We have already seen the first attempts of the French and English in the exploration of the north-east coast of North America; but during the sixteenth century very little was done to settle on such inhospitable shores, which did not offer anything like the rich prizes that Tropical America afforded.  Neither the exploration of Cartier in 1534, or that of the Cabots much earlier, was followed by any attempt to possess the land.  Breton fishermen visited the fisheries off Newfoundland, and various explorers attempted to find openings which would give them a north-west passage, but otherwise the more northerly part of the continent was left unoccupied till the beginning of the seventeenth century.  The first town founded was that of St. Augustine, in Florida, in 1565, but this was destroyed three years later by a French expedition.  Sir Walter Raleigh attempted to found a colony in 1584 near where Virginia now stands, but it failed after three years, and it was not till the reign of James I. that an organised attempt was made by England to establish plantations, as they were then called, on the North American coast.

Two Chartered Companies, the one to the north named the Plymouth Company, and the one to the south named the London Company (both founded in 1606), nominally divided between them all the coast from Nova Scotia to Florida.  These large tracts of country were during the seventeenth century slowly parcelled out into smaller states, mainly Puritan in the north (New England), High Church and Catholic in the south (Virginia and Maryland).  But between the two, and on the banks of the Hudson and the Delaware, two other European nations had also formed plantations—­the Dutch along the Hudson from 1609 forming the New Netherlands, and the Swedes from 1636 along the Delaware forming New Sweden.  The latter, however, lasted only a few years, and was absorbed by the Dutch in 1655.  The capital of New Netherlands was established on Manhattan Island, to the south of the palisade still known as Wall Street, and the city was named New Amsterdam.  The Hudson is such an important artery of commerce between the Atlantic and the great lakes, that this wedge between the two sets of English colonies would have been a bar to any future progress.  This was recognised by Charles II., who in 1664 despatched an expedition to demand its surrender, even though England and Holland were at that time at peace.  New Amsterdam was taken, and named New York, after the king’s brother, the Duke of York, afterwards James II.  New Sweden, which at the same time fell into the English hands, was sold as a proprietary plantation to a Jersey man, Sir George Carteret, and to a Quaker, William Penn.  By this somewhat high-handed procedure the whole coast-line down to Florida was in English hands.