The Historic Series for Young People

By RUPERT S. HOLLAND

Historic Boyhoods
Stories of the Boyhoods of Famous Men.
Historic Girlhoods
Stories of the Girlhoods of Famous Women.
Historic Inventions
Stories of the Great Inventors.
Historic Poems and Ballads
The Heroic Poems of All Lands.
Historic Adventures
Stories of Our Nation's Heroes.
Historic Heroes of Chivalry
Stories of Brave Knights of Old.

Each 12mo. Cloth, Illustrated, $1.50 net

"Ideal Books for Young Americans"

Andross Stared at Governor Treat

Historic Events of
Colonial Days
By RUPERT S. HOLLAND

Author of "Historic Boyhoods," "Historic
Girlhoods," "Historic Inventions," etc.

PHILADELPHIA
GEORGE W. JACOBS & COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

Copyright, 1916, by
George W. Jacobs & Company
Published, October, 1916

All rights reserved
Printed in U. S. A.

Contents

Illustrations

I A PURITAN HERO

(Rhode Island, 1630)

The good ship Lyon had been sixty-seven days outward bound from the port of Bristol, in England, when she dropped anchor early in February, 1630, at Nantasket, near the entrance of Boston Harbor, in New England. The ship had met with many winter storms, and passengers and crew were glad to see the shores of Massachusetts. On the ninth of February the Lyon slipped through a field of drifting ice and came to anchor before the little settlement of Boston. On board the ship was a young man who was to play an exciting part in the story of the New World.

Yet this young man, Roger Williams by name, seemed simple and quiet enough, as he and his wife came ashore and were welcomed by Governor John Winthrop. He was a young preacher, filled with a desire to carry his teaching to the new lands across the Atlantic Ocean, and he had been asked to be the minister of the First Church in Boston. As it turned out, however, his ideas were not the ideas of the people of Boston, and he soon found that the First Church was not the place for him.

So after a short stay in Boston Roger Williams and his wife went to Plymouth, which was then a colony separate from Massachusetts Bay. William Bradford, the governor of Plymouth, and his neighbors made the young preacher welcome, and there Roger Williams stayed for two years, teaching and exhorting and prophesying, as ministers were said to do in those days. There his daughter Mary was born. Roger Williams, however, was given to argument and could be very obstinate at times, and presently he fell out with his neighbors at Plymouth, and moved again, this time to Salem. There he was given charge of the church, and there he, like many other free-thinking men, fell under the displeasure of the governor of Massachusetts Bay. For some things he taught he was summoned before the General Court of the Bay, and the Court ordered him to leave the colony. He did not go at once, and Governor Winthrop let him stay until the following January, when rumors came to Boston that Roger Williams was planning to lead twenty men of his own way of thinking to the country about Narragansett Bay, and there establish a colony of his own. John Winthrop objected seriously to any such performance.

The governor sent Captain John Underhill in a sailboat to Salem, with orders to seize Roger Williams and put him on board a ship that was lying at Nantasket Roads, ready to sail for England. But when Captain Underhill and his men marched up to the house of Williams they found that the man they wanted had fled three days before. There was no knowing which way he had gone, the wilderness stretched far and wide to west and south, and so they gave up the search for him and reported to Governor Winthrop that Roger Williams had disappeared.

Five friends of Williams, knowing that he had been commanded to leave Massachusetts Bay, had gone into the wilderness and built a camp for him on the banks of a river which was called by the three names of the Blackstone, for the first settler there, the Seekonk, and the Pawtucket. There Williams joined them, and there they stayed during the winter and planted their crops in the spring. Then a messenger from the governor of Plymouth came, saying that their plantation was within the borders of the Plymouth Colony, and asking in a friendly way that Roger Williams and his friends should move to the other side of the river.

The settlers did not like to lose the harvest of their new crops, but neither did they want to make enemies at Plymouth, and so they launched their canoe and paddled down the river in search of a new site. As they went down the stream tradition says that a group of Indians, standing on a great rock near the river's bank, recognized Roger Williams as a man who had once befriended them. They cried their greetings to the white men, and the latter landed and went up the rock and talked with the Indians. Then, taking their canoe again, the white men went on down the river to its mouth, rounded a promontory, and came into an estuary of Narragansett Bay. Here they paddled north a short distance, until they reached the point where the Woonasquatucket and the Moshassuck Rivers joined, and there they landed, near a spring of sweet water. Here they pitched their camp, founding what was to be known in time as the Providence Plantations.

The little colony of six men was soon joined by others, and presently a government was formed, somewhat like those of Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth. There were many Indians along the shores of Narragansett Bay, and Roger Williams made it his concern to be on friendly terms with all of them. When he had lived at Plymouth and at Salem he had met many Indians and had been liked by them. Canonicus and his nephew Miantonomoh, chiefs of the Narragansetts, ruled over all this new region. When the six settlers reached their new plantation these chiefs were at odds with a chief to the north named Ausamaquin. Williams set to work to reconcile the hostile Indians, and while he did so he made such friends of the Narragansett chiefs that they gave him a large tract of land, stretching from the Pawtucket to the Pawtuxet Rivers. In his turn Roger Williams sold the land to his company for thirty pounds.

Here, as the little colony of Providence Plantations grew, Roger Williams tended to the government of it and preached constantly to his people. All was not smooth sailing, however, even here in the wilderness. Men disagreed with the preacher, and he found it hard to keep them from continually fighting with each other. When there was no danger of trouble with the Indians, the settlers stirred up trouble for themselves, and Roger Williams had his hands full trying to keep first the white, and then the red, men in order.

Every little while there would be some dispute, usually ending in bloodshed, between Indians and white men. Two white traders, venturing into the country between the two rivers now known as the Pawcatuck and the Thames, were killed by chiefs of the Pequods, who were the strongest tribe in all New England. News of this came to Plymouth, and was sent from there by messenger to the governor of Massachusetts Bay. Not long afterward a settler named John Oldham was killed by a party of Indians as he was sailing his own boat off Block Island. The white men, putting this and that together, decided that the Pequods were planning to kill all the settlers that came into their country, and thought it likely they were trying to get the Narragansett chiefs to join them in this. If these two tribes joined forces it would go hard with the white men, and so the people of Massachusetts Bay sent a message to Roger Williams, urging him to see his friends the Narragansetts, and try to keep them from joining with the Pequods.

Williams was brave, and he had need to be when he made his visit to the wigwam of the chief, Canonicus. He found men of the Pequods there, trying to induce Canonicus and the other Narragansett sachems to join them in war on the whites. He came as a friend, he showed no fear, and he stayed for several days, sleeping among them at night, as if he had no suspicion that the Pequods might want to kill him, alone and unarmed among so many of them. And the Pequods did not touch him. He had learned something of the Indian tongue while he lived at Plymouth and Salem, and he talked with them and the Narragansetts, urging them to be friends with the white men who had come to live among them.

His visit to Canonicus was successful. The Narragansett chiefs renewed their promises of friendship for Roger Williams' men and sent the Pequod envoys away. The disappointed Pequods, however, told the Narragansetts that the English were treacherous folk and warned them that they would not always find these new settlers as friendly as Roger Williams had said. And in part the Pequods were right, for there were white men who were fully as treacherous as any Indians.

Not long afterward four young men set out from Massachusetts Bay to go to the Dutch settlement on Manhattan Island. Somewhere between Boston and the Providence Plantations they sat down to rest and smoke. A Narragansett Indian came in sight, and they called to him to stop and smoke a pipe with them. The Indian accepted their invitation. The white men saw that he was a trader and had a large stock of wampum, and also cloth and beads with him, and so, as he sat with them, they suddenly attacked him, and, robbing him, left him for dead. The Narragansett, though very badly wounded, was able after a while to drag himself back to the wigwams of his tribe. There he told his story before he died. Some of the chiefs set out on the trail at once, and capturing three of the whites, took them to the settlers at Aquidneck. They were tried for the robbery and murder, found guilty, and executed, though some settlers murmured against Englishmen being condemned for doing harm to Indians. But wise men such as Governor Bradford and Roger Williams knew that they must use the same justice toward Indians as toward white men if they were ever to live in peace with their neighbors.

So the Narragansetts kept peace with the newcomers who were building their homes on the shores of the great bay that bore the name of the Indian tribe, and Roger Williams turned his attention to the needs of his people. He wanted a charter from the king of England for his new colony, and to get it he had to go back to England. Instead of going to Boston or Plymouth to take ship he traveled south to the Dutch seaport of New Amsterdam. The Dutch were also having trouble with their Indian neighbors, and Roger Williams was urged to try to pacify the red men. Governor Winthrop of Massachusetts Bay kept record of most of the important things that were taking place in the English colonies, and this is what he wrote:

"1643. Mo. 4, 20.—There fell out hot wars between the Dutch and the Indians thereabout. The occasion was this. An Indian being drunk had slain an old Dutchman.... The Indians also of Long Island took part with their neighbors upon the main, and as the Dutch took away their corn, so they fell to burning the Dutch houses. But these, by the mediation of Mr. Williams, who was there to go in a Dutch ship for England, were pacified and peace reëstablished between the Dutch and them."

Roger Williams sailed from New Amsterdam in June or July, 1643, and on the voyage he spent much time in writing a remarkable book, "A Key into the Languages of America," as he called it. He reached England at a most exciting time. Parliament had rebelled against King Charles the First, the king had fled from London, the battle of Edge Hill had been fought between the Cavaliers and the Roundheads, and the country was an armed camp. Williams tried to get his charter from the Parliament, but matters were so upset that such business took a long time. The people of London were suffering for fuel, and he busied himself in plans to provide coal and wood for them, and he went on with his writings, most of which were religious arguments, such as many men of that period, among them William Penn, were fond of writing.

At last he was able to get his charter from Parliament, and set out on his return journey. He had not sailed from Boston on his outward voyage because of the order of exile from the colony of Massachusetts Bay that still stood against him. But he asked permission of that colony to let him return by way of Boston, and this was granted. He landed at the same place where he had made his first landing in America; journeyed, probably on foot, to the Blackstone River, and paddled his canoe to Narragansett Bay. As he approached the Bay he was met by a fleet of canoes manned by the chief settlers of his colony, who gave him a royal welcome. In return for his services in obtaining the charter for the new Providence Plantations the three settlements of Newport, Portsmouth and Providence agreed to pay him one hundred pounds.

Roger Williams' wife had joined him at the Providence Plantations, and they now had a family of six children. He did not approve of a minister being paid for his services, and so he, like many other preachers of the Puritans, found other means to supply his family with bread and meat. He had traded with the Indians for furs while he was at Salem, and since then he had built a trading house on the west shore of Narragansett Bay, at a place called Cawcawmsquissick by the Indians, about fifteen miles south of Providence, and near where the town of Wickford now stands. Ninigret, one of his powerful Indian friends, lived near by, and saw to it that the best furs went to Roger Williams' house. It was a convenient place for the hunters to bring their stores, and it was not far across the bay to Newport, which was becoming the main shipping port of the colony. To Newport he took his furs to sell them in the market or send them by trading-vessel to England, and there he bought the stock of cloth and beads, sugar and other supplies that he paid to the Indians. He made at his trading-house at least one hundred pounds a year, the equal of five hundred dollars in American money, and with a much greater purchasing power in those days than now.

Meantime the Narragansetts and the Mohegans had been at war with each other, and the former tribe winning, had made an alliance with the Mohegans, and threatened a joint attack on the English colonies. Williams and two or three others went out to the Indian chiefs and again made a treaty of peace with them, for there was no white man in New England for whom all the Indians had such affection as they had for Roger Williams. Time and again he saved his own colony, and the neighboring ones of Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth and Connecticut from Indian attacks. His knowledge of the Indian tongues was of great assistance to him, and his desire to be perfectly fair and frank with them was even more valuable.

Once more he went to England, for a Mr. Coddington of Newport had obtained from Parliament a commission as governor for life of the settlements at Aquidneck, which interfered with the charter already granted to the Providence Plantations. There he succeeded in having the claims of his colony adjusted, there he wrote more religious pamphlets and preached and lectured, and there he met Oliver Cromwell, the Lord Protector of England, and John Milton the poet, and told them about the Indians of New England, their language and their customs and the missionary work the colonists were doing among them.

After he went back to Providence George Fox, the famous Quaker leader, came to New England and preached to the people there. Roger Williams did not agree with Fox in many of his teachings, and took the opposite side at many public meetings. Whenever there was debate or argument over religious matters Roger Williams wanted to have his share in it. He held the same views as leader of the Providence Plantations that he had voiced when he first came as minister to the First Church at Boston.

In many ways Roger Williams was something like William Penn. He founded a colony that was in time to become one of the original Thirteen States of the American Union. He was a religious leader, and he was always fair in his dealings with the Indians. Probably he was greatest as a friend of the Indians, for his little colony was spared the frequent attacks and massacres that made life so hard for many of the small English settlements along the Atlantic coast. He came to the New World seeking liberty and justice between all men, and these he taught to the settlers who followed and built their homes around his log house on the shores of the great bay named for the Narragansetts.

II PETER STUYVESANT'S FLAG

(New York, 1661)

I

The island of Manhattan, which is now tightly packed with the office-buildings and houses of New York, was in 1661 the home of a small number of families who had come across the Atlantic Ocean from the Netherlands to settle this part of the new world for the Dutch West India Company. There was a fort at the southern end of the island, sometimes known as the Battery, and two roads led from it toward the north. One of these roads followed the line of the street now called Broadway, running north to a great open field, or common, and, skirting that, leading on to the settlement of Harlaem. In time this road came to be known as the Old Post Road to Boston. Another road ran to the east, and in its neighborhood were the farms of many of the richer Dutch settlers. Near where Third Avenue and Thirteenth Street now meet was the bouwery, as the Dutchmen called a farm, of Peter Stuyvesant, the governor of the colony of New Netherland. It was a large, prosperous bouwery, with a good-sized house for the governor and his family.

This Dutch governor, sturdy, impetuous, obstinate, had lost a leg while leading an attack on the Portuguese island of Saint Martin, in 1644, and now used a wooden stump, which caused him to be nicknamed "Wooden-Legged Peter." He was a much better governor than the others who had been sent out by the West India Company to rule New Netherland. He had plenty of courage, but he had also a very determined will of his own, which often made him seem a tyrant to the other settlers.

Now there were two distinct classes of people in New Netherland: the peasants who worked the land, and the landowners, called patroons, who had bought vast tracts from the West India Company, and lived on them like European nobles. It was the patroons who brought the peasants over, paying for their passage, and the peasants worked for them until they could repay the amount of their passage money, and then took up small farms on their patroon's estate, paying the rental in crops, as tenants did to the feudal lords of Europe. The great manors stretched north from the little town of New Amsterdam at the point of Manhattan Island. Above Peter Stuyvesant's bouwery was the manor of the Kip family, called Kip's Bay. In the middle of the island lived the Patroon De Lancey. Opposite, on Long Island, was the estate of the Laurences. And along the Hudson were the homes of the powerful families of Van Courtland and of Phillipse, of Van Rensselaer and of Schuyler. In spite of constant danger from Indians and their great distance from Europe the patroons lived in a certain magnificence, and grew in power down to the time of the Revolution. Farming and fur-trading were the chief sources of profit of the colony. There were a few storekeepers and mechanics, but they lived close to the fort and stockade at the Battery. The trades that had done so much to make the Netherlands in Europe rich played small part in the life of this New Netherland.

In the year 1661 the West India Company bought Staten Island from its patroon owner, a man named Cornelius Melyn. A block-house was built which was armed with two cannon and defended by ten soldiers, and invited the people of Europe who were called Waldenses and the Huguenots of France to settle on the island. Fourteen families soon came and took up farms there south of the Narrows. The West India Company, however, had broader views on religion than their governor, Peter Stuyvesant, had. John Brown, an Englishman, moved from Boston to Flushing, on Long Island, and, having by chance attended a Quaker meeting, invited the Quakers to meet at his new house. Neighbors told the governor that John Brown was using his farm as a meeting-place for Quakers, and Stuyvesant had him arrested. The quiet, unoffending farmer was fined twenty-five pounds and threatened with banishment, and when he failed to pay, was imprisoned in New Amsterdam for three months. Then Governor Stuyvesant issued an order banishing Farmer Brown. "John Brown," so ran the order, "is to be transported from this province in the first ship ready to sail, as an example to others." Soon afterward he was sent to Holland in the Gilded Fox, but the officers of the West India Company received him kindly, rebuked the haughty governor for his severity, and persuaded John Brown to return to Flushing. When he did go back Stuyvesant showed by his acts that he was ashamed of what he had done. For the governor, in spite of his headstrong acts, had sense enough to know that his little colony needed all the settlers it could find, no matter what their religion, and that Quakers made as trustworthy settlers as any other kind.

Early in 1663 an earthquake shook New Netherland and the country round it. Soon afterward the melting snows and very heavy rains caused a tremendous freshet, which covered the meadow lands along the rivers, and ruined all the crops. Then came an outbreak of smallpox, which spread among the Dutchmen and the Indians like fire in a field of wheat. Over a thousand of the Iroquois tribe died of the plague. Then, as if these troubles were not sufficient for the colony, Peter Stuyvesant soon heard that there was new danger of an Indian uprising against his people.

There had been a truce between the red men and the white, but the former could not forget that after their last attack on the Dutch fifteen of their warriors had been sent as slaves to the island of Curaçoa. There were many Indians near the prosperous settlement of Esopus, up in the Hudson country, and in the spring of 1663 settlers there sent word to the governor that they needed more protection from their dark-skinned neighbors. Stuyvesant replied that he would come himself soon and try to settle any differences. The Indian chiefs heard of this reply of the governor and in their turn sent him word that if he were coming to renew their treaty of friendship they should expect him to come without arms, and would then gladly meet in a council in the field outside the gate of Esopus, and smoke the pipe of peace with him.

This was a friendly message, and the settlers at Esopus who lived within the palisades, as well as those at the little village of Wildwyck, which had sprung up a short distance from the fort, decided they had been wrong in suspecting the Indians of intending to harm them, and went on with their farming as usual. Peter Stuyvesant, busy in New Amsterdam, had not yet had a chance to go up to Esopus. On the seventh of June, as on other days, Indians came into the village, chatted with the settlers, and sold corn and other provisions they had grown.

Then suddenly a war-whoop rang out inside the palisades, and was instantly followed by a hundred more within and without the gates. Indian blankets were thrown aside, and tomahawks and long knives gleamed in the hands of the savages. The settlers were taken completely by surprise. Each Indian had marked his man. Men, women, and children were made prisoners or killed. Houses were plundered and set on fire, and the flames, escaping to the farms, soon made havoc of the prosperous village.

The settlers fought, and for several hours the savage war-whoops were answered by the fire of muskets. The chief officer of the village, called the Schout, Roelof Swartwout by name, rallied a few men around him, and by desperate fighting at last drove the Indians outside the palisades and shut the gates against them. But the outer village was in ashes, the fields were strewn with bodies, and houses smoked to the sky. Within the palisades matters were not quite so bad, for a change of the wind had saved part of the buildings from the flames.

Twenty-one settlers had been killed, nine were badly wounded, and forty-five, most of them women and children, had been taken captive. All that night the Schout and his men stayed on guard at the gates, while in the distance they heard the shouts of the triumphant red men.

The news of what had happened at Esopus spread rapidly through the Hudson country. In the villages the men hurried to strengthen their palisades, farmers fled with their families to the shelter of the nearest forts. The news came to Governor Stuyvesant on Manhattan Island, and he instantly sent forty-two soldiers to Esopus, and offered rewards to all who would enlist. Some friendly Indians from Long Island joined his forces, scouts were sent through the woods to find the hostile Indians' hiding-places. The Mohawks tried to make peace, and capturing some of the Dutch prisoners, sent them back to the village. The Mohawks also sent word that the Indians who had gone on the war-path felt they were only taking a just revenge for the act of the Dutch in sending some of their chiefs to Curaçoa, that they would return their other prisoners in exchange for rich presents, and were ready to make a new peace with the settlers.

But Peter Stuyvesant thought it needful to teach his Indian neighbors a lesson.

A white woman, Mrs. Van Imbrock, escaped from her captors, and finally reached Esopus after many hardships. She brought word that the Indians, some two hundred, had built a strong fort, and sent their prisoners every night under guard to a distant place in the mountains, intending to keep them as hostages. When he had heard her account, Stuyvesant sent out a party of two hundred and ten men, under Captain Crygier, armed with two small cannon, with which they hoped to make a breach in the walls of the Indian fort, which were only bulletproof.

This little army set out on the afternoon of July 26th. They made their way through forests, over high hills, and across rivers. They bivouacked for the night, and next morning marched on until they were about six miles from the fort. Half the men were sent on to make a surprise-attack, while the rest followed in reserve.

Scouts had brought word to the fort of the approach of the Dutch, and the Indians had gone into the mountains with their prisoners. So Captain Crygier's men went into the fort and spent the night there, finding it an unusually well-built and well-protected place. An Indian woman, not knowing the white men were there, came back for some provisions, was taken prisoner, and told the direction in which the chiefs had gone. Next morning twenty-five men were left at the fort, and the others followed the trail to a mountain, where the squaw said the Indians meant to camp. There were no red men there, and the squaw told of another camp yet farther on.

The Dutch soldiers marched all day, but their hunt proved fruitless. Finally Captain Crygier gave the order to return to the captured fort. Here they burned the buildings, and carried off all the provisions. Then they returned to Esopus, to await other news.

Early in September word came that the Indians had built another fort, or castle, as they called it, thirty-six miles to the southwest. Again Captain Crygier set out with his men, and on the second day came in view of the fort. It stood on a height, and was built of two rows of stout palisades, fifteen feet high. Crygier divided his forces, and one-half the men crept toward the fort. Then a squaw saw them, and by her cry warned the Indians. Both parties of the Dutch rushed up the hill, stormed the palisades, drove their enemies before them, and scattered them in the fields. Behind the fort was a creek. The Indians waded and swam it, and made a stand on the opposite bank. But the fire of the Dutchmen was too much for them, and shortly they were flying wildly into the wilderness.

The Indian chief, Papoquanchen, and fourteen of his warriors were killed in the battle, twenty-two white prisoners were rescued, and fourteen Indians were captured. The fort was plundered of provisions, and the Dutch found eighty guns, besides, as they reported, "bearskins, deerskins, blankets, elk hides and peltries sufficient to load a shallop."

There was great joy at Esopus when the victorious little army returned. Danger from that particular tribe of Indians seemed at an end, but to make the matter certain a third expedition was sent out in the fall. They scouted through the near-by country, but found only a few scattered red men. Those that were left of the Esopus tribe after that last attack on their fort had fled south and finally become part of the Minnisincks.

Again peace reigned in the Dutch settlements; the farmers went back to their fields, and the soldiers returned to the capital at New Amsterdam.

To the north of the Dutch colony lay the English colonies of New England, and the boundary between New Netherland and its neighbors had never been fixed. Many Englishmen had settled along the Hudson and on Long Island, and Governor Stuyvesant thought it was high time to reach some agreement with the New England governors. So he went to Boston in September, 1663; but scarcely had he left New Amsterdam when an English agent, James Christie, arrived on Long Island, and told the people of Gravesend, Flushing, Hempstead and Jamaica that they were no longer under Dutch rule, but that their territory had been annexed to the colony of Connecticut.

Now many of the settlers at Gravesend were English, and most of the magistrates and officers. When Christie read his announcement to the people one of the few faithful Dutch magistrates, Sheriff Stillwell, arrested him on a charge of treason. Then the other magistrates ordered the arrest of Stillwell in turn, and the public feeling against the latter was so strong that he had to send word secretly to New Amsterdam, asking for help. A sergeant and eight soldiers were sent from New Amsterdam, and they again arrested Christie and placed him under guard in Sheriff Stillwell's house.

Rumors came that the farmers meant to rescue Christie, so he was taken at night to the fort on Manhattan Island. Sheriff Stillwell had to fly from his own house to escape the neighbors, and hurried to New Amsterdam, where he complained of the illegal acts of the Gravesend settlers. Excitement ran high. People on Long Island demanded that Christie be set free; but the Dutch council insisted on keeping him a prisoner. The council sent an express messenger to Peter Stuyvesant in Boston, asking him to settle the Long Island difficulties with the English governor there.

But the officers of New England would not agree to the sturdy Dutchman's terms. And other English colonists went through the land that belonged to the Dutch, rousing the farmers against the West India Company. Richard Panton, armed with sword and pistol, threatened the men of Flatbush and other villages near by with the pillage of their property unless they would swear allegiance to the government at Hartford and fight against the Dutch. Such was the news that greeted Stuyvesant when he came back to his capital from Boston. He knew that there were not enough of the Dutch to resist an attack from the English, who had come swarming in great numbers recently into Massachusetts and Connecticut. His only hope lay in argument, and so he sent four of his leading men to Hartford to try to arrange a peaceful settlement.

The four Dutchmen sailed from New Amsterdam, and after two days on the water landed at Milford. There they took horses and rode to New Haven, where they spent the night. Next day they went on to Hartford over the rough roads of the wilderness. They were well received, and John Winthrop, who was governor of Connecticut and a son of Governor Winthrop of Massachusetts, admitted that some of the claims of the Dutch were just. But the rest of the officers at Hartford stoutly insisted that all that part of the Atlantic seacoast belonged to the king of England, by right of first discovery and claim. "The opinion of the governor," said these men, "is but the opinion of one man. The grant of the king of England includes all the land south of the Boston line to Virginia and to the Pacific Ocean. We do not know any New Netherland, unless you can show a patent for it from the king of England." Apparently the Dutch had no rights there at all; the whole tract between Massachusetts and Virginia belonged to Connecticut.

Still the Dutchmen tried to reach some sort of friendly agreement. They proposed that what was known as Westchester, the land lying north of Manhattan Island, should be considered part of Connecticut, but that the towns on Long Island should remain under the government of New Netherland. "We do not know of any province of New Netherland," the Hartford officers replied. "There is a Dutch governor over a Dutch plantation on the island of Manhattan. Long Island is included in our patent, and we shall possess and maintain it."

So the four Dutchmen had to return to Governor Stuyvesant with word that the Connecticut men would yield none of their claims.

The state of affairs was going from bad to worse. Stuyvesant called a meeting of men from all the neighboring villages, and the meeting sent a report to the Dutch government in Europe.

The report had hardly been sent, however, when more startling events took place in the colony. Two Englishmen, Anthony Waters and John Coe, with a force of almost one hundred armed men, visited many of the villages where there were English settlers, and told them they must no longer pay taxes to the Dutch, as their country belonged to the king of England. They put their own officers in place of the Dutch officers in these villages, and then, marching to settlements where most of the people were Dutch, they tried to make the people there take the oath of allegiance to the English king.

A month later a party of twenty Englishmen secretly sailed up the Raritan River in a sloop, called the chiefs of some of the neighboring Indian tribes together, and tried to buy a large tract of land from them. They knew all the while that the Dutch West India Company had bought that same land from the Indians some time before.

As soon as he heard of this Peter Stuyvesant sent Crygier, with some well-armed men, in a swift yacht, to thwart the English traders. He also sent a friendly Indian to warn the chiefs against trying to sell land they no longer owned. The Dutch yacht arrived in time to stop the Indians from dealing with the English, and the latter, baffled there, sailed their sloop down the bay to a place between Rensselaer's Hook and Sandy Hook, where they met other Indians and tried to bargain with them for land. The Dutch Crygier overtook them.

"You are traitors!" he cried. "You are acting against the government to which you have taken the oath of fidelity!"

"This whole country," answered the men from the sloop, "has been given to the English by His Majesty the King of England."

Then the two parties separated, Crygier and his men sailing back to New Amsterdam.

While matters stood this way in the province of New Netherland an Englishman, John Scott, petitioned King Charles the Second to grant him the government of Long Island, which he said the Dutch settlers were unjustly trying to take away from the king of England. Scott was given authority to make a report to the English government on the state of affairs in that part of the New World, and in order to do this he sailed to America and went to New Haven, where he was warmly welcomed. The colony of Connecticut gave him the powers of a magistrate throughout Long Island, and he at once set to work to wrest the island from the Dutch, whom he upbraided as "cruel and rapacious neighbors who were enslaving the English settlers."

Some of the villages on Long Island, however, and especially those where there were many Quakers and Baptists, did not want to come under the rule of the Puritans. Therefore six towns, Hempstead, Gravesend, Flushing, Middlebury, Jamaica and Oyster Bay, formed a government of their own, asking John Scott to act as their president, until the king of England should establish a permanent government for them. Scott swelled with pride in his new power. He gathered an armed force of one hundred and seventy men, horse and foot, and marched out to compel the neighboring Dutch towns to join his new colony.

First he marched on Brooklyn. There he told the citizens that their land belonged to the crown of England, and that he now claimed it for the king. He had so many men with him that the Dutch saw it would be impossible to arrest him, but one of them, the secretary, Van Ruyven, suggested that he should cross the river to New Amsterdam and talk with Peter Stuyvesant. Scott pompously answered, "Let Stuyvesant come here with a hundred men; I will wait for him and run my sword through his body!" And he scowled and marched up and down before the stolid Dutchman like a fierce cock-o'-the-walk.

The Dutchmen of Brooklyn, however, did not seem anxious to exchange the rule of Governor Peter Stuyvesant for that of Captain John Scott. As he was strutting up and down Captain Scott spied a boy who looked as if he would like to use his fists on the Englishman. The boy happened to be a son of Governor Stuyvesant's faithful officer Crygier. Captain Scott walked up to the boy, and ordered him to take off his hat and salute the flag of England. Young Crygier refused, and the quick-tempered captain struck at him. One of the men standing by called out, "If you have blows to give, you should strike men, not boys!"

Four of Scott's men jumped at the man who had dared to speak so, and the latter, picking up an axe, tried to defend himself, but soon found it best to run. Scott ordered the people of Brooklyn to give the man up, threatening to burn the town unless they did so. But the man was not surrendered, and the captain did not dare to carry out his threat.

Instead he marched to Flatbush, and unfurled his flag before the house of the sheriff. Settlers gathered round to see what was happening, and Captain Scott made them a speech. "This land," said he to the Dutchmen, "which you now occupy, belongs to His Majesty, King Charles. He is the right and lawful lord of all America, from Virginia to Boston. Under his government you will enjoy more freedom than you ever before possessed. Hereafter you shall pay no more taxes to the Dutch government, neither shall you obey Peter Stuyvesant. He is no longer your governor, and you are not to acknowledge his authority. If you refuse to submit to the king of England, you know what to expect."

But the men of Flatbush were no more ready to obey the haughty captain than those of Brooklyn had been. One of the magistrates dared to tell Scott that he ought to settle this dispute with Peter Stuyvesant. "Stuyvesant is governor no longer," he retorted. "I will soon go to New Amsterdam, with a hundred men, and proclaim the supremacy of His Majesty, King Charles, beneath the very walls of the fort!"

The Dutch would not obey him, but neither would they take up arms against him. Such treatment angered the fire-eating captain more and more. He marched his troop to New Utrecht, where the Dutch flag floated over the block fort, armed with cannon. Meeting no resistance from the peace-loving settlers Scott hauled down their flag and replaced it with the flag of England. Then, using the Dutch cannon and Dutch powder he fired a salute to announce his victory. All those who passed the fort were ordered to take off their hats and bow before the new banner, and those who refused were arrested by his men, and some were bound and beaten.

Peter Stuyvesant, in New Amsterdam, heard of these disturbances on Long Island, and sent three of his leading men to meet Scott and try to make some settlement with him. They met the captain at Jamaica, and after much wrangling, at last reached what they thought might be an agreement. But as they left Scott fired these words at their backs: "This whole island belongs to the king of England. He has made a grant of it to his brother, the Duke of York. He knows that it will yield him an annual revenue of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. He is soon coming with an ample force, to take possession of his property. If it is not surrendered peaceably he is determined to take, not only the whole island, but also the whole province of New Netherland!"

This was alarming news. Some of the English settlers were rallying to Scott's command, the Dutch in some of the villages fled to Dutch forts for shelter. Even the prosperous men in New Amsterdam began to fear lest the English captain should attack their homes. Fortifications were hurriedly built, and men enrolled as soldiers.

Peter Stuyvesant, fearful lest he should lose his colony, knowing well that the English greatly outnumbered the Dutch, found himself in a very difficult situation. But "Wooden-Legged Peter" was a fighter, quite as fiery as John Scott when his blood was up.

II

Peter Stuyvesant saw that he would have to make terms with the English Captain Scott, or more English adventurers might come swarming down from New England and speedily gobble up the whole of Manhattan Island. He went to Hempstead on Long Island, on the third day of March, 1664, and made an agreement with Scott that the villages on the western part of the island, where the settlers were mainly English, should consider themselves under English rule until the whole dispute could be settled by King Charles and the Dutch government. The Dutch had now lost bit by bit most of the colony they had started out to settle. First the English had taken the valley of the Connecticut River, because there were more English settlers there than Dutch, then they took Westchester, now the four important villages of Flushing, Jamaica, Hempstead and Gravesend were added to their list.

Meantime the States-General of Holland, receiving appeals for help from Stuyvesant, sent him sixty soldiers, and ordered him to resist any further demands of the English and to try to make the villages that had rebelled return again to his flag. But the governor knew that he could not possibly do this, his people were outnumbered six to one, and while he was turning this matter over in his mind news came that the English people in Connecticut were making a treaty of alliance with the Indians who lived along the Hudson. Fearful lest all the tribes should side with his rivals, Stuyvesant invited a number of the Indian chiefs to a meeting at the fort of New Amsterdam.

The chiefs came to the council. One of them called upon Bachtamo, their tribal name for the Great Spirit, to hear him. "Oh, Bachtamo," he said, "help us to make a good treaty with the Dutch. And may the treaty we are about to make be like the stick I hold in my hand. Like this stick may it be firmly united, the one end to the other."

Then turning to Stuyvesant and his officers, he went on, "We all desire peace. I have come with my brother sachems, in behalf of the Esopus Indians, to conclude a peace as firm and compact as my arms, which I now fold together."

He held out his hand to the governor. "What I now say is from the fullness of my heart. Such is my desire, and that of all my people."

A treaty was drawn up, signed by the Dutch and the Indians, and celebrated by the firing of cannon from the fort. Stuyvesant proclaimed a day of general thanksgiving in honor of the new alliance with the Indians.

Now it had been supposed that the English towns on Long Island would join the colony of Connecticut, but instead the settlers proclaimed their own independence and chose John Scott for their president. Then the court at Hartford sent John Allyn, with a party of soldiers, to arrest Captain Scott for treason. Scott met the Connecticut soldiers with soldiers of his own, and demanded what they wanted on his land. The Connecticut officer read the order for Scott's arrest. Then said Captain Scott, "I will yield my heart's blood on this ground before I will give in to you or any men from Connecticut!" The men from Hartford answered readily, "So will we!"

But in spite of his bold words his opponents did succeed in arresting Scott, and, taking him to Hartford, put him in prison there. Governor Winthrop went to Long Island to appoint new officers in the English villages in place of Scott's men, and Stuyvesant seized the chance to go to meet the Connecticut governor and make some treaty with him. The governor of New Netherland explained to the governor of the Connecticut Colony that the Dutch claimed the land they occupied by the rights of discovery, purchase, and possession, and reminded him that the boundary between the two colonies had been defined in a treaty made in 1650. Said that treaty, "Upon Long Island a line run from the westernmost part of Oyster Bay, in a straight and direct line to the sea, shall be the bounds between the English and the Dutch there; the easterly part to belong to the English, the westernmost part to the Dutch."

Yet, in spite of this, Governor Winthrop was now many miles west of the line, claiming villages that were clearly in Dutch territory. The truth was that Governor Winthrop knew Peter Stuyvesant had not the needful number of men to oppose the English claims. And the upshot of the meeting was that Winthrop simply declared that the whole of Long Island belonged to the king of England.

That king of England, Charles II, now took a hand in the matter himself. On March 12, 1664, he granted to his brother, James, Duke of York, the whole of Long Island, all the islands near it, and all the lands and rivers from the west shore of the Connecticut River to the east shore of Delaware Bay. It was a wide, magnificent grant, sweeping away the colony of New Netherland as if it had been a twig in the path of a tornado.

Word reached New Amsterdam that a fleet of armed ships had sailed from Portsmouth in England, bound for the Hudson River, to take possession of the neighboring territory. The prosperous Dutch settlers were in a panic. Peter Stuyvesant called his council, and they decided to lose no time in making their fortifications as strong as possible. Money was raised, powder was sent for, agents hurried to buy provisions all through the countryside. In the midst of these preparations the Dutch government, which had been completely fooled as to the plans of the English king, sent a message to Governor Stuyvesant saying that he need have no fear of any further trouble from the English.

This was pleasant word; it relieved the fears that had been raised by the message of the armed fleet sailing from Portsmouth for the Hudson. The work on the forts was stopped, and Stuyvesant went up the river to Fort Orange to try to quiet Indian tribes in that neighborhood who were threatening to take to the war-path.

The English fleet, four frigates, with ninety-four guns all told, meantime came sailing across the Atlantic, and arrived at Boston the end of July. Colonel Richard Nicholls was in command of the expedition, with three commissioners sent out with him from England. Their instructions were to reduce the Dutch to subjection. They were to get what aid they could from the New England colonies. The people of Boston, however, were too busy with their own affairs, and too content, to be interested in helping to fight the Dutch. But Connecticut was quite ready to help, and so Colonel Nicholls sent word to Governor Winthrop to meet the English fleet at the west end of Long Island, to which place it would sail with the first favoring wind.

A friend of Peter Stuyvesant's in Boston sent news of the English plans to New Amsterdam. A fast rider carried the message to the governor at Fort Orange. Stuyvesant hastened back to his capital, very angry at having lost three weeks in which to make ready his defenses. He called every man to work with spade, shovel and wheelbarrow. Six cannon were added to the fourteen already on the fort. Messengers rode through the country summoning other garrisons to come to the aid of New Amsterdam.

On August 20th the English frigates anchored in Nyack Bay, just below the Narrows, between New Utrecht and Coney Island. All communication between Long Island and Manhattan Island was cut off. Some small Dutch boats were captured. Three miles away from the fleet's anchorage, on Staten Island, was a small fort, a block-house, some twenty feet square. It boasted two small guns, which shot one pound balls, and was garrisoned by six soldiers. The English, sending some of their men ashore, had little difficulty in capturing the fort and rounding up the cattle that were grazing in the near-by fields.

The morning after he dropped anchor Colonel Nicholls despatched four of his men to Fort Amsterdam on Manhattan Island, with a summons to the garrison to surrender. At the same time he sent out word that if any of the farmers furnished supplies to the fort he would burn their houses, but that if they would quietly acknowledge the English flag they might keep their farms in peace.

Now Peter Stuyvesant had only one hundred soldiers in his garrison, and he could not hope for much real aid from the other men, undisciplined and poorly armed as they were, who lived on Manhattan Island. But he meant to resist these invaders as strongly as he was able, and so called his council together to consider what they might do for defense.

The peace-loving Dutch citizens, however, lacked the fiery spirit of their governor, and they too held a meeting, and voted not to resist the English fleet, and asked for a copy of the demand to surrender that Nicholls had sent to the fort. Governor Stuyvesant, angry though he was, went to the citizens and tried to persuade them to stand by him. But the citizens, fearful that a bombardment would destroy their little settlement, were not in the humor to agree with his ideas.

The English commander sent another envoy, with a flag of truce, to Fort Amsterdam, carrying a letter which stated that if Manhattan Island was surrendered to him the Dutch settlers might keep all the lands and buildings they possessed. Stuyvesant received the letter, and read it to his council. The council insisted that the letter should be read to the people. Stuyvesant refused, saying that he, and not the people, was the best judge as to what New Amsterdam should do. The council continued to argue and threaten, until Stuyvesant tore up the letter and trampled it under his feet to settle the matter.

The citizens, however, had heard that such a letter had come with a flag of truce, and they sent three men to demand the message from Peter Stuyvesant. These men told him bluntly that the people did not intend to resist the English, that resistance to such a large force was madness, and that they would mutiny unless he let them see the letter Colonel Nicholls had sent.

Again Governor Stuyvesant was forced to yield to pressure. A copy was made of the letter from its torn pieces, and this was read to the turbulent citizens. When they had heard it they declared that they were ready to surrender. But the governor hated the notion of giving up his province of New Netherland without a struggle; of yielding to highway robbers, as he regarded the English fleet. So he sent a ship secretly from Fort Amsterdam by night, bearing a message to the directors of the Dutch Company in Europe. The message was short. "Long Island is gone and lost. The capitol cannot hold out long," was what it said.

Then he sat down and wrote an answer to the letter of Colonel Nicholls. It was a fair-spoken answer, pointing out that this land belonged to the Dutch by right of discovery and settlement and purchase from the Indians. He said that he was sure the king of England would agree with the Dutch claims if they were presented to him. This was the end of his letter: "In case you will act by force of arms, we protest before God and man that you will perform an act of unjust violence. You will violate the articles of peace solemnly ratified by His Majesty of England, and my Lords the States-General. Again for the prevention of the spilling of innocent blood, not only here but in Europe, we offer you a treaty by our deputies. As regards your threats we have no answer to make, only that we fear nothing but what God may lay upon us. All things are at His disposal, and we can be preserved by Him with small forces as well as by a great army."

The only answer the English commander saw fit to make to the Dutch governor's letter was to order his soldiers to prepare to land from the frigates.

III

Soldiers, both foot and cavalry, were landed on Long Island from the English fleet, and marched double-quick through the forest toward the small cluster of houses that stood along the shore where the city of Brooklyn now rises. They met with no resistance; for the most part these woods and shores were as empty of men as the day when Henryk Hudson first sailed up the river that bears his name.

The fleet meanwhile went up through the Narrows, and two frigates landed more soldiers a short distance below Brooklyn, to support those that were marching down the island. Two other frigates, one of thirty-six guns, the second of thirty, under full sail, passed directly within range of Stuyvesant's little fort, and anchored between the fort and Governor's Island. The English fleet meant to show their contempt for the Dutch claims.

What was Peter Stuyvesant doing as the frigates so insolently sailed past under his very eyes? He was a fighter by nature and by trade, as peppery as some of the sauces he had brought with him from the West Indies. The cannon of his fort were loaded, and the gunners stood ready with their burning matches. A word, a nod, a wave of the hand from Stuyvesant, and the cannon would roar their answer to the insolent fleet. And what would happen then? Fort Amsterdam had only twenty guns; and the two frigates sailing by had sixty-six, and the two other frigates, almost within sight, had twenty-eight more. Stuyvesant bit his lips as his gunners waited. The first roar of his cannon would almost certainly mean the ruin of every house in New Amsterdam.

Stuyvesant Bit His Lips as His Gunners Waited

Yet could the governor see the flag of his beloved New Netherland flouted in this fashion? Raging with anger, the word to fire trembling on his lips, Stuyvesant turned to listen to the advice of two Dutch clergymen who had hurried up to him. They begged him not to be the first to shed blood in a fight that could only end in their utter defeat. They were outnumbered, outmatched in every way. The governor knew this was so; no one in the colony indeed knew it better than he. "I won't open fire," he said, bitter rage in his heart, but he shook his fist at the white sails of the frigates.

Stuyvesant left the rampart, leaving fifty men to defend the fort, and took the rest of the garrison, one hundred soldiers, down to the shore, to repel the English if they should try to land. He still had a faint hope that the English commander would make some terms with him that would allow him to keep the flag of Holland flying over New Amsterdam.

With this faint hope he sent four of his chief officers with a flag of truce to Colonel Nicholls. They carried this message from Peter Stuyvesant: "I feel obliged to defend the city, in obedience to orders. It is inevitable that much blood will be shed on the occurrence of the assault. Cannot some accommodation yet be agreed upon? Friends will be welcome if they come in a friendly manner."

So spoke the Dutch governor, trying to be patient and reasonable, no matter how hard such a course might be for him. Colonel Nicholls, sure of his greater power in men and guns, cared not a whit to be either reasonable or patient. He sent back a determined answer. "I have nothing to do but to execute my mission," he said. "To accomplish that I hope to have further conversation with you on the morrow, at the Manhattans. You say that friends will be welcome, if they come in a friendly manner. I shall come with ships and soldiers. And he will be bold indeed who will dare to come on board my ships, to demand an answer or to solicit terms. What then is to be done? Hoist the white flag of surrender, and then something may be considered."

This haughty answer spread through New Amsterdam, and men and women rushed to the governor to beg him to surrender. Bombardment by the fleet would destroy all they owned, and doubtless kill many of them. Stuyvesant would have fought until his flag fell over a heap of ruins, but he knew that his people would not stand behind him. "I had rather," he told the men and women as they thronged about him, "be carried a corpse to my grave than to surrender the city!"

The people went to the City Hall, and drew up a paper of protest to their governor. The protest said that the people could only see misery, sorrow, and fire in resistance, the ruin of fifteen hundred innocent men, women and children, only two hundred and fifty of whom were capable of bearing arms.

The words of the protest were true. "You are aware," it said, "that four of the English king's frigates are now in the roadstead, with six hundred soldiers on board. They have also commissions to all the governors of New England, a populous and thickly inhabited country, to impress troops, in addition to the forces already on board, for the purpose of reducing New Netherland to His Majesty's obedience.

"These threats we would not have regarded, could we expect the smallest aid. But, God help us, where shall we turn for assistance, to the north or to the south, to the east or to the west? 'Tis all in vain. On all sides we are encompassed and hemmed in by our enemies." Ninety-four of the chief men of New Amsterdam signed this protest, one of them being Stuyvesant's own son. In front of the governor were the guns of the English fleet, behind him was the mutiny of his own people.

New Amsterdam, only a cluster of some three hundred houses at the southern end of Manhattan Island, was entirely open to attack from either the East or the North River. An old palisade, built to protect the houses from Indian attacks, stretched from river to river on the north, and in front of this palisade were the remains of an old breastwork, three feet high and two feet wide. These might be of use against the Indians, but hardly against well-trained white soldiers.

Fort Amsterdam itself had only been built to withstand Indians, not white men. An earthen rampart, ten feet high and four feet thick, surrounded it, but there were no ditches or palisades. At its back, where the crowds of Broadway now daily pass, were a number of low wooded hills, with Indian trails leading through them. These hills, if held by an enemy, could easily command the fort. The little Dutch garrison hadn't five hundred pounds of powder on hand. The store of provisions was equally small, and there was not a single well of water within the fortifications. To cap the climax, the garrison itself couldn't be trusted; it was largely made up of the lowest class of the settlers, unfit to do any other work than shoulder a gun.

So Peter Stuyvesant saw that he must yield. He chose six of his men to meet with six of the English at his own bouwery on the morning of August 27th. There was little for the Dutchmen to do but agree to the terms their enemies offered them. The terms were that the province of New Netherland should belong to the English. The Dutch settlers might keep their own property or might leave the country if they chose. They might have any form of religion they pleased. Their officers, to be chosen at the next election, would have to take the oath of allegiance to the king of England.

Peter Stuyvesant only yielded because he saw that he must. He pulled down his flag that was flying above the ramparts, and "the fort and town called New Amsterdam, upon the island of Manhatoes," as the treaty called it, passed from the ownership of the Dutch to that of the English. The officers and soldiers of the fort were allowed to march out with their arms, their drums beating and their colors flying. Most of the soldiers, many of the settlers, cared little what flag flew above their colony, so long as they were permitted a peaceful living, but at least one Dutchman, the governor, "Wooden-Legged Peter," cared much when he saw the flag of the Netherlands come fluttering down.

The English Colonel Nicholls and his men marched into the fort and took possession of the government. They changed the name of the little settlement from New Amsterdam to New York, in honor of the Duke of York, who was the brother of the king of England. The fort was christened Fort James, the name of the Duke of York. Then Colonel Nicholls sent troops up the Hudson to take possession of the Dutch settlement of Fort Orange, and other troops to the Delaware River to raise the English flag over the small Dutch colony of New Amstel. The name of Fort Orange was changed to Fort Albany, the second title of the king's brother, the Duke of York. The settlers there were well treated, and given the same liberty as was given the people on Manhattan Island. But those at New Amstel, on the Delaware, did not fare so well. Peter Stuyvesant indignantly reported that "At New Amstel, on the South River, notwithstanding they offered no resistance, but demanded good treatment, which however they did not obtain, they were invaded, stript bare, plundered, and many of them sold as slaves in Virginia."

The flag of England now flew where the flag of the Netherlands had waved for half a century. There was no excuse for this seizing of the Dutch colony by the English. The Dutch were peaceful neighbors, fair in their dealings with the other colonies. But while the Dutch had not greatly increased the number of their settlers in the New World, the English had. New England was growing fast, so was Virginia, and in between these two English settlements lay the small Dutch one, at the mouth of a great river, and with the finest harbor of the whole seacoast. The English had cast envious eyes upon Manhattan Island. They wanted to own the whole seacoast; and so, being strong enough, they took it. And the Dutch, like the Indians before them, had to bow to the stronger force.

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.

There came a royal order to Massachusetts, requiring the governor to arrest the fugitives. The governor and his officers were anxious to show their zeal in carrying out all the wishes of the new king, and so they gave a commission to two zealous young royalists, Thomas Kellond and Thomas Kirk, authorizing them to hunt through the colonies as far south as Manhattan Island for the missing judges and to bring them back to Boston.

The searchers set out at once, and went first to Governor Winthrop at Hartford. He gave them permission to arrest the regicides anywhere in the colony of Connecticut, but he assured them that he understood that the judges were not in his colony, but had gone on to the colony of New Haven. So they set forth again, and next day reached the town of Guilford, where they stopped to procure a warrant from Governor Leete, who lived there.

Governor Leete appeared to be very much surprised at the news the two men brought. He said that he didn't think the regicides were in New Haven. He took the papers bearing the orders of Governor Winthrop and read them in so loud a voice that the two men begged him to keep the matter more quiet, lest some traitors should overhear. Then he delayed furnishing them with fresh horses, and, the next day being Sunday, the pursuers were forced to wait over an extra day before they could continue their hunt.

In the meantime an Indian messenger was sent to New Haven in the night, to give warning of the pursuers. Then Governor Leete refused either to give the pursuers a warrant or to send men with them to arrest the regicides until he should have had a chance to consult with the magistrates, which meant that he himself would have to go to New Haven. The upshot of all this was that the pursuers stayed chafing in Guilford while the men they were hunting had plenty of time to escape.

John Davenport, the minister at New Haven, preached that Sunday morning to a congregation that had heard the news of the pursuit of the English judges. Davenport knew that the king of England had ordered the capture of the judges and that this colony of New Haven was part of the English realm. Yet, for the sake of mercy and justice, he urged his hearers to protect the fugitives who had taken refuge among them. Not in so many words did he urge it, but his hearers knew what he meant, for the text of his sermon, taken from the sixteenth chapter of Isaiah, read: "Take counsel, execute judgment, make thy shadow as the night in the midst of noonday; hide the outcasts, bewray not him that wandereth. Let mine outcasts dwell with thee; Moab, be thou a covert to them from the face of the spoiler." The congregation understood his meaning.

Early Monday morning Kellond and Kirk rode into New Haven, where the people met them with surly faces. They had to wait until Governor Leete arrived, and when he did he refused to take any steps in the matter until he had called the freemen together. The two pursuers, now growing angry, told the governor flatly that it looked to them as if he wanted the regicides to escape. Spurred on by this the governor called the magistrates together, but their decision was that they would have to call a meeting of the general court.

More exasperated than ever, the two hunters spoke plainly to Governor Leete. They pointed out that he was not behaving as loyally as the governors of Massachusetts and Connecticut had; they warned him against giving aid to traitors, and then they flatly asked whether he meant to obey King Charles or not.

"We honor His Majesty," answered Governor Leete, "but we have tender consciences."

The pursuers lodged at a little inn in New Haven. There the governor went that evening, and taking one of them by the hand, said, "I wish I had been a plowman, and had never been in office, since I find it so weighty."

"Will you own His Majesty or no?" demanded the two men from Massachusetts.

"We would first know whether His Majesty would own us," was the governor's guarded answer.

The officers of New Haven would not help them, the people were openly hostile, and so Kellond and Kirk left the colony, without having dared to search a single house. They went south to Manhattan Island, where the Dutch Governor Stuyvesant received them very politely, and promised to help them arrest the fugitives if the latter came to New Netherland. Then they went back to Boston, baffled of their quarry.

Now when the Indian messenger had come to New Haven the fugitive judges had fled from the town and spent the night at a mill two miles away. Then they went to a place called "Hatchet Harbor," where they stayed a couple of days, and from there to a cave upon a mountain that they called Providence Hill. This cave, ever since known as the "Judges' Cave," was a splendid hiding place. On the top of the mountain stood a group of pillars of trap rock, like a grove of trees. These rocks slanted inwards and so formed a room, the door of which could be hidden with boughs. Here the regicides hid for almost a month. A friend named Sperry, who lived in the neighborhood, brought them food. Sometimes he sent the provisions by his small son, who left the basket on the stump of a tree near the top of the mountain. The boy couldn't understand what became of the food and how it happened that he always found the basket empty when he returned for it the next day. The only answer the cautious father would give him was, "There's somebody at work in the woods who wants the food."

That part of the country near the "Judges' Cave" was full of wild animals. One night the regicides were visited by a panther that thrust its head in at the door of their cave and roared at them. One of the judges fled down the mountain to Sperry's house and gave the alarm, and the farmer and the fugitives hunted the panther the rest of the night.

After a while the fugitives decided that it would be better for their friends in the colony, and particularly for Mr. Davenport, if they should give themselves up in obedience to the command of King Charles. They left their cave and went to Guilford to see Governor Leete. But the governor and the other officers did not want to surrender them to the king. The judges hid in the governor's cellar, and were fed from his table, while he considered the best course to adopt. The colony of New Haven decided that it would not arrest them, and so the fugitives moved to the house of a Mr. Tompkins in Milford, where they stayed in hiding for two years.

The people of Milford did not know that the fugitives were there. One day a girl came to the house and happened to sing a ballad lately come from England, that made sport of the fugitive regicides. She sang the song in a room just above the one where the fugitives were, and they were so amused by the words that they asked Mr. Tompkins to have her come again and again and sing to her unseen audience.

Officers came out from England in 1664, charged, among other duties, with the arrest of the fugitive judges, and the friends of the regicides thought it best that they should leave Milford for some new hiding place. So in October they set out for the small town of Hadley, on the frontier of Massachusetts, a hundred miles from Milford, and so distant from Boston, Hartford and New Haven that it was thought that no one could trace them there. They traveled only at night, lying hidden in the woods by day. The places where they stopped they called Harbors, and the name still remains attached to one of them, now the flourishing town of Meriden, which bears the title of Pilgrim's Harbor. They reached Hadley in safety, and were taken in at the house of John Russell, a clergyman. He gave them room in his house, and there they spent the rest of their lives, safe from royal agents and spies in the small frontier settlement. So three of the men, who, doing their duty as they saw it, had voted for the execution of King Charles I, found a refuge in the American wilderness from the pursuit of his son, King Charles II.

Ten years later a very different sort of man came to the colony of Connecticut. King Charles I had made large grants in America to his brother the Duke of York, and among other territory that which had belonged to the Dutch, called New Netherland. The Duke of York made Major Edmund Andross, afterward Sir Edmund Andross, governor of all his territories, and sent him out to New England. With full powers from the Duke, Andross expected to do about as he pleased, and rule like a king in the new world.

By way of making a good start Edmund Andross at once laid claim to all the land that had belonged to the Dutch and also to that part of Connecticut that lay west of the Connecticut River. Unless the settlers in that part of Connecticut consented to his rule he threatened to invade their land with his soldiers. Now the people of Connecticut had received the boundary of their colony in an early grant, and though they already had the prospect of a war with the Indians under King Philip on their hands, their governor and his council determined to resist the cutting in two of their colony.

Word came to Hartford that Andross was about to land at the port of Saybrook and intended to march to Hartford, New Haven and other towns, suppress the colonial government and establish his own. At once colonial soldiers were sent to Saybrook and New London, and Captain Thomas Bull, in command at the former place, strengthened the fortifications there to resist the Duke of York's new governor.

July 9, 1675, the people of Saybrook saw an armed fleet heading for their fort. The men hurried to the fort and put themselves under the command of Captain Bull. Then a letter came from the governor at Hartford telling them what to do. "And if so be those forces on board should endeavor to land at Saybrook," so ran the order, "you are in His Majesty's name to forbid their landing. Yet if they should offer to land, you are to wait their landing and to command them to leave their arms on board; and then you may give them leave to land for necessary refreshing, peaceably, but so that they return on board again in a convenient time."

Major Andross sent a request that he might be allowed to land and meet the officers of Saybrook. The request was granted, and Captain Bull, with the principal men of the town, met the Englishman and his officers on the beach. Captain Bull stated the orders he had received from the governor of Connecticut. Andross, with great haughtiness, waved the orders aside, and told his clerk to read aloud the commission he held from the Duke of York.

But Captain Bull was not easily cowed. He ordered the clerk to stop his reading of the commission. The surprised clerk hesitated a minute, then went on with the reading. "Forbear!" thundered the captain, in a tone that startled even Major Andross.

The major, however, haughty and overbearing though he was, could not help but admire the other man's determined manner. "What is your name?" he asked.

"My name is Bull, sir," was the answer.

"Bull!" said Andross. "It is a pity that your horns are not tipped with silver."

Then, seeing that the captain and his men would not listen to his commission from the Duke of York, Andross returned to his small boat, and a few hours later his fleet sailed away from the harbor.

The colony of Connecticut, like those of Massachusetts and New York, now had a checkered career. Governor John Winthrop, who had done so much for his people, died. False reports of the colony were carried to England, the people were accused of harboring pirates and other outlaws. Finally, in 1686, Andross, now Sir Edmund Andross, was given a royal commission as governor of New England.

Sir Edmund went to Boston, and from there sent a message to the governor of Connecticut saying that he had received an order from the king to require Connecticut to give up its charter as a colony. The governor and council answered that, though they wished to do the king's bidding in all things, they begged that they might keep the original grants of their charter.

Sir Edmund's answer to that was to go to Hartford. October 31, 1687, he entered Hartford, accompanied by several gentlemen of his suite and with a body-guard of some sixty soldiers. He meant to take the charter in spite of all protests.

The governor and council met him with all marks of respect, but it was clear that they were not over-pleased to see him. Andross marched into the hall where the General Assembly was in session, demanded the charter, and declared that their present government was dissolved. Governor Treat protested, and eloquently told of all the early hardships of the colonists, their many wars with the Indians, the privations they had endured. Finally he said that it was like giving up his life to surrender the charter that represented rights and privileges they had so dearly bought and enjoyed for so long a time.

Sir Edmund listened to the governor's speech attentively. Looking about him at the citizens who had gathered in the Assembly Hall he realized that it would be well for him to obtain the charter as quietly as he could, and without waking too much spirit of resentment in the men of Hartford. Governor Treat's speech was long, the sun set, twilight came on, and still the charter of the colony had not been handed over to Sir Edmund.

The governor and the people knew that Sir Edmund meant to have the charter; he himself was prepared to stay there until they should hand the paper over to him. Candles were brought into the hall and their flickering light showed the spirited governor still arguing with the determined, haughty Sir Edmund. More people pressed into the room to hear the governor's words. Sir Edmund Andross glanced at the crowd; now they seemed peaceful people, not of the kind likely to make trouble.

Sir Edmund had listened to Governor Treat long enough. He grew impatient. He slapped his hand on the table in front of him, and stated again that he required the people of Connecticut to hand him over their charter, and that at once. The governor saw that Sir Edmund's patience was at an end, and whispered a word to his secretary. The secretary left the room, and when he returned he brought the precious charter in his hand.

The charter was laid on the table in full view of Sir Edmund and the men of the Assembly and the people who had crowded into the hall. Sir Edmund smiled; he had taught these stubborn Connecticut colonists a well-deserved lesson. He leaned forward in his chair, reaching out his hand for the parchment. At that very instant the candles went out, and the room was in total darkness.

No one spoke, there were no threats of violence, no motion toward Sir Edmund. In silence they waited for the relighting of the candles.

The clerks relighted the candles. Andross looked again at the table. The charter had disappeared. Andross stared at Governor Treat and the governor stared back at him, apparently as much amazed as was Sir Edmund at the disappearance. Then both men began to hunt. They looked in every corner of the room where the charter might have been hidden. But the charter had vanished in the time between the going-out of the candles and their relighting.

Sir Edmund, baffled and indignant, hid his anger as well as he could, and with his gentlemen and soldiers left the Assembly Room. Next day he took over control of the colony, and issued a proclamation that stated that by the king's order the government of the colony of Connecticut was annexed to that of Massachusetts and the other colonies under his rule. The orders he gave were harsh and tyrannical, and the people of the colony had little cause to like him.

What had become of the charter? When Governor Wellys, a former governor of Connecticut, had come to America he had sent his steward, a man named Gibbons, to prepare a country home for him. Gibbons chose a suitable place, and was cutting trees on a hill where the governor's house was to stand when some Indians from the South Meadow came up to him and begged him not to cut down an old oak that was there. "It has been the guide of our ancestors for centuries," said the leader of the Indians, "as to the time of planting our corn. When the leaves are of the size of a mouse's ears, then is the time to put the seed in the ground."

The tree was allowed to stand, and flourished, in spite of a large hole near the base of its trunk.

When the candles had been blown out in the Assembly Hall Captain Wadsworth had seized the charter and stolen away with it. He knew of the oak with the hole that seemed purposely made for concealing things. There he took the charter and hid it, and neither Andross nor his men ever laid hands on it. The tree became famous in history as the Charter Oak.

As long as James II was king of England Andross and other despotic governors like him had their way in the colonies. But when James was driven from his throne by William, the Prince of Orange, conditions changed. William sent a messenger with a statement of his new plans for the government of New England, and when the messenger reached Boston he was welcomed with open arms. Andross, however, had the man arrested and thrown into jail. Then on April 18, 1689, the people of Boston and the neighboring towns rose in rebellion, drove Andross and his fellows from their seats in the government and put back the old officers they had had before. They thought that William III would treat them more justly than James II had done, and they were not disappointed.

Already, in their protection of the regicides and in their saving of their charter, the people of Connecticut had shown that love of liberty that was to burst forth more bravely than ever in the days of the Revolution.

IV THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN NATHANIEL BACON AND SIR WILLIAM BERKELEY

(Virginia, 1676)

I

There was great excitement in that part of the American colony of Virginia where Edmund Porter lived. It was in the month of May, 1676, and the place was the country just below the settlement of Henricus, on the James River, as one went down-stream toward the capital city of Jamestown. The Porters had a plantation not very far from Curles, which was the name of the place where their friend Nathaniel Bacon lived; and Nathaniel Bacon seemed to be the centre of the exciting events that were taking place.

Nathaniel Bacon was a young man, of a good family in England, who had come out to Virginia with his wife, and settled at Curles on the James. He had another estate farther up the river, a place called "Bacon Quarter Branch," where his overseer and servants looked after his affairs, and to which he could easily ride in a morning from his own home, or go in his barge on the James, unless he objected to being rowed seven miles around the peninsula at Dutch Gap. He was popular with his neighbors, and seemed as quiet as any of them until trouble with the Indians in the spring of that year made him declare that he was going to see whether the governor would protect the farms along the river, and if the governor wouldn't, then he had a mind to take the matter into his own hands.

Now Edmund, who was a well-grown boy of sixteen, wanted to be wherever there was excitement, and so spent as much time as he could at Curles. He was out in the meadow back of the house, watching one of the men break in a colt, when a messenger came with news that Indians had attacked Mr. Bacon's other estate; killed his overseer and one of his servants, and were carrying fire and bloodshed along the frontier. The news spread like wild-fire, as news of Indian raids always did, for there was nothing else so fear-inspiring to the white settlers. Edmund jumped on his pony, and rode home as fast as he could to tell his father. Then father and son, each taking a gun, with powder-horn and bullet-pouch, dashed back to Nathaniel Bacon's. Other planters had already gathered there, armed and ready to ride on the track of the Indians. There was much talk and debate; some wanted to know whether Governor Berkeley, down the river at Jamestown, would send soldiers to protect the plantations farther up the James; others wondered whether the governor, who was not very prompt or ready in dealing with the Indians in this far-off part of the colony, would be willing to commission the planters to take the war into their own hands. In the midst of all the talk Bacon himself appeared, and the crowd of horsemen called on him to take command, it being known he had often said openly that he intended to protect Curles and his other farms from the redskins.

Bacon agreed to lead his neighbors, but told them he thought it would be best to send a messenger to Sir William Berkeley, and ask for the governor's commission. A man was sent at once down the river to Jamestown, and the neighbors rode home to wait for the governor's answer. Next afternoon they met again at Curles, and heard the answer Sir William Berkeley sent. It was very polite, and spoke highly of Nathaniel Bacon and his neighbors. It further said that the times were very troubled, that the governor was anxious to keep on good terms with the Indians, and was afraid that the outcome of an attack on them might be dangerous, and urged Mr. Bacon, for his own good interests, not to ride against them. He did not actually refuse the commission that Bacon had asked for, but, what amounted to the same matter, he did not send it.

The horsemen were very angry. Sir William Berkeley, a man seventy years old, and safe at Jamestown, might care little what the Indians did, but the men whose plantations were threatened cared a great deal. Again they urged Bacon to lead them, and he, nothing loath now that he had set the matter fairly before the governor, jumped into his saddle and put himself at the head of the troop. All were armed, some had fought Indians before; in those days such a ride was not uncommon. A few boys rode with their fathers, and among them Edmund Porter.

Bacon's band rode fast, and were marching through the woods of Charles City when a messenger came dashing after them. The company stopped to hear him. He said that he came from Sir William, and that Sir William ordered the band to disperse, on pain of being treated as rebels against his authority. The message made it clear that they would ride on at their peril.

This threat cooled the ardor of some, but not of many. Bacon snapped his fingers at the governor's messenger, and rode on, with fifty-seven other followers. They were not the men to leave their frontiers unguarded, no matter what Sir William might call them.

Bacon led on to the Falls, and there he found the Indians entrenched on a hill. Several white men went forward to parley, but as they advanced an Indian in ambush fired a shot at the rear of the party, and their captain gave the word to attack. Edmund and a few others formed a rear-guard by the river, while the rest waded through a stream; climbed the slope; stormed and set fire to the Indian stockade, and so blew up a great store of powder that the red men had collected. The rout of the marauding Indians was complete, and when the fighting was over one hundred and fifty of them had been killed, with only a loss of three in Bacon's party. Victory had been won, the Indians were driven back to the mountains, leaving the plantations along the James safe, for some time at least. With a train of captives, Bacon and his neighbors rode homeward. The Porters went to their plantation, and the others scattered to their houses farther down the river. Edmund and his father thought the excitement was over, and everybody in the neighborhood had only words of the highest praise for the gallant Nathaniel Bacon.

Sir William Berkeley, however, was very angry, and he was a man of his word. He had sent his messenger to say that if Bacon marched against the Indians he should consider Bacon a rebel and the men who rode with him rebels as well. He meant to be master in Virginia, and therefore as soon as the news of what was called the Battle of Bloody Run came to him he made his plans to teach all rebellious colonists a lesson. He called for a company of officers and horsemen and set out hot foot, in spite of his seventy years, to capture the upstart Bacon and make an example of him.

But Sir William had not ridden far when disquieting news reached him. The people along the coast had heard how Bacon had sent to the governor for a commission and had been refused, and they also knew how he had fought the Indians in spite of the governor's warning. They were proud of him; they liked his dash and determination, and they meant to stand by him, no matter what Sir William might have to say.

The governor, who had always had his own way in Virginia, was thoroughly furious now. There were rebels before him, and rebels behind him, for that was the name he gave to all who dared to dispute his orders. But with the lower country in a blaze he didn't dare attend to Nathaniel Bacon then, so he ordered his troop of horse to countermarch, and galloped back to Jamestown as fast as he could go.

When he reached his capital he found it in a tumult; word came to him that all the counties along the lower James and the York Rivers had rebelled. It looked as if the colony were facing a civil war like the one that had broken out in England thirty years before. Then, realizing that this was no time for anger, but for cool, calm words, Sir William mended his manners. He didn't pour oil on the colonists' fire; instead he met their demands half-way. When the leaders of the colonists protested that the forts on the border were more apt to be a danger to them than a help, Sir William agreed that the forts should be dismantled. When the leaders said that the House of Burgesses, which was the name of the Virginia parliament, no longer represented the people, but in fact defied the people's will, Sir William answered that the House of Burgesses should be dissolved and the people given a chance to send new representatives to it. And the governor kept his word after the angry planters had gone back to their homes. He didn't want such a civil war in Virginia as the one that had cost King Charles the First his throne in England.

Sir William might have forgiven Nathaniel Bacon's disobedience, and forgotten all about it, but the owner of Curles Manor bobbed up into public notice again almost immediately. As soon as orders were sent out through the colony that new elections were to be held for the House of Burgesses, as the governor had promised, Bacon declared that he was a candidate to represent Henrico County. He was so popular now that when the election was held he was chosen by a very large vote. Many men voting for him who had no right to vote at all, according to the law, which said that only freeholders, or men who owned land, should have the right to vote in such a case. So now the man who had been called a rebel by the governor was going to Jamestown to sit in the House of Burgesses and help make laws for the colony. Many a man might have hesitated to do that, but not such a good fighter as Mr. Bacon.

The new burgesses were summoned to meet at Jamestown early that June, and they traveled there through the wilderness in many ways. Some rode on horseback, fording or swimming the numerous streams and rivers, for bridges were few, some came by coach, and some went down the river by barge or by sloop, the easiest way for those who lived near the James. Bacon chose the last way, and on a bright morning in June left his house at Curles, and with thirty neighbors sailed down the river. Mr. Porter and Edmund went with him, for the father had often promised his son to take him to Jamestown, and this seemed a good opportunity.

The voyage started pleasantly, but ended in disaster. Sir William now considered himself doubly flouted by this man from Curles, and vowed that the rebel Bacon should never sit in the new House of Burgesses. As the sloop came quietly sailing down to Jamestown a ship that was lying at anchor in front of the town trained its cannon on the smaller vessel, and the sheriff, who was on board the ship, sent men to the sloop to arrest Bacon and certain of his friends. There was no use in resisting; the cannon could blow the sloop out of the water at a word. Bacon surrendered to the sheriff's men, and he and the others who were wanted were landed and marched up to the State House, while Edmund Porter and the others rowed themselves ashore, wondering what was going to happen to their friend.

Governor Berkeley was at the State House when Bacon was brought in. Each of the two men was quick-tempered and haughty, but they managed to keep their anger out of their words. Sir William said coldly, "Mr. Bacon, have you forgot to be a gentleman?"

Bacon answered in the same tone, "No, may it please your honor."

"Then," said Sir William, "I'll take your parole."

That was all that was said, and Bacon was released on his word as a gentleman that he would do no more mischief. Doubtless the haughty governor would have liked to lodge the other man in jail, but he didn't dare attempt that, for the newly elected burgesses were reaching Jamestown every hour. Further almost all of them were known to side with Bacon, and in addition the town was fast filling with planters from the counties along the river that had revolted against the governor. So for the second time that spring Sir William saw the advantage of bending his stiff pride in order to ride out the storm.

The governor knew, however, that Bacon would be a thorn in his side unless he could be made to bend the knee to his own authority. So Sir William went to Bacon's cousin, a man who was very rich and prominent in the colony, and a member of the governor's council. He urged this man, who was known as Colonel Nathaniel Bacon, Senior, to go to his cousin, Nathaniel, Junior, and try to induce him to yield to Sir William's wishes. Colonel Bacon agreed, and was so successful with his arguments that the younger man, proud and headstrong as he was, at last consented to write out a statement, admitting that he had been in the wrong in disobeying Sir William Berkeley's orders, and to read it on his knees before the members of the Assembly, which was another name for the House of Burgesses. This was a great victory for the governor. Events had followed one another fast. In the space of little more than a week the owner of Curles Plantation had been proclaimed a rebel, had marched against the Indians and beaten them, had been a candidate for the House of Burgesses and been elected, had sailed down to Jamestown, been arrested, and paroled, and was now to admit on his knees that he had indeed been a rebel.

On June 5, 1676, Bacon went to the State House. The governor and his council sat with the burgesses, and Sir William Berkeley spoke to them about recent border fights between Virginians and Indians. He denounced the killing of six Indian chiefs in Maryland, who, he said, had come to treat of peace with white soldiers, and he added, "If they had killed my grandfather and grandmother, my father and mother and all my friends, yet if they had come to treat of peace, they ought to have gone in peace."

Sir William sat down; then after a few minutes stood up again. "If there be joy in the presence of the angels over one sinner that repenteth," said he, with solemn humor, "there is joy now, for we have a penitent sinner come before us. Call Mr. Bacon."

Bacon came in, and knelt down before the governor and his council and his fellow Virginians. He read from a paper he held, confessing that he had been guilty of "unlawful, mutinous, and rebellious practices," and promised that if the governor would pardon him he would act "dutifully, faithfully, and peaceably," under a penalty of two thousand pounds sterling. He pledged his whole estate for his good behavior for one year.

When Bacon had finished, Sir William said, "God forgive you; I forgive you." And to make the words more impressive he repeated them three times.

"And all that were with him," said Colonel Cole, a member of the council, meaning the men who had rebelled with Bacon and fought the Indians.

"Yes, and all that were with him," the governor agreed. Then Sir William added, "Mr. Bacon, if you will live civilly but till next quarter-day,—but till next quarter-day," he repeated the words, "I'll promise to restore you to your place there!" and he pointed to the seat which Bacon had sometimes occupied during meetings of the council.

All was peace again; the black sheep had repented and been allowed to return to the fold. It was generally understood that in return for Bacon's apology the governor would now give him the commission he had asked for before, the commission as "General of the Indian Wars," which would allow him to protect outlying plantations against Indian raids. Sir William pardoned the rebel on Saturday, and "General Bacon," as many people in Jamestown already spoke of him, took up his lodgings at the house of a Mr. Lawrence, there to wait until his expected commission should be sent him early the next week. Mr. Porter and his son, and many of the friends who had come in Bacon's sloop, took rooms at near-by houses, for their leader might be going back to Curles as soon as he had his commission, and they wanted to go with him.

Monday came and Tuesday, but no commission arrived from Sir William. On Wednesday there was no message for Bacon from the governor. Instead rumors began to spread abroad. Mr. Lawrence, who had an old grudge against Sir William, was reported to be busy with some plot against him; men of doubtful reputation were seen about the house, and it was whispered that possibly there might be further trouble. Edmund heard these rumors; he knew that there were men in Jamestown who wanted Nathaniel Bacon to defy the governor, and he kept his eyes and ears wide open. Then one morning, as he and his father came out from the house where they were staying, they met a crowd of their friends. "Bacon is fled!" cried these men. "Bacon is fled!"

Edmund listened to the excited words. Sir William had been frightened as he heard that more and more planters were flocking into Jamestown, he doubted that Bacon meant to keep his word, he knew that Lawrence's house was a hot-bed of disorder, and he determined that he would crush any rebellion before it got a start, and put the popular leader where he could do no harm. Bacon's cousin, the colonel, who was fond of his kinsman, though he disapproved of what he had done, had sent word the night before to Nathaniel, bidding him fly for his life. At daybreak the governor's officers had gone to Lawrence's house; but the man they wanted was gone; he had fled into the country, wisely heeding his cousin's warning.

"Bacon is fled!" were the words that sped through Jamestown that June morning. And many who heard the words were glad, for now they hoped that the rebel would raise a force and overthrow Sir William, who had made many enemies in his long and strict rule as governor. Men stole away from the capital in twos and threes, some by the river, more on horseback through the country. They were afraid to stay lest Berkeley should put them in irons as partisans of Bacon's. Mr. Porter found a man with horses to sell, bought two, and with his son rode out of Jamestown before noon. West along the river bank they galloped. Bacon would make for Henrico County, and there they wanted to join him. "And I may ride with you and General Bacon, father?" Edmund begged.

"I don't know," said the father. "This may be more serious business than looking after the rear-guard in a skirmish with Indians."

"But I'm almost a man, father," Edmund urged. "And even if I didn't fight, there's other things I could do."

"I hope there'll be no fighting. It's bad when settlers turn their guns against each other. We'll have to wait till we find Nat, Edmund, and learn what he's going to do. If it's a fight it's a fight for liberty and the safety of our homes. The governor's wrong; he hasn't treated us fair."

All that day they rode through the river country, and wherever they came to settlements they found armed men mounting, for the news had spread rapidly that Nathaniel Bacon was raising an army to fight the governor.

II

From big plantations and from small farms, from manor-houses in the lowlands and from log cabins in the uplands, grown men and half-grown boys, armed with guns or swords, hurried to join General Bacon, who was sending out his call for recruits from his headquarters up the James River. The colonists were a hardy lot, used to hunting and fighting, and well pleased now at the prospect of upsetting the tyrannical governor at Jamestown. Within three days after Bacon's escape from the capital he was at the head of about six hundred men, stirring them with his speeches, for he was a very fine and fiery orator, until they were ready to follow wherever he led. The Porters, father and son, succeeded in joining his ranks, and when the young commander set out on his march to Jamestown they rode among his men.

What was Sir William Berkeley doing meantime? Bacon was a fighter, but the white-haired governor was a fighter also. He sent riders from Jamestown to summon what were called the "train-bands" of York and Gloucester, counties that lay along Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. But the spirit of rebellion had spread from the plantations along the James down to the seaboard settlements, and only a hundred soldiers, and not all of them very loyal to the governor, answered his summons. They marched so slowly that Bacon reached Jamestown before they were in sight of the town. At two in the afternoon the rebel leader entered the capital at the head of his men and drew up his troops on the green, not an arrow's flight from the State House where he had knelt for the governor's pardon less than ten days before.

At his order his men sentineled the roads, seized all the firearms they could find, and disarmed or arrested all men coming into Jamestown by land or river, except such as joined their own ranks.

The little capital was in a turmoil. Sir William and his council sat in a room at the State House, debating what course to take. They ordered a drummer to summon the burgesses, and those burgesses who were not already in Bacon's army came trooping to the State House. It seemed as if war was to break out then and there. Bacon marched across the green with a file of fusileers on either side, and reached the corner of the State House. Sir William and his council came out, and the two leaders fronted one another, Bacon fairly cool and collected, but the aged governor raging at this affront to his dignity.

Sir William walked up to Bacon, and tearing open the lace at the breast of his coat, cried angrily, "Here! Shoot me! 'Fore God, a fair mark—shoot!"

Bacon answered calmly, "No, may it please your honor; we will not hurt a hair of your head, nor of any other man's. We are come for a commission to save our lives from the Indians, which you have so often promised, and now we will have it before we go."

But though his words were mild, Bacon was really very angry. As the governor, still raging and shaking his fist, turned and walked back to the State House with his council, Bacon followed him with his soldiers, one hand on his sword-hilt, the other threatening Berkeley. As the governor and council continued their retreat, Bacon and his men grew more threatening. The leader shook his fist, the fusileers cocked their guns. And as they came to the windows of the room where the burgesses sat some of the soldiers pointed their guns at the men inside, shouting again and again, "We will have it! We will have it!"

Presently one of the burgesses waved his handkerchief from the window, and called out, "You shall have it! You shall have it!" by which he meant the commission that Bacon wanted. The soldiers uncocked their guns, and stood back, waiting further orders from their leader. Bacon had grown as angry meantime as the governor had been before, and had cried, "I'll kill governor, council, Assembly and all, and then I'll sheathe my sword in my own heart's blood." And it was afterward said that Bacon had ordered his men, if he drew his sword, to fire on the burgesses. But the handkerchief waved from the window, and the words, "You shall have it!" calmed him somewhat, and soon afterward he went into the State House and discussed the matter fully with Sir William and his council.

Later that same day Bacon went to the room of the burgesses and repeated his request for a commission. The speaker answered that it was "Not in their province, or power, nor of any other save the king's vicegerent, their governor, to grant it." Bacon replied by saying that the purpose of his coming to Jamestown was to secure some safe way of protecting the settlers from the Indians, to reduce the very heavy taxes, and to right the calamities that had come upon the country. The burgesses gave him no definite answer, and he left, much dissatisfied. Next day, however, Sir William and his council yielded, Nathaniel Bacon was appointed general and commander-in-chief against the Indians, and pardon was granted to him and all his followers for their acts against the Indians in the west.

This was a great triumph for the rebel leader. Berkeley hated and feared him as much as ever, but had seen that he must pocket his pride in the face of such a popular uprising.

The owner of Curles Plantation was now commander-in-chief of the Virginia troops, and although it was intended that he should use his army only in defending the colony from Indian attacks, it was generally believed that he could do whatever he wished with his men. The colony was practically under his absolute control. The colonists would do whatever he ordered, and as they hailed Bacon's leadership they paid less and less heed to Sir William Berkeley. And the governor, knowing that many adventurers, many men of doubtful reputation, and many who were his own enemies, were now much in Bacon's company, feared for their influence on the impulsive young commander.

Having seen their neighbor win his commission, Mr. Porter and Edmund rode back to their own plantation, and took up the work that was always waiting to be done in summer. They were busy, and heard only from time to time of what Nathaniel was doing. They knew he was planning to take the field against the Indians with a good-sized troop of men.

Full of energy, and eager to show the colony that he was in truth a great commander, Bacon made his headquarters near West Point, at the head of the York River, a place frequently called "De la War," from Lord Delaware, who belonged to the West family. He disarmed all the men who opposed his command, and then set out, with an army of between five hundred and a thousand men, to attack the Indians in the neighborhood of the head waters of the Pamunkey. His scouts scoured the woods and drove out all hostile Indians; he cleared that part of the frontier of red men, and in a short time had made the border plantations safer than they had ever been before. He had justified all his friends had said of him, he had acted as a loyal Virginian, and he had proved his worth as general-in-chief of the colony's army.

Edmund Porter, going to the store at the crossroads on a July day, heard men discussing news that had just come from Jamestown. The rumor was that, despite Nathaniel Bacon's success as a commander, Sir William Berkeley had again denounced him as a rebel and traitor, and had fled to York River and set up his banner there not only as governor, but as general also. The report proved true. Sir William had nursed his anger for a short time, and now it flamed forth afresh and even more bitterly than before. In spite of Bacon's success he was still a rebel in the governor's eyes; he had forced the Assembly at Jamestown to do his bidding, and had acted as if the colony belonged to Bacon and his followers, and not to the king of England and the royal officers. This matter the governor meant to decide when he flew his flag at York River and summoned all loyal Virginians to come to his aid. Some came; there were many planters who honestly believed that Berkeley was in the right and Bacon in the wrong; but the great mass of the people sided with the latter, and it began to look as if Sir William might still call himself the governor, but would find that he had no people to govern.

Then, when the old Cavalier, proud in his defeat as the Cavaliers of England had been when the Roundheads beat them in battle after battle, was beginning to see his men desert him, a messenger came post-haste from Gloucester County, to the north of the York River, with word that the planters there were still loyal to the king's governor, and begged him to come to their county and to protect them from the Indians. The loyalists of Gloucester, some of whom Bacon had disarmed, were ready to rally round Sir William.

Sir William was overjoyed; he went to Gloucester at once, he flew his flag there, and called all loyalists to join him. Twelve hundred people came on the day Sir William set. But, with the exception of the wealthy planters who had sent the message, even these men of Gloucester were unwilling to take the field against General Bacon, as Sir William wanted. Some of them said that Bacon was fighting the common enemy, the Indians, with great success, and that as good Virginians they ought to help, and not to hinder, his work. The governor urged and argued with them, but as he talked men began to leave, muttering "Bacon! Bacon! Bacon!" as they went. A short stay showed that Sir William was not to find, even in Gloucester, the support he wished. Where could he go? There was one place where men might yet listen to him, the distant country that was sometimes called the "Kingdom of Accomac." It lay across Chesapeake Bay, remote from the rest of Virginia. The governor took ship and sailed across the thirty miles that divided it from the mainland, a romantic, apparently defeated figure, like some of the English Royalists who fled before the victorious troops of Oliver Cromwell.

On July 29, 1676, Berkeley posted his proclamation, declaring that Nathaniel Bacon was a traitor and outlaw. Bacon heard the news as he was in camp on the upper waters of the James. He was hurt at what he felt was the governor's injustice to him. To a friend he said, "It vexes me to the heart to think that while I am hunting wolves, tigers, and foxes (meaning Indians), which daily destroy our harmless sheep and lambs, that I and those with me should be pursued with a full cry, as a more savage or a no less ravenous beast."

The general marched his men down the river, arresting such as were known to side with the governor, but leaving their property unharmed. Presently he made his quarters at Middle-Plantation, which was situated half-way between Jamestown and the York River. Here his riders bivouacked around the small group of houses that formed the settlement, and their commander set to work to try to bring some sort of order out of the tangle into which Virginia had fallen. Sir William Berkeley was away in the distant country of Accomac, a country that was hardly looked upon at that time as part of Virginia, and Bacon was to all intents now the governor as well as the general-in-chief. Some of his friends advised him to do one thing, some another. Mr. Drummond, an old enemy of Berkeley's, who knew what Sir William thought of him, and who had once said of himself as a rebel, "I am in, over shoes; I will be over boots," now advised Bacon to proclaim that Berkeley was deposed from the governorship and that Sir Henry Chicheley should rule in his place. But Bacon would not go so far as that; he was quick-tempered, but fairly cool when it came to planning action, and he knew that to overthrow Sir William would make him clearly a rebel in the eyes of England.

So, instead of acting rashly, he issued what he called a "Remonstrance," which protested against Sir William's calling him and his men traitors and rebels, when they were really faithful subjects of His Majesty the King of England, and had only taken up arms to protect themselves against the savages. Besides that, he complained that the colony was not well managed, and called on all who were interested in Virginia to meet at Middle-Plantation on August 3d, and make a formal protest to the English king and Parliament.

Many men met at the village on that day, four members of the governors council among them. Bacon made a fiery speech, and all agreed to pledge themselves not to aid Sir William Berkeley in any attack on General Bacon or his army. Then Bacon went further; he asked the meeting to promise that each and every man there would rise in arms against Sir William if he should try to resist General Bacon, and further that if any soldiers should be sent from England to aid Sir William each man there would fight such troops until they had a chance to explain matters to the king of England.

That was going too far; the men had no desire to rebel against their king. They were willing to sign the first pledge, but not the second. In the midst of their arguing Bacon interrupted angrily. "Then I will surrender my commission, and let the country find some other servant to go abroad and do its work!" he exclaimed. "Sir William Berkeley hath proclaimed me a rebel, and it is not unknown to himself that I both can and shall charge him with no less than treason!" He added that Governor Berkeley would never forgive them for signing either part of the pledge, and that they might as well sign both as one. Then into the stormy meeting rushed a gunner from York Fort, shouting out that the Indians were marching on his fort, that the governor had taken all the arms from the fort, and that he had no protection for all the people who had fled there from the woods of Gloucester in fear of the Indians' tomahawks.

The gunner's words settled the matter. All the men agreed to sign the whole pledge, promised to fight not only Sir William Berkeley but the king's troops as well if they came to Virginia to support him. The oath was taken, the paper signed by the light of torches near midnight on that third day of August, 1676. Just a hundred years later another Declaration of Independence was to be signed by men, some from this same colony of Virginia, in Independence Hall in Philadelphia.

The next business was to organize a new government, and Bacon sent word through the colony for men to choose representatives to meet early in September. Then the general marched off with his army to protect the people who had fled to York Fort, and try to finish his war with the Indians.

There was great rejoicing throughout the length and breadth of Virginia when news came to town and plantation that Nathaniel Bacon had set up a new government in place of the old one that had failed to protect the colony and that had suppressed the people's liberty. They gloried in their defiance of the royal governor. Sarah Drummond, the wife of Bacon's friend, said to her neighbors:

"The child that is unborn shall have cause to rejoice for the good that will come by the rising of the country!"

One of her neighbors objected, "We must expect a greater power from England that will certainly be our ruin."

Mrs. Drummond picked up a stick, and breaking it in two, said scornfully, "I fear the power of England no more than a broken straw!"

And when others shook their heads doubtfully, she said bravely, "We will do well enough!" That was the feeling of most of the people. They were back of Bacon, and pledged themselves to support him through thick and thin.

At the plantation near Curles Mr. Porter brought the news of the oath at Middle-Plantation to his family, and his wife and son and the men and women who worked for him celebrated the event as a great victory for all true Virginians.

Meantime General Bacon crossed the James River, attacked the Appomattox Indians, and killed or routed the whole tribe. He then marched along the south side of the river toward the Nottoway and Roanoke, scattered all the Indians he met, and ultimately returned north to West Point, where he dismissed all his army but a small detachment, bidding the others go back to their own plantations to harvest the autumn crops.

Scarcely had the men of Bacon's army reached their homes when a new message electrified the whole countryside. From man to man the news ran that Sir William Berkeley, with seventeen ships and a thousand men, had come back from far-away Accomac, had sailed up the James River, had taken possession of Jamestown, and was now flying his flag above the State House there.

III

Sir William Berkeley had met few friends in that distant country of Accomac when he had first flown there. Rebellion was in the air there as it was on the mainland of Virginia, and only a few of the planters of the eastern shore welcomed the king's governor and agreed to stand by him in his fight with Nathaniel Bacon. Still he stuck to his determination to try conclusions with the rebels, and meantime he waited as patiently as he could, hoping that the tide of fortune would presently turn in his favor.

General Bacon, when he set out from Middle-Plantation to fight the Indians, sent Giles Bland to keep Governor Berkeley in Accomac, and, if possible, to induce the people there to surrender him. Giles Bland started on his mission with two hundred and fifty men, and one ship with four guns, commanded by an old sailor, Captain Carver. One ship was not enough, however, to carry the men across to the Eastern Shore, and so Bland seized another that happened to be lying in the York River, and that belonged to Captain Laramore, a friend of Governor Berkeley. Captain Laramore was seized by Bland's men, and locked up in his cabin, but after a time he sent word to Bland that he would fight with him against the governor, and Bland, thinking that the captain was sincere, restored command of the vessel to him. Two more ships were captured, and so it was a fleet of four vessels that ultimately carried the rebel party to the Eastern Shore.

When he saw this fleet nearing Accomac Sir William gave up his cause as lost. He knew that he must surrender, as King Charles the First of England had surrendered to Oliver Cromwell's men. Then suddenly a loophole of escape offered itself most unexpectedly. Captain Laramore, still very angry with the rebels for having seized his ship in such a high-handed manner, secretly sent word to Sir William, that if assistance were given him he would betray Giles Bland. The fleet was at anchor, and Captain Carver had gone ashore to try to find the governor. Laramore's offer looked as if it might be a trap, but Colonel Philip Ludwell, a friend of Berkeley's, offered to vouch for Laramore's honesty and moreover to lead the party that was to capture Bland. Sir William agreed to this offer, and Colonel Ludwell got ready a boat in a near-by creek, out of sight of the fleet. At the time set by Laramore Colonel Ludwell's crew rowed out toward Laramore's ship. Bland thought he came to parley, and did not fire. The boat pulled under the ship's stern, one of Ludwell's men leaped on board, and aiming a pistol at Bland's breast, cried, "You're my prisoner!" The crew of the rowboat followed, and with the help of Laramore and those sailors who sided with him, quickly captured the rebels on board. When Captain Carver returned he and his crew were seized in the same way, and Colonel Ludwell and Laramore took Bland and Carver and their officers ashore and presented them to Sir William as his prisoners.

Sir William was stern in dealing with men he considered traitors. He put Giles Bland and his officers in chains, and he hung Captain Carver on the beach of Accomac. This victory won him recruits also among the longshoremen, and now one of his own followers, Captain Gardener, reached the harbor in his ship, the Adam-and-Eve, with ten or twelve sloops he had captured along the coast. Counting Bland's ships the governor now had a fleet numbering some seventeen sail, and on these he embarked his army of nearly a thousand men. Many of them were merely adventurers, lured by Sir William's promise to give them the estates that belonged to the men who had taken the oath with Bacon at Middle-Plantation. Sir William also proclaimed that the servants of all those who were fighting under Bacon's flag should have the property of their masters if they would enlist under the king's standard.

The governor set sail for Jamestown, and reached it on the sixth day of September. One of the bravest of Bacon's commanders, Colonel Hansford, held the town with eight or nine hundred men. The governor called on Hansford to surrender, promising pardon to all except his old enemies, Lawrence and Drummond, who were then in Jamestown. Hansford refused to surrender, but Lawrence and Drummond advised him to retreat with his army, and so he evacuated the town during the night. At noon next day Sir William landed, and kneeling, gave thanks for his safe return to his former capital.

Colonel Hansford, with Drummond and Lawrence, rode north to find General Bacon. They found him at West Point and told him the startling news that Sir William had come back with an army. The fight was to be waged all over again, the question whether Bacon or Berkeley was to rule Virginia was yet to be settled.

Bacon had only a body-guard with him, but he mounted in haste and rode toward Jamestown, sending couriers in all directions to rouse the countryside and bring his men to his flag. The message came to Curles, and Edmund Porter and his father and their neighbors armed and hurried to join their general. So swiftly did the planters take to horse that by the time Bacon was in sight of Jamestown he was followed by several hundred men.