The fixed "service" or "rent" on which New York was held in socage by the Duke of York was the yearly payment of"' forty beaver skins when they shall be demanded or in ninety days after." When the Puke became King in 1685, this nominal rent ceased and he held the Province from that date as Sovereign of England. And under him and his successors, from that v'ear until the peace of 1783, by virtue of this fact New York continued to be a Royal Province, under Royal Governors commissioned by its English monarchs under their signs manual.

As such representatives of their Sovereigns were all grants, of Manors, and other great, and small, tracts of land, made by the Governors of New York as long as New York continued to be a British Province. The tenure of all was the same as that in the Patents from Charles II. to the Duke of York, "in f<ee and common socage as of our manor of East Greenwich in County of Kent." The fixed services or renfs varied, but were merely nominal in all cases. In some of the minor incidents of the grants of manors, and of lands not manors, they also varied, but the important thing, the tenure itself, was the same in all. When William and Mary directed their Governor to call General Assemblies, with the advice and consent of the Council, .md the first Assembly held in New York, under those sovereigns, met in April, 1691, that Assembly, in the second act it passed, declaring the rights and privileges of their Majesties' subjects to their Province of New York, enacted "That all the Lands within the Province, shall be esteemed and accounted Land of Freehold and Inheritance, in free and common Soccage, according to the tenor of East Grermcich in their Majesties' Realm of England.'" And it is owing to these facts that this subject has been so fully dwelt upon, dry as it must necessarily be to the general reader.