doubtless on account of its pretensions, for the authority and protection
of the States General, as they afterward did to the English Virginia
Company for British protection), that this Company had lost its own
charter by expiration, and hence had absolutely nothing to offer the
Leyden people beyond the personal and associate influence of its members,
and the prestige of a name that had once been potential. In fact, the
New Netherland Company was using the Leyden congregation as a leverage to
pry for itself from the States General new advantages, larger than it had
previously enjoyed.

Moreover it appears by the evidence of both the petition of the Directors
of the New Netherland Company to the Prince of Orange (February 2/12,
1619/20), and the letters of Sir Dudley Carleton, the British ambassador
at the Hague, to the English Privy Council, dated February 5/15, 1621/22,
that, up to this latter date the Dutch had established no colony

[British State Papers, Holland, Bundle 165. Sir Dudley Carleton's
Letters. "They have certain Factors there, continually resident,
trading with savages . . . but I cannot learn of any colony,
either I already planted there by these people, or so much as
intended." Sir Dudley Carleton's Letters.]

on the territory claimed by them at the Hudson, and had no other
representation there than the trading-post of a commercial company whose
charter had expired. There can be no doubt that the Leyden leaders knew,
from their dealings with the New Netherland Company, and the study of the
whole problem which they evidently made, that this region was open to
them or any other parties for habitation and trade, so far as any prior
grants or charters under the Dutch were concerned, but they required more
than this.