Gracefully he alluded to the hospitality with which the exiled Pilgrims had been received in Holland.

"Many of us," he wrote, "are tied by the good and courteous entreaty which we have found in your country, having lived there many years with freedom and good content, as many of our friends do this day; for which we are bound to be thankful, and our children after us, and shall never forget the same." At the same time he claimed that the territory, north of forty degrees of latitude, which included a large part of New Netherland, and all their Hudson river possessions, belonged to the English.

Still he promised that, for the sake of good neighborhood, the English would not molest the Dutch at the mouth of the Hudson, if they would "forbear to trade with the natives in this bay and river of Narragansett and Sowames, which is, as it were, at our doors." The authorities at Fort Amsterdam could not, for a moment, admit this claim of English supremacy over New Netherland.

Director Minuit returned an answer, remarkable for its courteous tone, but in which he firmly maintained the right of the Dutch to trade with the Narragansetts as they had done for years, adding "As the English claim authority under the king of England, so we derive ours from the States of Holland, and we shall defend it." Governor Bradford sent this correspondence to England.

In an accompanying document he said, "the Dutch, for strength of men and fortification, far exceed us in all this land.