1635.]

DIVISION OF THE COMPANY'S LANDS.

337

country about the sea-coast as might be sufficient to our own uses, and such of our private friends as had affections to works of that nature.” 1 This was done in 1635, and the lands of the Company, lying between the forty-eighth and thirty-sixth degree of latitude, were parcelled out among its members.2

3

Gorges.

This new division confirmed the right of Gorges to the tract lying between the Piscataqua and the Kennebec, with a sea-coast The terriof sixty miles, and an extent of one hundred and twenty tory of miles inland. And now for the first time, he called this his province of Maine, and he drew up for it a code of laws, dividing the land first into counties, subdividing these into hundreds, and again. into parishes or tithings, as fast as population flowed in to fill up the vacant places. He offered also to transport planters to his domain, promising to assign them a certain portion of land at the low rate of two or three shillings for a hundred acres, and if any would found a town or city, he would endow it with such liberties and immunties as they would have in England. Others of poorer condition, who would go as laborers, should have as much land as they could till, at the rent of four or six pence an acre, according to the situation.

The laws and government were a return to Saxon simplicity, the lord proprietary retaining ownership of the soil. In 1637, the king gave Gorges a commission as governor of New England, to compensate him for his strenuous efforts in colonization, and the many losses he had suffered in these endeavors. He made preparations to go to Maine, to assume the duties of this office, and see a country in which he had so great an interest, but some accident prevented his departure, and he never came to America. Three years later, he sent

1 Gorges's "Brief Narration," Maine Hist. Coll., vol. ii, part 2, pp. 5, 7.

2 The divisions were: (1.) Between the St. Croix and Pemaquid, to William Alexander. (2.) From Pemaquid to Sagadahoc, in part to the Marquis of Hamilton. (3.) Between the Kennebec and Androscoggin; and (4.) From Sagadahoc to Piscataqua, to Sir F. Gorges. (5.) From Piscataqua to the Naumkeag, to Mason. (6.) From the Naumkeag round the sea-coast, by Cape Cod to Narragansett, to the Marquis of Hamilton. (7.) From Narragansett to the half-way bound, between that and the Connecticut River, and fifty miles up into the country, to Lord Edward Gorges. (8.) From this midway point to the Connecticut River, to Earl of Carlisle. (9 and 10.) From the Connecticut to the Hudson, to Duke of Lennox. (11 and 12.) From the Hudson to the limits of the Plymouth Company's territory, to Lord Mulgrave. — See Hubbard's Hist. N. E., Mass. Hist. Coll., Series 2, vol. v., p. 228. Williamson's Hist. Maine, vol. i., p. 256. Gorges's "Brief Narration,” Maine Hist. Coll., vol. ii., p. 54.

3 Sullivan in Hist. of Maine, and others, say that the territory was called the Province of Maine, in compliment to Queen Henrietta, who had that province in France for dowry. But Folsom, " Discourse on Maine," Maine Hist. Coll., vol. ii., p. 38, says that that province in France did not belong to Henrietta. Maine, like all the rest of the coast, was known as the "Maine," the mainland, and it is not unlikely that the word so much used by the early fishers on the coast, may thus have been permanently given to this part of it.

over his kinsman Thomas Gorges, who came first to Boston, and after a courteous reception by the governor there, went to take up his abode at Agamenticus.

The services

ter of

Gorges.

To Ferdinando Gorges more credit is due than has been always acknowledged, for his persistent efforts to settle New Engand charac- land, and for his unswerving belief in the value of such a colony to the mother country. In the conflict of patents and titles between him and the Virginia Company, and between him and the colonists of Massachusetts Bay, his real and essential services as the friend of colonization have been in some degree lost sight of. As a staunch adherent to the Established Church, he undoubtedly wished that those who should find homes in the lands under his jurisdiction in the New World should be of the faith of that Church in which he believed. But the jealousy with which, for this reason, he was regarded, seems to have had no sufficient ground; for no sectarian narrowness prevented his being the earnest friend of the Puritans of New Plymouth, and always desirous of their success and welfare. If, indeed, the fear of him as a zealous Churchman was quite sincere, it was, at least, no doubt increased by a covetous jealousy of him as a patentee. As so often happens, the contemporary estimate of his character, taking its form from the convictions and interests of those who made it, has survived, and is often accepted as just by those who do not in the least sympathize with the partial and narrow views which led to that judgment. Losing sight of these, or taking them at their real value as the result of local and temporary influences, the true place of Gorges is found among those Englishmen whose far-sighted wisdom, zeal, and energies were devoted earnestly and unselfishly to the permanent settlement of his countrymen upon this continent. He builded, perhaps, better than he knew; but, so far as he did know, he built with no narrow purpose.

CHAPTER XIII.

DUTCH EXPEDITIONS TO NORTH AMERICA.

AMSTERDAM.

COMMERCIAL ENTERPRISE AND PROSPERITY OF THE DUTCH. THEIR INTEREST IN A SHORT ROUTE TO INDIA. EARLY NORTHEAST VOYAGES. · HENRY HUDSON EMPLOYED BY EAST INDIA COMPANY. - HIS FIRST VOYAGE TO AMERICA.- ENTRANCE INTO NEW YORK BAY AND DISCOVERY OF THE HUDSON RIVER. HIS RETURN TO ENGLAND. VOYAGE TO HUDSON'S BAY. THE DUTCH ESTABLISH TRADING-POSTS AT MANHATTAN ISLAND. - DUTCH WEST INDIA COMPANY CHARTERED. - EMIGRATION OF WALLOONS. SETTLEMENTS ON SITES OF ALBANY AND NEW YORK CITY.

-

ALONG the whole Atlantic coast of North America, there were, in the early years of the seventeenth century, only three feeble European colonies established, that of the Spanish at St. Augustine, of the English on the James River, and of the French in Acadia on the shores of the Bay of Fundy. Yet more than a hundred years had passed away since it was claimed that Cabot had run along this coast for a thousand miles in an English ship; and that only a few years later Verrazano for the French, and Gomez for the Spanish, had visited and named some of the most distinctive of its rivers, bays, and capes. Of all the states of Europe, Spain alone had increased in wealth and power from the discovery of the New World. Into her coffers, both public and private, gold had poured in such enormous quantities from the ravishment of Mexico and Peru, as to affect the relative value of everything that was bought and sold among civilized people; but otherwise no other nation shared in this sudden wealth except as their ships could spoil the Spaniards on the high seas. The Emperor Charles V. stamped upon his gold coin the device of the Pillars of Hercules and the legend Plus Ultra; but other powers saw as yet little reason to boast that there was much for them beyond the western boundary of Europe.

That Spain had gained so much and other nations seemingly so little, was owing partly to the poverty in gold and silver of the northern regions; partly to the failure to find the northwest passage to the South Sea; and partly to the absorbing interest of great political and religious complications which agitated all Europe during much of the sixteenth century. But there were secondary results of American

discovery in the growth of commerce and navigation, the closer relations, whether hostile or friendly, between nations, the significance of which was to be developed in the coming years of another era. These, as they led the way in a certain degree to juster views of the importance of the New World to the Old, so also, they brought another power into competition with the other maritime states of Europe for a share in the acquisition of a hemisphere.

When Charles V. resigned his Spanish possessions to his son, with certain outlying kingdoms in Europe and that great and vague Plus Ultra, a portion of them included a country small in extent, but already of extraordinary wealth and energy, a country of which the

The Nether

inces.

favorite phrase of historians has always been that it had "wrested its territory from the sea." This was the region occupied land Prov by the seventeen provinces of the Netherlands. Its people had been busy for centuries in redeeming foot after foot of swamp, and marsh, and submerged land, and surrounding the fertile territory thus gained with dikes and defences against the ocean; in developing an agriculture which was amazing considering the resources at command; in establishing trades which even at this time produced the highest results of any in Europe; and in training, as such means inevitably must, a race of prosperous, vigorous, and intelligent citizens. It is easy to admit, without being carried away by any enthusiastic admiration, that the material advancement of the country at the time of Charles's abdication denoted the highest degree of prosperity. The emperor is said, and probably without exaggeration, to have derived two of the five millions of gold which formed his annual revenue, from these little provinces alone. They had become leaders in the commerce of the world, and had gained much of the trade that had been a great source of wealth to the southern nations of Europe; they had shown themselves powerful in war as well as in 1 Suriano MS., quoted by Motley, Rise of the Dutch Republic, chap. i.

1581.]

WAR OF THE UNITED NETHERLANDS.

341

peace; and their political institutions, in all those things where they themselves controlled them, were liberal and enlightened not only for the time, but might have been held so in a much later period.

Policy of

It was dangerous to attempt to oppress or repress provinces like these; but Charles and Philip were among the most shortsighted of their class of rulers. Charles had treated the Spain toward the Netherlands with cruelty of every kind; he had extorted Netherlands. from them enormous sums for schemes of personal ambition, besides constantly drawing from them a revenue utterly disproportionate to their place among his possessions; he had interfered with their political liberties and charters in every possible way; repressed every attempt to make their institutions as liberal as the intelligence of their citizens required; issued edicts disposing of their people as if they had been born serfs; and finally had established the Inquisition, where Protestantism was rapidly becoming the prevalent faith. But it was reserved for Philip to attempt to carry out his father's policy with a still more terrible thoroughness, and with a bigotry which even Charles did not bring into the work. He established a still more elaborate tyranny in the provinces; sent them governors each one of whom was worse than his predecessor; and finally, by setting over them the brutal Alva, he roused the Netherlands into open war.

United

This war continued through the century, and soon assumed its true character that of a war of independence. What was already the wealthiest and strongest of the regions subject to Spain, became through it one of the first of the self-sustained nations of Europe. Bound together by the Union of Utrecht in 1579, and declaring their entire independence in the memorable declaration issued at War of the the Hague on the 26th of July, 1581, the seven provinces Nether of Gelderland and Zutphen, Holland, Zealand, Utrecht, lands. Friesland, Overyseel, and Groningen, states which had, at length, determined to throw off all foreign rule, established the Republic of the United Netherlands, and carried on the conflict against Spain not as a rebellion, but as an independent power. It was apparently as unequal a struggle as any recorded in history; but the heroic pertinacity with which it was continued was greater than the inequality of the combatants. The little republic steadily gained ground through all discouragements. The murder of William of Orange, the great leader of his people, only "hardened their stomachs," as Walsingham wrote, "to hold out as long as they should have any means of defence." This spirit brought about its inevitable results. Spain was slowly but very surely taught the strength of it; and more than forty years after the time when Philip had sent Alva into his provinces, the independence of the United Netherlands was acknowledged in a treaty which estab