Cromwell's Colonial Policy	397
threatened with disruption. To some of the colonists, the whole future of New England seemed to depend on the result.
" Our cure is desperate if the Dutch are not removed," wroteWilliara Hooke of New Haven to Cromwell. " They lie close upon our frontiers westward, as the French do on the east, interdicting the enlargement of our borders any farther that way,-so that we and our posterity (now almost prepared to swarm forth plenteously) are confined and straitened, the sea lying before us, and a rocky rude desert, unfit for cultivation and destitute of commodity, behind our backs, all convenient places upon the seacoast being already possessed and planted."
Cromwell answered the appeal without a moment's delay. In February, 1654, he despatched three ships and a few soldiers to New England with instructions to capture the Dutch settlements " in the Manhat-toes" and on the Hudson. The expedition was commanded by Major Robert Sedgwick of Massachusetts, with whom was associated Captain John Leverett of the same colony—once a captain in the army of the Eastern Association, and to be in future years governor of Massachusetts. Cromwell's letter to the colonial governments told them that he would not enquire why they had not hitherto taken action, but he saw no consideration which should prevent any colony from co-operating with the rest in this work, which concerned their common welfare. When the expedition arrived, even Massachusetts yielded so far as to permit the levy of five hundred volunteers, while the other three colonies were