Hence historians generally have regarded the Rye people as mere squatters, without right or title to the soil of the White Plains, and indebted, finally, to the kindness of Colonel Caleb Ileathcotc, the grantee of the Kichbcll title, for undisturbed possession of this goodly torritor}'. If we pause here to make a careful examination of the grounds upon which the respective claims to these lands by the rival purchasers, and by New Amsterdam and New England, were based, we shall find that this commonly accepted idea is erroneous.
The Pilgrims, although in exile, counted themselves Englishmen, and were ever ready to maintain at any sacrifice the claims of the mother country, based upon the undisputed discovery of the coast of North America, from the Chesapeake Bay to Nova Scotia, in 1407, by the Cabots, sailing under the British flag ; no actual occupation of the land was accomplished, however, notwithstanding many attempts were made, until the bold and enterprising spirit of Sir Walter Raleigh establislied the Virginia colony in 1607.
In the year 1609, Henry Hudson, an English navigator in the employ of the Dutch East India Company, undertook a voyage in the "Half-Moon," to seek a westward passage to China, and in September entered what is now known as New York Bay. In 1613, a Dutch trading establishment, consisting of five houses, under tlie superintendence of Hendrick Corstiaensen, was set up, but received a serious check when Captain Argall, of the Virginia colony, touched at the island and forced Corstiaensen and his associates to submit to the King of England, and to agree to pay tribute, in token of their dependence on the English crown.