court contrived for a while to live till Stuyvesant's persecutions drove him, at length, out of the colony.

With Melyn, on Staten Island, Van Dincklage, the vice-director, also found a refuge from the violence of Stuyvesant. The vicedirector busied himself in preparing a new protest to the States-General on behalf of the colony, when Stuyvesant ordered that he be expelled from the council. Van Dincklage refused to be thus disposed of, on the plea that he held his commission not from the Director but from Holland. Stuyvesant arrested and imprisoned him for some days, and he felt that his life was not safe on Manhattan Island.

Persecution

ular leaders.

Other leaders of the popular party were subjected to treatment hardly less vindictive and arbitrary. "Our great Muscovy of the pop- Duke (noster magnus Muscovi Dux)," Van Dincklage wrote to Van der Donck, "goes on as usual, resembling somewhat the wolf, the older he gets the worse he bites. He proceeds no longer by words or letters, but by arrests and stripes." Van Dyck, the fiscal, or attorney-general, who, with Van Dincklage, was detected in drawing up the protest, was excluded from the council, and his duty reduced to that of a mere scrivener. Sometimes he was 66 charged to look after the pigs and keep them out of the fort, a duty which a negro could very well perform;" and if he objected the Director "got as angry as if he would swallow him up; " or if he disobeyed," put him in confinement or bastinadoed him with his rattan."1 Finally he was charged with drunkenness, and removed from office. The secretary, Tienhoven, was appointed in his place; the "perjured secretary," wrote Van Dyck, "who returned here contrary to their High Mightinesses' prohibition; a public, notorious, and convicted whoremonger and oath-breaker; a reproach to this country, and the main scourge of both Christians and heathens, with whose sensualities the Director has been always acquainted.” "The fault of drunkenness," he adds, "could easily be noticed in me, but not in Van Tienhoven, who has frequently come out of the tavern so full that he could go no further, and was forced to lie down in the gutter." While the Director was thus making life a burden to his enemies, he had, under the pretext that his own person was in danger, four halberdiers to attend him whenever he walked abroad.

1

1 Albany Records and Holland Documents, cited by O'Callaghan and Brodhead.

CHAPTER VII.

THE DUTCH AND THEIR NEIGHBORS.

THE HARTFORD BOUNDARY TREATY OF 1650. ACTION OF THE STATES-GENERAL ON THE NEW NETHERLAND REMONSTRANCE. NEW ENGLAND TROUBLES. STUYVESANT ACCUSED OF CONSPIRING WITH THE INDIANS AGAINST THE ENGLISH. — JOHN UNDERHILL IN THE FIELD. - POPULAR DISCONTENTS AT NEW AMSTERDAM AND ON LONG ISLAND. CONVENTION OF THE TOWNS. A RENEWED APPEAL TO HOLLAND. ENGLISH FEELING ON LONG ISLAND. - HOSTILE PREPARATIONS IN CONNECTICUT.- -NEW ENGLAND ASKS AID FROM THE PROTECTOR AGAINST THE DUTCH. - AN APPROACHING CONFLICT PREVENTED BY THE TREATY OF PEACE IN EUROPE. — UNFAVORABLE REPLY TO THE CONVENTION'S APPEAL.- NEW SWEDEN ON THE DELAWARE. CONTESTS BETWEEN THE DUTCH AND THE SWEDES. - STUYVESANT VISITS THE SOUTH RIVER. FORT NASSAU ABANDONED AND FORT CASIMIR BUILT BY THE DUTCH. - GOVERNOR PRINTZ RETIRES. FORT CASIMIR TAKEN BY THE SWEDES.RETAKEN BY THE DUTCH.-DIVISION OF THE COLONY BETWEEN THE W. I. COMPANY AND THE CITY OF AMSTERDAM. - LIMITS OF NEW AMSTEL. DISASTERS AND DISSENSIONS.

Negotiation

STUYVESANT had a leaning toward the English, notwithstanding his quarrels with Governor Eaton, of New Haven, and his altercations. with others of the New England colonies. Of all the people of New Netherland, the English on Long Island were treated with the most consideration, and in return they gave him the weight of their support against the opposition party among his countrymen. This was not the smallest among the causes of his unpopularity, and it gained new intensity and bitterness when in the midst of all these other troubles the Director concluded an agreement with of the New England in regard to the boundary. The two com- treaty of missioners appointed by him to conduct the negotiation. were both Englishmen, Thomas Willett, a merchant of Plymouth, and George Baxter, employed by Stuyvesant as his secretary. His opponents exclaimed at this loudly and vehemently, as treacherous to the colony and an insult to the Dutch.

boundary

1650.

Villett

Signature of Thomas Willett.

The articles of agreement between the contracting parties left the question of jurisdiction on the South River, the Delaware, undetermined; but the boundary line on Long Island was fixed to run from

the westernmost part of Oyster Bay straight to the sea, east of that line to belong to the English, and west of it to the Dutch; on the mainland the point of departure was on the west side of Greenwich Bay, about four miles from Stamford, the line to run thence up into the country twenty miles, provided it did not come within ten miles of the Hudson River, the Dutch agreeing not to build within six miles of such line. The inhabitants of Greenwich were to remain under the Dutch till some other arrangement was agreed upon which agreement by a subsequent article of the treaty was modified by transferring them to the jurisdiction of New Haven, and the Dutch were to retain only such lands in Hartford as they were in actual possession of.1

Here was ground for fresh complaints with the popular party of New Amsterdam, inasmuch as the Director had first outraged his own countrymen by intrusting so important a negotiation to Englishmen on his behalf, and then by consenting to give away enough territory, which the Dutch claimed as theirs, to make fifty plantations each four miles square. It was the resignation of more than half of Long Island, and nearly the whole of the present States of Connecticut and Rhode Island, even if the Dutch claim was limited to Point Judith. Stuyvesant reported to his masters in Holland that he had made this treaty with the English, and it did not meet with their approval; but as he sent no copy its precise terms were probably unknown there. It was plain at last to the States-General that temporizing measures with a man of Stuyvesant's despotic temper, unscrupulous will, and fearless disposition, were altogether useless, — Netherland they only made him worse. Hitherto all the complaints of the colonists, backed by the energetic efforts of Van der Donck and his colleagues, were incapable of overcoming the influence of the Amsterdam Chamber of the West India Company. But the Chamber yielded in the spring of 1652, when it was evident that if the desired reforms in New Netherland were not made with their consent, they would be made without.

The StatesGeneral act on the New

appeal.

Their order.

After three years of delay the prayer of the people was listened to in earnest. It was decreed that a "burgher government" should be established; that the citizens of New Amsterdam should have the right to elect their own municipal officers; that those officers should constitute a court of justice, with appeal to the supreme court of the Director and Council; that the export duty on tobacco should be abolished; that emigration should be encouraged by a reduction in passage-money; that the importation of negro slaves, hitherto a monopoly of the Company, should be now free to all citi

1 Hazard's State Papers, vol. ii.

1653.]

MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT.

139

zens; and Stuyvesant was ordered to return home to give an account of his administration of affairs in answer to the numerous complaints that had been made

against him. This last order, however, was presently revoked, for war was declared between England and Holland; Tromp and Blake were sweeping up and down the English Channel, and it was thought not wise to remove a governor who was, at any rate, bold and energetic, in the probable contingency of an outbreak of hostilities among the American colonies.

These long-delayed concessions were taken to New Amsterdam by Van der Donck himself, and in accordance therewith Stuyvesant published a proclamation on the day of the Feast of Candlemas, the 2d of February, 1653. But none knew better than he how to keep a promise to the ear and break it to the hope. The States-General meant to bestow upon New Amsterdam the right of self-government as it existed in their own city of Amsterdam ;-in the election by the people of a schout or sheriff; of two burgomasters, who were, in effect, the chief magistrates of the town; and of five schepens, who constituted a court of civil and criminal jurisdiction. Van der Donck might well come home in triumph with this grant of municipal government, as the fruit of his three years' incessant labor in Holland, and the people might well rejoice that they were at last to govern themselves. It was, indeed, the beginning of popular government in New Netherland; for in the years to come new concessions to the will and rights of the people followed as the inevitable consequence of this first success. But even this first success the Director defeated for a time, by assuming the right to appoint where election was ordered. Such appointments he at once made, and they were all

acceded to without objection, except that of Van Tienhoven as schout. Against him there was loud protest, but the rest were accepted, perStuyvesant's haps, because they were unexceptionable, and the people action. were weary of contest; perhaps, because the fear that the war between England and Holland might involve the colonies in serious difficulties overshadowed, for the present, all internal dissension. The apprehension, real or feigned, of coming trouble, existed on all sides. Stuyvesant endeavored, and no doubt with sincerity, to avert the danger, by assuring Virginia and the New England colonies of

the continued good feeling of the Company and of the colony, notwithstanding the war at home, and expressing the hope that their friendly relations would not be interrupted. At the same time he did not neglect prudent preparations for defence, for New England he heard was arming. The people of New Amsterdam for once agreed with him, and submitted cheerfully to a tax for the digging of a ditch. from the North to the East River, and the erection of a breast work and palisades to secure the town from attack.