Present-day Brooklyn left Dutch hands after the English
conquest of New Netherland in 1664, which sparked the
Second Anglo-Dutch War. New Netherland was taken in a naval action, and the English renamed the new capture for their naval commander,
James, Duke of York, brother of the then monarch
King Charles II and future king himself as
King James II. Brooklyn became a part of the West Riding of
York Shire in the
Province of New York, one of the
Middle Colonies in
England's North American colonies.
