The Limits of Connecticut were settled by the Agreement with this Province confirmed by the Crown and tho' the possession and claim of the Dutch, might have been offered as an argument to confine the Limits of that Colony to the River Connecticut, Yet as the Tract might thereby have been rendered too inconsiderable for the establishment of a Colony, and the People had so early extended their settlements Westward of the River, these considerations probably were the motives which induced the Government of New York first in 1664, and afterwards in 1683, to yield to Connecticut the Lands Westward, to the distance of about 20 miles of Hudson's River.

But no agreement or settlement of Boundaries can be alledged on the part of Massachusets Bay. The Dutch at the time of the Massachusets first Grant, possessed this Province, then called New Netherland--Extended their claim between the two Rivers, Delaware and Connecticut, and had long before the English

564 CONTROVERSY RESPECTING THE

approached the last mentioned River, a Fort called Fort Hope, on its Western Banks near where the town of Hartford now stands. These facts were well known at the time, and therefore, in the Grant to the Council of Plymouth in 1620, of the lands within the 34 and 48 Degrees of North Latitude, on which the Claim of Massachusetts Bay and Connecticut was originally founded, all Lands which were held or Possessed by any other Christian Prince or State are expressly saved and excepted. Hence it appears that the Grant to the Duke of York in 1663-4 of the Lands westward of Connecticut River, was certainly grounded on an opinion, that the Crown had an absolute Right to those Lands, notwithstanding the claim of the New England Colonies ; and that this Grant, which immediately preceded the Conquest of this Province from the Dutch, was intended to include all the Lands which the Dutch held here.