After a twenty years' struggle between royalists and republicans, the monarchy was restored, and the English people again became subjects of the head of the Scottish house of Stuarts.
[Illustration: Oliver Cromwell] The accession of Charles II.

soon caused a change in the affairs of America.

The new king assigned to his brother James, Duke of York, the whole territory of New Netherland, with Long Island and a part of Connecticut.

Charles had no more right to that domain than to the central province of Spain; but the brutal argument that "might makes right" justified the royal brothers, in their own estimation, in sending ships, men and cannon, the "last argument of kings," to take possession of and hold the territory.

Four men-of-war, bearing four hundred, and fifty soldiers, commanded by Colonel Richard Nicolls, a court favorite, arrived before New Amsterdam in the latter part of August, 1664.
Governor Stuyvesant had been warned of their approach and tried to strengthen the fort; but money, men and will were wanting.