In the Fatherland the title of Domine was familiarly given to clergymen.

The phrase crossed the Atlantic with Bogardus, and it has survived to the present day among the descendants of the Dutch colonists of New Netherland." The little settlement at Manhattan was entitled to the feudal right of levying a tax upon all the merchandise passing up or down the river.
The English were, at this time, so ignorant of this region of the North American coast that a sloop was dispatched to Delaware Bay "to see if there were any river there." As the Dutch had vacated the Delaware, the English decided to attempt to obtain a foothold on those waters.

Accordingly, in the year 1635, they sent a party of fourteen or fifteen Englishmen, under George Holmes, to seize the vacant Dutch fort.
Van Twiller, informed of this fact, with much energy sent an armed vessel, by which the whole company was arrested and brought to Manhattan, whence they were sent, "pack and sack," to an English settlement on the Chesapeake.
The Plymouth people had now been two years in undisturbed possession of their post at Windsor, on the Connecticut.

Stimulated by their example, the General Court of Massachusetts encouraged emigration to the Connecticut valley, urging, as a consideration, their need of pasturage for their increasing flocks and herds; the great beauty and fruitfulness of the Connecticut valley, and the danger that the Dutch, or other English colonies, might get possession of it.

"Like the banks of the Hudson," it was said, "the Connecticut had been first explored and even occupied by the Dutch.