This formality was provided for in the celebrated code known as "The Duke's Laws," adopted by an assembly of delegates from the towns of the province held at Hempstead in the summer of 1665. It was prescribed that "all persons whatsoever who may have any grants or patents of townships, lands, or houses, within this government, shall bring in the said grants or patents to the said governor and shall have them renewed by authority from his Loyal Highness, the Duke of York, before the next Court of Assizes. That every purchaser, etc., shall pay for every hundred acres as an acknowledgment two shillings and six pence." The Dutch submitted cheerfully to the regulation, but some opposition to it was offered by the inhabitants of the English towns of Long Island, who, conceiving that they belonged to the jurisdiction of Connecticut, were disinclined to be thus summarily incorporated under the new-fledged government. The boundary question which so vexed Stuyvesant was immediately brought to the serious attention of Nicolls by the Connecticut officials. He was no sooner well established in possession of the Dutch province than delegates were sent to him from Connecticut to congratulate him and arrange a settlement of the boundary line.

AFTER

EN GUSH

CONQUEST

He appointed commissioners to meet these delegates, and on the 28th of October, lf>C>4, it was agreed that the line should start on the Sound at a point twenty miles east of the Hudson River and pursue a north-northwest coarse until it intersected the line of Massachusetts, which at that time was supposed to ran across the continent to the Pacific Ocean. In locating the twenty-mile starting point, Nicolls accepted representations made by the Connecticut people, and it was fixed at the mouth of the Maniaroneck Eiver, which in point of fact, however, is only ten miles from the Hudson.