Page:History of Hudson County and of the Old Village of Bergen.djvu/35

Rh Andriese, Samuel Edsall and Dirk Claesen went to the Fort on behalf of the hamlets and demanded that the Schout and Schepens be ordered once and for all to "leave the petitioners undisturbed about the fence." In the end the Council evidently got impatient, for it issued a decree ordering the hamlets to attend to both the fence and the quota, and to do it at once. The records do not show if they did. Knowing the fine, upstanding firmness of the race, it may be that the cows and the Precentor and the Schoolmaster passed away from old age with the matter still unsettled.

Petrus Stuyvesant soon had more serious things to consider than appeals from decisions of Schout and Schepens. In 1664, Charles II of England in his large, generous way granted his brother, the Duke of York, a royal charter for the "whole region from the west bank of the Connecticut River to the east shore of the Delaware." The Duke, without pausing for the trivial details of proving title, promptly conveyed to Lord Berkeley and Sir George Carteret all the territory that now is New Jersey. The early voyages of the Cabots were the foundation of the English claim. The small fact that these voyages were made in 1498 was not permitted to disturb the legal mind.

Colonel Richard Nichols with three ships of 130 guns and with 600 men appeared before New Amsterdam. Everybody knows how brave old Petrus wanted to blow up the fort and all within it rather than to surrender, and how the burgers declined to go to a glorious death.

The English took the place and immediately renamed it New York. It seems to have been the most important change