IT HAD been so easy. Without declaring war, without firing a shot, without spilling a drop of blood, the English took the forty-year-old Dutch city of New Amsterdam on August 29, 1664.
They renamed it New York in honor of the Duke of York, its new lord proprietor. York is a compound of two ancient words, which mean place at the water, a fit title for so great a seaport.
The day after the surrender the burgomasters and schepens transacted municipal business as though nothing had happened. The next Sunday the chaplain of the English troops conducted the first Church of England rites ever observed here. The transition from Dutch to British rule did not greatly disturb most citizens, for they felt nothing could be so oppressive as a soulless corporation and a high-handed governor. But Peter Stuyvesant took it hard. To Holland he sent an explanation of his own conduct, describing how helpless he had been at the critical moment. Then he retired to the shaded quietude of his country estate.
The surrender of the city was an event of deep significance for all America. As historian John Fiske said, “Few political changes have been greater in their consequences. By transferring from Dutch into English hands the strategic center of antagonism to New France, it brought about an approach toward unity of political development in the English colonies and made it possible for them to come together in a great federal union.”
Except for one brief interruption, New York was to be ruled for many years by the last of England’s royal Stuarts, James Stuart—first as the Duke of York and then as King James II. His authority over the new English colony was as absolute as that formerly enjoyed by the Dutch West India Company. His henchmen wielded all legislative, executive, and judicial power, subject only to approval by the king and Privy Council of England. James, who never visited his American empire, chose well when he selected Colonel Richard Nicolls as his first governor.
Nicolls was about forty years old when he succeeded Peter Stuyvesant. Tall and erect, gray-eyed, genial and polite, and somewhat curly-haired, Nicolls was a bachelor. The son of a lawyer, university-trained Nicolls read Greek and Latin classics in the original and spoke Dutch and French as fluently as his native English. He utterly charmed the Dutch citizens, who signed a letter proclaiming Nicolls “a wise and intelligent governor, under whose wing we hope to bloom and grow like the cedar on Lebanon.” He repaired Fort Amsterdam and renamed it Fort James. He offered to let any Dutchman go back to Holland, hoping none would do so, and none did. Of course, he was careful to ship the Dutch soldiers back home.
This first English governor found himself at the head of a strange assortment of people. The Dutch made up three-quarters of the population, but the other quarter consisted of English, French, Swedes, Finns, Portuguese, and Negroes—most of the Negroes having been brought here from Brazil. From the time of the first English settlers there had been frequent marriages between the Dutch and the English. Educated citizens spoke both languages, but many businessmen were unable to translate from one language to the other. Because of the growing influx of Huguenots, some records were kept in French. All in all, the city was a veritable Babel.
Society was rigidly stratified. The immigrants brought along their Old World prejudices, which they handed down to their children. A line was clearly drawn between master and slave, master and indentured servant, aristocrat and tradesman, rich and poor. The common people felt they had small chance of rising in the social scale. Because of patroonships, the first wealthy class consisted of landowners. Only later did trade and shipping elevate to prominence men of humble origin.
The colonists owned several kinds of livestock—goats, hogs, oxen, sheep, cattle, and horses. Goats cost little, bred prolifically, and yielded milk and meat. Hogs overran the streets. Some farmers preferred English swine because they were hardy and could endure cold weather without shelter, but Holland hogs grew heavier and yielded more pork than the English kind. Oxen hauled wagons and pulled plows.
Dutchmen had brought their own stolid cattle to the New World. With the inauguration of livestock fairs in the city they gazed for the first time on the red English cattle shipped here by New Englanders. Local farmers soon learned that superior cattle could be bred by mating Holland bulls and English heifers. Milk was sold from house to house by countrymen bearing wooden yokes on their shoulders. From each end of the yokes dangled chains, attached to huge tin milk cans. Thus laden, the dairymen trudged about the city, crying, “Milk come!”
Because fences were scarce, most livestock grazed at large. This resulted in confusion and in conflicts about ownership until Nicolls ordered the branding of all cattle and horses. Roundups were held in Manhattan. To corner, halter, and lead wild bulls to market was a dangerous sport. The English imported bulldogs, which soon became popular among butchers. The bowlegged broad-jawed animals were trained to seize a bull by the nose and hold down its head until a rope could be slung about its neck.
When the English arrived, most of the horses in the colony were of Dutch strain. Heavy and awkward, they were good for farmwork but for little else. After the first English horses had been imported from New England and the mother country, Governor Nicolls introduced horse racing into America. Out on Long Island, near the town of Hempstead, he found a long narrow plain covered with fine grass and unmarred by sticks or stones. There Nicolls built a racetrack, called the Newmarket Course for the famous racetrack outside London. Then the governor scheduled a series of horse races, “not so much for the divertisement of youth as for encouraging the bettering of the breed of horses which, through neglect, have been impaired.”
Apparently the first race was run in 1665, and others were run in the two following years. We know for certain that a contest was held in 1668 because Yale University owns a silver dish with this inscription: “1668: runn att Hampsted Plains, March 25.”
Two months after the city had been captured, Nicolls called a meeting of leading citizens, including former Governor Stuyvesant. Nicolls said that he hoped they would take the customary oath of allegiance to British authority. This did not mean, he explained, that they would be renouncing allegiance to the Dutch government. Presumably, the oath would result in dual citizenship. Some Dutchmen protested. Then the English governor pointed out gently but firmly that all Dutch inhabitants must renew the titles to their lands in the name of the Duke of York. After more discussions and explanations, 250 residents of the city and the adjoining countryside swore fidelity to British overlordship. Even Stuyvesant took the oath.
The Dutch West India Company now ordered Peg Leg Peter back to Holland to explain his surrender to the English. Before sailing, he obtained from the burgomasters and schepens a certificate testifying to his good character. Upon his arrival in Holland he blamed the loss of the colony on company officials, who had left him without adequate means of defense, without a single warship, and with only a few barrels of gunpowder. Angrily, they countercharged that Stuyvesant was guilty of cowardice and treason.
While this dispute bubbled overseas, in New York, Stuyvesant’s nephew, Nicholas Bayard, was appointed secretary of the council. Bayard was a mere youth in age and appearance but, thanks to his mother, as self-possessed as a mature man. Peter Stuyvesant’s elder son, Balthazar, quit the colony to live in the West Indies, but his younger son, Nicholas William Stuyvesant, chose to remain.
At the time of the conquest Broadway was a street only from the Battery to Wall Street, continuing north as an Indian trail. Nearly a century passed before Broadway became a street reaching as far as the Commons, or City Hall Park. To the river along the west side of Manhattan the British gave the name of Hudson, for their countryman who first explored it. Staten Island became Richmond County in honor of the Duke of Richmond, the illegitimate son of King Charles II. Then, sailing up the Hudson in force for the first time, the British took Fort Orange and changed its name to Albany, for the Duke of York’s Scotch title—the Duke of Albany.
Unable to quarter all his English soldiers within the fort, Nicolls sought to billet them in private homes, offering to pay householders for their food. However, some enlisted men and officers behaved so badly that they were turned out of respectable houses. Irate citizens finally agreed to pay an assessment for feeding and lodging the soldiers elsewhere, rather than shelter them in private homes. This change pleased the people, but not the soldiers themselves. In a letter to the Duke of York the governor complained that “not one soldier to this day since I brought them out of England has been in a pair of sheets, or upon any sort of bed but canvas and straw.”
At first Nicolls let the conquered people retain their Dutch form of municipal government. When the burgomasters and schepens completed their terms of office on February 2, 1665, they named their successors, as before. This happened just twelve years to the day that Stuyvesant had granted them their limited powers. The new officials were promptly confirmed by Nicolls and announced by the usual ringing of a bell. Three of the eight men were Huguenots.
However, the Duke of York ordered Nicolls to alter the city government tc conform to the customs of England. Accordingly, on June 12, 1665, he issued this proclamation: “I, Richard Nicolls, do ordain that all the inhabitants of New York, New Harlem and the Island of Manhattan are one body politic under the government of a Mayor, Aldermen, and Sheriff, and I do appoint for one whole year, commencing from the date hereof and ending the 12th day of June, 1666, Mr Thomas Willett to be Mayor. . . .”
Thus did Thomas Willett—by appointment, not election—become the first mayor of New York City. Born in England, he emigrated in 1629 to Plymouth, Massachusetts. Willett began trading operations between New England and New Amsterdam, profited mightily, bought real estate here, and became a permanent resident. Despite his Puritanical heritage and pinched features, he roistered with the easygoing Dutch. Nicolls selected Willett for office because of his popularity. However, the new mayor enjoyed more dignity than power, the governor retaining for himself and his council the right to impose taxes and make laws. Nicolls and the council also functioned as a court of assizes, the supreme tribunal of the province.
Besides changing New York City’s form of government, Nicolls sought to bring into line the nearby towns of the colony. At Hempstead, Long Island, he convened a meeting of thirty-four deputies from seventeen communities on Long Island and in Westchester County. With the help of his secretary, Matthias Nicolls (no relation), the governor had been studying various laws of the New England colonies. Using these as guides, he had drawn up a code of laws to govern his own territory.
When he explained his conclusions, the delegates were shocked. Unlike the New England laws, the code did not grant self-government to the people or give them a voice in levying taxes. A ten-day debate ensued. Nicolls shrewdly accepted a few minor changes but insisted that he alone would appoint all civil officials. If the delegates wanted a larger share in government, they would have to appeal to King Charles. Because they were powerless at the moment, they adopted this civil and criminal code, known as the Duke’s Laws.
One provision stipulated that death would be the penalty for denying the true God, for murder, treason, kidnapping, and striking one’s parents, and for some other offenses. But—significantly—witchcraft was not listed under capital offenses because it was not recognized as a crime. However, when so-called witchcraft was alleged to result in murder, the charge became murder.
Nicolls’ comparative enlightenment saved New York from the witchcraft delusions and persecutions that blotched the reputation of New England. The Dutch themselves cherished their long tradition of tolerance. Although some witchcraft trials had been held in the Netherlands, the last of record had taken place in 1610—long before the Dutch had settled New Amsterdam. Throughout the witch-hunting seventeenth century New York remained free of the madness except for two minor cases.
The first came to trial on October 2, 1665. Ralph Hall and his wife, Mary, were brought by the sheriff to the court of assizes in New York City. The Halls lived on an island, now known as City Island, in Long Island Sound, just off the eastern shore of the Bronx. The husband and wife were accused of murdering George Wood and his baby by the use of witchcraft. Both pleaded not guilty, and a jury decided: “We find that there are some suspicions by the evidence of what the woman is charged with, but nothing considerable of value to take away her life. But in reference to the man, we find nothing considerable to charge him with.” The court ruled that Ralph Hall should be held responsible for his wife’s appearance at the next session of court and every other session so long as the Halls remained within the province. Then they were released. On August 21, 1668, before Governor Nicolls left for England, he released the Halls from all “bonds of appearance or other obligations . . . there having been no direct proofs nor further prosecution of them or either of them since.”
Two years later some Westchester residents demanded that a rich widow, named Katherine Harrison, be sent back to her hometown of Wethersfield, Connecticut. It was stated that “contrary to the consent and good liking of the town, she would settle amongst them, and she being reputed to be a person lying under the suspicion of witchcraft, hath given some cause of apprehension to the inhabitants there.” Like the Halls, she was tried in New York and set free.
In 1665 the British declared war on the Dutch, thus launching the Second Anglo-Dutch War. France supported the Dutch in a desultory fashion. Plague and fire wracked London, adding to the general woes of Englishmen.
New Yorkers became innocent victims of this war, which was caused by rivalry in commerce and fishing. Neither King Charles II of England nor the Duke of York could render any real assistance to the newly taken province. The Dutch held the upper hand at sea, and vessels owned by New Yorkers were seized by Dutch privateers almost in sight of the harbor. Abundant nature provided many of the colonists’ wants, but the shipping crisis prevented them from exchanging raw materials for finished goods from the Old World. They were unable to get badly needed Indian goods—blankets, woolens, guns, powder, and lead, which had always been traded to the Indians for furs.
Nicolls wrote the Duke of York to urge that British merchant ships be sent to New York, where commerce languished. Necessities of all kinds grew scarce. Unable to make the province turn a profit, the governor could raise money only by borrowing. He realized that New York, with its gigantic harbor, was fated to become the chief port of the American continent. But lacking a helping hand from across the sea, he could not transform this potential into reality. Forced to pay his British troops himself, Nicolls ran through his private fortune. Finally, he became so oppressed by money troubles that he wrote both the king and the duke begging to be relieved of his command.
The Stuarts were slow to reply. Before releasing this able man, they wanted to make sure that they wouldn’t lose New York. On July 21, 1667, the Peace of Breda ended the Second Anglo-Dutch War, and news of the treaty reached here on the same ship bearing the recall of the weary governor. The settlement was generally favorable to the Dutch, but they made a historic error of judgment. They let the British keep the colony of New York, while they retained Surinam, also known as Dutch Guiana. The tiny enclave on the northeastern shore of South America counts for little today, compared with the power, wealth, and prestige of New York.
Nicolls’ replacement was Colonel Francis Lovelace. Handsome and gracious and a polished man of the world, Lovelace was also narrow-minded and greedy. Perhaps his fanatical devotion to the Stuarts blinded them to his flaws. In their behalf he had endured imprisonment in the Tower of London under Cromwell. For this and services rendered, he was knighted.
When Lovelace landed in New York in the spring of 1668, he was nearly forty years old. Accompanying him were his two younger brothers, Dudley and Thomas, who hoped to line their pockets at the expense of the colonists. Nicolls broke in his successor, taking Lovelace on trips throughout the province to acquaint him with its problems. Lovelace was smart enough not to make any premature changes in the form of government that Nicolls had established. His regime, like that of his predecessor, was autocratic, but not oppressive.
Most New Yorkers were sorry to see Nicolls leave. Even those who had chafed under some of his orders had come to love the man. He had arrived as a conqueror, but he left as a friend. An impressive dinner was given for him in the square stone house owned by Mayor Cornelius Steenwyck on the corner of Whitehall and Bridge streets. The guests marveled at the mayor’s marble tables, velvet chairs trimmed with silver lace, Russian leather chairs, French nutwood bookcases, alabaster statues, tall clock, muslin curtains in the parlor and flowered tabby curtains in the drawing room, and oil paintings by old Antwerp masters. A few days later, on August 28, 1668, Nicolls was led to his ship by the largest procession yet seen in Manhattan.
During Nicolls’ four-year rule the population had remained about at a standstill. When Lovelace took over, the city contained about 1,500 inhabitants and 380 houses. The entire colony of New York held no more than 6,000 persons, compared with the 40,000 colonists in New England. However, New York City was not a crude frontier town. Indeed, Lovelace wrote the king: “I find some of these people have the breeding of courts, and I cannot conceive how such is acquired.” No printing press existed here, the only one in America being located at Cambridge, Massachusetts. Yet three Dutch girls, using books imported from Europe, became fine Latin scholars.
With England and Holland at peace, New York began to prosper. Several Bostonians moved here and invested in real estate, one of them buying five houses on Broadway. All kinds of business increased. Nine or ten vessels could be seen in the harbor at the same time. Huge quantities of wheat were shipped to Boston. A clatter and bang rose from New York’s reactivated shipyards. A rich fishing bank was discovered near Sandy Hook. Oil-yielding whales were taken off the eastern tip of Long Island and even in New York Harbor.
Clothmaking was widespread here as early as 1670. This we know from an eager-eyed Englishman, named Daniel Denton, who visited New York about then. After getting home, he wrote a book, called A Brief Description of New York, Formerly Called New Netherland, With the Places Thereunto Adjoyning. Published in London in 1670, it was the first printed description of the city in the English language.
Denton noted that the tobacco grown here was as good as that cultivated in Maryland. Smoking was as important to the Dutch as to the English. One day, Denton said, two New York Dutchmen raced each other on horseback, each rider clenching a short pipe between his teeth. One horse stumbled and pitched its rider onto the ground. The man wasn’t hurt. The pipe still in his mouth, he pulled himself into a sitting position. He continued to puff furiously and enjoyably, paying no attention to the fact that his horse was running away.
During Governor Lovelace’s administration much real estate changed hands. For the final time Staten Island was acquired from the Indians. On April 9, 1670, Lovelace bought it in the name of the Duke of York. Although land prices had risen, he got the island at bargain rates—some wampum, coats, kettles, gunpowder, lead, guns, axes, hoes, and knives. Surveyors sent from England laid out lots and declared the island the “richest land in America.”
About the same time a man named Isaac Bedloe made improvements on a small island he had obtained by patent from Governor Nicolls. Today this is called Liberty Island because the Statue of Liberty stands on it. The colonists then named it Great Oyster Island, to distinguish it from Oyster Island (now Ellis Island). But Governor Lovelace proclaimed that Bedloe’s property should be known as Love Island, and he designated it as “a Priviledged place Where no warrant of Attachment or arreast shall be of force or be served unlesse it be by ye peace of Criminall Matters.”
An island in the East River, just off mid-Manhattan, a place known today as Welfare Island, was bought by a British officer, Captain John Manning. Ferries began operating across the Harlem River to the north of Manhattan and across the Hudson River between New York and New Jersey. Some Barbados merchants, named Morris, bought the Bronck estate and gave this part of the Bronx its present name of Morrisania. University Heights in the west Bronx perches on the site of the old manor of Fordham, which Lovelace granted to a conniving Dutchman, named Jan Arcer. This real estate promoter was so clever at seizing land from the Indians that his neighbors dubbed him Koopall, or Buy-All.
In the early months of Lovelace’s regime the city suffered a severe epidemic, the first of record but by no means the last. Its victims burned with fever and swelled into grotesque shapes. The governor set aside a day of prayer and atonement for the swearing, drunkenness, and impiety that he believed responsible for this disease.
No bluenose himself, Lovelace persuaded some Dutch, English, and French families to form a little club to promote sociability. The members were fluent in all three languages. They met in one another’s homes from 6 to 9 P.M., twice a week in winter and weekly in summer. From silver tankards they drank punch made from Madeira wine, rum, and brandy—not diluted, as in England, but straight.
Lovelace continued Nicolls’ policy of religious toleration. He helped the Dutch Reformed Church get a good minister from Holland and gave this divine a generous salary, a rent-free house, and free firewood. In 1671 the Lutherans established their first church here. The same year the Quakers, who had huddled under trees during Stuyvesant’s regime, held their first meeting under the roof of an inn. In 1672 these Quakers were visited by the founder of their sect, the Englishman George Fox, then making a missionary trip to America.
The first commercial exchange was started by Lovelace when he ordered merchants and “other artificers” to meet every Friday between 11 A.M. and noon near the bridge over the canal. This was at Exchange Place and Broad Street.
Lovelace also began the first postal service in America. Because events in Europe influenced affairs in New York, the governor decided that news from abroad must be received as quickly as possible. Because Boston lies nearer to Europe than this city does, Lovelace laid out the first mail route between these two communities. For the first postman he chose a fat but hardy horseman, named John Archer. On January 22, 1673, Archer leaped onto his horse just outside Fort James at the tip of Manhattan. He rode north up Broadway to the present City Hall Park, angled northeast to the Bowery, and headed north to Harlem. The people there watched excitedly as Archer strode into a tavern for a draught of the famous Harlem beer. Then, flicking foam from his lips, Archer sprang back into the saddle and crossed the Bronx River on a bridge erected by Lovelace. Marking his trail-blazing route with slashes on tree trunks and using boats to cross other rivers and inlets, the courier wound his way through Connecticut, into Massachusetts, and on to Boston. Archer’s ride was the origin of the famous Old Post Road, or Boston Post Road.
At first this service ran only once a month, and few letters were exchanged. Then, as New Yorkers became accustomed to it, they deposited ever more dispatches in a locked box in the colonial secretary’s City Hall office. Whenever Archer returned from Boston, he headed for a coffeehouse. People flocked there to watch with delight as he dumped the contents of his mail pouch on a broad table.
The Dutch government had let Peter Stuyvesant leave Holland and return to New York. In February, 1672, the grizzled former governor died on his Bowery estate, now fronting the Boston Post Road. His body was interred in a vault in a chapel a few steps from his house. Almost immediately, family servants whispered that they saw his ghost prowling about the farm. Later, when streets were cut through this part of the city, neighbors vowed that a tap-tap-tapping, as if from his peg leg, emanated from his tomb.
One month after Stuyvesant’s death the Third Anglo-Dutch War erupted in Europe. Like previous Continental wars, it affected New York City.
King Louis XIV of France wanted to extend his empire, destroy Dutch trade rivalry, and crush Holland for sheltering political writers who criticized him. To achieve all this, the French monarch sought help from his cousin, Charles II of England. By promising to give Charles more French mistresses, enough money to dispense with Parliaments, and 200,000 pounds a year as long as the war lasted, Louis secretly won the English king’s consent to join his attack on the Dutch and all their possessions.
In March, 1672, British ships swooped down on Dutch vessels in the Mediterranean, and French soldiers invaded the Netherlands. In partial retaliation the Dutch outfitted an expedition in Holland to recapture New Netherland. This was done secretly. Commanders of the new Dutch fleet were given a code, the figure 163 standing for New York. Finally, 19 men-of-war, carrying full crews and 1,600 soldiers, left Holland for the New World.
Only now did the British publicly declare war on the Dutch. A copy of Charles’ formal declaration was sent to New York, and Governor Lovelace had it read aloud in front of the fort and City Hall. In a covering message the king warned the governor to place the city in a posture of defense. Lovelace set men to work repairing the fort. He recalled British soldiers from Albany, Kingston, and Delaware. Even so, he was able to raise only 330 fighting men.
Several ships owned by New York merchants were captured in European waters. After that, all eastbound vessels sailed in convoys for mutual protection. Navigation was restricted on the Hudson River, and New York’s commerce fell off so steeply that local merchants found themselves on the verge of bankruptcy.
Time passed. No menacing Dutch fleet appeared. Lovelace relaxed and failed to complete repairs on the fort. He took a short trip to the Bronx to settle a question about the new postal route. There, from a swift-riding messenger, he received word that a Dutch armada had been sighted off Sandy Hook. The governor hurried back to the city, but unable to confirm this report, he decided it was a false alarm. And since Indians threatened British towns elsewhere in the colony, Lovelace foolishly ordered many of his soldiers back to their outposts. This left only eighty warriors in Fort James. Then the governor left town again, this time for New England to straighten out still other postal problems. He placed the city in the hands of the sheriff, Captain John Manning.
A second dispatch rider caught up with Lovelace at Hartford and reported that a Dutch fleet had anchored in the Narrows just below New York City. This time the news was true.
Since Governor Lovelace could not get back in time to take charge, responsibility fell on Captain Manning. However, the fort wasn’t finished, only a handful of soldiers was available, and the townspeople were divided among themselves. Englishmen burned with indignation at the thought that they might fall into the hands of the enemy, while Dutchmen welcomed what they regarded as a liberation force. Some local Dutchmen rowed out to the Dutch ships to reveal the fort’s weaknesses; others spiked the guns set up in front of City Hall.
Under a flag of truce two Dutch admirals sent an officer to Captain Manning with the demand that he surrender. “We have come to take the place which is our own,” they said, “and our own we will have.” Manning tried to stall until Governor Lovelace could return to the city. But after an exchange of several notes the Dutch ships edged closer to Manhattan. This brought them within range of the fort. Now the admirals gave Manning only half an hour to make up his mind. There was a nervous upending of hourglasses in the fort and aboard the ships. The period of grace was extended. At last the impatient Dutch fired broadside into the fort. The defenders fired back, but to no avail. After perhaps 700 shots had been traded, several English soldiers being killed and wounded, 600 Dutch soldiers landed on the shore of the Hudson River just behind the site of the present Trinity Church and deployed south toward the fort.
New York City surrendered to the Dutch on August 9, 1673. Once again the tricolored flag of the Dutch republic waved over the fort.
In Holland, meantime, the startling successes of the French invaders led to a revolt among the Dutch people. Fortunately, they found a leader in young William, the third Prince of Orange, making him their stadholder (chief executive officer), their captain general, and their admiral for life. William’s mother was the daughter of Charles I of England; thus, William was a nephew of the Duke of York, whose American colony had just been recaptured by the Dutch.
New York City was renamed New Orange in honor of William of Orange. Administration of the city and province was not returned to the heartless Dutch West India Company but was assumed by the Dutch government itself. A Dutch captain, named Anthony Colve, was made governor-general of the province, which once again became New Netherland.
When Lovelace got back to the city, he found that he not only had lost his title and power but was also in financial trouble. A speculator, Lovelace had bought much real estate in and around town without always paying cash. Now creditors fell on him, and he was arrested for debt. At first the Dutch authorities said that he could leave within six weeks after he had paid everything he owned. When he was unable to make restitution, though, they let him sail sooner. For losing the province with its three cities and thirty villages, Lovelace was severely reprimanded by Charles II and the Duke of York, and all his large British estates were confiscated.
John Lawrence was mayor of New York when the Dutch retook the city. Thomas Willett, the first mayor, had served two divided terms, the first in 1665 and the second in 1667. The Dutch seized all of Willett’s New York property, so he moved to Rhode Island, where he helped found the town of Swansey. He died in 1674, and the remains of New York’s first mayor lie today in Rhode Island soil.
The government and the people of Holland were eager to end the Third Anglo-Dutch War. At the very least they hoped to stop British attacks so that they could turn their full military might against the French invaders. Weary of the carnage in their homeland, they were willing to sacrifice their overseas colony of New Netherland. In December, 1673, the Dutch government informed the English king that it wanted to negotiate peace, offering him New Netherland as bait.
The Treaty of Westminster, signed in February, 1674, ended hostilities between England and Holland. Under its terms the Dutch agreed to restore New Netherland and the city of New Orange to the English.
First word of the treaty was brought here by two men from Connecticut, and as a reward for bearing bad news, they were cast into dungeons. New York Dutchmen gathered on street corners to denounce the States General and the Prince of Orange. One angry citizen shrilled that the Dutch would oppose submission to the English “so long as they could stand with one leg and fight with one hand.”
Despite this uproar and despite his own dejection, Governor Colve received orders from the Dutch government to transfer the city to the proper English representatives. King Charles II gave the Duke of York a new patent to his former colony of New York. The duke appointed Major Edmund Andros his new governor. On November 1, Andros arrived here aboard a frigate. Governor Colve asked for a few days in which to complete plans for the transfer of power.
The last entry in the court records of New Orange, the last statement ever written by a Dutch official in this city, reads as follows: “On the 10th November, Anno 1674, the Province of New Netherland is surrendered by Governor Colve to Governor Major Edmund Andros in behalf of His Majesty of Great Britain.”
For fifteen months the city had been called New Orange. Now, for the final time, it was given the name New York City.