This circumstance, strengthened by the incorporating of it within the Eye limits while the old boundary understanding still prevailed, enabled the Eye men to advance plausible pretensions to it when, very soon afterward (in fact, only six days subsequently), a new boundary line was fixed, beginning at the mouth of the Byram Eiver, which gave both the White Plains and Eye to New York. The claim set up by Eye to the White Plains caused Eichbell's title in the upward reaches of his twentymile patent to assume a decidedly cloudy aspect; and to the confusion thus brought about was due the comparatively limited range of

HISTORY

WESTCHESTER

COUNTY

the bounds of the Manor of Scarsdale, which otherwise would have run twenty miles north from the mouth of the Mamaroncck River, instead of stopping short at the White Plains. After Kichbell's death (July 26, 1684), his widow continued in quiet possession of the estate, making no efforts to further develop or improve it, and, with the exception of a renewed protest against the intrusion of the Rye men in the White Plains tract, doing nothing in the way of asserting her proprietary rights outside of the East In 1696 she gave Neck, where, of course, they were unquestioned. to Caleb Heathcote, of the Town of Westchester, her written consent to his procuring from the Indians deeds of confirmation of the old Richbell patent; and in the same year Governor Fletcher granted to Colonel Heathcote a license authorizing him to buy vacant and unappropriated lands in Westchester County and to extinguish the title On December 23, 1697, Heathcote bought from Mrs. of the natives. Richbell her entire landed estate for £600, New York currency. Availing himself of the rights and privileges thus acquired, ho not only became the founder and lord of an organized manor, but embarked in comprehensive original purchases of the interior lands of Westchester County, which ultimately gave him, in association with others, the title to most of the county between the Manors of Cortlandt on the north, Philipseburgh on the west, Scarsdale on the These latter purchases, south, and the Connecticut line on the east. made under Governor Fletcher's license of 1696, were entirely disconnected from his manor grant of Scarsdale, and resulted in extensive new patents, which are known in the history of the county as the " Three Great Patents of Central Westchester," named respectively the West, Middle, and East Patents, and having an aggreThe history of the Three gate area of some seventy thousand acres.