We are accustomed to point to those colonial princelings as though they had brought to the New World the inestimable advantages of blue blood along with the favour of the sovereign Lords of Holland. But history shows that land patents were never supposed to imply either birth, breeding, or previous rank of any kind on the part of the recipient. Patroonships, like houses, lands, ships, or peltries, were in the market to be purchased for money. Exactly the requirements insisted upon by the company may be learned from the following excerpt from a bill of "Freedoms and Exemptions," granted by the West India Company in 1640:

All good inhabitants of the Netherlands and all others inclined to plant any Colonies in New Netherland shall be at liberty to send three or four persons in the Company's ships going thither, to examine the circumstances there, on condition that they swear to the articles, as well as the officers and seamen, as far as they relate to them, and pay for board and passage out and home, to wit, those who eat in the master's cabin, fifteen stivers

Early Settlers of the Hudson Valley 89 per day, and those who go and eat in the orlop, shall have their board and passage gratis, and in case of an attack, offensive or defensive, they shall be obliged to lend a hand with the others, on condition of receiving, should any of the enemy's ships be overcome, their share of the booty pro rata, each according to his quality, to wit: the Colonists eating out of the Cabin shall be rated with the seamen, and those eating in the cabin with the Company's servants who board there and have the lowest rate of pay. In the selection of lands, those who shall have first notified and presented themselves to the Company, whether Patroons or private Colonists, shall be preferred to others who may follow.