the Indians over-awed, the veriest dictator this continent ever
saw, until, one August day in 1664, an English fleet sailed up the bay
and summoned the city to surrender.

Stuyvesant set his men to work repairing the fortifications, and was for
holding out, but the town was really defenseless against the frigates,
which had only to sail up the river and bombard it from either side; his
people were disaffected and to some extent not sorry to be delivered
from his rule; the terms offered by the English were favorable, and
though Stuyvesant swore he never would surrender, a white flag was
finally run up over the ramparts of Fort Amsterdam. The city was at once
renamed New York, in honor of the Duke of York, to whom it had been
granted; and the hard-headed old governor spent the remaining years of
his life very comfortably on his great farm, the Bouwerie, just outside
the city limits.

This conquest, bloodless and easy as it was, was fraught with momentous
consequences. It brought New England into closer relations with Maryland
and Virginia by creating a link between them, binding them together; it
gave England command of the spot designed by nature to be the commercial
and military centre of the Atlantic sea-board, and confirmed a
possession of it that was never thereafter seriously disturbed, until
the colonies themselves disputed it. Had New Amsterdam remained Dutch,
dividing, as it did, New England from the South, there would never have
been any question of revolution or independence. The flash of that
little white flag on that September day, decided the fate of the
continent.

* * * * *

The Duke of York, being of a generous disposition and having many claims
upon him, used a portion of the great territory granted him in America
to reward his friends, and thereby laid the foundation for another great
commonwealth with a unique history. New Jersey was given jointly to Sir
George Carteret and Lord Berkeley, and in 1673, Lord Berkeley sold his
share, illy-defined as the "southwestern part," to a Quaker named Edward
Byllinge. Byllinge soon became insolvent, and his property was taken
over by William Penn and two others, as trustees, and the seeds sown for
one of the most interesting experiments in history.

There are few figures on the page of history more admirable,
self-poised, and clear-sighted than this quiet man. He was born in
London in 1644, the son of a distinguished father, and