1665.]

"THE DUKE'S LAWS.”

327 certain to be even had it been a fraud. What was done in haste was considered at leisure, and the Duke of York refused his assent to the agreement. Twenty years later, a new line was drawn and surveyed beginning at Byam River, which is essentially the present boundary of the States of New York and Connecticut.

New divis

ions and

names of the

Duke's terri

tory.

To Long Island, thus made, as it has ever since remained, a part of New York, the name of Yorkshire was given. That, with the neighboring country, was afterward divided into three judicial districts or ridings, in each of which a court was to sit three times a year. The present Queen's County (excepting the town of Newtown) and Westchester formed the North Riding; Newtown, the present King's County and Staten Island made the West Riding; the present Suffolk alone was the East Riding. There was, however, some question whether Staten Island belonged to New Jersey or New York, which was not settled till 1668, and seems to have been referred to the proprietary in England. Samuel Maverick, one of the commissioners, writing in February, 1669, to Governor Winthrop, says, on the authority of a letter from Nicolls who returned to England the previous autumn: "Staten Iland is adiudged to belong to N: Yorke." It is, he says in another letter, "the most commodiosest seate and richest land I haue seene in America."

"1

The Indians parted with it so reluctantly that the Dutch had been compelled to make repeated purchases; but the chiefs gave a final and lasting title in 1670 to Governor Lovelace, Nicolls's successor, receiving as recompense four hundred fathoms of wampum and a number of guns, axes, kettles, and watch-coats.

Duke's

Laws."

The King in his grant to the Duke of York had empowered him to make all laws for his new territory, with the usual proviso Preparation that these be not contrary to the laws of England. The Duke of the in turn had granted this power to Nicolls as his deputy. Having settled the boundaries of New York for the time, renamed its different parts, put English garrisons and officers at Albany, Esopus, and elsewhere, and brought the affairs of the distant Delaware region into proper train, the Governor assumed the duties of a legislator. He took for his guidance the Codes of the New England colonies in civil affairs, but disregarded their severe provisions relating to religion. "The Duke's Laws" -as the code prepared by Nicolls and his territory belonged. But as if doubting the wisdom of this settlement of the bonndary he adds: "I humbly begg your Lpp. to take the whole matter into serious consideracon, for if the Duke will improove this place to the vtmost, Neither the trade, the Riuer, nor the Adjacent lands must bee devided from this Collony, but remayne Entire."

1 Maverick's Letters in the Winthrop Papers. Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., Fourth Series. vol. vii.

The Long Island people and the

tion.

councillors was called were promulgated at a meeting of delegates from the towns of Yorkshire, held at Hempstead on February 28, 1665. The people of these towns alone — the great new legisla majority being Englishmen seem to have felt much interest in the character of the new government about to be established. For this reason, no doubt, they only were summoned to send representatives. Certainly the code had been drawn up more with a view to their wants, as Nicolls understood them, than to those of any other portion of the province. Being emigrants from New England, the Long Islanders especially hoped for the concession of all the popular rights which the people of Massachusetts and Connecticut enjoyed. They did not gain them; it was not within Nicolls's power to grant them, indeed; but they received, with considerable grumbling and discontent, the next best system as wise and liberal a code, perhaps, as it was possible for the deputy of a proprietary government to bestow.

Provisions of

code.

The Duke's Laws prescribed the annual holding, on the last Thursday in September, of a court of assizes at New York, which the Duke's should be the court of highest resort in the province; the holding of courts of sessions, next in rank, in each of the Yorkshire "ridings" thrice a year; arbitration was allowed in trifling cases, but a local court of a constable and six overseers might be held for the trial of cases involving less than five pounds. The executive power in Yorkshire was in the hands of a high sheriff appointed annually by the Governor, the three ridings in turn furnishing the candidate. Each town had eight overseers, chosen by the freeholders, the freeholders selecting one of the eight to act as constable. The town officers made the assessments for taxes. Old land grants were to be looked upon as valueless unless submitted to the provincial authorities and confirmed by new patents issued by the Governor in the Duke's name. Trade with the Indians was restricted that in arms, ammunition, liquor, and furs being permitted only under special license. Disputes between Indians and whites were to be fairly adjusted by the authorities as if between Christians. Slavery was recognized as legal, as there were many negro slaves already in the province; but kind and humane treatment for them and for servants was enforced by penalties. The militia law included all persons over sixteen years old, the militia expenses to be equitably shared by all the towns. One form of blasphemy ("denying the true God"), treason, murder, some offences against nature, the striking of parents in case the offender were over fourteen, and kidnapping, were capital crimes. A very great number of regulations provided for all minor matters of discipline, for licenses, trading and shipping laws, and so

1665.]

ENGLISH OFFICIALS.

329

on. Trial by juries was provided for; but, except in capital cases, the jury was not to exceed seven men. No person who "professed Christianity" was to be molested for minor differences of opinion. There were a few regulations about church matters, applying equally to all sects, but no Indian was to be permitted "to powow, or perform outward worship to the devil."

Nicolls enforced this code immediately and thoroughly in Yorkshire only, leaving the changes to be very gradual in New York The code in and along the river, where the Dutch could not conform New York. at once to English ways. In the city there was for a little while loud complaint that the English official titles of mayor, alderman, and

Inauguration of the First English Municipal Government at the Stadt Huys.

sheriff were substituted for the old Dutch terms of schepen, burgomaster, and schout; and when, in June, 1665, Thomas Willett was appointed mayor, and other Englishmen were put upon the board of aldermen, Nicolls was accused of disregarding the articles of capitulation. Such complaints the Governor met by pointing to his instructions, which required him to conform to English custom in his rule of the province. In the appointment of Englishmen to office English offihis wish was, he declared, to provide for the peace and quiet cials. of the whole community by having in office men of both nations. The discontent was speedily allayed, for no fault could be found with the selection of officers made among the English. The mayor, Willett,

especially, was greatly esteemed among the Dutch, whom more than once he had served in important trusts in the time of the late gov Moreover, there could be little real fear of injustice, for the sheriff, or schout, and the majority of this new board of aldermen, were still Dutch.

ernor.

Breaking out of the war between

lands.

Only on the day before the inauguration of this first municipal government in the town so lately called New Amsterdam, the Dutch and English at home were fighting the great England and naval battle off Lowestoft in the North Sea. The furious cannonading was heard on the banks of the Thames in England almost in London. While Nicolls peacefully debated with the burghers in the Stadt Huys, the Duke of York was face to face with Dutchmen in quite another way, and one that came well-nigh giving to the Governor a new master; for as the Duke, who was in command of the English fleet, stood on the deck of his flag-ship, the Royal Charles, three of his officers were shot down at his side, so that their blood "flew in the Duke's face." 1

The war had at length come, to which the disturbed relations of the two governments had been gradually leading since the restoration of Charles, and which now the conquest of New Netherland made inevitable. Angry competition on the coast of Africa had given rise to actual conflicts, and the English had driven the Dutch out of the forts they had built. In the East, the Dutch East India Company and the English merchants were virtually at war. The news from Africa and from Manhattan had reached England in the same week, to be received with open approval at court. Carteret told Pepys that "the king did joy mightily at it," but asked him, laughing, "How shall I do to answer this to the embassador when he comes? "2 He answered it by the insolent claim of priority of ownership of the New Netherland territory, and the English ambassador at the Hague treated the matter with an equally high hand. De Witt, the Grand Pensionary of Holland, answered sharply for the States General that the American province must be given back; at the same time the Dutch admiral, De Ruyter, was secretly ordered to retaliate upon the English on the Guinea coast- which he did effectually a short time after. The English seized such Dutch vessels as were in their ports, and thus the two nations were already at war, though this was only December, 1664, and no formal declaration was made till the fourth of March following, after considerable further negotiation on Holland's part had proved fruitless.

It was in this war that the battle off Lowestoft had been the firstthough a useless - English victory. These events belong to Euro1 Pepys's Diary.

2 Ibid.

1666.]

THE FRENCH AND THE MOHAWKS.

331

pean, rather than to American history, except that by the treaty of Breda 1667-the possession of New York was confirmed Progress of to the English. The only immediate effect of the declara- the war. tion of war upon that province was to compel Nicolls to take all possible measures for its defence, lest De Ruyter should come that way on his mission to "inflict. . . . as much damage and injury as possible" upon the English. The apprehended attack, however, never came. There were no dissensions between the old and new masters of New Netherland, and through the summer and autumn of 1665 Nicolls was left unmolested to quietly bring the whole province into obedience to his rule.

Discontent

Island

The next spring, however, brought the necessity of quelling some disturbances in eastern Long Island, where there was still much dissatisfaction because the Duke's code denied the peo- in Long ple the popular elements of New England, especially of Connecticut, government. When the Governor had quieted these disorders by tempering vigorous measures against the chief offenders with indulgence to the rest, new trouble arose in the same region in resistance to the enforcement of the law of renewal of patents — a matter requiring the wisest management. The Court of Assizes decreed in September that the neglect of the Long Island towns and of individuals to renew their land grants under the Duke of York could be no longer tolerated. It required all Nicolls's skill and firmness to carry out the measure, accompanied as it was by the exaction of fees and quit-rents. After much discontent, however, all the towns of consequence, except Southold and Southampton, yielded, and these complied with the conditions a year or two afterward.

New York

Though the war in Europe left Nicolls thus free to establish order in his new government, it was not to pass away without disturbance to the American colonies. The alliance of Louis and Canada. XIV. with the Dutch against England, in January, 1666, had of course made enemies, nominally at least, of those colonies and the French in the new world. King Charles sent out letters in February directing his American subjects to begin whatever hostile measures they could against Canada, doubtless expecting that New England and New York would undertake at once a vigorous campaign against their northern neighbors. But he little understood the comparative indifference to European affairs felt by the colonists. His instructions were received with little enthusiasm, and the only measures taken were some attempts to excite the Mohawk Indians to enmity against the French settlers. Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Nova Scotia agreed that it would not be wise to undertake an expedition against the French settlements in Canada.

1 Dutch document cited in Brodhead, ii., 58.