To our trusty and well beloved, the governour and council of New Plymouth, Greeting.

CHARLES REX.

Trusty and well beloved, we greet you well. We need not enlarge upon our care of, and affection to that our plantation of New Plymouth, when we give you such a testimony and manifestation of it in the sending of those gentlemen, persons well known unto us, as deserving from us, our trusty and well beloved Col. Richard Nichols, Sir Robert Carr, knight, George Cartwright, Esq. and Samuel Maverick, Esq. our commissioners to visit you, and other our plantantations in those parts of New England, and to give us a full and particular information and account of your present state and condition, and how the same may be advanced and improved by any further acts of grace and favour from us towards you; and that both you and all the world may know and take notice, that we take you into our immediate protection, and will no more suffer you to be oppressed or injured, by any foreign power or ill neighbours, than we shall suffer our other subjects, that live upon the same continent with us, to be so injured and oppressed. And as our care and protection will, (we doubt not,) be sufficient, with God's blessing, to defend you from foreign force, so our care and circumspection is no less, that you may live in peace amongst yourselves, and with those our oth er subjects, who have planted themselves in your neighbour colonies, with that justice, affection, and brotherly love, which becomes subjects born under the same prince, and in the same country, and of the same faith and hope in the mercies of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. And to the end, that there may be no contention and difference between you, in respect of the bounds and jurisdiction of your several colonies, the hearing and determining whereof we have referred to our commissioners, as the right appears by clear evidence and testimony before them, or that they can settle it by your mutual consent and agreement; otherwise, in cases of difficulty, they shall present the same to us, who will determine according to our own wisdom and justice. The address you formerly made to us, gave us so good satisfaction of your

duty, loyalty, and affection to us, that we have not the least doubt that you will receive these commissioners in such manner as becomes you, and so may manifest your respect and affection towards us, from whom they are sent. They will let you know the resolution we have to preserve all your liberties and privileges, both ecclesias. tical and civil, without the least violation, which we presume will dispose you to manifest, by all ways in your power, loyalty and affection to us, that all the world may know, that you do look upon yourselves as being as much our subjects, and living under the same obedience under as if you continued in your natural country; and so we bid you farewell.

us,

Given at our court at Whitehall, April 23, 1664, in the sixteenth year of our reign.

By his majesty's special command.

HENRY BENNETT.

CHAP. LXXVIII.

The country about Hudson's river, when first discovered and planted; what changes have passed over them, since their first planting to this present time.

THE most fertile and desirable tract of land in all the southerly part of New England, is that which lieth about the greatest river in all those parts, called Hudson's river, at the first called New Netherlands, from the people that first possessed it.

That great river was first discovered by Capt. Hudson in the year 1610, from whom it received its name. The reason why it was not first seized into the possession of the English, seems to be the many sad disasters they met withal, in their first attempts that way in 1607, and some years after, which discouraged those of our nation from further prosecuting any design of that nature till the year 1620, when some of the separations of Leyden, in Holland, put on a fresh resolution to transplant themselves into some part of America. Their intent was to have pitched upon some place about Hudson's river, but they were therein supplanted by some of the Dutch, amongst whom they sojourned, which hired the master

of the ship to bend his course more northward, which to gratify their fraudulent interlopers, Jones, their mercenary pilot, performed, and forced them in at Cape Cod, having at that time an intent to make a plantation about Hudson's river themselves, which they soon after accomplished, although their pretence was only to make use of the harbour for a supply of fresh water for their ships, as they passed to and from the West Indies; but took such liking to the place, that they there settled a plantation; for those that began 1614, were routed by Sir Samuel Argall, soon after the other began at Cape Cod. On which consideration, that providence is the more remarkable, that hath of late brought it under the English in the year 1664, having been in the hands of the Dutch above forty years before.

At the first settling of their plantation there, they always held a friendly correspondence with the English at New Plymouth; thereby, as it were, proffering them a mess of pottage instead of the birthright of the land, which, by an under contrivance, they had before subtilely deprived them of.

It was quietly possessed by the Dutch a long time, till of late, when beginning to stand upon terms, and upon masteries, with our royal sovereign Charles the Second, (whose royal predecessors had not only been their great benefactors, but their chief upholders, when casting off the Spanish yoke, they began to set up for themselves,) it was happily surrendered, or surprized, by the English, under the conduct of Col. Nichols, in the behalf of his royal highness the duke of York. Under the government of the said Col. Nichols it continued until the year before our last quarrel with the Dutch, when Gen. Nichols, weary of his confinement there, resigned up his place in the government of the Dutch plantation to Col. Lovelace, who held it till the year 1673, when in his absence from the fort, and chiefest place of strength, it was unhappily surprised by Mons. Colve, under a Dutch commission, who held it for a while, to the no small damage of the English in those parts, till it was again restored to the absolute possession of the English, upon their last treaty of peace between the two nations.

When the Dutch first planted that part of the country, they took possession, in like manner, of the westermost part of Long Island, where they began some petty plantations with some inhabitants of their own nation.

The remainder of the said island was possessed by the English, that removed into those parts for the sake of a more convenient and commodious situation, out of the other colonies of New England, having obtained the liberty so to do, by some kind of grant from the agent of my lord Sterling, to whose share or allotment, (either by grant from the earl of Carlisle, or in some other way,) that part of the country fell, upon the resignation of the grand patent betwixt the years 1630 and 1635, and also by a voluntary consent and agreement amongst themselves and of the towns upon that part of Long Island, put themselves under the government of New Haven, and some under Connecticut colony; under which jurisdictions they remained till the coming over of Col. Nichols, 1664, who assumed the whole island into his possession, as part of the patent granted his royal highness the duke of York, to which it hath been annexed ever since. The towns planted thereon, all, or most of them are moulded, as to their ecclesiastical concernments, after the manner of the rest of the New English plantations, and are of their persuasion generally in matters of religion; nor have they been abridged of their liberty therein, by any of the honourable gentlemen that have presided there, since it hath been reduced into the power of the English.

The towns there seated lie in this order, being about twelve in all,

In a bay, at the eastermost end of Long Island, is that called Shelter Island, a very fruitful and pleasant place, the seat of one Mr. Sylvester, a rich merchant, that purchased it of a New Haven gentleman, and hath there settled his family, which he brought from Barbados.

The next place, on that called Long Island, is East Hampton, at the furthest end eastward; then South Hampton; next, Southhold, where the inhabitants of late have fallen upon the killing of whales, that frequent

the south side of the island in the latter part of the winter, wherein they have a notable kind of dexterity; and the trade that ariseth therefrom hath been very beneficial to all that end of the island; then Seatocket, Huntingdon, Oister, Jerusalem, Jericho, Hempsted, Flushing, New Town, Bedford, Gravescant. Some of these are Dutch towns, in the first planting or ordering of which there hath not much matter of moment been reported.

any

After Mons. Colve had possessed himself of the Dutch plantations at Manhattos, he made some attempts to have seized the towns of the English on Long Island, but the inhabitants stood resolutely upon their guard, and so prevented his further design upon them. As for further discourse of the Dutch plantations next adjoining, or the description thereof, the reader may take the following relation, with little variation, in the words of D. D. some time an inhabitant there, and published in the year 1670.

A brief relation of New York, with the places thereunto adjoining, formerly called the New Netherlands, &c.

That tract of land, formerly called the New Netherlands, doth contain all that land which lieth in the north parts of America, betwixt New England and Maryland, in Virginia, the length of which northward into the country, as it hath not been fully discovered, so it is not certainly known; the breadth of it is about two hundred miles. The principal rivers within this are Hudson's river, Afterkull, Raritan river, and Delaware Bay river; the chief islands, the Manahatan's Island, Long Island, and Staten Island.

And first, to begin with the Manahatan's Island, so called by the Indians. It lieth within and betwixt the degrees of 41 and 42 of north latitude, and is about fourteen miles long and two wide. It is bounded with Long Island, on the south; with Staten Island, on the west; on the north, with the main land; and with Connecticut colony on the east side of it; only a part of the main land, belonging to New York colony, where several towns and villages are settled, being about three miles in