seizure of New Netherland. After the
conquest of New Sweden, in 1655, the possessions and claims of the Dutch
in our country extended from the Connecticut River to the Delaware
River, and from the Mohawk to Delaware Bay. Geographically, they cut the
English colonies in two, and hampered communication between New England
and the South. To own this region was therefore of the utmost importance
to the English; and to get it, King Charles II., in 1664, revived the
old claim that the English had discovered the country before the Dutch,
and he sent a little fleet and army, which appeared off New Amsterdam
and demanded its surrender. The demand was complied with; and in 1664
Dutch rule in our country ended, and England owned the seaboard from the
Kennebec to the Savannah.

The King had already granted New Netherland to his brother the Duke of
York, in honor of whom the town of New Amsterdam was now renamed
New York.

%49. New Jersey.%--The Duke of York no sooner received his province
than he gave so much of it as lay between the Delaware and the ocean to
his friends Lord Berkeley and Sir George Carteret, and called it New
Jersey, in honor of Sir George Carteret, who had been governor of the
island of Jersey in the English Channel. The two proprietors divided it
between them by the line shown on the map (p. 56). In 1674 Berkeley sold
West Jersey to a company of Quakers, who settled near Burlington. A
little later, 1676, William Penn and some other Quakers bought East
Jersey. There were then two colonies till 1702, when the proprietors
surrendered their rights, and New Jersey became one royal province.

%50. The Beginnings of Pennsylvania.%--The part which Penn took in
the settlement of New Jersey suggested to him the idea of beginning a
colony which should be a refuge for the persecuted of all lands and of
all religions.

[Illustration]

Now it so happened that Penn was the son of a distinguished admiral to
whom King Charles II. owed L16,000, and seeing no chance of its ever
being paid, he proposed to the King, in 1680, that the debt be paid with
a tract of land in America. The King gladly agreed, and in 1681 Penn
received a grant west of the Delaware. Against Penn's wish, the King
called it Pennsylvania, or Penn's Woodland. It was given almost
precisely the bounds of the present state.[1] In 1683 Penn made a famous
treaty with the Indians, and laid out the city of Philadelphia.

[Footnote 1: There was a long dispute, ho