The bloodless seizure of New Amsterdam in 1664 by the English, cunningly plotted by George, Lord Downing and Charles II’s brother, the Duke of York, led to a copious spillage of blood a year later, with the outbreak of the Second Anglo-Dutch War. It was during that conflict that the Dutch carried out their daring nighttime raid on the English fleet in the Medway, burning, among other ships, the Royal Charles, which had brought Charles II home to England after his exile (with Pepys aboard). That and other disasters on the English side brought Charles II’s reputation low and weakened his rule. Downing, who had avidly fomented war with Holland, prospered. Land once his, on which he built and sold houses shoddily made on the cheap, still bears his name as the residence, since 1735, of British prime ministers—Number 10 Downing Street. The official Number Ten website acknowledges that Downing was “miserly and at times brutal.”
In 1672, during the third war between England and Holland, Richard Nicholls, who took New Amsterdam without a shot fired, and Edward Montagu, First Earl of Sandwich, were both killed at the Battle of Solebay.
Barbara Palmer, Countess Castlemaine, principal mistress to King Charles II, bore him five illegitimate children. Seldom has the title “Lady of the Bedchamber” been more faithfully undertaken. Her descendants include Diana Spencer, erstwhile Princess of Wales; Sarah Ferguson, erstwhile Duchess of York; Mitford sisters Nancy, Pamela, Diana, Unity, Jessica, and Deborah; philosopher Bertrand Russell; and British prime minister Anthony Eden.I Many hated her. Pepys adored her.
The land Dr. Thomas Pell bought from Wampage, chief of the Siwanoy, is now Pelham, Pelham Manor, the eastern Bronx, and southern Westchester County. Pell died in 1669. His descendants include the U.S. senator from Rhode Island, Claiborne Pell.
Thirty years after cofounding the Colony of New Haven, the Reverend John Davenport found himself defeated—politically by the absorption of New Haven into the Connecticut Colony, and spiritually by the rise of Arminianism (the Dutch theology that rejected original sin and predestination). He returned to Boston and became pastor of the First Church there, dying of apoplexy on March 15, 1670, age seventy-two. His descendants include Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox and Maxwell Perkins, the legendary editor of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Thomas Wolfe. Yale University’s Davenport College bears his name.
Captain John Underhill, warrior and Indian fighter, died in the Quaker faith on his farm at Oyster Bay in 1672. The plot of land he owned when he lived in New Amsterdam is the site of Trinity Church in lower Manhattan. His sister-in-law played an important role in the Flushing Remonstrance of 1657, which resulted in the Dutch West India Company granting rights to Quakers. The Remonstrance went on to influence the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights, establishing freedom of speech.
Following the British seizure of New Netherland, Peter Stuyvesant was recalled to Amsterdam in disgrace and blamed for the loss, by his neglectful and indifferent employers at the West India Company. He eventually returned to Manhatoes and lived out his life in tranquility at Bouwerie Number One. He died in 1672. Russell Shorto notes that his tombstone in St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery “manages to get both his age and his title wrong.” His descendants include former New York governor, U.S. senator, and U.S. secretary of state Hamilton Fish; writer Loudon Wainwright Jr., under whom the present author studied journalism at college; and singer-songwriter Loudon Wainwright III.
John Winthrop (the Younger), Governor of the Connecticut Colony, was a man of abundant scientific curiosity. In England, he gazed at the heavens with Charles II through his majesty’s “royal tube.” Winthrop owned a three-and-a-half-foot telescope in Hartford. In 1664, the year of events related here, he observed a fifth moon of Jupiter. In 1892, the Lick Observatory in California confirmed its existence. Winthrop died of a severe cold in Boston in 1692. His direct descendants include former senator and secretary of state John F. Kerry.
Neither Edward Whalley nor his son-in-law William Goffe was ever apprehended. An incident during the conflict known as King Philip’s War gave rise to the so-called legend of the Angel of Hadley. On Sunday, September 1, 1675, the Massachusetts town of Hadley came under Indian attack. The settlers, at pains to get themselves organized, were surprised by an aged man with white hair and military bearing, who appeared suddenly and rallied them to repel the attack. The old man, whom no one had seen before, disappeared and was never seen again. According to the legend, this was Goffe, who had been hiding for many years in the local pastor’s house. Seeing the Indians approaching, the old soldier sprang into action. The episode furnished inspiration to Sir Walter Scott, James Fenimore Cooper, and Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Samuel Pepys was eyewitness to the execution of Charles I, the Restoration, the execution of the first of the men who condemned Charles I to death, the Great Plague and the Great Fire of London. (It was Pepys who informed the king and his brother, James, Duke of York, that the city was on fire.) He rose to be secretary of the admiralty. His career ended in 1688 after the Glorious Revolution deposed the Catholic James II who, as Duke of York and Lord High Admiral, had successfully schemed to seize New Amsterdam. Pepys died on May 26, 1703. Despite their stormy marriage, his myriad infidelities, and the importunings of his brother-in-law Balty, he remained devoted to Elizabeth. She died in 1669, leaving him grief-stricken. He never remarried. The six volumes of his diary, which he kept in his own shorthand, were deciphered and published in 1825. Pepys is considered by many to be the greatest diarist in the English language.
Balthasar de St. Michel came to his brother-in-law’s defense in 1673 when Pepys was maliciously (and falsely) accused by his political enemies of “popery.” He wrote a letter for the record, staunchly (and falsely) asserting his sister’s Protestant bona fides. An elusive figure, Balty disappears from history as casually as he enters it.
The curious “glacial erratic” boulder atop West Rock Ridge State Park in New Haven, Connecticut, is known as Judges Cave. Here, in 1661 (and perhaps again in 1664), two of the men who signed the death warrant of King Charles I hid from their pursuers. Their first stay ended when they were surprised by the growl of a catamount and decided to seek refuge elsewhere. A plaque noting what took place here ends with a paraphrase of Benjamin Franklin’s design for the Great Seal of the United States: “Opposition to tyrants is obedience to God.”
I. Per an unsourced entry in Wikipedia.