One of the first documents which the new authorities had to consider was a communication from the "inhabitants of Westchester," reciting, under seven different heads, their local grievances against the Dutch. In this paper no specific remedy was prayed for, and it appears to have been drawn merely to put on record the real and supposed injuries that the settlers had suffered from the New Netherland government, and to attract official attention to their community. O'Callaghan shows that in some of its more serious charges it is distinctly untruthful, suggesting a malignant animus. It concluded with the bitter complaint that, because of the conduct of the Dutch, the plantation is at " a low estate," that conduct having operated as " an utter obstruction from the peopling and improving of a hopeful country." The form of tenure under which New Netherland was granted to the Duke of York by the king was defined in the patent as follows: "To be holden of us, our heirs, and successors, as of our Manor of Greenwich and our County of Kent, in free and common

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socage, and not in capite, nor by knight service, yielding and rendering of and for the same, yearly and every year, forty beaver skins when they shall be demanded, or within ninety days thereafter." This meant simply that there was to be no feudal tenure of lands under its provisions (all feudal tenures having, in fact, been abolished throughout English dominions by act of Parliament four years previously), but that the system introduced should be strictly allodial, patterned, moreover, upon that prevailing in " our Manor of East Greenwich in the County of Kent," " the object being to give to the new possessions in America the most favorable tenure then known to the English law." The basis of the ancient and effete feudal system was the complete subjection of the vassal to his lord, the vassal being bound to perform military and other personal services and to be judged at law by his lord, and the lord guaranteeing him, in consideration of his fealty, security in the possession of his lands and general protection.