The troubles with the Dutch were not so easily settled. England had never acknowledged the Dutch claim to New Amsterdam, and the New England Council in making its grants had paid no attention to the Dutch occupation. Though trade had been carried on and early relations had been on the whole amicable, yet, after Connecticut's overthrow of the Pequots in 1637 and the opening of the territory to settlement, the founding of towns as far west as Stamford and Greenwich had rendered acute the conflict of titles. There was no western limit to the English claims, and, as the colonists were perfectly willing to accept Sir William Boswell's advice to "crowd on, crowding the Dutch out of those places which they have occupied, without hostility or any act of violence," a collision was bound to come. The Dutch, who in their turn were not abating a jot of their claims, had already destroyed a New Haven settlement on the Delaware, and had asserted rights of jurisdiction even in New Haven harbor, by seizing there one of their own ships charged with evading the laws of New Amsterdam. Peter Stuyvesant, the Dutch Governor, famous for his short temper and mythical silver leg, visited Hartford in 1650, and negotiated with the commissioners of the United Colonies a treaty drawing the boundary line from the west side of Greenwich Bay northward twenty miles. But this treaty, though ratified by the States General of Holland, was never ratified by England, and, when two years later war between the two countries broke out overseas, the question of an attack on New Amsterdam was taken up and debated with such heat as nearly to disrupt the Confederation. The absolute refusal of Massachusetts to enter on such an undertaking so prolonged the discussion that the war was over before a decision was reached; but Connecticut seized the Dutch lands at Hartford, and Roger Ludlow, who had moved to Fairfield from Windsor after 1640, began an abortive military campaign of his own. The situation remained unchanged as long as the Dutch held New Netherland, and the region between Greenwich and the Bronx continued to be what it had been from the beginning of settlement, a territory occupied only by Indians and a few straggling emigrants. There the unfortunate Anne Hutchinson with her family was massacred by the Indians in 1643. The New England Confederation performed the most important part of its work during the first twenty years of its existence, for although it lasted nominally till 1684, it ceased to be effective after 1664, and was of little weight in New England history after the restoration of the Stuarts. Owing to the fact that it had been formed without any authority from England, the Confederation was never recognized by the Government there, and with the return of the monarchy it survived chiefly as an occasional committee meeting for debate and advice. CHAPTER VI WINNING THE CHARTERS