USA > New York > Westchester County > Origin and History of Manors in the Province of New York and in the County. > Part 13
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One of the Manors of the Crown of England was that of East Greenwich in this favored County of Kent which had never been reduced to the new mili- tary tenures brought in by the Norman Conqueror, and owed no claim for suit or services or other obli-
gation than that of fealty and allegiance." Hence it was that when the tenure of the British grants in America came to be settled, it was described as of our Manor of East Greenwich in the County of Kent, that manor being held only "in free and common soccage." The object being to give to the new pos- sessions in America the most favorable tenure then known to English law.
The fixed "service" or "rent" on which New York was held in socage by the Duke of York was the yearly payment of " forty beaver skins when they shall be demanded or in ninety days after." When the Duke became King in 1685, this nominal rent ceased and he held the Province from that date as Sovereign of England. And under him and his suc- cessors, from that year until the peace of 1783, by vir- tue of this fact New York continued to be a Royal Province, under Royal Governors commissioned by its English monarchs under their signs manual.
As such representatives of their Sovereigns were all grants, of Manors, and other great, and small, tracts of land, made by the Governors of New York as long as New York continued to be a British Province. The tenure of all was the same as that in the Patents from Charles IT. to the Duke of York, "in free and common socage as of our manor of East Greenwich in County of Kent." The fixed services or rents varied, but were merely nominal in all cases. In some of the minor incidents of the grants of manors, and of lands not manors, they also varied, but the im- portant thing, the tenure itself, was the same in all: When William and Mary directed their Governor to call General Assemblies, with the advice and consent of the Council, and the first Assembly held in New York, under those sovereigns, met in April, 1691, that Assembly, in the second act it passed, declaring the rights and privileges of their Majesties' subjects to their Province of New York, enacted "That all the Lands within the Province, shall be esteemed and ac- counted Land of Freehold and Inheritance, in free and common Soocage, according to the tenor of East, Greenwich in their Majesties' Realm of England."" And it is owing to these facts that this subject has been so fully dwelt upon, dry as it must necessarily be to the general reader.
The confirmations by the English Governors of the Dutch groundbriefa, transports, and other grants, were rendered necessary, by the change of the Sovereign Power. The Dutch instruments, under the Dutch law, it will be remembered, required their grantees to take the oaths of allegiance to the West India Company and to the States-General of the United Provinces. Of course when the country became a British posses- sion, and the Duke of York became its Lord Proprie- tor, the terms on which the Dutch grantees held their lands required to be changed in this respect, so as to
1 Digby. 72.
" Eiton's Tenures of Kent, 72.
" Digby's Hist. Real Property, 38; n. 2.
+ Eltou's Tenures uf Kent passim.
5 Ibid. 29.
· Sullivan's Mam. Land Titles, 89.
7 II. Bradford's Lawa, N. Y., ed. 1710, p. 4.
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HISTORY OF WESTCHESTER COUNTY.
conform to the actual change of the owners of the ul- terior sovereign right of eminent domain.
This was provided for in that very ably drawn, lib- eral, and just "Code of Laws," enacted and promul- gated at the first meeting of delegates of the people of the Towns of the Province of New York under the English rule, held at Hempstead, in Queens County, on June 24th, 1665, nine months only after the Dutch surrender, known as "The Duke's Laws." This code, the earliest of the codes of New York, full, clear, and complete, is well arranged in an alphabetical di- vision of its subjects. Under the heading "Lands," is this provision, "To the end all former Purchases may be ascertained to the present possessor or right owner, They shall bring in their former Grants, and take out new Pattents for the same from the present Governoure in the behalf of his Royall Highness the Duke of Yorke;" then after directing the making and filing of a survey and map within a year from the date of a purchase, the law continues, "Every Pur- chaser in acknowledgment of the propriety of such Lands belonging to his Royal Highness James Duke of York, shall upon the sealing of the Pattent Pay unto the Governoure so much as they shall agree upon ; not exceeding hundred acres." Some amend- ments and alterations were made to this code pursu- ant to its own provisions at a meeting of the Court of General Assizes' held in the City of New York at the close of September, 1665, three months later, one of which re-enacts the last cited clause in these more definite words,-"To the end all former Purchases &c, all persons whatsoever who have any Grants or Patents of Towneshipps, Lands, or Houses, within this Gov- ernment, shall bring in the said Grants or Patents to the Governoure and shall have them Revewed by Authority from his Royall Highness the Duke of Yorke, before the beginninge of the next Court of As- sizes.2 That every purchaser &c. shall pay for every hundred acres as an acknowledgment two Shillings and six pence.ª
This law and this sum marked the beginning of the Quit-rents and their amount or rate paid ever after to the King, and subsequently to the American Revolution to the State, and which only terminated under the State Quit-rent statute of 1815, which com- muted them all for gross sums of money, as will be fully explained hereafter.
Governor Lovelace sent a report to the Duke of York on the state of the Province, undated, but which is believed to have been made early in 1669, the year after his arrival in New York. In this he says : "The Tenure of Lands is derived from his Royall Highness who gives and grants Lands to Planters as their freehold forever, they paying the customary rents and duties with others toward the Defraying of
the Publique Charges. The highest Rent, or ac- knowledgment of his R. H., will be one penny per acre for Lands purchased by his R. H., the least two shillings six pence for each hundred acres, whereof the Planters themselves are purchasers from the In- dyans."‘
In the year 1666 the "General Court of Assizes" made an order, that all persons who had old patents should bring them in to be renewed, and they that had none should be supplied therewith by a certain time therein limited. A proclamation of the Gov- ernor dated at Fort James the 1st of July, 1669, to "the Inhabitants about Delaware" shows us very clearly what this order meant. After quoting the order, it continues in these words : "Which said order did extend itself to Albany, Esopus, and all other places of the Governm', as well as this City and more particularly to all those who had beene under the Dutch, and are now reduced to his Majesties obedience.' These presents doe declare and make Knowne that the Inhabitants in and about Delaware being under this Governm' are likewise concerned as well as the rest; So that all persons there who hould their lands by Patent or ground briefs of yo Dutch Tenure are to have their Patents renewed. And those who have none are with all conveniente speed to bee supplyede therewith, otherwise they are liable to incurre the penaltye in the Law set forth."5
The terms on which the new Patents of Confirma- tion were granted were very liberal. So much so as to explode the idea indulged in by many writers that the sole object was to extort fees. The evidence is conclusive. The mayor and aldermen of New York presented a petition of inquiry to the Court of As- sizes on this subject. In this Court it will be remem- bered the Governor presided. In the proceedings of the Court in the Assize Book, under date of March 25, 1667, two years prior to the proclamation just cited, is Governor Nicolls' reply to this petition in the form of six specific entries. They are as follows, (the contractions in the original being plainly written out).
"1. The reason for renewing all former groundbriefs was, and is, to abolish the express conditions con- tained in every one of them, to hold their lands and houses from and under the States of Holland and the West India Company in Amsterdam as their Lords and Masters.
"2. Whoever shall bring a certificate from the mayor, or deputy mayor, or two aldermen of his inca- pacity shall pay nothing for renewing an old or grant- ing a new patent.
"3. No man shall pay more than a beaver for a . new patent and all the transports depending there- upon. If any person shall desire his own transport to be converted into a patent, it shall be done for 3 guilders in beaver.
1 This court combined judicial and legislative powers, and was created by the code itself.
" This court sat annually in September.
" The Duke's Laws, I. N. Y. H. Coll., 359 and 410.
4 III. Col. Hist. N. Y. 188.
6 XII. Col. Hist. 463.
1
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THE ORIGIN AND HISTORY OF THE MANORS.
"4. Where the original groundbrief of several trans- ports cannot be found each transport shall be confirmed for 3 guilders.1
"5. If any man have 2, 3, or more ground briefs of small parcels of land they shall be comprised in one confirmation at the half price allowed by the Ci urt.
"6. The Mayor and Alderman to draw up a dist of houses and lots belonging to persons now in Holland or else where not in amity; nor under allegiance to his Majesty of Great Britain who are deprived of. the benefit hereof.
As the time allowed for bringing in the said ground briefs is almost expired the Governor suspends the penalty for not bringing them in at or before the 1st April next until the 1st May this present year, 1667."
Surely more favorable or easier terms could not have been promulgated.
Such, in brief, was the nature of the tenure of land established in New York when the Province came under English rule. It was fortunate that that event was almost simultaneous with the greatest change in the law of England since the days of King John. That change really gave to New York the freehold, partible, and perfectly alienable, land system, which, with slight modifications, has existed from that day to this, and under which her population has increased from the 10,000 souls in the last year of Director Stuyvesant to the 5,000,000 people over whom Gover- nor Hill now rules in this year of grace 1886.
9. .
The Manors in New York, what they were not, and what they were.
What were the Manors which existed in New York ? What were those in the County of Westchester ? To answer these questions, the origin and nature of Manors, especially those of England, all of which were created prior to the 18th year of the reign of Edward I. (Anno 1290), must be considered. The statute of Edward, called " of Westminster," or " Quia emptores" from its first two words, "in the year 1290 put an end forever to New Manors in England."? Those Manors were feudal Manors, of the kind already alluded to, those erected in New York, four hundred years later were freehold Manors. Their difference, and why Manors could be erected in New York, and not in England will be shown.
"It has often been noticed," says Sir Henry Maine, "that a Feudal Monarchy was an exact counterpart of a Feudal Manor,' but the reason of the correspondence is only now beginning to dawn upon us, which is, that both of them were in their
origin bodies of assumed kinsmen settled on land and undergoing the same transmutation of ideas through the fact of settlement. The history of the larger groups ends in the Modern Notions of Country and Sovereignty ; the history of the smaller in the Mod- ern Notions of Landed Property. The two courses of historical development were for a long while strictly parallel, though they have ceased to be so now."" It is not possible in the limits of this essay to describe, except in outline, the various steps and changes by which the barbarian Teutonic leader and his followers, developed into the family or tribal ruler and his kindred by blood or by tribe settled upon the land which they had seized, and which they retained as their own. How strong, how natural, and how general, was this principle of a specific land-settle- ment on the basis of kinship by blood or by tribe, is proven by the examples which now exist in three continents at this day. The more prominent of which are, the clans of Scotland, the Septs of Ireland, the Slav tribes of the Balkan regions, in Europe, the Hindoo Joint-Families of British Asia, and the na- tive Indian tribes of North America.
Out of the tribal settlement on a fixed district of land came the Teutonic village or town. This was "an organized, self acting group of Teutonic families exercising a common proprietorship over a definite tract of land,-its Mark,-cultivating its domain on a common system, and sustaining itself by the pro- duce."5 It had its separate households, each gov- erned by the father of a family, and each entirely free from any interference by anybody else. Its master was supreme, and from this feature, continually pre- served and maintained to this day, comes the familiar principle of English and American law, that "every man's house is his castle." These groups of families, or societies, with their Leader, or Headman, were often involved in disputes, with neighboring societies and their families and Headmen. And to this fact of native Teutonic quarrelsomeness the German in- vestigators and writers ascribe the change (which took place gradually) that evolved the manor from the Mark. "One community conquers another and the spoil of war is either the common Mark (the part of the district cultivated in common), or the waste (the uncultivated part), of the worsted community. Either the conquerors appropriate and colonize the part of the waste so taken, or they take the whole domain and restore it to be held in dependence on the victor society."" This was the origin of the idea of suzer- ainty or lordship. Another cause of the change from this Mark system to the manorial system, the German writers say, was the fact, that these Teutonic village societies, "though their organization can only be de- scribed as democratic, appear, nevertheless, to have
1 It will be remembered that under the Dutch system, the "ground- brief" was the license to buy of the Indians, and the "transport " the deed of the Director and Council for the land after the purchase of the natives had been made.
" Gneist's Const. History of England, 148.
3 A similar statement is found in West's Manner of Creating Peers, . . 10. Cruise on Digni:les, p. 13.
4 Hist. Inst. 77.
" Von Maurer cited by Maine, Vill. Com. 10, with approval.
"Maine's Vill. Com. 143.
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HISTORY OF WESTCHESTER COUNTY.
86
generally had an abiding tradition that in some one family, or in some families, the blood which ran in the veins of all the freemen was purest; probably be- cause the direct descent of such family, or families, from a common ancestor was remembered or be- lieved in.
From the members of these families the leader for a military expedition would, as a rule, be chosen, and the power he would thus acquire " would be a combi- nation of political, military, and judicial, power." This leader, "thus taken from the privileged family would have the largest share of the lands appropriated from the conquered village societies; and there is ground for supposing that he was sometimes rewarded by an exceptionally large share of the common land belonging to the society which he headed." Another privilege which the leading family and its chief ob- tained, was the power "to sever his own plot of land from the rest, and, if he thought fit, to enclose it; and thus break up or enfeeble that system of common cul- tivation under rules of obligatory custom which de- pended mainly on the concurrence of all the villag- ers."" Add to this the inherent tendency of the Teu- tonic mind to the principle of primogeniture, and we have the basis of what is known as the manorial system. Transplanted into England by its early Ger- man invaders this inchoate manorial system took root and existed under the Saxon domination till the days of Harold. At the Norman conquest, which, as we have seen, brought full-grown to England the Feudal System, William of Normandy had little difficulty in engrafting it upon the existing Saxon system, or rather in transforming that system into Norman Feudalism, which was that of France and Continental Europe.
Such is the view, of the latest historians, and most learned writers, on this subject. A view most tersely summed up by Sir Henry Maine, "our modern English conception of absolute property in land is really descended from the special. proprietor- ship enjoyed 'by the Lord, and more anciently by the tribal chief, in his own Domain." " "Manors," Sir William Blackstone, tells us "are in substance as ancient as the Saxon Constitution, though perhaps differing a little in some immaterial circumstances from those which exist at this day; just as we ob- served of feuds, that they were partly known to our ancestors, even before the Norman Conquest.""
Originating before the feudal system itself, that system when it became fully developed and consoli- dated in England under its Norman Kings, gave its own coloring and imparted its own features to the manor land-system of the England of the Saxons.
The impression is very common, especially in America, that the Manor system is purely of feudal origin. Writers who have referred to the New York manors, as a rule, describe them as the same as the
feudal manors of England. Not aware that manors have not been created in England since 1290, not aware , that, the law of England at the time of the wresting of New Netherland from the Dutch, prohib- ited the existence in the New Province of New York of feudal Manors, they have indulged, and do indulge, in a great deal of fine, and sometimes indignant, writing on this subject, which had, and has, no real basis ,whatever.
The word ' Manor' is an English corruption of the French word, ' Manoir,' a habitation, or mansion, in which the owner of land dwelt permanently ; and that is derived from the Latin verb ' Maneo,' to remain, to abide in a place, to dwell there. In Latin a Manor was termed ' Manerium' which signifies the same as the French 'Manoir.' It has, however, been stated to be a synonym of 'Manurium,' because it was labored by handy work,' ' Manus' being the Latin for ' hand;' but this signification is very doubtful. Ellis in his introduction to Domesday Book, the Great Survey of the Lands of England made by order of William the Conqueror," says, that the earliest ap- pearance of the word Manor in England was in the reign of Edward the Confessor who was fond of in- troducing Norman language and customs.
In that famous survey the words ' mansio,' 'villa,' and ' manerium,' are synonymous. "The conquest," Mr. Digby states, probably wrought but little change in the relation of Saxon supreme land owners, or lords of districts, and the tenants holding small par- cels of land under them. " A Norman lord might be substituted for a Saxon, but the dues and services would substantially continue the same. . . . After the Conquest, England is [ found] parcelled out into manors varying greatly in size, having, as a rule, fixed boundaries, often coinciding, as is still the case at the present day, with the boundaries of the parish. In some cases manors were diminished or added to, and new ones created. Probably. however there was no great addition after the Conquest to the number of Manors."" In the reigns of the later Saxon Kings, those subsequent to Alfred, the English Commis- sioners on the Law of Real Property tell us, "that portions of the royal domains, with jurisdiction were granted, and afterwards jurisdiction was granted although the land might never have belonged to the King. The objects of these grants were lay favorites or monastic houses, and the operation of them was to invest the grantees with the power of judging the people dwelling in their territory. The courts for this purpose were framed after the ordinary model. The lord or a deputy presided, and the tenants and suitors formed the jury. They were commonly held in the hall of the lord's house, and were thence called Hallmotes." The words which granted this jurisdic- tion "were saca, soca, and theime, of which one of the
1 Maine Vill. Com. 1215, and 146.
: II. Christian's Blackstone, 90.
2 Hist. Ins. 126.
+ Tomlina, 518. Tower's Law Dict. "Manors."
" Digby 34,35. 5.P. 2.5.
.
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THE ORIGIN AND HISTORY OF THE MANORS.
laws supplies us with the interpretation. Saca, meant the privilege of administering justice locally ; soca, the territory or franchise in which the privilege was to be exercised ; theime,1 the seignorial jurisdic- tion." "It will be obvious to every one's mind that this species of local and private jurisdiction is what we now call a Manor. The substance of a manor is therefore justly said by Mr. Ellis to be as ancient as the Saxon constitution; and the lord having soc and sac over his own men, and the baron holding his own court for his own men, were the same characters as were afterwards termed lords of Manors. The word manor was not however applied in pure Saxon times; nor perhaps were all the laws and usages such . as we now have them.""
The ancient manor as it became consolidated in the eleventh and twelfth centuries is thus defined and de- scribed by that " reverend Judge eminently knowing in the common and statute law, William Rastall "' in his famous book on the Terms of the Law :- "Mannor is compounded of divers things; as of a House, Ara- ble Land, Pasture, Meadow, Wood, Rent, Advowson, Court's Baron, and such like which make a Mannor. And this ought to be by long continuance of time, the contrary whereof man's memory cannot discern ; for at this day a Mannor cannot be made because a Court-Baron cannot be made, and a Mannor cannot be without a Court-Baron and Suitors and Freeholders, two at the least ; for if all the Freeholds except one escheat to the Lord, or if he purchase all except one, there his Mannor is gone, for that it can- not be a Mannor without a Court Baron (as is afore- said) and a Court-Baron cannot be holden but before Suitors, and not before one Suitor; and therefore where but one Freehold or Freeholder is, there can- not be a Mannor properly, although in common speech it may be so called.
Mansion (Mansio) is most commonly taken for the Chief Messuage or habitation of the Lord of a Man- nor, the Mannor-House where he doth most reside, his Capital Messuage as it is called; of which the wife by the Statute of Magna Charta, chapter 7. shall have her Quarantine.""
It will be noticed that in this description the Court- Leet is not mentioned. This is because, though it ex- isted in every Manor, it was not of its essence as the Court-Baron was. The Court-Leet was a Sheriff's court and had cognizance only of offences against the King, or the King's peace, below the degree of high treason.
The Manors of New York, in consequence of their having been erected after the statute of Charles II. (12 Charles II., ch. 24, Anno 1660) abolishing the
military tenures and turning them into free and com- mon soccage, never possessed, nor were their lords ever invested with, the powers, privileges, rights, duties, and burdens of the old feudal manors of Eng- land as thus described. It is owing to ignorance of this fact, or the concealment of it, as the case may be, that so much misconception has been generated in the popular mind, by some writers, and also by some law- yers and men in public life, who in the recent past sought political preferment, or private gain, in relation to the manors of New York, their ten- ants, and their owners. As to the latter, a curious error has obtained credence. We often, at this day, see them written of, and hear them spoken of, as Nobles. "Lord Philipse " and " Lord Pell " are fa- miliar examples of this ridiculous blunder in West- chester County. No grant of a feudal manor in Eng- land at any time from their first introduction ever carried with it a title, and much less did any grant of a New York freehold manor ever do so. Both re- lated to land only. The term Lord of a Manor is a technical one, and means simply the owner,-the pos- sessor,-of a manor, nothing more. Its use as a title is simply a work of intense, or ignorant, republican provincialism. "Lord" as a prefix to a manor owner's name was never used in England, nor in the Province of New York.6
The origin, nature, existence and continuance ot the Manors of New York, and the reason why they could be erected by the English Sovereigns here, when those Sovereigns could not do so in England since 1690, was so fully, thoroughly and learnedly set forth, more than thirty years ago, in an opinion by one of the greatest chief justices who ever graced the State of New York, that no apology is necessary for giving it in his own language: "The grantees are authorized in terms to hold a court-leet and a court- baron, to award fines, have the customary writa, etc., to have the waifs and estrays, deodands, etc., and the patronage of any churches to be erected on the tract; and the freeholders of the manor are empowered to elect a representative to sit in the General Assembly in the Province of New York. [ This " privilege" was granted only to the three manors of Cortlandt, Livings- ston and Rensselaerswyck, and the Borough towns of West Chester and Schenectady]. There is nothing in the patent which in terms empowers the patentees to grant lands to be holden of themselves, [and all the manors were alike in this respect. ], but it is argued that the erection of a manor and the authority to hold the courts mentioned, which, according to English law, are manor courts, necessarily implies the power to create suitors, who must of necessity be tenants, hold- ing of the proprietor of the manor, owing him suit
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