The efforts begun by Nicolls and continued by Lovelace, to bring into harmonious subjection the diverse elements of the Duke’s government were not wholly successful. The inhabitants of eastern Long Island clung tenaciously to the traditions of the Connecticut colony, and petitioned the King directly for representation in the Government; but the Council for Plantations denied the claim, on the ground that the territory was in the limits of the Duke of York’s patent and government. The unsettled boundaries again gave trouble, Massachusetts renewing her claim to the navigation of the Hudson, which the Dutch had, during their rule, successfully resisted. Massachusetts further claimed the territory to the Pacific westward of the line of the Duke of York’s patent. The contiguous territory was however held by the Mohawks, who had never acknowledged other sovereignty than their own. In 1672 this tribe made a considerable sale of lands on the Mohawk River to the inhabitants of Schenectady, by which New York practically acquired title to the soil as well as sovereignty.
In 1672 English politics again underwent a change. The Triple Alliance was dissolved, and a secret treaty entered into with France. War was declared against the Dutch. In a severe action at Solebay, the Dutch won an advantage over the allied fleets of England and France. In the engagement Nicolls, the late governor of the New York province, fell, killed by a cannon ball, at the feet of his master, the Duke of York, Lord High Admiral of England, who commanded the British fleet. But while the Dutch maintained an equality at sea with the combined fleets of the powers, their fortune on land was not as favorable. Turenne and Condé led the armies of France to the soil of the Dutch Republic, and to mark his advantage, Louis XIV. brought his court to Utrecht. A revolution in Holland was the immediate consequence. The Grand Pensionary, who in his alarm sought peace, lost the favor of the people, resigned his office, and was quickly murdered by the excited followers of William of Orange. William, having demanded and obtained appointment as Stadtholder, at once placed himself at the head of the war party, and active hostilities were prosecuted by sea and land, both far and near. Among the rumors which reached the inhabitants of the New York province, whose kinsmen were again at war with each other, was one to the effect that a Dutch squadron which had been despatched against the West India colonies was on its way along the Atlantic coast. Lovelace discredited the information, and seems to have made no immediate efforts to strengthen the forts. Troops were called in, however, from the river garrisons and the posts on the Delaware; but their number, with the volunteers, reached only three hundred and thirty men. The alarm soon subsiding, the new-comers were dismissed, and the garrison left in Fort James did not exceed eighty men. Lovelace himself, in entire serenity of mind, left the city on a visit to Governor Winthrop in Connecticut. The rumor, however, proved true. The Dutch squadron, after capturing or destroying the Virginia fleet of tobacco ships in the Chesapeake, sailed northward, and on Aug. 7, 1673, anchored off Staten Island. Informed of the precise state of the New York defences by the captain of a prize captured at the mouth of James River, the Dutch commander made an immediate demand for the surrender of the city. The Dutch fleet, commanded by Evertsen, originally consisting of fifteen ships, had been reinforced in its course by seven men-of-war, and with its prizes now numbered twenty-seven sail, which carried sixteen hundred men. Against this force no resistance was possible. On the morning of the 8th the fleet moved up the bay, exchanged shots with the fort, and landed six hundred men on the shore of the Hudson just above the city, where they were joined by a body of the Dutch burghers. A storming party was advanced, under command of Captain Anthony Colve, to whom Captain Manning, who commanded in the Governor’s absence, surrendered the fort, the garrison being permitted to march out with the honors of war. Thus New York was again surrendered without the shedding of a drop of blood.
A few days later Lovelace, entrapped into a visit to the city, was first courteously entertained, then arrested on a civil suit for debt and detained. The river settlements of Esopus and Albany surrendered without opposition; and those in the immediate neighborhood of the city, where the Dutch population was in ascendency, made submission. The eastern towns of Long Island, of English descent, came in with reluctance. The commodores Evertsen and Binckes, who acted as council of war of New Netherland, after confiscating the property of the Duke of York and of his agent, by proclamation commissioned Captain Anthony Colve Governor-General of the country, and set sail for Holland,—Binckes taking Lovelace with him on his ship at his request.
New York had greatly changed in nine years of English rule. From a sleepy Dutch settlement it had become the capital of a well-ordered province. Colve, the new Dutch governor, went through the form of a return to the old order of city government of the home pattern, and prepared a provincial Instruction to which the outlying towns were to conform. Massachusetts again asserted her old claim to run her southern line to the Hudson, and Connecticut hankered once more after the fertile towns of Long Island, settled by her sons. But Massachusetts had no disposition to take up arms to restore the Duke of York to his possessions. The refusal of the Duke to take the test oath of conformity to the Protestant religion of the Established Church, and the leaning of Charles to the French alliance, alarmed the Puritans, and Connecticut was content, by volunteer reinforcements, to strengthen the eastern towns in their resistance to Colve’s authority.
The news of the recapture of New York reached Holland in October, when Joris Andringa was by the States-General appointed governor of New Netherland under the instructions of the Board of Admiralty. Notwithstanding the earnest request of the Dutch inhabitants of the reconquered province and the petition of persons interested in its trade in the mother country, the States-General recognized the impossibility of holding their American possessions on the mainland, surrounded as they were by a growing and aggressive English population. The Prince of Orange, with true statesmanship, saw that the only safety of the Republic was in a concentration of resources in order to oppose the power of France. The offer of a restitution of New Netherland was directly made to Charles II. as an evidence of the desire for peace and a good understanding. Charles referred the subject to Parliament, which instantly recommended acceptance, and within three days a treaty was drawn up and signed at Westminster, which once more and finally transferred the province of New York to the King of Great Britain. Proclamation of the treaty was made at Guild Hall early in July, 1674. The news came by way of Massachusetts and Connecticut. Connecticut determined to make one more push for the control on Long Island of Southampton, Easthampton, and Southold, and petitions were addressed to the King. At the same time she sought again to include the territory between the boundary line established in 1664 and the Hudson. And it may be stated as a curious instance of the politics of the time, that some friend of Massachusetts, urged by her agent in London, actually contemplated the purchase of the entire province of New York in her interest.
The new governor appointed by the King to receive the surrender of the New Netherland was one Edmund Andros, major in a dragoon regiment. In continuance of the liberal policy of 1664, all the inhabitants were by his instructions confirmed in their rights and privileges, and in the undisturbed possession of their property. By the treaty of Westminster, the New Netherland, the rightful possession of which by the Dutch was implied by its tenor, was ceded to the King. Although termed a restitution, it was held that the rights of the Duke of York had been extinguished by the conquest, and that restitution to the sovereign did not convey restoration to the subject. The Duke of York, now better informed as to the nature and value of the territory, on June 29, 1674, obtained from his royal brother a new patent with enlarged authority. To Andros, who bore the King’s authority to receive submission, the Duke now conferred his commission to govern the province in his name. Lieutenant Anthony Brockholls was named his successor in case of death. Andros was a man of high character, well suited by nature and experience to carry out the policy of his master,—the policy skilfully inaugurated by Nicolls and loyally pursued by Lovelace,—the institution of an autocratic government of the most arbitrary nature in form, but of extreme mildness in practice; one which, insuring peace and happiness to the subject, would best contribute to the authority and revenue of the master. Colonization was encouraged, the customs burdens lightened, the laws equally administered, and freedom of conscience secured. Although the Duke of York, in his refusal to take the test oath prescribed by the Act of 1673, had proclaimed himself an adherent of the Church of Rome, and Brockholls was a professed Papist, and neither master nor servant could hold office in England under that Act, and although the British American colonies were not within its provisions, yet it does not appear that any effort was made by the Church of Rome to exercise its religion under the guarantee of the King and of the Duke. There were doubtless few of that faith in the Protestant colony of New York to claim the privilege. It was left to the wise men who laid the foundations of the Empire State in 1777 to put in practice the freedom of religion to all, which, strangely enough, was first guaranteed in word by the Catholic prince.
The new patent of 1674 restored to the Duke his full authority over the entire domain covered by the original grant, and brought New Jersey again within his rule; yet he was persuaded to divest himself of this proprietorship by a new release to Carteret. No grant of power to govern being named in either the first or the second instrument, this authority was held as reserved by the Duke. The cession was nevertheless of extreme and lasting injury to the New York province, as it impaired its control over the west bank of the mouth of the Hudson and the waters of the bay. On the other hand, the Duke’s title to Long Island and Pemaquid was strengthened by a release obtained from Lord Stirling; and the assumption of Connecticut to govern the eastern towns in the former territory was summarily disposed of. The Duke’s authority in Pemaquid, Martha’s Vineyard, and Nantucket, though disturbed by some of the inhabitants who sought to bring them under the government of Massachusetts, had been maintained during the period of Colve’s administration. They had not been named in the commission of the Dutch commanders to Colve. The claim of Connecticut to the strip of land between the Mamaroneck line and the Hudson River was disallowed by the Duke, and possession of the territory entered by Connecticut was demanded by Andros. Connecticut held to the letter of her charter; Andros to the letters-patent of the King. The rising of the Narragansett tribes under King Philip afforded Andros an opportunity to assert the Duke’s authority. Sailing with three sloops and a body of soldiers, he landed at Saybrook, and read the Duke’s patent and his own commission. The Connecticut officers replied by reading the protest of the Hartford authorities. It is reasonable to suppose that had Andros found the Saybrook fort unoccupied, he would have put in a garrison to protect from the Indians the territory which he claimed to be within his commission. Had he intended a surprise, he would not have given notice to Winthrop that the object of his journey was “the Connecticut River, his Royal Highness’s bounds there.” Neither Andros nor the Connecticut authorities desired an armed collision. Andros, content with the assertion of his claim, crossed the Sound, despatched aid to his dependencies of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket, and returned, after reviewing the militia and disarming the Indians. The course of Andros was approved by the Duke, who, while insisting on his claim to all the territory west of the Connecticut River, ordered that the distance of twenty miles from the Hudson be observed for the dividing line.
The northern frontier was also watched with jealous solicitude. The increase of French influence through their missionaries now became the occasion of an English policy of far-reaching significance,—a policy felt throughout the American Revolution and in the later contest of the States of the Union for Western territory. The friendship of the Mohawks, the only tribe which did not acknowledge French supremacy, was encouraged. Andros personally visited the stronghold of the Mohawks, and on his return to Albany confirmed a close alliance with the Iroquois and organized a board of Indian Commissioners. This sagacious plan served in the future as an effectual check to the encroachments of the French. The ministers of Louis XIV. were quick to feel the blow, and in 1677 the counter claim was set up that the reception of the Jesuit missionaries had given sovereignty to France over the Iroquois. The future contest which was to shake the two continents was already foreshadowed. The same year the supremacy of New York over the Iroquois was tacitly admitted by Massachusetts in the treaty made with them “under the advice” of Andros.
In the details of his administration Andros showed the same firmness. The old contraband trade with the Dutch was arrested; no European goods were admitted from any port that had not paid duties in England. This strict enforcement of the Navigation Laws diminished the coastwise trade with Massachusetts and promoted a direct intercourse with England, which gradually brought the province into close relation with the English commercial towns. Social and political alliance was the natural result, and New York grew gradually to be the most English in sentiment of the American colonies, notwithstanding the cosmopolitan character of her population.
Increasing commerce requiring greater accommodation, a great mole or dock was built on the East River, which afforded protection to vessels in the rapid tide, and for a long period was the centre of the traffic of the city of New York. The answer of Governor Andros to the inquiries of the Council of Plantations as to the condition of the province gives the best existing account of it in 1678. The following are the principal points:—