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In the next year, 1665, he gave them another tract from the mouth of the Raritan to Sandy Hook; and soon the villages of Shrewsbury and Middletown were started. Meantime, however, unknown to Nicolls, the Duke of York in England had given all of New Jersey to Lord Berkeley and Sir George Carteret.
He had a hope that Massachusetts might be so wrought upon as to choose Nicolls for her governor and Carr for her major-general, but in this, as in the pious hope of a return of the Puritans to the Church of England, he reckoned without a knowledge of the grimness of the Massachusetts temper.
Visiting the city under a flag of truce Winthrop delivered this to Stuyvesant outside the fort and urged him to surrender. The director declined; and, returning to the fort, he opened Nicolls' letter before the council and the burgomasters, who desired that it should be communicated, as "all which regarded the public welfare ought to be made public."
Nicolls was succeeded by Francis Lovelace in 1667. Lovelace was a quiet man, unfitted to encounter great storms, yet he showed considerable energy in dealing with hostile Indians and French on the northern frontier of New York.
It appears by a preface of Richard Nicolls, that the original plan of the Mirror of Magistrates was principally owing to him, a work of great labour, use and beauty.
Lossing graphically described it as follows: "Nicolls was tall, athletic and about forty-five years of age, a soldier, haughty and sometimes very irritable and brusque in speech when excited. Carteret was shorter and fat, good-natured and affable, with polished manners which he had learned by being much at court.
They would not listen to him. They replied to him only with curses and groans. Then from all sides came cries of, "The letter, the letter, we will have the letter." So at last Stuyvesant yielded; the torn fragments were gathered together and a copy made. And when the people heard the terms they bade him yield. Still he would not, and he sent another message to Nicolls.
Several other companies were in course of organization in the city and county, but the emergency had passed before they were ready to respond to the call: Fifth Ward Guards, Captain F.S. Bickley, 70 men, Company G, 2d Regiment; September 13. Nicolls Guards, Captain Charles H. Hunter, 104 men, Company E, 11th Regiment; September 15.
Stuyvesant immediately called together the council and the burgomasters, but would not allow the terms offered by Nicolls to be communicated to the people, lest they might insist on capitulating. In a short time several of the burghers and city officers assembled at the Stadt-Huys.
"Friends," was the answer, "will be welcome if they come in a friendly manner." "I shall come with ships and soldiers," replied Nicolls; "raise the white flag of peace at the fort, and then something may be considered." When this imperious message became known, men, women, and children flocked to the director, beseeching him to submit. His only answer was, "I would rather be carried out dead."
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