The Prince of Orange (February 2/12,
1619/20), and the letters of Sir Dudley Carleton, the British ambassador
at the Hague, to the English Privy Council, dated February 5/15, 1621/22,
that, up to this latter date the Dutch had established no colony
[British State Papers, Holland, Bundle 165. Sir Dudley Carleton's
Letters. "They have certain Factors there, continually resident,
trading with savages . . . but I cannot learn of any colony,
either I already planted there by these people, or so much as
intended." Sir Dudley Carleton's Letters.]
on the territory claimed by them at the Hudson, and had no other
representation there than the trading-post of a commercial company whose
charter had expired. There can be no doubt that the Leyden leaders knew,
from their dealings with the New Netherland Company, and the study of the
whole problem which they evidently made, that this region was open to
them or any other parties for habitation and trade, so far as any prior
grants or charters under the Dutch were concerned, but they required more
than this.
To Englishmen, the English claim to the territory at "Hudson's River"
was valid, by virtue of the discovery of the Cabots, under the law of
nations as then recognized, not withstanding Hudson's more particular
explorations of those parts in 1609, in the service of Holland,
especially as no colony or permanent occupancy of the region by the
Dutch had been made.
