ical writer of his age, was condemned to imprisonment for life; and by the default of the stadholder, Olden Barneveldt, at the age of threescore years and twelve, the venerable founder of the republic, was conducted to the scaffold.

These events hastened the colonization of New Netherland, where as yet no Europeans had repaired except commercial agents and their subordinates. In 1620, 1620. merchants of Holland, who had thus far had a trade only in Hudson River, wished to plant there a new commonwealth, lest the king of Great Britain should first people its banks with the English nation. To this end it was proposed to send over John Robinson, with four hundred families of his persuasion; but the pilgrims had not lost their love for the land of their nativity, and the states were unwilling to guarantee them protection. A voyage from Virginia, to vindicate the trade in the Hudson for England, proved a total loss. The settlement of Manhattan grew directly out of the great continental struggles of Protestantism.

The thirty years' war of religion in Germany had 1621 begun; the twelve years' truce between the Netherlands and the Spanish king had nearly expired; Austria hoped to crush the Reformation in the empire, and Spain to recover dominion over its ancient provinces. The statesgeneral, whose existence was menaced by a combination of hostile powers, were summoned to display unparalleled energy in their foreign relations; and on the third of June, 1621, the Dutch West India company, which became the sovereign of the central portion of the United States, was incorporated for twenty-four years, with a pledge of a renewal of its charter. It was invested, on the part of the Netherlands, with the exclusive privilege to traffic and plant colonies on the coast of Africa from the Tropic of Cancer to the Cape of Good Hope; on the coast of America, from the Straits of Magellan to the remotest north. Subscription to its joint stock was open to every nation; the states-general made it a gift of half a million of guilders, and were stockholders to the amount of another half million. The franchises of the company were immense, that it might lay its

own plans, provide for its own defence, and in all things take care of itself. The states-general, in case of war, were to be known only as its allies and patrons. While it was expected to render efficient aid in the impending war with Spain, its permanent objects were the peopling of fruitful unsettled countries and the increase of trade. It might acquire provinces, but only at its own risk; and it was endowed with absolute power over its possessions, subject to the approval of the states-general. The company was divided into five branches or chambers, of which that in Amsterdam represented four ninths of the whole. The government was intrusted to a board of nineteen, of whom eighteen represented the five branches, and one was named by the states.

Thus did a nation of merchants give away the leave to appropriate continents; and the corporate company, invested with a boundless liberty of choice, culled the rich territories of Guinea, Brazil, and New Netherland.

Colonization on the Hudson and the Delaware was neither the motive nor the main object of the establishment of the Dutch West India company; the territory was not described either in the charter or at that time in any public act of the states-general, which neither made a formal specific grant nor offered to guarantee the possession of a single foot of land. Before the chamber of Amsterdam, under the authority of the company, assumed the care of New Netherland, while the trade was still prosecuted by private enterprise, the English privy council listened to the complaint of Arundel, Gorges, Argall, and Mason of the Plymouth company against "the Dutch intruders;" and by the king's direction, in February, 1622, Sir Dudley Carleton, then British ambassador at the Hague, claiming the country as a part of New England, required the statesgeneral to stay the prosecution of their plantation. This remonstrance received no explicit answer; while Carleton reported of the Dutch that all their trade there was in ships of sixty or eighty tons at the most, to fetch furs, nor could he learn that they had either planted or designed to plant a colony. Bnt the English, at that time disheartened by

1622.

the sufferings and losses encountered in Virginia, were not disposed to incur the unprofitable expense of a new settlement; and the Dutch ships, which went over in 1622, found none to dispute the possession of the country.

1623.

The organization of the West India company in 1623 was the epoch of its zealous efforts at colonization. In the spring of that year, "The New Netherland," a ship of two hundred and sixty tons' burden, carried out thirty families. They were chiefly Walloons, Protestant fugitives from Belgian provinces. April was gone before the vessel reached Manhattan. A party under the command of Cornelis Jacobsen May, who has left his on the southern county and cape of New Jersey, ascended the river Delaware then known as the South River of the Dutch, and on Timber Creek, a stream that enters the Delaware a few miles below Camden, built Fort Nassau. At the same time Adriaen Joris, on the site of Albany, threw up and completed the fort named Orange. There eighteen families were settled; their huts of bark rose round the fort, and were protected by covenants of friendship with the various tribes of Indians.

name

The next year, 1624, may be taken as the era of a 1624. continuous civil government, with Cornelis Jacobsen May as the first director. It had power to punish, but not with death; judgments for capital crimes were to be referred to Amsterdam. The emigrant ship returned laden with valuable furs, and the colony was reported to be bravely prosperous.

1625.

In 1625, May was succeeded by William Verhulst. The colony was gladdened by the arrival of two large ships freighted with cattle and horses, as well as swine and sheep. At Fort Orange a child of Netherland parentage was born. In that year, Frederick Henry, the new stadholder, was able to quell the passions of religious sects, and unite all parties in a common love of country. Danger from England also was diminished; for Charles I., soon after his accession, entered into a most intimate alliance with the Dutch. Just then Jean de Laet, a member of the chamber of Amsterdam, in an elaborate work on the

West Indies, opportunely drew the attention of his countrymen to their rising colony, and published Hudson's glowing description of the land.

Under such auspices, Peter Minuit, a German 1626. of Wesel, in January, 1626, sailed for New Netherland as its director-general. He arrived there on the fourth of May. Hitherto the Dutch had no title to ownership of the land; Minuit purchased the Island of Manhattan from its native proprietors. The price paid was sixty guilders, about twenty-four dollars for more than twenty thousand acres. The southern point was selected for " a battery," and lines were drawn for a fort, which took the name of New Amsterdam. The town had already thirty houses, and the emigrants' wives had borne them children. In the want of a regular minister, two consolers of the sick" read to the people on Sundays "texts out of the Scriptures, together with the creeds."

1627.

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No danger appeared in the distance except from the pretensions of England. The government of Manhattan sought an interchange of "friendly kindness and neighborhood" with the nearest English at New Plymouth; and by a public letter in March, 1627, it claimed mutual 'good-will and service," pleading "the nearness of their native countries, the friendship of their forefathers, and the new covenant between the states-general and England against the Spaniards." Bradford, in reply, gladly accepted the "testimony of love." "Our children after us," he added, "shall never forget the good and courteous entreaty which we found in your country, and shall desire your prosperity for ever." His benediction was sincere ; though he called to mind that the English patent for New England extended to forty degrees, within which, therefore, the Dutch had no right "to plant or trade;" and he especially begged them not to send their yachts into the Narragansett.

"Our authority to trade and plant we derive from the states of Holland, and will defend it," rejoined Minuit. But, in October of the same year, he sent De Rasières, who stood next him in rank, on a conciliatory embassy to New

Plymouth. The envoy proceeded in state with soldiers and musicians. At Scusset, on Cape Cod Bay, he was met by a boat from the Old Colony, and "was honorably attended with the noise of trumpets." He succeeded in concerting a mutual trade; but Bradford still warned the authorities of New Amsterdam to "clear their title" to their lands without delay. The advice seemed like a wish to hunt the Dutch out of their infant colony, and led the college of nineteen to ask of the states-general forty soldiers for its defence.

1628.

Such were the rude beginnings of New Netherland. The women and children of the colony were concentred on Manhattan, which, in 1628, counted a population of two hundred and seventy souls, including Dutch, Walloons, and slaves from Angola. Jonas Michaelius, a clergyman, arriving in April of that year, "established a church," which chose Minuit one of its two elders, and at the first administration of the Lord's Supper counted fifty communicants. This was the age of hunters and Indian traders; of traffic in the skins of otters and beavers ; when the native tribes were employed in the pursuit of game, as far as the St. Lawrence, and the skiffs of the Dutch, in quest of furs, penetrated every bay and bosom and inlet, from Narragansett to the Delaware. It was the day of straw roofs and wooden chimneys and windmills. There had been no extraordinary charge; there was no multitude of people; but labor was well directed and profitable; and the settlement promised fairly both to the state and to the undertakers. The experiment in feudal institutions followed.

Reprisals on Spanish commerce were the alluring pursuit of the West India company. On a single occasion, in 1628, the captures secured by its privateers were almost eightyfold more valuable than all the exports from their colony for the four preceding years. While the company of merchant warriors, conducting their maritime enterprises like princes, were making prizes of the rich fleets of Portugal and Spain, and, by their victories, pouring the wealth of America into their treasury, the states-general

1629.