PATROONS AND LORDS OF THE MANOR
Their High Mightinesses, the States-General of the United Netherlands,
as we have seen, granted to the Dutch West India Company a charter
conveying powers nearly equaling and often overlapping those of the
States themselves. The West India Company in turn, with a view to
stimulating colonization, granted to certain members known as patroons
manorial rights frequently in conflict with the authority of the
Company. And for a time it seemed as though the patroonship would be
the prevailing form of grant in New Netherland.
The system of patroonships seems to have been suggested by Kiliaen Van
Rensselaer, one of the directors of the West India Company and a
lapidary of Amsterdam, who later became the most successful of the
patroons. A shrewd, keen, far-seeing man, he was one of the first of
the West India Company to perceive that the building up of {33} New
Netherland could not be carried on without labor, and that labor could
not be procured without permanent settlers. "Open up the country with
agriculture: that must be our first step," was his urgent advice; but
the dwellers in the Netherlands, finding themselves prosperous in their
old homes, saw no reason for emigrating, and few offered themselves for
the overseas settlements. The West India Company was not inclined to
involve itself in further expense for colonization, and matters
threatened to come to a halt, when someone, very likely the shrewd
Kiliaen himself, evolved the plan of granting large estates to men
willing to pay the cost of settling and operating them. From this
suggestion the scheme of patroonship was developed.
The list of "Privileges and Exemptions" published by the West India
Company in 1629 declared that all should be acknowledged patroons of
New Netherland who should, within the space of four years, plant there
a colony of fifty souls upwards of fifteen years old. "The island of
the Manhattes" was reserved for the Company. The patroons, it was
stipulated, must make known the situation of their proposed
settlements, but they were allowed to change should their first
location prove {34} unsatisfactory. The lands were to extend sixteen
miles along the shore on one side of a navigable river, or eight miles
on both sides of a river, and so far into the country as the situation
of the colonies and their settlers permitted. The patroons were
entitled to dispose of their grants by will, and they were free to
traffic along the coast of New Netherland for all goods except furs,
which were to be the special perquisite of the West India Company.
They were forbidden to allow the weaving of linen, woolen, or cotton
cloth on their estates, the looms in Holland being hungry for raw
material.
The Company agreed that it would not take any one from the service of
the patroon during the years for which the servant was bound, and any
colonist who should without written permission enter the service of
another patroon or "betake himself to freedom" was to be proceeded
against with all the available force of the law. The escaped servant
would fare ill if his case came before the courts, since it was one of
the prerogatives of a patroon to administer high, middle, and low
justice--that is, to appoint magistrates and erect courts which should
deal with all grades of crimes committed within the limits of the manor
and also with breaches of the civil law. In civil cases, {35} disputes
over contracts, titles, and such matters, where the amount in
litigation exceeded twenty dollars, as well as in criminal cases
affecting life and limb, it was possible to appeal to the Director and
Council at Fort Amsterdam; but the local authorities craftily evaded
this provision by compelling their colonists to promise not to appeal
from the tribunal of the manor.
The _scherprechter_, or hangman, was included with the superintendent,
the _schout fiscaal_, or sheriff, and the magistrates as part of the
manorial court system. One such _scherprechter_ named Jan de Neger,
perhaps a freed negro, is named among the dwellers at Rensselaerswyck
and we find him presenting a claim for thirty-eight florins ($15.00)
for executing Wolf Nysen.
No man in the manorial colony was to be deprived of life or property
except by sentence of a court composed of five people, and all accused
persons were entitled to a speedy and impartial trial. As we find
little complaint of the administration of justice in all the records of
disputes, reproaches, and recriminations which mark the records of
those old manors, we must assume that the processes of law were carried
on in harmony with the spirit of fairness prevailing in the home
country.
{36}
Even before the West India Company had promulgated its charter, a
number of rich merchants had availed themselves of the opportunity to
secure lands under the offered privileges and exemptions. Godyn and
Blommaert, in association with Captain David de Vries and others, took
up a large territory on Delaware Bay, and here they established a
colony called "Swannendael," which was destroyed by the Indians in
1632. Myndert Myndertsen established his settlement on the mainland
behind Staten Island, and his manor extended from Achter Kul, or Newark
Bay, to the Tappan Zee.
One of the first patents recorded was granted to Michiel Pauw in 1630.
In the documentary record the Director and Council of New Netherland,
under the authority of their High Mightinesses, the Lords
States-General and the West India Company Department of Amsterdam,
testify to the bargain made with the natives, who are treated
throughout with legal ceremony as if they were high contracting parties
and fully capable of understanding the transaction in which they were
engaged. These original owners of the soil appeared before the Council
and declared that in consideration of {37} certain merchandise, they
agreed to "transfer, cede, convey and deliver for the benefit of the
Honorable Mr. Michiel Paauw" as true and lawful freehold, the land at
Hobocan Hackingh, opposite Manhattan, so that "he or his heirs may take
possession of the aforesaid land, live on it in peace, inhabit, own and
use it ... without that they, the conveying party shall have or retain
the least pretension, right, power or authority either concerning
ownership or sovereignty; but herewith they desist, abandon, withdraw
and renounce in behalf of aforesaid now and forever totally and
finally."
It must have been a pathetic and yet a diverting spectacle when the
simple red men thus swore away their title to the broad acres of their
fathers for a consideration of beads, shells, blankets, and trinkets;
but, when they listened to the subtleties of Dutch law as expounded by
the Dogberrys at Fort Amsterdam, they may have been persuaded that
their simple minds could never contend with such masters of language
and that they were on the whole fortunate to secure something in
exchange for their land, which they were bound to lose in any event.
It has been the custom to ascribe to the Dutch and Quakers the system
of paying for lands taken {38} from the Indians. But Fiske points out
that this conception is a mistake and he goes on to state that it was a
general custom among the English and that not a rood of ground in New
England was taken from the savages without recompense, except when the
Pequots began a war and were exterminated. The "payment" in all cases,
however, was a mere farce and of value only in creating good feeling
between savages and settlers. As to the ethics of the transaction,
much might be said on both sides. The red men would be justified in
feeling that they had been kept in ignorance of the relative importance
of what they gave and what they received, while the whites might
maintain that they created the values which ensued upon their purchase
and that, if they had not come, lands along the Great River would have
remained of little account. In any case the recorded transaction did
not prove a financial triumph for the purchaser, as the enterprise cost
much in trouble and outlay and did not meet expenses. The property was
resold to the Company seven years later--at a price, however, of
twenty-six thousand guilders, which represented a fair margin of profit
over the "certain merchandise" paid to the original owners eight years
earlier.
{39}
Very soon after the purchase of the land on the west shore of the North
River, Pauw bought, under the same elaborate legal forms, the whole of
Staten Island, so called in honor of the Staaten or States-General. To
the estate he gave the title of Pavonia, a Latinized form of his own
name. Staten Island was subsequently purchased from Pauw by the
Company and transferred (with the exception of the _bouwerie_ of
Captain De Vries) to Cornelis Melyn, who was thus added to the list of
patroons. Other regions also were erected into patroonships; but
almost all were either unsuccessful from the beginning or short-lived.
The patroonship most successful, most permanent, and most typical was
Rensselaerswyck, which offers the best opportunity for a study of the
Dutch colonial system. Van Rensselaer, though he did not apparently
intend to make a home for himself in New Netherland, was one of the
first to ask for a grant of land. He received, subject to payment to
the Indians, a tract of country to the north and south of Fort Orange,
but not including that trading-post, which like the island of Manhattan
remained under the control of the West India Company. By virtue of
this grant and later purchases Van Rensselaer acquired a {40} tract
comprising what are now the counties of Albany and Rensselaer with part
of Columbia. Of this tract, called Rensselaerswyck, Van Rensselaer was
named patroon, and five other men, Godyn, Blommaert, De Laet, Bissels,
and Moussart, whom he had been forced to conciliate by taking into
partnership, were named codirectors. Later the claims of these five
associates were bought out by the Van Rensselaer family.
In 1630 the first group of emigrants for this new colony sailed on the
ship _Eendragt_ and reached Fort Orange at the beginning of June. How
crude was the settlement which they established we may judge from the
report made some years later by Father Jogues, a Jesuit missionary, who
visited Rensselaerswyck in 1643. He speaks of a miserable little fort
built of logs and having four or five pieces of Breteuil cannon. He
describes also the colony as composed of about a hundred persons, "who
reside in some twenty-five or thirty houses built along the river as
each found most convenient." The patroon's agent was established in
the principal house, while in another, which served also as a church,
was domiciled the _domine_, the Reverend Johannes Megapolensis, Jr. The
houses he describes as built of boards and roofed with {41} thatch,
having no mason-work except in the chimneys. The settlers had found
some ground already cleared by the natives and had planted it with
wheat and oats in order to provide beer and horse-fodder; but being
hemmed in by somewhat barren hills, they had been obliged to separate
in order to obtain arable land. The settlements, therefore, spread
over two or three leagues.
The fear of raids from the savages prompted the patroon to advise that,
with the exception of the brewers and tobacco planters who were obliged
to live on their plantations, no other settlers should establish
themselves at any distance from the church, which was the village
center; for, says the prudent Van Rensselaer, "every one residing where
he thinks fit, separated far from others, would be unfortunately in
danger of their lives in the same manner as sorrowful experience has
taught around the Manhattans." Our sympathy goes out to those early
settlers who lived almost as serfs under their patroon, the women
forbidden to spin or weave, the men prohibited from trading in the furs
which they saw building up fortunes around them. They sat by their
lonely hearths in a little clearing of the forest, listening to the
howl of wolves and fearing to see a savage face at the {42} window.
This existence was a tragic change indeed from the lively social
existence along the canals of Amsterdam or on the stoops of Rotterdam.
Nor can we feel that these tenants were likely to be greatly cheered by
the library established at Rensselaerswyck, unless there were hidden
away a list of more interesting books than those described in the
patroon's invoice as sent in an _oosterse_, or oriental, box. These
volumes include a Scripture concordance, the works of Calvin, of Livy,
and of Ursinus, the friend of Melanchthon, _A Treatise on Arithmetic_
by Adrian Metius, _The History of the Holy Land_, and a work on natural
theology. As all the titles are in Latin, it is to be presumed that
the body of the text was written in the same language, and we may
imagine the light and cheerful mood which they inspired in their
readers after a day of manual toil.
I suspect, however, that the evening hours of these tenants at
Rensselaerswyck were spent in anxious keeping of accounts with a
wholesome fear of the patroon before the eyes of the accountants. Life
on the _bouweries_ was by no means inexpensive, even according to
modern standards. Bearing in mind that a stiver was equivalent to two
cents of {43} our currency and a florin to forty cents, it is easy to
calculate the cost of living in the decade between 1630 and 1640 as set
down in the accounts of Rensselaerswyck. A blanket cost eight florins,
a hat ten florins, an iron anvil one hundred florins, a musket and
cartouche box nineteen florins, a copper sheep's bell one florin and
six stivers. On the other hand all domestic produce was cheap, because
the tenant and patroon preferred to dispose of it in the settlements
rather than by transporting it to New Amsterdam. We learn with envy
that butter was only eight stivers or sixteen cents per pound, a pair
of fowl two florins, a beaver twenty-five florins.
How hard were the terms on which the tenants held their leases is
apparent from a report written by the guardians and tutors of Jan Van
Rensselaer, a later patroon of Rensselaerswyck. The patroon reserved
to himself the tenth of all grains, fruits, and other products raised
on the _bouwerie_. The tenant was bound, in addition to his rent of
five hundred guilders or two hundred dollars, to keep up the roads,
repair the buildings, cut ten pieces of oak or fir wood, and bring the
same to the shore; he must also every year give to the patroon three
days' service with his horses and wagon; {44} each year he was to cut,
split, and bring to the waterside two fathoms of firewood; and he was
further to deliver yearly to the Director as quit-rent two bushels of
wheat, twenty-five pounds of butter, and two pairs of fowls.
It was the difficult task of the agent of the colony to harmonize the
constant hostilities between the patroon and his "people." Van
Curler's letter to Kiliaen Van Rensselaer begins: "Laus Deo! At the
Manhattans this 16th June, 1643, Most honorable, wise, powerful, and
right discreet Lord, my Lord Patroon--." After which propitiatory
beginning it embarks at once on a reply to the reproaches which the
honorable, wise, and powerful Lord has heaped upon his obedient
servant. Van Curler admits that the accounts and books have not been
forwarded to Holland as they should have been; but he pleads the
difficulty of securing returns from the tenants, whom he finds slippery
in their accounting. "Everything they have laid out on account of the
Lord Patroon they well know how to specify for what was expended. But
what has been laid out for their private use, that they know nothing
about."
If the patroon's relations with his tenants were thorny, he had no less
trouble in his dealings with {45} the Director-General at New
Amsterdam. It is true, Peter Minuit, the first important Director, was
removed in 1632 by the Company for unduly favoring the patroons, and
Van Twiller, another Director and a nephew of Van Rensselaer by
marriage, was not disposed to antagonize his relative; but when Van
Twiller was replaced by Kieft, and he in turn by Stuyvesant, the
horizon at Rensselaerswyck grew stormy. In 1643 the patroon ordered
Nicholas Coorn to fortify Beeren or Bears Island, and to demand a toll
of each ship, except those of the West India Company, that passed up
and down the river. He also required that the colors on every ship be
lowered in passing Rensselaer's Stein or Castle Rensselaer, as the fort
on the steep little island was named.
Govert Loockermans, sailing down the river one day on the ship _Good
Hope_, failed to salute the flag, whereupon a lively dialogue ensued to
the following effect, and not, we may be assured, carried on in low or
amicable tones:
_Coorn_: "Lower your colors!"
_Loockermans_: "For whom should I?"
_Coorn_: "For the staple-right of Rensselaerswyck."
_Loockermans_: "I lower my colors for no one {46} except the Prince of
Orange and the Lords my masters."
The practical result of this interchange of amenities was a shot which
tore the mainsail of the _Good Hope_, "perforated the princely flag,"
and so enraged the skipper that on his arrival at New Amsterdam he
hastened to lay his grievance before the Council, who thereupon ordered
Coorn to behave with more civility.
The patroon system was from the beginning doomed to failure. As we
study the old documents we find a sullen tenantry, an obsequious and
careworn agent, a dissatisfied patroon, an impatient company, a
bewildered government--and all this in a new and promising country
where the natives were friendly, the transportation easy, the land
fertile, the conditions favorable to that conservation of human
happiness which is and should be the aim of civilization. The reason
for the discontent which prevailed is not far to seek, and all classes
were responsible for it, for they combined in planting an anachronistic
feudalism in a new country, which was dedicated by its very physical
conditions to liberty and democracy. The settlers came from a nation
which had battled {47} through long years in the cause of freedom.
They found themselves in a colony adjoining those of Englishmen who had
braved the perils of the wilderness to establish the same principles of
liberty and democracy. No sane mind could have expected the Dutch
colonists to return without protest to a medieval system of government.
When the English took possession of New Netherland in 1664, the old
patroonships were confirmed as manorial grants from England. As time
went on, many new manors were erected until, when the province was
finally added to England in 1674, "The Lords of the Manor" along the
Hudson had taken on the proportions of a landed aristocracy. On the
lower reaches of the river lay the Van Cortlandt and Philipse Manors,
the first containing 85,000 acres and a house so firmly built that it
is still standing with its walls of freestone, three feet thick. The
Philipse Manor, at Tarrytown, represented the remarkable achievement of
a self-made man, born in the Old World and a carpenter by trade, who
rose in the New World to fortune and eminence. By dint of business
acumen and by marrying two heiresses in succession he achieved wealth,
and built "Castle Philipse" and the picturesque little church at Sleepy
Hollow, {48} still in use. Farther up the river lay the Livingston
Manor. In 1685 Robert Livingston was granted by Governor Dongan a
patent of a tract half way between New York and Rensselaerswyck, across
the river from the Catskills and covering many thousand acres.
But the estate of which we know most, thanks to the records left by
Mrs. Grant of Laggan in her _Memoirs of an American Lady_, written in
the middle of the eighteenth century, is that belonging to the
Schuylers at "the Flats" near Albany, which runs along the western bank
of the Hudson for two miles and is bordered with sweeping elm trees.
The mansion consisted of two stories and an attic. Through the middle
of the house ran a wide passage from the front to the back door. At
the front door was a large _stoep_, open at the sides and with seats
around it. One room was open for company. The other apartments were
bedrooms, a drawing-room being an unheard-of luxury. "The house
fronted the river, on the brink of which, under shades of elm and
sycamore, ran the great road toward Saratoga, Stillwater, and the
northern lakes." Adjoining the orchard was a huge barn raised from the
ground by beams which rested on stone and held up a massive oak {49}
floor. On one side ran a manger. Cattle and horses stood in rows with
their heads toward the threshing-floor. "There was a prodigious large
box or open chest in one side built up, for holding the corn after it
was threshed, and the roof which was very lofty and spacious was
supported by large cross beams. From one to the other of these was
stretched a great number of long poles so as to form a sort of open
loft, on which the whole rich crop was laid up."
Altogether it is an attractive picture of peace and plenty, of
hospitality and simple luxury, that is drawn by this visitor to the
Schuyler homestead. We see through her eyes its carpeted winter rooms,
its hall covered with tiled oilcloth and hung with family portraits,
its vine-covered _stoeps_, provided with ledges for the birds, and
affording "pleasant views of the winding river and the distant hills."
Such a picture relieves pleasantly the arid waste of historical
statistics.
But the reader who dwells too long on the picturesque aspects of manors
and patroonships is likely to forget that New Netherland was peopled
for the most part by colonists who were neither patroons nor lords of
manors. It was the small proprietors who eventually predominated on
western {50} Long Island, on Staten Island, and along the Hudson. "In
the end," it has been well said, "this form of grant played a more
important part in the development of the province than did the larger
fiefs for which such detailed provision was made."
{51}