CHAPTER VII.
WAR BETWEEN ENGLAND AND HOLLAND.
Action of the Patroons .-- Settlements on the Hudson .-- Alarm of the Home Government .-- Recall of Stuyvesant .-- His Escape from Humiliation .-- Difficulties between England and Holland .-- The Breaking out of War .-- Directions to Stuyvesant .-- The Relations of the Colonies .-- Charges against the Dutch Governor .-- Their Refutation .-- Efforts of Stuyvesant for Peace .-- Noble Conduct of the Massachusetts Government .-- The Advocates for War.
Governor Stuyvesant having removed the obnoxious vice-director, had another, Johannes Dyckman, who he thought would be more subservient to his wishes, appointed in his stead.

The commissary of the patroons, whom he had imprisoned at Manhattan, secreted himself on board a sloop and escaped up the river to Beaverwyck.

The enraged governor seized the skipper of the sloop on his return, and inflicted upon him a heavy fine.
The patroons were now fearful that the governor would fulfill his threat of extending his authority over the extensive territory whose jurisdiction the Charter of Privileges had entrusted exclusively to the patroons.

They therefore, on an appointed day assembled the freemen and householders who bound themselves, by an oath, "to maintain and support offensively and defensively the right and jurisdiction of the colony against every one." Among the persons who took this oath we find the name of John Baptist Van Rensselaer.

He was the younger half-brother of the patroon, and probably the first of the name who came to New Netherland.