Kieft as ours, in the usual manner granted by letters patent, and in virtue of these possessed by those of our nation, as so among others the land of Jonas Bronck, the lands of the old Verdonck divided and settled by his children and associates in various plantations and farms, but who in the massacre'^ were absconded with many others, all which are situated here and bordering on our island, only divided by a small creek, which in some places by low water is passable, so as they to us the

» Alb. Rec. vol. iv. 3.

b Thos. Pell, proprietor of the manor of Pelham, was authorized by the assembly of Conn., to purchase all the lands from Westchester town to the North river, of the Indians, 1664. Trumbull's Conn., 272, Webster's Letters, 205.

e The massacre here alluded to, took place Sept. 1655, during the absence of Stuyvesant, when the warriors of the Algonquin tribes, made a furious onset upoij the colony. See Bancroft's Ilis. U. S., vol. ii. 299.

412 . r ^ HISTORY OF THE

savages declared and solicited them to purchase other lands to the east ar^d west of the North river, dat. 20 June, 1664.*

On the I2th of March, 16G4, the Dutch possessions in America were patented to his Royal Highness James Duke of York and Albany, by his brother KingCharles II. This grant was immediately followed by a military and naval armament under the command of Colonel Richard PsicoUs, which reduced the New Netherlands to the subjection of the English Crown, 27th August, 1664.