Crossing the Sound: The Rise of Atlantic American Communities in Seventeenth-Century Eastern Long Island

4. English Settlers Cross the Sound

English Settlers Cross the Sound The English settlements on eastern Long Island were the result of the confluence of interests continually in flux throughout the region. The most common conduit for these interests was land. This was true for all the region’s players. The local English and Dutch colonial entities pursued an agenda that called for them to control as much land as possible in the region on their own terms; the English grandees desired to assert and replicate the home country’s traditional patterns; and individual settlers sought out “fruitful” lands, even in the face of official opposition, resulting in many outmigrations from established towns and villages. Finally , the East End native communities used access to land to cement and promote their budding alliance with the English and as a tool to preserve their own independence and traditional way of life. The Grandee and Long Island William Alexander, Earl of Stirling (1580–1640) was a Scotsman and a favorite of the Scottish-born king, James I. Stirling, who served as Scotland ’s secretary of state, was also a poet and playwright. In 1621, the king granted Stirling a royal charter in northern New England for land that Stirling named Nova Scotia. His New Scotland project proved to be a daunting, expensive, and unsuccessful undertaking, which eventually left the Stirling estate in financial ruins. Yet, this did not dampen Stirling’s interest or enthusiasm for colonization, and in 1634, he became a councilor to and patentee of the Council for New England. Only a year after Stirling joined the Council, it dissolved and surrendered its patent to the king. 4 87 Most of that patent was subsequently redistributed in the form of individual grants and charters to the Council’s former members. Stirling received one of those grants, entitling him to what is now known as the Stirling Patent, which encompassed, among other areas, all of Long Island.1 Stirling quickly discovered that holding a patent to lands in North American did not guarantee possession of those lands. His first attempt to claim rights granted under the Stirling Patent was in 1637. In June of that year, Winthrop reported that the Massachusetts Bay Colony had news of a “commission granted in England to divers gentlemen here for the governing of New England, etc.; . . . The party who procured the commission , one George Cleeves . . . under the privy signet for . . . the planting of Long Island, by articles of agreement between the Earl of Sterling, Viscount Canada, and him.”2 Winthrop and the other Bay leaders were disturbed and threatened by these claimants, whom they perceived as interlopers : “Thus this and other gentlemen in England get large circuits of lands, etc., in this country, and are very ready to grant them out to such as will become their tenants, and, to encourage them, do procure commissions , protections, etc., which will cost them nothing, but will be at no charge in any right way of plantation, which should be by coming themselves , or sending some of their children, etc.”3 Winthrop’s words appear to reflect the belief that a patent to lands in America was not sufficient to convey ownership if no personal engagement with the granted land was undertaken. Cleeves, armed with a patent that theoretically put in jeopardy the settlers’ claims to former Pequot lands (including Long Island), was not about to be welcomed with open arms. Bay leaders Sir Henry Vane and John Winthrop openly expressed to Council members their dislike of Cleeves and his mission. In response, the Council’s leader, Sir Ferdinando Gorges, wrote to Vane assuring him that the Council was in receipt of “severall letters from servant Vines, and others of the generall dislike conceaved against Mr. Cleeves” and that all support for Cleeves had been withdrawn.4 Nothing came of this first attempt to claim or settle Long Island by a grandee, and Stirling appears to have realized that without some type of support from the in situ authorities in southern New England, nothing could be accomplished. Even though Cleeves ceased to represent Stirling’s interest in southern New England, over the next decade Cleeves continued to make sporadic appearances in the area as the erstwhile stakeholder to one piece of land or another, but always without success.5 88 | English Settlers Cross the Sound The Cleeves claim to Long Island and the Bay Colony’s reaction to it reveals the colonists’ developing...