The ])ossibility of annoyance, both by land and sea, to the unguarded towns along the Sound, and the dread, on the part of the colonies of Connecticut and New Haven, of greater quarrels than they could singly manage, brought about the formation of the New England Confederacy in 1G43, said by John (Juincy Adams to have been " the model and prototype of the North American Confederacy of 1774." At the first meeting of the Commissioners of the United Colonists, in September, 1()43, oneof the most urgent items of business was to answer a letter from Governor Kieft desiring an explicit declaration of the policy to be pursued in relation to the Dutch claims in Connecticut. The opportunity was welcomed, and an answer drawn up asserting the justice of the English claims. By the time, this answer reached Kieft, however, his rashness and the greed of the Dutch traders had brought on an Indian war, the violence of which left the Dutch neither time nor strength for other aggressive movements while the reins of government remained in Kieft's hands.

In May, 1647, Kieft was deposed and the government passed into the hands of Peter Stuyvesant, who soon found occasion for shawing the spirit in which he ])roposed to administer his office. He secretly seized a shij) from Holland trading in the harbor of New Haven, on the ground that the Dutch jurisdiction, by right of discovery, included New Haven within the limits of New Netherland, and therefore customs duties on the cargo should be paid to the Dutch Governor. This unexpected insult led to a voluminous correspondence, conducted on the part of Governor Eaton with such unanswerable reasoning as to compel Stuyvesant to deny any intentional wrong.