Let it be remembered that the Calverts of Maryland had claimed Delaware Bay while it was in the possession of the Dutch. After Dutch surrender, Delaware Bay came under the jurisdiction of New York, and Maryland's claims had to be set aside for a while. They were not abandoned, however. In 1672 Lord Baltimore concluded that the time had come to act. He sent a party of thirty horsemena large troop for the time and placeto plunder the inhabitants of the Whorekills, a small but strategic community at the mouth of the bay (Lewes, Delaware).⁶⁷   New York's bumbling Governor Francis Lovelace was incredulous and then apoplectic at the news, but Baltimore had timed the raid with luck.68 England and the Netherlands were at war again; soon a Dutch fleet returned both New York and the Delaware Bay to Dutch government, and thus removed Lovelace from any power to chastise Baltimore. But Baltimore wanted the Whorekills for himself, not for the Dutch, and in December, 1673, he struck again. He sent forty troopers this time, under the command of Captain Thomas Howell, who took the place by a simple show of force. Howell entertained himself by torturing a merchant into confessing the location of his peltry hoard, and by committing sundry other "barbarous cruelties." On Christmas Eve he summoned all the Whorekills inhabitants together, took their arms from them, and informed them of his instructions from Baltimore to destroy everything on fifteen minutes' notice" that he must not Leave one stick standing." His men set fire to the place, standing guard to prevent anyone from rescuing even a single possession. The bewildered people, their boats and horses taken away as well as their arms and food, and with some of their women pregnant, stood aghast. Survivors recalled that "the Indians that Lived here about wept when they saw the spoil that the Inhabitants had suffered by their owne native Country men."⁶⁹ When news of the attack finally reached Governor General Colve, the new chief of the revived New Netherland, he ordered immediate "means of support" to be given to the victims, English as well as Dutch. In his outrage he further ordered "proper arrangements" to prevent "such cruel tyranny" thereafter, and he put the inhabitants of Delaware Bay into a state of military emergency.⁷⁰

Now it was the turn of the Lord Baltimore's people to feel fear. The Dutch of Manhattan were far away, and the Dutch of Delaware Bay were weak; but, given some prodding and arms, the Indian allies of the Dutch might become terrible indeed, and the Indians were in a highly volatile state. Continual seizure by Virginians and Marylanders of Indian lands had led some of the Lenape sachems to contemplate preventive war to hold their own at Delaware Bay. A couple of Englishmen had been killed by Indians. Before the Dutch reconquest the English had decided to wage an Indian war in the spring of 1673, and they had been making plans for it when the Dutch overthrew their government. One suggestion that had been made by the Bay Englishmen to their distant Governor in New York is worth noting. If possible, they had asked, fifty or sixty "North Indyans" should be hired "who will doe more than 200 men in such a warr." Such notions would not have escaped the attention of the Marylanders; and certainly, if the English at the Delaware might have brought in Iroquois to attack other Indians, there could be small reason to doubt that the Dutch might bring them in to attack the Marylanders with whom the Iroquois were already formally at war.⁷¹