The pressure on New Netherland began in 1633 when a trading vessel from England invaded the Hollanders’ North River for furs. Her name was the _William_. She was the first English ship ever to ascend the Hudson. At the time, the annual returns there were estimated at 16,000 beaverskins, and no one was better qualified to appreciate this rich business than the factor in charge of the _William_; for, he was none other than a former Dutch commissary on the Hudson, Jacob Eelkens, who himself had driven a great trade with the Indians at Fort Orange. In 1623 however, after incurring the displeasure of the West India Company, he had been summarily discharged. Now he was in the employ of English merchants, William Cloberry and Company of London, and he was of a mind to square accounts. Defying both Governor Wouter van Twiller and the threatening guns on Manhattan, Eelkens proclaimed haughtily that the Hudson River belonged to England and then proceeded upstream. Van Twiller didn’t fire on him. In fact, the irresolute Dutch governor broached a cask of wine while he deliberated on the situation. Not until he had been roundly twitted for timidity by his drinking companions did he acquire enough spirit to dispatch three ships with some soldiers after the renegade Hollander. By the time this force caught up with Eelkens, he was anchored near Fort Orange, where he had established a well-stocked trucking station ashore and was enjoying a lucrative trade for beaver with the natives, all at the expense of the frustrated Dutch commissary there. Van Twiller’s soldiers, upon their arrival, arrested the turncoat interloper, and the _William_ was convoyed back down the river to Manhattan where all the pelts aboard were confiscated. Then Eelkens, protesting loudly, was escorted with his empty ship out of the Narrows, never again to bother his countrymen on the Hudson. But this same year, 1633, there was pressure of a more serious nature on the Dutch. It came overland, and it was not to be repulsed so easily. The fur traders of New England hankered for the beaver that abounded in the valley of the Connecticut River where the Hollanders were taking annually some 10,000 skins. Of course Dutch Captain Adrien Block had discovered and explored the Connecticut, or “Fresh Water” as he called it, in 1614. And since fur traders from New Amsterdam bartered traditionally on the river, even establishing a temporary trading post and laying out the foundations of Fort Good Hope near the site of present-day Hartford in 1623, there was not much question in their minds about the jurisdiction of New Netherland. Admittedly, however, they had made no permanent settlements.