1655-74] Settlement of New Jersey. 41 which established a colony of its own there by the name of New Amstel. When Nicolls had completed his conquest of New Amsterdam he detached Robert Carr, one of his subordinates, to reduce the settlement on the Delaware. Carr's severity to the twice-conquered Swedes was the one exception to the humanity and moderation shown by the English. In 1673 England and Holland were again at war. Nicolls' successor, Francis Lovelace, in careless confidence, took no measures for securing the colony. When a Dutch fleet of twenty-three ships with sixteen hundred men on board appeared before New York resistance was manifestly useless. Albany and the settlements on the right bank of the Hudson and the outlying province on the Delaware all yielded. Only the towns of English descent on Long Island, supported by Connecticut, held out. The Dutch reoccupation did not last out a whole year. In accordance with the Treaty of Westminster (1674) the whole of the reconquered territory was restored to England. Nothing could show more strongly the lack of any vigorous sense of nationality than the passivity with which the Dutch settlers suffered themselves to be handed backwards and forwards without protest or expression of interest. The Duke of York had already shown a conspicuous lack of intelligence in his dealing with the soil of his new province. Before the result of Nicolls' expedition was known, before indeed he had reached America, James granted to Sir George Carteret and Lord Berkeley the whole territory from the Hudson to the Delaware (1664). The effect of this was to cut the Duke's province into two detached portions, and to isolate New Amstel from the seat of government. Nicolls remonstrated, but it was too late. Carteret at once proceeded to act on his grant by sending out his kinsman Philip Carteret to act as governor of the newly-formed province, and also by drafting a constitution vesting the government in a governor or council and an elective chamber. New Jersey, as the colony was called, was settled after a fashion previously unknown elsewhere. The Proprietors did little towards supplying their settlement with inhabitants. A scattered population of small farmers, mostly Swedes and Finns, was already on the soil ; but the Proprietors also looked to drawing inhabitants from New England. In this fortune favoured them, since most of those inhabitants of New Haven, whom we have already mentioned as escaping incorporation with Connecticut by flight, took refuge on the south banks of the Hudson. The re-conquest of New York in 1673 annihilated the Duke's first patent and made a fresh grant from the Crown necessary. The Duke might have taken advantage of this to resume his grant to Carteret and Berkeley, compensating them, as Nicolls suggested, by a grant of land on the Delaware, which would have left New York a compact and continuous territory occupying both banks of the Hudson to the sea. The opportunity was, however, neglected ; and Carteret was reinstated with full proprietary rights. CH. I.
