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. Nothing of the latter ever existed in New Netherland. Except this political acknowledgment of the West India Company to be what we now call "the State," the Patroonships were held as hereditary allodial lauds, which the Patroons could divide in parts and sell in fee at their pleasure; but what they did not sell in fee, descended to the next heir, whether man or woman, unless devised by will otherwise.

This power of devising by will was earnestly desired and contended for by the Patroons. The seventh article of the charter of 1629 says, "There shall likewise be granted to all Patroons who shall desire the same, venia tcstandi, or liberty to dispose of their aforesaid heritage by testament." " All Patroons and feudatories {/undatories were the holders of any part of the fief) shall, on requesting it, be granted " Venia Testandi, or the power to dispose of, or bequeath his fief by Will," is the language of that of 1640.