Discovery and Settlement of the New World 19fleet appeared in the harbor of New Amsterdam and demanded the
surrender of Manhattan Island. The governor, Peter Stuyvesant, swore
he would never surrender, but the leading citizens overruled him. They
knew they could not fight off the well-armed and determined British,
so they persuaded Stuyvesant to surrender the colony. And not a shot
was fired. James, now the proprietor, renamed the colony New York.
He blithely assumed he could rule the Dutch settlers through his cho-
sen governor without any consultation whatsoever with the residents.
He soon learned that such an approach from across thousands of miles
of ocean guaranteed disobedience and lawlessness. Thus, when he suc-
ceeded his brother as King James II, he did permit the calling of a
legislative assembly. Still, his regular disregard of the needs and re-
quests of the New York colonists only generated further discord. The
system of semifeudal landholdings of the original Dutch settlers fur-
ther exacerbated the problem. It produced social, economic, and ethnic
tensions between them and the new English arrivals.
James turned over the lower section of his holdings to two friends,
Lord John Berkeley and Sir George Carteret. Since Carteret had served
as governor of Jersey in the English Channel, the area was named New
Jersey in his honor. Berkeley was in charge of the western half of the
province and Carteret of the eastern half. Both men later sold their
proprietorships, and Puritans, Anglicans, and Quakers settled the di-
vided province until the King united East and West Jersey into a single
royal colony in 1702.
One of the more successful attempts at establishing a proprietary col-
ony resulted from a grant of land in the New World from Charles II to
William Penn. While studying at Oxford, Penn joined a radical religious
sect, the Society of Friends, whose members denounced war, rejected the
authority of priests and bishops, abhorred ceremonial worship, and obeyed
only what they called the “inner light of conscience.” These Quakers even
refused to bow to the king or remove their hats when confronted by royal
officials. They professed complete equality—none excepted.
William Penn embraced their beliefs with a fervor that landed him
in prison and provoked the anger and disappointment of his father,
Admiral William Penn. Once released from jail, he took up missionary
work in Holland and Germany, where he organized Quaker societies.
Since Charles owed Admiral Penn a large sum of money, he agreed to