Page:Augustine Herrman, beginner of the Virginia tobacco trade, merchant of New Amsterdam and first lord of Bohemia manor in Maryland (1941).djvu/47

 him by the Director General of New Netherland on the grounds that the ship had been taken long after the publication of the treaty of peace between the two countries. There is no record of Herrman’s privateers making depredations on English vessels even during the period of the years of actual hostilities between Holland and England, 1651–1664. There is reason to believe, on the other hand, that he gave express orders to the captains of his privateers not to molest English shipping, because he certainly could have captured vessels of that nation between the years 1651 to 1664 and yet been wholly within the law. Moreover, at this time he particularly courted popularity with the southern planters and during this period made trips to Virginia and Maryland. It may have been that on one of the occasions that he was making a visit with his kinspeople, the Hacks, on their estate in Northampton County, Virginia, that he met some of the leading families of the county, such as the Scarboroughs, Custises and Spencers, all of whom took leading parts in the governmental affairs of the colony. Charmed with the delightful social life of the southern colonies, particularly with the atmosphere of ease and elegance that probably reminded him of his early boyhood days in his native city, Prague, he determined to make preparations to leave New Amsterdam and settle among the English.

We must now turn our attention to that unfortunate period in the career of Augustine Herrman’s mercantile life, namely his quarrel with Peter Stuyvesant, although we shall leave the political aspect of the controversy for a later chapter. For the beginning of the feud was essentially of a political nature, though it is not improbable that the headstrong old governor resented seeing Herrman, who was not really a Dutchman, prosper so amazingly and amass so much wealth. Herrman, as