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22 New Netherlands. [i626-47 them. All that resulted was two small settlements, one at Agamenticus, afterwards York, the other at Saco. At the same time other independent settlements sprang up within the proper limits of Gorges' patent. The New England Company, through carelessness and imperfect surveying, made many conflicting and overlapping grants of land. This had a very important effect on the future history of New England, since it was by annexing these that Massachusetts acquired its control over Maine. The foundation of Connecticut and New Haven brought New England into contact with the settlements of another civilised power. In 1626 the Dutch West India Company had established a settlement, which extended up the valley of the Hudson and on to Long Island. The settlement, as a whole, bore the name of New Netherlands: the chief town, on Manhattan Island, was called New Amsterdam. This colony enjoyed nothing like the highly organised civic life of New England, nor even that of Virginia. It was at first little more than a trading station, with a scattered community of farmers attached to it, holding under non-resident landowners. The governor had almost de- spotic power : such control as was enjoyed by the citizens was doled out grudgingly by instalments and fenced in by checks which rendered it well-nigh valueless. The community depended largely on the Indian fur-trade. This and its paucity of numbers made i needful to secure the good- will of the savages, or, in default of that, to overawe them; yet the rulers of the colony and the Dutch settlers were conspicuously wanting in the capacity to do either. Nor was the colony happy in its governors. Peter Stuyvesant, who succeeded to office in 1647, was by far the best. He was brave, pious, and disinterested, but an austere martinet, utterly without that sympathy and flexibility needed in one who has to govern a young and expanding community. Between New Netherlands and New England there could not but be mutual jealousy. Before Connecticut became an organised community, there were quarrels between English and Dutch traders in the Connecticut valley. It was the settled policy of the English to press on southward and to occupy the land to which the Dutch made a de jure claim under their patent from the States-General. To this local source of strife was added another from abroad. Englishmen had been deeply impressed by the unscrupulous slaughter of their countrymen by the Dutch at Amboyna (1626) ; and it was not surprising if the next generation believed that the Dutch were capable of inciting the Indians to attack the New England settlements. Every movement which suggested the possibility of such an attempt was viewed with suspicion and alarm. Thus a combination of motives, desire for religious and political unity, dread not only of Dutch and Indian attacks but of encroachment by the British government, and the want of machinery for deciding territorial disputes, all seemed to force upon the settlers the need for