New Netherland Restored to the British-Andros and the Duke of York

THE swift conquest of New York by the Dutch was speedily supplemented by the submission of the settlers on the Delaware within the domain of New Netherland. The other English colonists were amazed by the unlooked-for event, and some of them prepared for war. Connecticut foolishly talked of an offensive war; others prepared to stand on the defensive. Anthony Colve, the governor of re-conquered New Amsterdam, was wide-awake. He kept his eye on the movements of the savages and Frenchmen on the North; watched every hostile indication in the East, and sent proclamations and commissions to towns on Long Island and in Westchester to compel hesitating boroughs to take the oath of allegiance to Prince William of Orange. He had strengthened his fortifications; and upon the fort and around the city of New Orange he had planted one hundred and ninety cannon. But all anxiety was ended by a treaty of peace between the Dutch and English, made at London early in 1674, by which New Netherland was restored to the British crown. Some doubts arising about the validity of the duke's title after these changes, the king gave him a new grant of territory in June, 1674, within the boundary of which was included all the domain west of the Connecticut River, to the eastern shores of the Delaware; also Long Island and a territory in Maine. King Charles had commissioned Major Edmund Andros to receive the surrender of the province from the Dutch governor. He was now appointed governor of New York. The surrender took place, in a formal manner, at Fort James, in October.

Andros, who was destined to play an important part in American affairs, was then thirty-seven years of age. He had been brought up in the royal household, and accompanied the exiled family to Holland, where he began his military career. As major of Prince Rupert's regiment of dragoons, he performed gallant service, and being a favorite of the king and the duke, a good Dutch and French scholar, a thorough royalist and an obedient servant of his superiors, he was well fitted to perform the part which his masters appointed him to play. His private character was without blemish, and the evil things spoken of him relate to his public career. The duke's instructions favored the constitution of the province of New York, and Andros enforced them with ever-increasing vigor. In his zeal he even exceeded his instructions; and in a short time he acquired the just title of "tyrant." The duke, his master, was a strange compound of wickedness and goodness; slow to perceive right from wrong and seldom seeing the truth in its purity, Bancroft says of him-" A libertine without love, a devotee without spirituality, an advocate of toleration without a sense of the natural right to freedom of conscience, - in him the muscular force prevailed over the intellectual. He was not blood-thirsty; but to a narrow mind fear seems the most powerful instrument of government, and he propped his throne with the block and the gallows. He floated between the sensuality of indulgence and the sensuality of superstition, hazarding heaven for an ugly mistress, and, to the great delight of abbots and nuns, winning it back again by pricking his flesh with sharp points of iron, and eating no meat on Saturdays." Of the two brothers, the Duke of Buckingham said well, that "Charles would not, and James could not see." The fact that he was the destined successor of Charles on the throne of England-a king whose irregularities of life were rapidly hurrying him to the grave-made James an object of intense interest to the Protestants of the realm, and the subject of intrigues to prevent him ascending to the seat of his brother.

With all their political disabilities under Andros, the people of New York were prosperous and therefore comparatively happy. Luxury had not corrupted their tastes, and wants were few. A man worth three thousand dollars was rich; the possessor of five thousand dollars was opulent. There was an almost dead level of equality in society. Beggars were unknown. "Ministers were few, but religions many;" and out of matters of faith grew many controversies. There seemed little reason for the twenty thousand inhabitants of the domain to be unhappy; but the divine instinct of freedom, which demanded a free exercise of the rights of self-government, made many of them discontented and in some places mutinous.

It was then a stormy time in England. Theological disputes culminated in bloodshed and universal disorder, and thousands were sent to America, and other thousands fled to the colonies. Of the former, women were often burnt in the cheek, and men marked by cutting off their ears. These fugitives, many of them people of good families and education, inoculated all the provinces with healthful republican aspirations.

At about this time the duke's daughter Mary married her cousin Prince William of Orange. These nuptials were distasteful to the duke, who was becoming more and more a confirmed Roman Catholic; for William was recognized as the leader of the Protestants of Europe. "I predict," said the French ambassador in London to James, "that such a son-in-law will inevitably be your ruin." The prediction was soon fulfilled, as we shall observe presently. The nuptials of those cousins led to very important events in the history of England and America.