NEIGHBORS OF NEW NETHERLAND 131

New Sweden was ended, and the jurisdiction of the
Dutch was for a time established.

New Netherland had, however, other neighbors
more powerful, more persistent, and with more at
stake than the French, the Indians, and the Swedes.
These were the English colonists, pressing north-
ward from the Virginias and southward from
New England. From the beginning of the Dutch
colonization, England had looked askance at the
wedge thus driven between her own settlements.
She had stubbornly refused to recognize the
sovereignty of the States-General in the region of
New Netherland while at the same time she vainly
sought a pretext for the establishment of her own.
England put forward the apocryphal claim of dis-
covery by Cabot; but here she was stopped by the
doctrine announced in a previous century that in
order to give title to a new country, discovery must
be followed by occupation. When England main-
tained that, since Hudson was an Englishman,
the title to his discovery must pass to his native
land, she was reminded that Cabot was a Genoese,
and that Genoa might as well claim title to Vir-
ginia as England to New Netherland.

The Plymouth Company particularly was con-
cerned at the Dutch occupation of. this middle