He was also lulled into security by the receipt of a despatch from the Directors at Amsterdam tfhat no danger from England need be entertained as the King only wanted to reduce his own colonies to uniformity in church and State.' The truth was, that the Directors of the Company, intently engaged in the public affairs of Holland (it was the period of John de Witt's ascendancy and the efforts of the Prince of Orange's party to destroy it) really neglected New Netherland, and their own interests there, giving both such slight attention, as not only, disappointed its people, and their own officials, but facilitated, the treacherous action of the English King, and inclined its inhabitants to yield with less resistance and feeling to his military power, than they otherwise would.

Of course no real resistance,^ greatly as he desired to make it, could be offered, by Director-General Stuyvesant, and his people ; and after several days negotiations. Articles of Capitulation were definitely settled by a commission, composed of John De Decker, Nicholas Varleth, Samuel Megapolensis, Cornells Steenwyck, Jacques Cousseau, and Oloff Stevens

1 II. O Call., 517.

2 The details of Stuyvesant's action at this crisis are too niinieroue to be given in an esssiy of this kind, and are so generally known, at least in their outlines, as not to need further mention.

van Cortlandt, on the part of Director Stuyvesant, and Robert Carr, George Carteret, John Winthrop, Samuel Willys, John Pynchon, {the latter three of Connecticut), and Thomas Clarke {of Massachusetts) on the part of Governor Nicolls, and consented to by both. The negotiations took place, and the terms were finally agreed upon, on Saturday, September 6th, 1664, at Gov. Stuyvesant's house in the Bowery. This house, as L have been told by the Hon. Hamilton Fish, now the oldest living descendant of Stuyvesant, .stood on what is now the block between 12th and 13th Streets facing the Third Avenue, as that part of the Bowery road is now called, and on the east side of that avenue.