Penobscot. When
the Governor-General died in 1635, a contest for the governorship took
place between these two men, and not unnaturally volunteers from
Massachusetts aided La Tour, whose original jurisdiction was farthest
removed from their colony. Trade on these northeastern coasts was deemed
essential to the prosperity of the New Englanders, and it was considered
of great importance to make no mistake in backing the wrong claimant.
D'Aulnay, or more correctly Aulnay, had been partly responsible for the
attack on the Plymouth trading-posts, but, on the other hand, he had the
stronger title; and Massachusetts was a good deal perplexed as to what
course to pursue. In 1644, Aulnay sent a commissioner to Boston, who
conversed with Governor Endecott in French and with the rest of the
magistrates in Latin and endeavored to arrange terms of peace. Two
years later the same commissioner came again, with two others, and was
cordially entertained with "wine and sweetmeats." The matter was
referred to the commissioners of the United Colonies, who decided, with
considerable shrewdness, that the volunteers in aiding La Tour had acted
efficiently but not wisely; and consequently a compromise was reached.
Aulnay's commissioners abated their claims for damages, and Governor
Winthrop consented to send "a small present" to Aulnay in lieu of
compensation. The present was "a fair new sedan (worth," says Winthrop,
"forty or fifty pounds, where it was made, but of no use to us)," having
been part of some Spanish booty taken in the West Indies and presented
to the Governor. So final peace was made at no expense to the colony;
and later, after Aulnay's death in 1650, La Tour married the widow and
came to his own in Nova Scotia.

The troubles with the Dutch were not so easily settled. England had
never acknowledged the Dutch claim to New Amsterdam, and the New England
Council in making its grants had paid no attention to the Dutch
occupation. Though trade had been carried on and early relations had
been on the whole amicable, yet, after Connecticut's overthrow of the
Pequots in 1637 and the opening of the territory to settlement, the
founding of towns as far west as Stamford and Greenwich had rendered
acute the conflict of titles. There was no western limit to the English
claims, and, as the colonists were perfectly willing to accept Sir
William Boswell's advice to "crowd on, crowding the Dutch out of those
places which they have occupied, with