years,) and thereby to procure a commission under the great seal, wherein four persons (one of them our known and professed enemy) are empowered to hear, receive, examine, and determine all complaints and appeals in all causes and matters, as well military as criminal and civil, and to proceed in all things for settling this country according to their good and sound discretions, &c.; whereby, instead of being governed by rulers of our own choosing (which is the fundamental privilege of our patent) and by laws of our own, we are like to be subjected to the arbitrary power of strangers, proceeding, not by any established law, but by their own discretions. "If these things go on (according to their present appearance), your subjects here will either be forced to seek new dwellings, or sink and faint under burdens that will be to them intolerable; the vigor of all men's endeavors in their several callings and occupations (either for merchandise abroad, or further subduing this wilderness at home) will be enfeebled, as we perceive it already begins to be; the good work of converting the natives obstructed; the inhabitants driven to we know not what extremities; and this hopeful plantation in the issue ruined. . . . . . "We perceive there have been great expectations of what is to be had here, raised by some men's informations; but those informations will prove fallacious, disappointing them that have relied upon them. And if the taking of this course should drive this people out of the country (for to a coalition therein they will never come), it will be hard to find another people that will stay long, or stand under any considerable burden in it, seeing it is not a country where men can subsist without hard labor and great frugality. "Sir: The all-knowing God he knows our greatest ambition is to live a poor and a quiet life, in a corner of the world, without offence to God or man. We came not into this wilderness to seek great things to ourselves; and, if any come after us to seek them here, they will be disappointed. We keep ourselves within our line, and meddle not with matters abroad. A just dependence upon, and subjection to, your Majesty, according to our charter, it is far from our hearts to disacknowledge. And, should Divine Providence ever offer an opportunity wherein we might, in any righteous way, according to our poor and mean capacity, testify our dutiful affection to your Majesty, we hope we should most gladly embrace it. But it is a great unhappiness to be reduced to so hard a case, as to have no other testimony of our subjection and loyalty offered us but this, viz. to destroy our own being, which nature teacheth us to preserve, or to yield up our liberties, which are far dearer to us than our lives. "Royal Sire: It is in your power to say of your poor people in New England, they shall not die. If we have found favor in the sight of our King, let our life be given us at our petition (or rather that which is dearer than life, that we have ventured our lives, and willingly passed through many deaths, to obtain); and our all, at our request. Let our government live, our patent live, our magistrates live, our laws and liberties live, our religious enjoyments live; so shall we all have yet further cause to say from our heart, 'Let the King live forever;' and the blessing of them that were ready to perish shall come upon your Majesty, having delivered the poor that cried, and such as had none to help them."1 1 Mass. Rec., IV. (ii.) 129.—The Court, at the same time, wrote to Robert Boyle (Hutch. Coll., 388); to Lord Clarendon (Hutch. Hist., I. 464); and to Secretary Morrice, whom they entreated to be their advocate before the Privy Council. — Hull feared that "Some the Court had been too stiff. Expedition against New July 8. Aug. 20. Meanwhile, "the Commissioners, departing from Boston immediately before the sitting" of the former of these two General Courts, had proceeded by sea towards New Amsterdam. Stuyvesant had had early intelligence of the expedition, and had Netherland. made some arrangements for defence, in which, however, he was embarrassed by the alarm and disaffection that prevailed within the town. The English fleet appeared in the Narrows, having on board the Commissioners, who had been joined by Winthrop from Connecticut, and by two officers, sent from Massachusetts with a report of the military preparations there.1 Cartwright, with a party, carried up a summons for the surrender of the fort and town, with a proclamation which promised the protection of private property, and the continuance of the existing forms of administration. The Governor would have held out, but he could not rouse the spirit of his people. The ships moored off the battery, and a camp of volunteers from Connecticut and Long Island was formed on the opposite shore. The municipal authorities, the ministers, and the officers of the town militia, united in a remonstrance against the rashness of an attempt to resist. The Governor said he would die rather than surrender; but, the citizens refusing to be enrolled, and his hundred and fifty regular troops becoming mutinous, nothing remained for him at last, but to treat for a capitulation. His six Commissioners, appointed for that purpose, were met by Carr and Cartwright, Winthrop and Willis from Connecticut, and Clarke and Pynchon, the Surrender of messengers to Nicolls from Massachusetts. Easy terms were granted. On the third following day, Aug. 29. call out the whole people, men, women, and children, in their several neighborhoods, to be instructed and excited, as to public affairs, by the Aug. 23. Aug. 26. New Amster dam. discourses and prayers of their ministers. 1 Mass. Rec., IV. (ii.) 123, 124. Sept. 10. Nicolls took military possession of the town, and was proclaimed Deputy-Governor of New York, as the place was now named.1 Cartwright sailed up the river, and received the surrender of Fort Orange, thenceforward called Fort Albany, from the second ducal title of the King's brother. Carr, with two ships, proceeded to the South River (the Delaware), and, after some proceedings in accordance with his violent and rapacious character, reduced the feeble posts in that quarter? What is now New Jersey was called Albania, and Long Island received the name of Yorkshire. New Netherland was effaced from the map. British America extended along the coast from Labrador to Florida.3 The new state of things enforced a settlement of the dispute between Connecticut and New Haven. Not only was that circuit of alien towns, by which New Haven had long been almost surrounded, now made complete, but, if the last royal grant of the southwestern region of New England should take effect, the whole of New-Haven Colony, and all of Connecticut except what lay on the eastern side of the river of that name, would be taken to constitute a broad plantation for the Popish Duke of York. A peaceable union between the two Arrange- Colonies would afford to both a hope of escape the junction from this doom. A continued collision, proConnecticut. Voking the resentment of the home government, and supplying a specious excuse for its peremptory interference, would involve them in a common loss of all for which hitherto they had striven with each other. For New Haven, at all events, it seemed that nothing remained except the choice between sub ments for of New Ha with 1 The population of the place at this time is estimated at fifteen hundred souls. (Brodhead, History, I. 741.) 2 Carr had already incurred Nicolls's displeasure. (O'Callaghan, Documents, &c., III. 69.) In Hume's judgment, "the acquisition of New York, a settlement so important by its situation, was the chief advantage which the English reaped from the war." (Hist., Chap. LXIV.) mission to Connecticut and submission to New York. Mr. Whiting, a Magistrate of Connecticut, was at Boston when the Commissioners arrived. The disclosures soon made there of their characters and designs caused him to be hurried back to Hartford to urge the indispensa bleness of an instant accommodation. Thence with Mr. Bull, a military officer, he was despatched immeAug. 11. diately to New Haven on that errand. A General Court was at once convened there. After sorrowful debate, a majority of the Court came to the conclusion that a longer conflict was hopeless. Yielding to the necessity, they saved their pride by a vote in these words: "That, if they of Connecticut come, and make a claim upon us in his Majesty's name and by virtue of their charter, then we shall submit to them until the Commissioners of the Colonies do meet."1 Sept. 1. The Federal Commissioners for this year assembled at Hartford. Commissioners from New Haven appeared as usual, and, notwithstanding a remonstrance from Connecticut, were admitted to their seats. It was a gloomy meeting. Little business was done. Probably under the influence of Massachusetts, advice was given to the General Courts of the several jurisdictions, on receiving notice of a visit from the royal Commissioners, to send information of it to the other Colonies, "to the end that, if they saw meet, they might send their Commissioners invested with full power to advise and act in any case that might be of common concernment to the whole." But this recommendation proved fruitless. As to "the difference still depending between Connecticut and New Haven," the Federal Commissioners declared their opinion to be unaltered "as to the right of the cause, yet, considering how much the honor of God, and as well the weal of all the Colonies as themselves, therein not interest, were concerned in the 1 N. H. Rec., II. 544–546. |