These "old fiefs" were not transplanted to New Netherland by the charters of Freedoms and Exemptions, but the new fiefs created by virtue of those charters had merely the same rights of jurisdiction, hunting, fishing, fowling, and milling, as the old un-

1 This means "political and judicial," the original being badly transl.ited. See Art. X, in the charter of 1629, where the language, " is aa well in the political as the judicial government."

s Herbert's Orotius, £30, ? I. sjbid.

THE OKIGIN AND HISTORY OF THE MANORS.

dying ones. In all other respects they were entirely different. The jurisdiction of the Patroons and their feignorial rights were held "as" of these undying fiefs, that is in the same manner as jurisdiction and seignorial rights were held under them. But the land itself, together with the produce, superficies, minerals, rivers and fountains thereof, was held by a very different tenure. That tenure was allodial, which means, not feudal, independent of a lord paramount. "The lands remaining allodial but the jurisdiction as of a perpetual (undying) hereditary fief" is the language of the charter of 1640. Then follows this radical change from the old fiefs, " devolvable by death as well to females as males," to women as well as to men, is the literal translation of the original words. Thus in New Netherland the right of succession was extended to at least double the number of persons, that it was under the old fiefs of the Fatherland. Annexed to this right, was the provision that upon each person succeeding to the inheritance of the Patroonship, fealty and homage were "to be rendered on each of such occasions to the Company with a pair of iron gauntlets, redeemable by twenty guilders within a year and six months, at the Assembly of the XIX. here [Amsterdam), or before the Governor there {New Amsterdam)." This was simply a method adopted for the acknowledgment by the Patroons of the ])olitical supremacy of the West India Company, as the ultimate and paramount government and source of title in New Netherland ; a method borrowed from the old feudal manner in which the tenant, or vassal, acknowledged the holding of his lands from a lord paramount, who was in his turn thereby obliged to protect him, and which was called tenure by knight-service.