The States-General gladly complied with the wishes of the Company, and on the 11th of October, 1614, a charter was given them, duly signed and sealed, by which the petitioners were granted the usual privileges of the ordinance. The territory included in the charter, and which was defined as lying between Virginia and New France--between the parallels of 40 deg and 45 deg--was called NEW NETHERLAND. At the expiration of the charter at the beginning of 1618, the Amsterdam Company applied for its renewal. The privilege was denied, because the States-General contemplated the issuing of a more comprehensive and lasting patent to a West India Company.
| Hollanders were so remote from the Jamestown settlement, and all New England being a wilderness untrodden by any European resident, that they were not disturbed. The Plymouth Company complained that they were intruders on their domain; and King James growled; and a word of warning was given by Captain Dermer of an English ship which, one fine morning in June, 1619, while on its way to Virginia, sailed through Long Island Sound, and lost an anchor in its encounter with the eddies of Hell Gate. That commander thought he was the first discoverer of that "most dangerous cataract" and the flowery islands between which he sailed, but when he was fairly out upon the Bay of New York, he saw the smoke of cottages on Manhattan, and was saluted by Hollanders. That charter was granted on the 3d of June, 1621, at the time when the stricken Pilgrims at Plymouth, on the coast of Massachusetts, were cultivating their first fruitgardens and cornfields. The government of the West India Company was vested in five separate chambers of managers, composed of members in different parts of Holland. |  |