Navesink; A Historical Novel
1655 Grover Goes for it
In 1655 James Groves had reason to be satisfied with his life. He had arrived as an apprenticed servant to James Hubbard in the Massachusetts colony in 1638 at age 17 and here he found himself the owner of a substantial farm and with a substantial home construction business in Gravesend, Nieuw Netherlands. He was married, his wife had a servant, and he employed four hands.
Initially it was all coincidence. He arrived in Massachusetts as the apprenticed servant to James Hubbard. Hubbard was a carpenter and a decent master, but he did not have the resources to keep Grover as an apprentice. To relieve himself of that burden Grover was sub-apprenticed to Edward Tomlins. Tomlins was a tough task master and Grover was looking for ways to get out of his apprenticeship.
Meanwhile, Hubbard started to become interested in the religious point of view of Anne Hutchison, who called herself an Anabaptist, which did not agree with the Puritan point of view of the Massachusetts colony.
Hubbard heard about Anne Hutchinson’s travails and her banishment and her eventual settlement in Nieuw Netherlands. Soon after that he heard of another Anabaptist, Lady Deborah Moody and her troubles with the local leaders. When it became apparent that Lady Moody would also be banished, Hubbard decided to join her. It occurred to James Grover that he could escape his apprentice indentureship by declaring himself an Anabaptist and getting banished with Lady Moody.
It turned out to be very simple, he told his Master James Tomlins he also was an Anabaptist, his Master reported him to the local leaders who then summarily banished him with Lady Moody’s followers. He could still chuckle about how his Master would have felt when he realized he was losing his investment in his apprenticed servant by tattling on him to the authorities. Since he was still under indentureship, he was reconsigned to Hubbard, who certainly was an easier Master than Tomlins.
Grover had initially expected that they would move to Roger Williams’ settlement on Narragansett Bay, but just like Anne Hutchinson, Lady Moody became concerned about the possibility that Roger Williams’ colony would be taken over by the Massachusetts Bay Colony and she decided to directly head for Nieuw Netherlands where Anne Hutchinson had let her know that they would be welcome.
They shipped to Nieuw Netherlands and arrived in Nieuw Amsterdam right when Kieft’s war had escalated. There Kieft gave them permission to settle on the north shore of the Raritan Bay on Lang Eiland. They were sorry to hear about Anne Hutchinson’s murder by the natives north of Nieuw Amsterdam, but did not experience any troubles with the natives in their settlement.
They found an area with fallow native fields and Lady Moody laid out a village and construction started right away. James Grover’s skills as a carpenter, even only as an apprentice, made him valuable to the community. In 1646 he finished his apprenticeship and was granted a house lot and 20 acres of farmland. He managed to make some money as a skilled carpenter and he soon was able to build his own home. He then made money building homes for other members in the community and they in turn farmed the land he had acquired.
He very much enjoyed his developing status and enjoyed the fact that there were other young people in the colony including some eligible young women. In general, the community was a happy community, although clearly he was not much favored by Lady Moody. She kept her distance with him and was much more friendly with other young people such as Penelope van Princes and Richard Stout.
Richard Stout was an ever friendly and cheerful ex sailor who had the ability to make himself useful at every turn, either by his wide ranging sailor skills or by his dependability. James did not like Richard and considered him to be an ass kisser. James also considered himself to be the better of Stout because he knew how to read and write while Richard was illiterate.
Penelope was very popular in the village even though she occasionally got in trouble by not minding her own business and chatting too much. She was even tried for slandering another woman by claiming that the woman had milked a cow she did not own. True to her character she quickly apologized, and worked for the woman for a while to make her amends and did it with such enthusiasm that she remained a village favorite. James worked hard too and tried to meet his commitments, but, somehow, he never became part of the popular inner circle in the village or in special favor with Lady Moody.
He pretended hard to maintain and practice his Anabaptist convictions, but Lady Moody favored Richard and Penelope who did not even profess to adhere to Anabaptist believes and, quite frankly, paid very little attention to any Christian practices. They attended church, but never discussed or referred to religion outside church.
Even though he had been very much attracted to Penelope van Princes, she clearly was not attracted to him. Instead, she married Richard Stout and started a family very soon thereafter.
In 1650 he proposed marriage to Rebecca Chesseman, the stolid daughter of the village cheesemaker. She accepted his proposal and they too started their family. Rebecca took good care of things, and they made a good team, but they had little in common as far as social and recreational interest was concerned. While Richard and Penelope were found to picnic with their small children and to go fishing with Navoo when he came to visit, Rebecca simply preferred to take care of her house and family without frills or distractions.
James sort of envied Richard and Penelope’s happiness, but did not linger on it and instead focused on increasing his wealth and with Rebecca’s hard working support was doing quite well.
But as a carpenter and farmer he was starting to develop friction with the Dutch who were running the entire colony. It was the Dutch who controlled the supply and demand of products in the colony and he considered them to be underhanded and evil when they refused to include him in their dealings. Moreover, whenever he had trade, they would offer a low price and when he tried other Dutch traders it was apparent that they knew what their inside price was and refused to pay more. He also found that they would overcharge him for building supplies, and, again, he could not find a lower cost Dutch supplier. Most of all he disliked their superior attitude. These Dutchmen were all firmly convinced that they were smarter, better educated, better traders and better sailors than any of the other many nationalities that had settled in Nieuw Netherland and they did not hesitate to tell you so too. And then those dirty Dutchmen also taxed them, and as far as he was concerned, they did not do enough to protect their village against the Indians. Although, quite frankly, Gravesend hardly ever saw any Indians, especially after Kieft had been replaced by Pieter Stuyvesant.
He raised this subject with other members of the community and found that some professed to have no problems of that kind while others agreed with him. It did not occur to him that possibly the Dutch liked some of the English, and not others and that he was in the group that the Dutch simply did not like.
When he first raised the subject with Lady Moody, she professed to have no such problems and reminded him that all of them were much better off under the Dutch than with the Puritans up North. The Dutch let them be and were reliable and predictable as long as you followed the rules and acted as good neighbors. James felt that Lady Moody had betrayed her English heritage and felt confirmed in this belief when soon thereafter she was appointed judge by Pieter Stuyvesant, who had relieved Kieft as the Director General. Lady Moody even occasionally dined at his house in Nieuw Amsterdam.
She was getting older though, and day to day she focused less and less on the welfare of the community and left most of her business to her son Henry. Within Gravesend two camps started to develop, those who were grateful for the opportunities the Dutch had provided, and those who felt the Dutch were suppressing them and felt that they would have more freedom under English rule.
With the ebb and flow of wars between the Dutch and his countrymen, James knew that Nieuw Netherland was in a precariously positioned between very rapidly growing English colonies to the North and the South. Pieter Stuyvesant spent much of his time trying to defend Nieuw Netherlands’ claimed borders against English infringements and heavily depended on Gravesend support in the various skirmishes that occurred. James very much resented being called in to defend Nieuw Netherlands against his own countrymen and he was not alone in that regard.
It all related to the long-lasting English and Dutch rivalry. The two European powers were often at war, signing peace treaties which they soon violated, then coming into conflict again. Their military and commercial competition also played out in America where the rival countries butted up against each other’s land claims. The English were annoyed that the New Netherland territory, located between New England and Virginia, interfered with trade and settlement.
They believed the Dutch Colony was rightfully theirs, and they coveted the increasingly important harbor and trading town of Nieuw Amsterdam.
Because language differences made efforts to fix disagreements very difficult, Willem Kieft had appointed the Gravesender George Baxter as his secretary in December 1642 to help settle disputes. When Kieft was relieved of his duties in 1647 by Peter Stuyvesant, George Baxter retained his interpreter’s position.
When Director Stuyvesant travelled to English-controlled Hartford, Connecticut for discussions over boundary problems, Baxter was a key asset. The resulting 1650 Treaty of Hartford allowed the Dutch to control western Long Island, and the English eastern Long Island.
But George Baxter became more and more politically involved and also sensed that some of the Dutchmen did not appreciate Pieter Stuyvesant’s heavy focus on real estate instead of trade. George Baxter and Grover’s old master James Hubbard assembled English and Dutch delegates at the Stadt Huys (city hall) in New Amsterdam to protest the misuse of taxes paid to Peter Stuyvesant and the West India Company.
They complained that Gravesend and other Long Island towns received no protection from the Indians. To Stuyvesant the assembly “smelt of rebellion, of contempt of his high authority and commission.” He was right, of course.
The once friendly Stuyvesant-Baxter relationship also frayed over who should have the right to appoint Gravesend officials. In 1654, Stuyvesant refused to confirm the election of Baxter and Hubbard, who had been chosen magistrates for Gravesend. Though Stuyvesant subsequently allowed the Baxter and Hubbard appointments after meeting with Lady Moody, Baxter and Hubbard nursed grudges, further fueling their machinations to have England take control of New Netherland. James Grover was happy to align himself with Hubbard and became part of a small group of Gravesenders who regularly got together to talk about taking control of New Netherland.
They had all traveled to the various parts of the American East Coast and one thing was clear to them. This piece of the American Northeast coast was the sweet spot. Better farmland than the Puritan colonies north, and healthier than the mosquito ridden plantations south. Moreover, Nieuw Amsterdam was quickly becoming an important port and they had no problem envisioning the possibility that if all of the American Northeast coast became English, they would be players in the hottest real estate.
There were no secrets in Nieuw Amsterdam, and Stuyvesant paid attention. He reported to his Holland superiors that “The English, living among and under us, would, we believe, enter into a plot with our enemies, they being of the same nationality, to our great disadvantage: especially the people of Gravesend, of which we have seen and heard unfortunately already some proofs.”
As a trading center, Nieuw Amsterdam was not deprived of world news even it was generally delayed by a number of months, and sometimes much longer. The Nieuw Nederlanders, Dutch, English and every other nationality living there now, knew that the Puritan Oliver Cromwell’s Parliamentary forces had defeated the Royalists during the first phases of the English Civil Wars. They also knew about the Treaty of Westchester, another attempt at peace signed between England and Holland in April 1654.
England was aware that Stuyvesant left Nieuw Amsterdam the following December, bound for Barbados to establish trade with the Caribbean. Despite the peace treaty, the English embargoed his ships in the islands for six months before he was allowed to return in 1655. This attempt to take advantage of a peace treaty was yet another reason for English impatience with the Dutch in the Americas, and was duly reported to John Thurloe, Secretary to Cromwell's Council of State.
During March of 1655, hearing that Cromwell had given orders to the Governors of the English colonies to take Long Island from the Dutch, and taking advantage of Stuyvesant’s absence, Grover, Hubbard, and Baxter audaciously hoisted the English flag at Gravesend.
They had also prepared a declaration and Grover boldly read it out loud to the Gravesend citizenry: "We, individuals of the English nation here present, do, for diverse reasons and motives, as free-born British subjects, claim and assume to ourselves the laws of our nation and Republic of England over this place, as to our persons and property, in love and harmony, according to the general peace between the two states in Europe and this country. God Almighty preserve the Republic of England and His Highness the Lord Protector, and also the continuance of peace between the two countries. Amen."
The trio of insurgents understood that the grand gesture of hoisting the English flag would ingratiate themselves to Cromwell, and perhaps garner a future audience with them in London.
Stuyvesant would have none of it and ordered the arrest of the rebellious Englishmen. Baxter and Hubbard were caught but Grover got word of his impending arrest and fled east to the English part of Long Island. There was nothing he could do to right things in Nieuw Netherlands, but during his long ride to the tip of Long Island he came to realize that he might very much be of value to the New England colonies in their fight against Nieuw Netherlands.
A year later, through the intercession of Henry Moody, Lady Moody’s son, Baxter and Hubbard were released but forced to mortgage their properties as bond. Baxter took no chances with another arrest and escaped to New England. His Gravesend property was sold.
Hubbard decided to lay low and make it look like he had given up on his rebellious notions.
James Grover had made it to Massachusetts where he found shelter and where he reconnected with Baxter. Neither had given up on their plan to expel the Dutch, and Baxter sent Grover – “the very man who had set up the arms of the Republic of England in the village of Gravesend” - to take “a petition to Cromwell to be emancipated from the Dutch yoke and to be taken under his protection.”
Grover was well received in England, and was much delighted in his status as spy and anti- Dutch agitator with intimate knowledge of the dynamics in New Holland. He was eagerly received by government officials who each and every one were minding their own battles, intrigues, and money making schemes.
While in London in August of 1656, Grover found out about John Thurloe. Everybody who spoke about John Thurloe used hushed tones but never provided specifics. Based on this vague and fragmented information, Grover came to realize that John Thurloe was maybe even more important than Cromwell.
Cromwell was the leader of the Republic but he was far from an attractive person, he spit fire in public pronouncements, was impatient and reveled in a good fight. John Thurloe was the total opposite. Thurloe was handsome, elegant and smooth, and was the ultimate behind the scenes player. Thurloe was trained as a lawyer and avoided physical fights and combat. Only after the bloodshed of the Revolution was over, did he make himself available to Cromwell. Cromwell knew about Thurloe’s talents and immediately put him in charge of anything that Cromwell wanted, but for which he did not have the patience to do it himself.
That ranged from running his intelligence service, breaking up plots against the Republic, working out treaties, and working out schemes to undermine treaties. Anything that could help in achieving Cromwell’s goals ended up under Thurloe’s control. He was even appointed postmaster, not because he wanted to be postmaster, but rather because it gave him ready access to information that was traveling around the Republic. One of his interests was remedying the annoyance of having a Dutch colony on the American East Coast and when he heard a person with first hand information about New Netherland was in town, he wanted to see him.
When Grover got word that Thurloe wanted to see him, he was tickled pink. Here despite his humble origins, he was asked to assist one of the most powerful people in the world. Oddly, he was not nervous when he entered Thurloe’s office. Had his absence from England’s class stratifications worn away his fear of status, or was it because in the colonies the rulers and the ruled were not even separated by an outhouse and that had much diminished his awe of status?
It was a nice office and the man behind the desk exuded confidence and power. He looked up and motioned Grover to a chair in front of his desk.
He studied Grover for a moment. “Nice to finally meet you Mr. Grover. I understand you have information that may help the Republic.”
“Yes sir, I think New Netherlands is ready for the picking.”
“Tell me all you know”
And Grover spoke. He told Thurloe everything he knew. And Grover knew a lot. The strengths and weaknesses of New Holland, ranging from Stuyvesant all the way down to the lowest servants, the slaves and the Native Americans. The economic circumstances, population counts and defenses of the colony, and the possibility of riches for the Republic if they were to take power away from the Dutch.
Thurloe said very little but took copious notes while Grove spoke. When Grover came to the end of his verbal report, Thurloe stood up and led Grover to a large table under a window at one side of the room. On it were some maps including a map of New Netherlands. It was a relatively large map and written in Dutch. Grover had never seen a map of New Netherlands with this much detail on it. He recognized most of the locations and names, but also noticed there were some errors.
Within his limited abilities he provided various comments on the map and Thurloe continued to take notes.
When Grover had nothing further to offer, Thurloe looked up from his notes: “Thank you Mr. Gover you have been most helpful”
There was a momentary pause. Thurloe studied Grover’s face, “Do you have any further plans Mr. Grover?”
“Well Mr. Thurloe, when do you think the Republic will take over from the Dutch?”
“I don’t know, we need to find the right time.”
“How long will it take to find the right time, Sir?”
“What is on your mind Mr. Grover?”
“I don’t think the English can stay much longer in New Netherlands, and many people in Gravesend have been thinking about maybe moving to Jamaica.”
“I think that would be a mistake Mr. Grover. Jamaica is no place for proper Christians. We have been shipping Irish and Scots to Jamaica. We have only barely been able to get rid of the pirates and that island is a cesspool of disease. Moreover, you and your friends at Gravesend are of great value to us, while you have no value to us in Jamaica. I would like to make a suggestion. Go back to New Holland, make peace with the Dutch, live well and when the time comes, which may be sooner than you think, you and your friends will be the leading citizens in that part of our colonies.”
Grover wanted to object, but Thurloe’s steady gaze kept him from speaking up. Grover turned his head to look out of the window. The weather outside was miserable, cold, rain and wind. All he had to look forward to was a long walk to a cold and damp attic room that was provided by a distant friend of an elder in the Massachusetts colony. Here he had achieved his goal of making contact with the Republican leadership and it had effectively removed his future.
He wondered how his friends in Gravesend were doing. Could he make peace with the Dutch? Some Dutchmen were friendly with Gravesend. After all they had protested about taxes too. The Moodies were friendly with the Dutch and personally he knew a few Dutchmen might vouch for him when he returned. He missed his wife and his kids. He wondered how they were doing. Had Rebecca managed to hold on to his properties? Had he overplayed his hand in Gravesend? He did not even have the money to book passage back to Gravesend and he certainly was not going back as someone’s servant.
Thurloe cleared his throat and Grover turned back to him.
“You will be of great value to the Republic in New Holland. I would like to offer you a fee of 50 Pounds for you to be able to travel back in comfort and to manage our intelligence affairs in New Holland. I assure you I will be making an effort with the Lord Protector to convince him that an action to take control of New Netherlands is in the Republic’s best interest and you have been of great assistance in allowing me to collect my thoughts on this matter.”
Grover was delighted. In just a few moments Thurloe had convinced Grover that, while not completely certain, he had been provided with a new prospect for the future. Moreover, if he returned, undoubtedly the other Gravesenders would be much impressed about his connections to the highest level of the Republic.
“Mr. Thurloe, I think I will accept your offer, when can I receive the funds to book my passage back to New Holland?”
“Come back to meet me in two weeks. I plan to prepare a narration of our position with regard to our rights to New Netherlands, which I will present to the Lord Protector. I would like to show it to you and possibly provide you with a copy to take to Gravesend as an inducement for your friends to lay low until we can make a move against New Holland.”
Thurloe moved back to his desk and it was clear that it was time for Grover to leave.
“I will see you on Wednesday two weeks from now”, he reached for his quill and Grover left with a quick” “Good day, Mr. Thurloe. Thank you. I will see you then.”
That afternoon Thurloe dictated “A Brief Narration of the English Rights to the Northern Parts of America.”
In it he made a bombastic argument that although the Dutch pointed to Henry Hudson’s American discoveries while he was under the employ of the East India Company in 1609, that the Dutch had no claim since it was English territory all along. He based the English claims on the 15th century voyages of John Cabot (the Italian Giovanni Caboto). His brief was copied and circulated among the leadership and was generally well received and became the basis for a general strategy to take control of New Netherlands the moment the next conflict with the Dutch would happen. And conflict with the Dutch was inevitable. Those money grubbing opportunists in their tiny wet little country needed to be taken down a peg.
It was an even colder day in December 1656, when Thurloe provided Grover with £50 to pay off some debts and book return passage to America. The Secretary also gave James Grover a letter from Cromwell encouraging the “English well affected inhabitants on Long Island, in America.” He was also given a copy of the Brief Narration, and a sealed letter that Grover could use as a letter of passage and credit in case he needed assistance from any member of government or the military in his activities in support of the Republic.
Thurloe let Grover read the letter and then quadruple sealed it and handed it to him.
“Be careful with this letter. Don’t let it fall in the wrong hands. It will be your head if the Dutch see what is in it, but it will yield great power when things start to move.”
Grover had no further business in England and was provided passage on a naval dispatch to New England before the year had ended to become a traitor, or a patriot, depending on where one stood.
ENDNOTES:
Grover’s actions in this chapter are historically accurate. Grover did meet with Thurloe and did receive a mysterious letter.