nd[350] to settle the new country, and a trading
post established at the mouth of the river. Sir Samuel Argall, governor
of Virginia, conceived that this foreign settlement trenched upon the
rights granted by the English crown to its subjects, and by a display of
superior force constrained the Dutch colony to acknowledge British
sovereignty (1613);[351] but this submission became a dead letter some
years later, when large bodies of emigrants arrived from the Low
Countries (1620);[352] the little trading post soon rose into a town,
and a fort was erected for its defense. The site of this establishment
was on the island of Manhattan;[353] the founders called it New
Amsterdam. When it fell into the possession of England, the name was
changed to New York. Albany[354] was next built, at some distance up the
Hudson, as a post for the Indian trade, and thence a communication was
opened for the first time with the Northern Indian confederacy of the
Iroquois, or the Five Nations.

Charles II., from hatred to the Dutch, as well as from the desire of
aggrandizement, renewed the claims of England upon the Hudson
settlements, and in 1664 dispatched an armament of 300 men to enforce
this claim. Stuyvesant, the Dutch governor,[355] was totally unprepared
to resist the threatened attack, and after a short parley agreed to
surrender. The settlers were, however, secured in property and person,
and in the free exercise of their religion, and the greater part
remained under their new rulers. In the long naval war subsequently
carried on between England and Holland, the colony again passed for a
time under the sway of the Dutch, but at the peace was finally restored
to Great Britain. James, then Duke of York, had received from his
brother a grant of the district which now constitutes the State of New
York. On assuming authority, he appointed governors with arbitrary
power, but the colonists in assertion of their rights as Englishmen,
stoutly resisted, and even sent home Dyer, the collector of customs,
under a charge of high treason, for attempting to levy taxes without
legal authority. (1681.) The duke judged it expedient to conciliate his
sturdy transatlantic subjects, and yielded them a certain form of
representative government. In 1682, Mr. Dongan was sent out with a
commission to assemble a council of ten, and a house of assembly of
eighteen popular deputies. The new governor soon rendered himself
beloved and respected by all, although