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CHAPTER IX

FRANCIS LOVELACE,   AND  THE RECAPTURE  OF NEW NETHERLAND

1668-1674

HARLES II. is said to have been caricatured in Holland
with a woman on each arm and courtiers picking hispocket—
this latter the last place, perhaps, they would have thought
worth the trouble of picking.   Nevertheless, to be a court
favorite during his reign presented      ^—'      p          f    q^

opportunities   for   profits   and  per-    Oj/f^^ cJ^O^U^td^
quisites,   of   which   the   shrewd  or                          ^—-

needy — colonels, younger sons^ and others—were not slow to avail
themselves. If nothing offered at home, there were governorships,
proprietorships, and land grants in America to be had almost liter¬
ally for the asking. It was such an easy way for Charles to silence
importunity and reward or gratify friends, to give them what they
sought,— whole provinces, sometimes, as large as France — a less
costly gift to himself than would have been a snuff-box. Of Vir¬
ginia in 1669, says Bancroft: " To satisfy the greediness of favorite
courtiers, Virginia was dismembered by lavish grants, till at last the
whole colony was given away for a generation, as recklesslj^ as a
man would give away a life-estate in a farm."

Some of these men—as, for instance. Sir William Berkeley, Lord
Clarendon, and others associated with them—very well knew what
they were asking, if Charles did not; knew that they were obtaining
valuable prospective estates, if they could only retain them; knew
that there were perquisites of office open to a Governor, such as might
compensate for a few years' absence from court
and court life. Few if any of them, we may be
quite sure, had in mind Addison's idea, that " the
best perquisites of a place are the advantages it gives a man of
doing good." Tet, it must be said that, though the most of them
fished the streams of the New World thoroughly and well, few, if
any, brought home any satisfactory amount of fish. Colonel and late
Governor Nicolls did not, for the reason that he was really an honor¬
able and loyal soldier, and advanced, from his own means, to put the