with the self-rule of the New England colonies as with the presence of Dutch sovereignty on American soil; and in the conquest of the foreigner he found the means to bring the English subject into closer dependence on the King.
James Duke of York, Lord High Admiral, was the heir to the crown. He had married the daughter of Edward Hyde, the Chancellor of the kingdom, who now controlled its foreign policy. A patent to James as presumptive heir to the crown, from the King his brother, would merge in the crown; and a central authority strongly established over the territory covered by it might well, under favorable circumstances, be extended over the colonies on either side which were governed under limitations and with privileges directly secured by charter from the King. In this adroit scheme may be found the beginning in America of that policy of personal rule, which, begun under the Catholic Stuart, culminated under the Protestant Hanoverian, a century later, in the oppression which aroused the American Revolution. The first step taken by Clarendon was the purchase of the title conveyed to the Earl of Stirling in 1635 by the grantees of the New England patent. This covered the territory of Pemaquid, between the Saint Croix and the Kennebec, in Maine, and the Island of Matowack, or Long Island. The Stirling claim had been opposed and resisted by the Dutch; but Stuyvesant, the Director of New Netherland, had in 1650 formally surrendered to the English all the territory south of Oyster Bay on Long Island and east of Greenwich on the continent. A title being thus acquired by the adroitness of Clarendon, a patent was, on the 12th of March, 1664, issued by Charles II. to the Duke of York, granting him the Maine territory of Pemaquid, all the islands between Cape Cod and the Narrows, the Hudson River, and all the lands from the west side of the Connecticut to the east side of Delaware Bay, together with the islands of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket. The inland boundary was “a line from the head of Connecticut River to the source of Hudson River, thence to the head of the Mohawk branch of Hudson River, and thence to the east side of Delaware Bay.” The patent gave to the Duke of York, his heirs, deputies, and assigns, “absolute power to govern within this domain according to his own rules and discretions consistent with the statutes of England.” In this patent the charter granted by the King to the younger John Winthrop in 1662 for Connecticut, in which it was stipulated that commissioners should be sent to New England to settle the boundaries of each colony, was entirely disregarded. The idea of commissioners for boundaries now developed with larger scope, and the King established a royal commission, consisting of four persons recommended by the Duke of York, whose private instructions were to reduce the Dutch to submission and to increase the prerogatives of the Crown in the New England colonies, which Clarendon considered to be “already well-nigh ripened to a commonwealth.”
Three of these commissioners were officers in the Royal army,—Colonel Richard Nicolls, Sir Robert Carr, Colonel George Cartwright. The fourth was Samuel Maverick, an earnest adherent of the Church of England and bitter enemy of Massachusetts, in which colony he had passed his early manhood. These commissioners, or any three or two of them,—Nicolls always included,—were invested with full power in all matters, military and civil, in the New England colonies. To Colonel Nicolls the Duke of York entrusted the charge of taking possession of and governing the vast territory covered by the King’s patent. To one more capable and worthy the delicate trust could not have been confided. He was in the fortieth year of a life full of experience, of a good Bedfordshire family, his father a barrister of the Middle Temple. He had received an excellent education. When, at the age of nineteen, the Civil War broke out, he at once joined the King’s forces, and, obtaining command of a troop of horse, clung persistently to the Royal cause. Later, he served on the Continent with the Duke of York in the army of Turenne. At the Restoration he was rewarded for his fidelity with the post of Groom of the Bedchamber to the Duke, to whose interests he devoted himself with loyalty, prudence, and untiring energy. His title under the new commission was that of Deputy-Governor; the tenure of his office, the Duke’s pleasure.[694]
The English Government has never been scrupulous as to method in the attainment of its purposes, justification being a secondary matter. When the news of the gathering of the fleet reached the Hague, and explanation was demanded of Downing as to the truth of the reports that it was intended for the reduction of the New Netherland, he boldly insisted on the English right to the territory by first possession. To a claim so flimsy and impudent only one response was possible,—a declaration of war. But the Dutch people at large had little interest in the remote settlement, which was held to be a trading-post rather than a colony, and not a profitable post at best. The West India Company saw the danger of the situation, but its appeals for assistance were disregarded. Its own resources and credit were unequal to the task of defence. Meanwhile the English fleet, composed of one ship of thirty-six, one of thirty, a third of sixteen, and a transport of ten guns, with three full companies of the King’s veterans,—in all four hundred and fifty men, commanded by Colonels Nicolls, Carr, and Cartwright,—sailed from Portsmouth for Gardiner’s Bay on the 15th of May. On the 23d of July Nicolls and Cartwright reached Boston, where they demanded military aid from the Governor and Council of the Colony. Calling upon Winthrop for the assistance of Connecticut, and appointing a rendezvous at the west end of Long Island, Nicolls set sail with his ships and anchored in New Utrecht Bay, just outside of Coney Island, a spot since historical as the landing-place of Lord Howe’s troops in 1776. Here Nicolls was joined by militia from New Haven and Long Island. The city of New Amsterdam was at once cut off from all communication with the shores opposite, and a proclamation was issued by the commissioners guaranteeing the inhabitants in their possessions on condition of submission. The Hudson being in the control of the English vessels, the little city was defenceless. The Director, Stuyvesant, heard of the approach of the English at Fort Orange (Albany), whither he had gone to quell disturbances with the Indians. Returning in haste, he summoned his council together. The folly of resistance was apparent to all, and after delays, by which the Director-General sought to save something of his dignity, a commission for a surrender was agreed upon between the Dutch authorities and Colonel Nicolls. The capitulation confirmed the inhabitants in the possession of their property, the exercise of their religion, and their freedom as citizens. The municipal officers were continued in their rule. On the 29th of August, 1664, the articles were ratified, and Stuyvesant marched out from Fort Amsterdam, at the head of his little band with the honors of war, and embarked the troops on one of the West India Company’s ships for Holland. Stuyvesant himself remained for a time in the city. The English entered the fort, the Dutch flag was hauled down, the English colors hoisted in its place, and the city passed under English rule. The first act of Nicolls on taking possession of the fort, in which he was welcomed by the civic authorities, was to order that the city of New Amsterdam be thereafter known as New York, and the fort as Fort James, in honor of the title and name of his lord and patron.
At the time of the surrender the city gave small promise of its magnificent future. Its entire population, which did not exceed 1,500 souls, was housed within the triangle at the point of the island, the easterly and westerly sides of which were the East and North Rivers, and the northern boundary a wall stretching across the entire island from river to river. Beyond this limit was an occasional plantation and a small hamlet known as New Haarlem. The seat of government was in the fort. Nicolls now established a new government for the province. A force was sent up the Hudson under Captain Cartwright, which took possession of Fort Orange, the name of which was changed to Albany, in honor of a title of the Duke of York. On his return, Cartwright took possession of Esopus in the same manner (the name of this settlement was later changed to Kingston). The privileges granted to the inhabitants of New Amsterdam were extended to these towns. The volunteers from Long Island and New England were now discharged to their homes.
The effect of the prudent and conciliatory measures of Nicolls, which in the beginning had averted the shedding of a single drop of blood, and now appealed directly to the good sense of the inhabitants, was soon apparent. The fears of the Dutch were entirely allayed, and as no inequality was imposed upon them, they had no reason to regret the change of rule. Their pride was conciliated by the continuance of their municipal authorities, and by the cordial manner in which the new-comers arranged that the Dutch and English religious service should be held consecutively under the same roof,—that of the Dutch church in the fort. Hence when Nicolls, alive to the interests of his master, which could be served only by maintaining the prosperity of the colony, proposed to the chief citizens that instead of returning to Holland, as had been arranged for in the capitulation, they should take the oath of allegiance to the King of Great Britain and of obedience to the Duke of York, they almost without exception, Stuyvesant himself included, accepted the conditions. The King’s authority was thus peaceably and firmly established in the metropolis and in the outlying posts of the province of New York proper, which, by the King’s patent to the Duke, included all the territory east of the Delaware. The commissioners next proceeded to reduce the Dutch settlements on the Delaware, and established their colleague, Carr, in command, always however in subordination to the government of New York. The necessities of their condition, dependent upon trade, brought the Dutch inhabitants into easy subjection. Indeed it seems that though their attachment to the mother country, its laws and its customs, was unabated, the long neglect of their interests by the Holland Government had greatly weakened if not destroyed any active sentiment of loyalty.
The southern boundary established, the commissioners turned to the more difficult task of establishing that to the eastward. The Duke of York’s patent covered all the territory claimed alike by the Dutch and by the Connecticut colony under its charter of 1662,—involving an unsettled controversy. A joint commission finally determined the matter by assigning Long Island to New York, and establishing a dividing line between New York and Connecticut, to run about twenty miles distant eastwardly from the Hudson River. The superior topographical information of the Connecticut commissioners secured the establishment of this line in a manner not intended by the Board at large. The boundary was not ratified by the royal authorities, and was later the source of continual dispute and of endless bad feeling between the two colonies.
Nicolls next settled the rules of the customs, which were to be paid in beaver skins at fixed valuations. Courts were now established,—an English modification of those already existing among the Dutch. These new organizations consisted of a court of assizes, or high court of law and equity. Long Island was divided, after the English manner, into three districts or ridings, in which courts of sessions were held at stated intervals. The justices, sitting with the Governor and his Council once in each year in the Court of Assizes, formed the supreme law-making power, wholly subordinate to the will of the Governor, and, after him, to the approval of the Duke. To this body fell the duty of establishing a code of laws for such parts of the province as still remained under the Dutch forms of government. Carefully examining the statutes of the New England colonies, Nicolls prepared from them a code of laws, and summoning a convention of delegates of towns to meet at Hempstead on Long Island, he submitted it for their approval. These laws, though liberal in matters of conscience and religion, did not permit of the election of magistrates. To this restriction many of the delegates demurred; but Nicolls fell back upon the terms of his commission, and the delegates submitted with good grace. The code thus established is known in jurisprudence as the “Duke’s Laws.” Its significant features were trial by jury; equal taxation; tenure of lands from the Duke of York; no religious establishment, but requirement of some church form; freedom of religion to all professing Christianity; obligatory service in each parish every Sunday; recognition of negro slavery under certain restrictions; and general liability to military duty.