16 HISTORY OF BROOKLYN.

the south and those of France in the north, the English could not fail to feel annoyed by the active preparations of their Dutch neighbors for the occupation of so large a portion of those ter-ritories. Their apprehension found expression in an official remon-strance to the States-General against the sailing thither of the Dutch vessels, but the protest was unheeded, and after a brief diplomatic correspondence, the matter was temporarily dropped. Warned, however, by the evident and growing jealousy of the English, the West India Company lost no time, even before their final organiza-tion, in securing, in the year 1622, their title to New Netherland by taking formal possession, and by making arrangements for the building of two new forts, one on the North River, to be called “Fort Orange,” and another called “Fort Nassau,” on the South or Delaware River, near the present town of Gloucester, N. J. And, simultaneously with its final organization, in June, 1623, the company began to prosecute with energy the colonization of New Netherland, which was erected into a province, and invested with the armorial bearings of a count.1 The particular management of its affairs was intrusted, as we have before remarked, to the Amsterdam Chamber, which sent out the ship “New Netherland”2 of two hundred and sixty tons burden, with a company of thirty families, mostly Walloons,3 under

1. The Provincial seal of New Netherland was a shield, bearing a beaver, proper, surmounted by a count's coronet, and encircled by the legend “Sigillum Novi Belgii.”

2. Catelina Trice’s statement (see Appendix No. 1) gives the name of this vessel, in which she was a passenger, as the “Unity” (Eendragt). As, however, her deposition was made in 1688, at tile age of eighty-three, concerning events which happened sixtyfive years before, when she was a girl of eighteen years, we have preferred to follow Wassaneer's account, which was contemporaneous, and supported by Hol. Doc. ii. 370.

3. “These Walloons, whose name was derived from their original ‘Waalsehe’ or French extraction, had passed through the fire of persecution. They inhabited the Southern Belgic Provinces of Hainault, Namur, Luxemburg, Limburg, and part of tile ancient Bishopric of Liege, and spoke the old French language. When the Northern provinces of the Netherlands formed their political union at Utrecht, in 1579, the Southern provinces, which were generally attached to the Romish Church, declined joining the Confederation. Many of their inhabitants, nevertheless, professed the principles of the Reformation. Against these Protestant Walloons the Spanish Government exercised the most rigid measures of inquisitorial vengeance, and the subjects of an unrelenting persecution emigrated by thousands into Holland, where they knew that strangers of every race and creed were sure of an asylum and a welcome. Carrying with them a knowledge of the arts, in which they were great proficients, they were distinguished in their new home for their tasteful and persevering industry. To