The legal limits of their estates were reduced to four English miles along the shore, although they might extend eight miles laud ward in; and the planting of their "colonies" was required to be completed within three instead of four years. Trade privileges along the coast outside of the Dutch dominions were continued as before; but within the territory of New Netherland no one was permitted to compete with the ships of the company, excepting that fishing for cod and the like was allowed, on condition that the fisherman should sail direct to some European country with his catch, putting in at a Netherlands port to pay a prescribed duty to the company. In this act much greater relaor colotive importance was attached to the subject of free colonists,1629, the nizers other than patroons, than in the original charter of object manifestly being to assure the public that New Netherland was

EARLIEST

SETTLERS

not a country set apart for lords and gentlemen, but a land thrown open in the most comprehensive way to the common people. Free colonists were defined to be those who should " remove to New Netherland with five souls above fifteen years," and all such were to be granted by the director-general " one hundred morgens (two hundred acres) of land, contiguous one to the other, wherever they please to select." The colonists were put on precisely the same footing as thepatroons in matters of trade privilege, and, in fact, enjoyed all the material rights granted to the patroons except those of bearing a title and administering great landed estates, which, however, were equally within their reach in case of their ability to comply with the requirement for the transportation from the old country and introduction', into the new of fifty bona fide settlers. The company assumed the responsibility of providing and maintaining " good and suitable of the sick"; and it excomforters preachers, tended to theschoolmasters, free colonists, and no less than the colonists of the patroons, exemption from all taxes for a certain period.