Conquest of New Netherland

A 1664 illustration of New Netherland

In March 1664, Charles granted American territory between the Delaware and Connecticut rivers to James. On May 25, 1664 Colonel Richard Nicolls set out from Portsmouth with four warships and about three hundred soldiers. They arrived at Gravesend Bay on Long Island on August 27 and enlisted the support of militias from the English towns there as they moved west to Breuckelen.[6] Having arrived at Fort Amsterdam on Manhattan Island, Nichols sent director-general Peter Stuyvesant a letter offering lenient terms of surrender. James authorized generous terms because he preferred the profits of an intact colony to the spoils of a ruined one.[7] Despite Fort Amsterdam's limited supply of gunpowder, Stuyvesant was inclined to resist. On September 4, the English ships began to maneuver closer to the fort. Stuyvesant was confronted by ninety-three burghers and his own son, and conceded.[8]

A group of prominent merchants then met at Stuyvesant Farm with Nicholls' officers to draft Articles of Capitulation.[8] The Dutch colonists were guaranteed in the possession of their property rights, their laws of inheritance, and the enjoyment of religious freedom. Article 2 specified that all "publick houses" would remain open.[6] The Articles were signed on September 6, 1664 onboard ship by Johannes de Decker, Stuyvesant's lawyer and chief negotiator. The following day being Sunday the transfer did not take place until September 8 when the Dutch forces marched down Beaver Street and embarked on board the Gideon bound for Holland, and Nicolls assumed the position of deputy-governor.

On September 10, Johannes de Decker sailed north to Fort Orange to warn them the English were coming and to rally opposition. Nicholls sent troops to demand the fort's peaceful surrender. Realizing that control of the mouth of the river, controlled the settlement's future, on September 24, 1664 that vice-director of New Netherland Johannes de Montagne surrendered the fort to the English, and Colonel George Cartwright took command. The next day, Captain John Manning was given charge of the fort, which was renamed Fort Albany, after the Duke of York's title in the Peerage of Scotland. While he was there, Cartwright renewed the Dutch treaty with the Iroquois.

On his way back down river, Cartwright landed at Esopus and the settlement surrendered without resistance. Cartwright took the same precautions as at Albany to conciliate the residents and left the local Dutch officials to continue in power. A garrison of regular soldiers was placed in charge of the fort under the command of Captain Daniel Brodhead of the grenadiers.[9] Brodhead and his wife settled in the area; his grandson, Daniel Brodhead II, founded Dansbury, Pennsylvania.

Around the same time that Nicholls sent Cartwright north to Fort Orange, he dispatched Sir Robert Carr, a relative of the Earl of Arlington, south to the territory the Dutch had previously seized from Sweden. The English took Fort Altena peacefully. Alexander D’Hinoyossa director of New Amstel retreated with some followers to Fort Casimir. Carr fired two broadsides into the fort, then took it by storm. His soldiers then pillaged the surrounding settlements,[10] even though the residents had made no resistance. He seized property, harvests, some 200 sheep, horses, and cows, destroyed a brewery, and a sawmill. He then proceeded further south and plundered Pieter Corneliszoon Plockhoy's Mennonite settlement near present day Lewes, Delaware.