Rondout, the mouth of the river, the head of navigation, and about midway between the two.

The charter of the first company expired in 1618, and in 1621 the States-General granted another to the West India Company, with the monopoly of exclusive trade as before. The general government of the company was lodged in a board or assembly of nineteen delegates. They might choose a Director-General and Council who "were invested with all powers, judicial, legislative and executive, but the resolutions and customs of Fatherland were to be received as the paramount rule of action."

In 1624, in the same ship with Peter Minuit,—the first Director-General of the West India Company,-there came to New Netherland some families of Walloons from the frontier of Belgium and France. After a temporary settlement on Staten Island, they removed to the north-western extremity of Long Island on a bay called the "Wahle-Bocht," or "the bay of the foreigners," where they established a permanent home. With the exception of such small accessions, comparatively nothing was done towards advancing settlement and agriculture during the seven years which followed the incorporation of the West India Company. The States-General, accordingly, determined to plant "colonies" or seignorial fiefs, or manors, in the new country, and in June, 1629, ratified the document called "Freedoms and Exemptions," granted by the Assembly of XIX of the West India Company, "to all such as shall plant any colonies in New Netherland." This charter established a monopoly in land, as the previous one had in trade, and put the valley of the Hudson largely into the hands of proprietors who were favorites of the company. Each proprietor or "Patroon" was to undertake to plant a colony of fifty souls, upwards of fifteen years old, and for that purpose might extend his limits four (that is sixteen English) miles on one side of the river, or half that

'O'Callaghan, History of New Netherland, I., p. 90.

distance on both sides, "and so far into the country as the situation of the occupiers will permit." The company was to retain the intervening lands, and no one was allowed to come within thirty miles distance without the consent of the "Patroon;" subject, however, to the order of the commander and council. The Patroons were to hold the lands "as a perpetual inheritance," establish officers and magistrates in the cities, and dispose of their property by will. The colonists were to be freed by the company from payment of customs, taxes, excise, or other contributions, for the space of ten years, after which they should pay the usual exactions. The most liberal clause of the charter is the one which grants to other persons, who should go and settle there, but without the privileges of the Patroons, as much land (with the approbation of the Director-General and Council) "as they shall be able properly to improve.'

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The Patroons and colonists were to endeavor to support a minister and a schoolmaster, that thus the service of God and the zeal for religion may not grow cool, and be neglected among them; and that they do, for the first, procure a comforter of the sick there." But the colonists were prohibited from manufacturing, "on pain of being banished, and as perjurers to be arbitrarily punished." The Patroons were entitled to the services of the colonists, and were to be supplied with "blacks" by the company. Thus the feudal tenure of Europe, in a somewhat modified form, but conferring less liberty than the Dutch had enjoyed in the Fatherland, was imposed upon the settlers of the Hudson river valley by the States-General of Holland acting under the instigation of the Assembly of XIX. of the West India Company. "While

it secured the right of the Indian to the soil and enjoined

'O'Callaghan, History of New Netherland, I., p. 113. (Citing Hol. Doc. ii., pp. 98, 99.

2 O'Callaghan, History of New Netherland, I., p. 118. 'O'Callaghan, History of New Netherland, I., p. 119.

schools and churches, it scattered the seeds of servitude, slavery and aristocracy. While it gave to freemen as much land as they could cultivate, and exempted colonists from taxation for ten years, it fettered agriculture by restricting commerce and prohibiting manufactures."

Kilien Van Rensselaer, a merchant of Amsterdam and one of the directors of the West India Company, became a Patroon in 1630 under this "Freedoms and Exemptions charter of 1629, and secured the grant of a large tract of land on both sides of the Hudson, including the present site of Albany. As Patroon he was "empowered to administer civil and criminal justice in person or by deputy within his colonie, to appoint local officers and magistrates; to erect courts and to take cognizance of all crimes committed within his limits." 2

Nominally an appeal lay from the manorial courts to the Director-General and Council at Fort Amsterdam, in cases

'Moulton, History of New York, pp. 387, 388.

It should be especially noted that in this earliest charter of 1629, notwithstanding its restriction of civil liberties, the Dutch recognized the prime importance of establishing in their colony here the foundations of religion and education. So intimately were the two connected that, as Dr. Baird mentions in his "Huguenot Emigration to America" (Vol. I., p. 185), in 1656 some colonists set sail for New Netherlands in three ships, one of which carried a schoolmaster who was to be also "a comforter of the sick," till the minister arrived. As early as 1633, Everardus Bogardus, the first minister in New Amsterdam, and Adam Roelandsen, the schoolmaster, came over from Holland together.-(Brodhead, p. 223).

Of the character and influence of the religious life of the Hudson river colonists, something will be said in connection with the account of New Paltz, which in most respects may be called the typical village community of the Hudson river.

The part which Dutch influence played in shaping the educational life of America, has not been given the general recognition it deserves. Our free public school system, of which we are so justly proud, seems to have its beginnings distinctly traceable to the earliest life of the Dutch colonies

2 O'Callaghan, History of New Netherland, I., p. 320.

(For Van Rensselaer Patent, see Docs. relating to Colonial Hist. N. Y., Vol. I., p. 44).

affecting life or limb, or where the amount in controversy was over twenty dollars; but this right to appeal was rendered for the most part nugatory, by the exaction of a promise from the colonist at the time of settlement, that he would not resort to the higher tribunal. Thus, besides being subject to the laws prevailing elsewhere in New Netherland, the civil code, the ordinances of the Province of Holland and of the United Netherlands, the edicts of the West India Company and of the Director and Council at Manhattan,-the colonists of the manor were also subject to such laws as the Patroon or his deputies might establish. "Theoretically," says Mr. Brodhead, "the Patroon was always present in his court baron." Practically, the government of the colony was administered by a court composed of two commissaries and two schepens, assisted by the colonial secretary and the schout." The Patroon bore the expenses of preparing the land for occupancy. He set off farms, erected farm buildings, stocked them with tools and cattle, and so brought the farmer to his

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here in America, and to have had its prototype in "the free schools in which," says Dr. Storrs (American Spirit and the Genesis of It, p. 47), "Holland had led the van of the world." Mr. Motley, in a letter to the St. Nicholas Society (cited by Dr. Storrs, supra), intimates that the New England colonists gained their educational impulses more from the Netherlands than from their own country. "It is very pleasant to reflect," he says, "that the New England pilgrims, during their residence in the glorious country of your ancestry, found already established there a system of schools which John of Nassau, eldest brother of William the Silent, had recommended in these words: You must urge upon the States-General that they should establish free schools, where children of quality as well as of poor families, for a very small sum, could be well and Christianly educated and brought up. This would be the greatest and most useful work you could ever accomplish for God and Christianity, and for the Netherlands themselves.' . . . This was the feeling about popular education in the Netherlands during the 16th century." In New Amsterdam in 1647, the Nine Men approved arrangements "for finishing the church and reorganizing the public schools."-(Brodhead, Hist. N. Y., p. 476).

'Brodhead's Hist. of N. Y., p. 305; O'Callaghan's Hist. of N. Y., p. 321. 2 "Studies" I., VII, Old Maryland Manors, pp. 11, 12.

3 Brodhead's Hist. of N. Y., p. 305.

work unhampered by want of capital. In return for these outlays the civil code gave the Patroon many of the rights incident to lordship under the feudal system. He was not only entitled to the rent1 fixed upon, but also to a portion of the increase of the stock and of the produce of the farm. Even to the remainder he had pre-emptive right, and the farmer was not at liberty to sell any of his produce elsewhere, until it had been refused by the Patroon. He required each colonist to grind all grain at his mill, to obtain license from him to fish or hunt within the domain, and as "lord of the manor," he was the legal heir of all who died intestate within the "colonie." 2

This manor, thus early created under Dutch rule,3 may stand as a type of the later ones, most of which were established after the English obtained possession of the territory, and before the close of the 17th century. The proprietary on the Hudson river, therefore, had the power of establishing the feudal system as they had in Maryland, where, as Mr. Geo. Wm. Brown has stated, "express provision was made for manors, lords of manors and manorial courts."

In the patent for the Livingston manor given under the hand and seal of Gov. Dongan, July 22, 1686, provision is made for constituting "in the said Lordship and Mannor one Court Leet and one Court Baron . . . to be kept by the said Robert Livingston his Heirs and assignes for ever or theire or any of theire Stewards Deputed and appointed with

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The rent was usually paid in kind on the Hudson as it was in “Old Maryland Manors." See "Studies," I., VII., p. 10.

Brodhead's Hist. of N. Y., p. 305; O'Callaghan's Hist. of New Netherland, I., pp. 325-6.

The summary above is from the Charter of Rensselaerswyck. In 1646, Kieft's manorial grant to Van der Donck was of territory on which Yonkers is now the chief town.

Geo. Wm. Brown, The Origin and Growth of Civil Liberty in Maryland (1850), p. 7. Conf. Maine, Village Communities, pp. 139, 140.

"The ownership of the manorial estate carried with it in New York the right to hold two courts," as Mr. Johnson says it did in Maryland— "Studies," supra, p. 11.