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.

In 1650 an attempt was made by the English colonies and the Dutch to settle the boundary line between them. A conditional agreement ^ was entered into, subject to ratification by England and Holland, whereby the dividing line was to begin on the west side of Greenwich Bay ' and run twenty miles into the country, -- Greenwich to be under the government of the Dutch. This agreement, howeyer, was never confirmed, and a subsequent declaration of war between the mother countries created a more hostile feeling between the Dutch and English on this side of the Atlantic, which continued until the conclusion of peace, in 1654.

Prior to this time, in 1642, a few families from Massachusetts, under the leadership of John Throckmorton, settled on Throgg's Neck, and that remark-

I 2 O'Callaghan, 153. 3 2 O'Callaghan, 153.

PLAINS. 717

able woman, Anne Hutchin.son, with her family, settled on Hutchinson's River, in what is now Pelhain. In 1648 the Hutchinson family was entirely swei)t away by the Indians in their retaliatory war with the Dutch, and a part only of Throckmorton's colony survived. These, with the exception of Thomas Cornell and the Mondys, all New England people, were the only persons who attempted settlements east of the Bronx River until 1654, when Thomas Pell, acting under special authority from Connecticut, purchased of the Indians the land which embraces the present town of Westchester, and obtained a grant of the territory ' bearing date the 14th day of November.