New York

In 1629, mainly to promote agriculture, the company issued its famous charter of privileges and exemptions, which provided that any member might have anywhere in New Netherland except on Manhattan island his choice of a tract of unoccupied land extend ing 16 m. along the seacoast or one side of a navigable river, or 8 m. along the river on both sides "and so far into the country as the situation of the occupyers will permit" by purchasing the same from the Indians and planting upon it a colony of 5o persons, within four years from the beginning of the undertaking, and that any private person might with the approval of the director general and council take up as much land as he should be able to improve. The founder of a colony was styled a patroon, and, although the colonists were bound to him only by a voluntary contract for specified terms, the relations between them and the patroon dur ing the continuance of the contract were in several important respects similar to those under the feudal system between the lord of a manor and his vassals. The single colony of Rensselaer wyck established by Kilian van Rensselaer on both sides of the Hudson and extending in all directions from Ft. Orange (Albany), was the only one that prospered under the patroon system. In the meantime the patroons had claimed unrestricted rights of trade within the boundaries of their estates. These were stoutly denied by the company. Director-general Minuit was recalled in 1632 on the ground that he had been partial to the patroons ; and Wouter van Twiller, who arrived in 1633, endeavoured to promote only the selfish commercial policy of the company; at the close of his administration (1637) the affairs of the province were in a ruinous condition.

William Kieft was appointed director-general late in 1637, and in 1638 the company abandoned its monopoly of trade in New Netherland and gave notice that all inhabitants of the United Provinces, and of friendly countries, might trade there subject to an import duty of o%, an export duty of 15%, and to the require ment that the goods should be carried in the company's ships.

At the same time the director-general was instructed to issue to any immigrant applying for land a patent for as large a farm as he required for cultivation and pasturage, to be free of all charges for ten years and thereafter subject only to a quit-rent of one tenth of the produce. Two years later, by a revision of the charter of privileges and exemptions, the prohibition on manu factures was abolished, the privileges of the original charter with respect to patroons were extended to "all good inhabitants of the Netherlands," and the estate of a patroon was limited to four miles along the coast or a navigable river and eight miles back into the country. These inducements encouraged immigration not only from the Fatherland but from New England and Virginia.

But the freedom of trade promoted dangerous relations with the Indians, and an attempt of Kieft to collect a tribute from the Algonkin tribes in the vicinity of Manhattan island and other indiscretions of this officer provoked Indian hostilities during which most of the outlying settlements were laid waste.

Out of this warfare arose an organized movement for a Govern ment in which the colonists should have a voice. In Aug. 1641, Kieft called an assembly of the heads of families in the neighbour hood of Ft. Amsterdam to consider the question of peace or war. The assembly chose a board of 12 men to represent it, and a few months later this board demanded certain reforms, but Kieft later denied its authority to exact promises from him, and dissolved it. At another crisis in 1643, he was obliged to call a

second assembly of the people. This time a board of eight men was chosen to confer with him. It denied his right to levy certain war taxes, and when it had in vain protested to him against his arbitrary measures it sent a petition, in 1644, to the States-Gen eral for his recall, and this was granted. Peter Stuyvesant (q.v.), his successor, arrived at Ft. Amsterdam in May, 1647. Under his rule there was a return of prosperity; from 1653 to 1664 the population of the province increased from 2,000 to I o,000. Stuy vesant was, however, extremely arbitrary. Although he permitted the existence of a board of nine men to act as "tribunes" for the people he treated it with increasing contempt.

English Occupation.

Notwithstanding the good claim to their province which the Dutch had established by discovery and occu pancy, the Government of Great Britain, basing its claim to the same territory on Cabot's discovery (1498), the patent to the London and Plymouth companies (1606), and the patent to the Council for New England (162o), contended that the Dutch were intruders, and by the Treaty of Hartford (165o), the commis sioners of the United Colonies of New England forced Stuyvesant to agree to a boundary which on the mainland roughly determined the present boundary between New York and Connecticut and on Long Island extended from Oyster bay to the Atlantic ocean In 1653, the Dutch, fearing an English attack, built a wall, from which the present Wall street was named, across Manhattan island at what was then the northern limits of New Amsterdam. In March 1664, Charles II. formally erected into a province the whole territory from the west side of the Connecticut river to the east side of Delaware bay together with the whole of Long Island and granted it to his brother James, the duke of York and Albany, as its lord proprietor. The duke appointed Col. Richard Nicolls governor and placed him in command of an expedition to effect its conquest. Nicolls won over the burgomaster of New Amsterdam and other prominent citizens by the favourable terms which he offered, and Stuyvesant was forced, without fighting, into a formal surrender on Sept. 8. The duke's authority was pro claimed and New Netherland became New York. Among numer ous changes from Dutch to English names was that from Ft. Orange to Ft. Albany. A treaty of alliance with the Mohawks and Senecas procured for the English the same friendly relations with the Iroquois that the Dutch had enjoyed. The transition from Dutch to English institutions was effected gradually and the pri vate rights of the Dutch were carefully preserved. The introduc tion of English institutions into settlements wholly or largely English was begun in i665 by the erection of Long Island, Staten Island and Westchester into an English county under the name of Yorkshire, and by putting into operation in that county a code of laws known as the "Duke's Laws." It gave the freeholders of each town a voice in the government of their town by permitting them to elect a board of eight overseers and a constable. The board sat as a court for the trial of small causes. Nicolls resigned the gov ernorship in 1668, but his successor, Francis Lovelace, continued his policy—autocratic government, arbitrary in form but mild in practice, and progressive in the matter of religious toleration.