Page:Historic towns of the middle states (IA historictownsofm02powe).pdf/378

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stock. But the King was shortly to be busied in the wars of Germany, and when he died at his great victory of Lützen, the plans of Usseliux were yet unexecuted. One biographer of Gustavus, indeed, says that the little fleet intended for America was seized by the Spaniards, but it is by no means certain that such a fleet ever set sail.

Queen Christina, the daughter of Gustavus, permitted her able chancellor, Oxenstiern, to revive the charter of Usselinx, and Oxenstiern employed to take out a Swedish colony to the Delaware probably the fittest man in all the world for that task, Peter Minuet, sometime Governor of New Netherlands, driven from his post by the jealous factors that they might put in his place the more pliant Walter Van Twiller, surnamed the Doubter. The exact date of Minuet's expedition is unknown, but Kieft, who succeeded Van Twiller in the Governorship of New Netherlands, made protest in May, 1638, against the presence upon the Delaware of Peter Minuet, "who stylest thyself commander in the service of her Majesty the Queen of Sweden." Kieft warned Peter "that the whole South River [the Delaware] of the New Netherlands, both the upper