Page images
PDF
EPUB

In this country, my greatest obligations have naturally been for the most part to librarians, who have with unfailing kindness assisted the researches I have had to make in our various large libraries. I am under especial obligations to David Hutcheson, Esq., of the Library of Congress, to Dr. Henry A. Homes, librarian of the State of New York, and to Justin Winsor, Esq., librarian of Harvard University. Especially kind favors have been received from Professor Gregory B. Keen, corresponding secretary of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, from Mrs. John Carter Brown and J. Nicholas Brown, Esq., of Providence, and from the late Hon. John Russell Bartlett. I have to acknowledge obligations less extensive but not less gratefully remembered, to the Honorable Mellen Chamberlain, Esq., librarian of the Boston Public Library, to C. A. Cutter, Esq., librarian of the Boston Athenæum, to Frederick D. Stone, Esq., librarian of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, to Theodore F. Dwight, Esq., chief of the Bureau of Rolls and Library in the Department of State, to J. Carson Brevoort, Esq., of Brooklyn, to Dr. Geo. H. Moore, librarian of the Lenox Library, to Mr. Bjerregaard of the Astor Library and Mr. Newhouse of the Library of Congress, and to the officers of the Peabody Institute Library in Baltimore.

But the materials which I have obtained from abroad have obviously been the most important. For the largest portions of these, my warmest thanks are due to Mr. L. Ph. C. van den Bergh, archivist of the royal archives at the Hague, to Dr. W. N. du Rieu, librarian of the University of Leiden, and to Madame K. Sjöberg, of Stockholm. Without their kind assistance the book could never have been written. I have also received obliging favors from Professor Paul Fredericq, of the University of Ghent, from Dr. G. E. Klemming, chief librarian of the Royal Library at Stockholm, from Dr. C. G. Malmström, archivist of the kingdom of Sweden, from Dr. Claes Annerstedt, chief librarian, and Dr. Aksel Andersson, assistant librarian, of the University of Upsala, and from Henry Vignaud, Esq., secretary of the United States Legation at Paris. Town archivists have been very ready in

assisting my researches. MM. P. Génard, archivist of Antwerp, and H. van Neuf, archivist of Hasselt, Mr. A. Wildschut Az., archivist of Purmerend, Dr. Theodor Schiemann of Réval, Dr. G. von Bülow, kön. Staatsarchivar at Stettin, Dr. Mummenhoff of Nuremberg, and Dr. H. Grotefend of Frankfort-on-the-Main, have sent me materials of value. With equal kindness, though with less result, researches have been made for me by the archivists Dr. F. Crull of Wismar, Dr. C. Wehrmann of Lubeck, and Dr. Velke of Mainz, and by Drs. F. Voigt and W. Sillem of the Verein für Hambürgische Geschichte.

A part of the earlier chapters of this paper was read at the meeting of the American Historical Association at Washington, on April 29, 1886; a larger part before the New York Historical Society, on March 1, 1887. On the latter occasion, a member defended Dr. O'Callaghan from the charges suggested by what I have said as to his translation of the charter of the Dutch West India Company (see post, pp. 71–72). I did not feel that there was opportunity then to present my proofs; the reader will find them in foot-notes 126, 127, and 128. The defence urged was that Dr. O'Callaghan's competence was shown in the matter of a translation made by him in connection with a certain lawsuit. In subsequent conversation it appeared that the document was not the charter I was speaking of, and that the case occurred about 1877. I have not alleged that Dr. O'Callaghan could not make a good translation from the Dutch in 1877 (though I have no very great opinion of his scholarship); I have only stated that he did not make a good one in 1855, the date of his History of New Netherland, but adopted an imperfect one from Hazard. Portions of the subsequent chapters were read before the Historical Society of Pennsylvania on May 9, 1887.

My effort has been to give dates according to new style in Catholic countries and in the province of Holland, according to old style in other Protestant countries and cities.

J. FRANKLIN JAMESON.

JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY, Baltimore, May 12, 1887.

WILLEM USSELINX.

1.-EARLY LIFE.

"Y pues es de andar adonde haya trato grande, digo que no es razon de se detener, salvo ir á camino y calar mucha tierra fasta topar en tierra muy provechosa."-COLUMBUS, Journal, Oct. 23, 1492.

OF all the heroes who in any way assisted the emigration of the pious Æneas, only two, Palinurus, who navigated one of the vessels, and Misenus, who blew the trumpet, attained, through the bestowal of their names upon two Italian headlands, an immortal remembrance among the posterity of the colonists. Helenus, who, with minute care, pointed out the way, enumerated its dangers, foretold the greatness awaiting the band of exiles, supplied them with equipments, and sped them on their way, received no such reward. It has been somewhat so with the heroes of American colonization. The navigators of ships, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the blowers of the trumpet, like Captain John Smith, have received among us in full payment the glory that is their due; but, meanwhile, we have been somewhat less than just to the memory of those who, without having themselves come to this country, or shared in the picturesque adventures of the age of settlement, stood behind all efforts towards colonization, and assisted them in ways more prosaic, but not less efficient, nor less deserving of grateful remembrance,-the class of colonial projectors. A voyage or two has been enough to make the names of Amidas and Barlow, Gosnold, Pring, Weymouth, and Henry Hudson household words among us. The very school-children know about them. But Richard Hakluyt and the Reverend John White occupy by no means so large a space in the public 161]

13

eye, and even Raleigh would hardly do so were it not for fame acquired in other ways. It is the object of the present essay to relate, in sufficient detail to enable its importance to be correctly estimated, the career of a member of this latter class, a man almost unknown to the English-reading public, yet who was, though not directly the founder, at any rate the originator, of two of our colonies-that upon the Hudson and that upon the Delaware.

Willem Usselinx' was born at Antwerp,' in June, 1567,' a year marked in Great Britain by the murder of Darnley and the abdication of Queen Mary, in France by the second rising of the Huguenots and the battle of St. Denis, and in

1 In contemporary documents and publications, the name is found written in a great variety of ways, to mention which may lead to finding further information, and thus be worth while: Usselinx, Wsselinx, Wsselincx, Vsselinx, Vsselincx, Wesselincx, Wesselinx, Wisselinx, Wsselinxs, Uysselingh; Usselincx, Usselingx, Usselinck, Usselink, Usseling, Usselingh, Usselincxs, Uselincxs, Uisselincx, Urselincx, Ursselincx, Ussling, Usling, Vszling, Vsseling, Wsselings, Wsselingz, Wsselincx, Wesseling, Eusselinx, Eusselincx, Eusselinck, Eusselijn, Yssling, Flessinghe. Of these thirty-five spellings, all of the first ten seem to have been used by himself; Wsselinx most frequently. I have, therefore, adopted Usselinx. His first name he spells Willem, or Wilhelm ; others spell it also Wilhem, Wellam, and Guill'., to say nothing of Jan and Johan, obviously errors.

* Art. xxiii. of the Octroy of 1626; I have a copy in the Swedish from the Stockholm archives, but shall quote it from the German, printed in the Argonautica Gustaviana, p. 14. G. Udemans, 'T Geestelijk Roer van 't Coopmans Schip, i., f. 100. E. van Meteren, Hist. der Nederlanden (ed. 1662), p. 527 b; I shall quote Meteren by columns, a and b on the recto, c and d on the verso.

3 The date of his birth, which Asher, Bibliographical Essay on the Dutch Books and Pamphlets relating to New Netherland, p. 73, declares to be unknown, and Laspeyres, p. 59, note 186, infers from Arg. Gust., Mercurius Germaniae, p. 33 (which he quotes from Marquardus), to have been 1566 or 1567, is fixed in 1567 by his own statement in an unpublished memorial of Jan. 16, 1645 (see Bibliographical Appendix, II., No. 90), of which a copy is among the Murphy MSS. in the Library of the State of New York, at Albany, designated as A. 8 in the calendar of those manuscripts which I left there. Van Rees, Geschiedenis der Staathuishoudkunde in Nederland, ii., p. 72, n. 1, cites the original to the same purpose. The date is further fixed in the month of June, 1567, by his statement in a letter of Mar. 16, 1639 (Bibliographical Appendix, II., No. 76), from Hamburg, to Jan Beyer, Secretary to Queen Christina (Stockholm MSS.): want de Jaeren syn daer aende 72 niet meer als dry maenden gebrekende."

[ocr errors]

the Netherlands themselves by the arrival of the Duke of Alva and the departure of the Duchess Margaret. Antwerp was, at the beginning of that year, literally at the height of its prosperity, and we shall not be far wrong if we declare that the future merchant, economist, and colonial projector was born at the commercial capital of the world, the centre of its wealth and civilization. The immense trade which, two or three generations before, had been transferred to Antwerp from Bruges had not yet begun to decline; a few years before, we are told, it was no uncommon thing to see the sails of two or three thousand vessels in the Scheldt; and, at the time of the arrival of Alva, the population of the city was probably not less than one hundred thousand. From the day of that arrival, however, the decline of the city began. The heavy, ill-adjusted, and injurious taxes which the new commander imposed in order to defray in part the expense of building the new citadel, and, above all, the institution of the famous "Blood-Council," and the terror which its summary proceedings inspired in a community perhaps half Protestant, caused an immediate and extensive emigration of traders and others. A census ordered by the Bishop of London, in this year, showed that of 4,851 strangers then in the city, 3,838 were from the Low Countries. It is this exodus which has been, indirectly, the occasion of the preservation to our time of a few bits of information concerning the family of Usselinx. For towards the end of September, when Alva had been in the province scarcely more than a month, it already became necessary to issue a proclamation prohibiting any individual from leaving the country until he had given the city council a month's previous notice of his intention, and received their permission to depart."

It is, no doubt, this order that occasioned two declarations which M. P. Génard, the archivist of Antwerp, a few years ago, discovered in the certificate-book of the schepens of that city, under date of Oct. 9 and Oct. 10, 1567, respec

J. W. Burgon, Life and Times of Sir Thomas Gresham, 1., p. 72, quoting Huet. Burgon's Gresham, i., p. 75. 6 Id., ii., p. 242.

5

« PreviousContinue »