Tis evident and clear that were Westchester and the five English towns on Long Island surrendered by us to the Colony of Hartford, and what we have justly possessed and settled on Long Island left to us, it would not satisfy them, because it would not be possible to bring them sufficiently to any further arrangement witli us by commissioners to be chosen on both sides by the mediation of a third party; and as in case of disagreement they assert, in addition, that they may possess and occupy, in virtue of their unlimited patent, the lands lying vacant and unsettled on both sides of the North River and elsewhere, which would certainly always cause and create new pretensions and disputes, even though the boundary were provisionally settled here." The patent here referred to by Stuyvesant was one granted by Charles II. on the 23d of April, 1662, to the Colony of Connecticut, wherein the westward bounds of Connecticut were stated to be " the South Sea" -- that is, the Pacific Ocean. Tin southern bounds wore likewise fixed at " the Sea " -- meaning not the Sound, but the Atlantic Ocean south of Long Island.

HISTORY

WESTCHESTER

COUNTY

March 23, 1C61 (n. s.J, Charles II. by royal patent vested in his brother, the Duke of York (afterward James II.), the proprietorship of all of New Netherland. The sole semblance of justification of this act was the venerable claim of England to the North American mainland, based upon the discovery of the Cabots in the reign of Henry VII., nearly a hundred and seventy years before. At the time of the gift to the Duke of York, no state of war existed between England and the Netherlands. Neither was there the plausible excuse of emergency on the ground of any threatening behavior of the Dutch in America, or even of dangerous differences between the provinces of New Netherland and Connecticut; for, as wTe have seen, the Dutch had pursued an undeviating course of forbearance and submission, and had but recently yielded all for which their English neighbors contended.