Under the Lord Proprietor, 1664-1685 49 



Hempstead, Long Island, during the summer of 1665 and 

 enacted the celebrated code known as the "Duke's Laws." 

 The principal thing to be done was to secure to the land- 

 owners indisputable possession of their holdings, which might 

 be placed in doubt in the change in ownership from the 

 Company to the proprietor, and the consequent change of 

 allegiance. All holders of land grants, farms, patents, or 

 houses were required to bring to the Governor their deeds 

 from the Dutch Company, and new ones were issued in the 

 name of the Duke of York. A charge of two shillings and 

 sixpence was made for every hundred acres of land. The 

 Dutch readily acquiesced in the new regulations, but the Long 

 Islanders, who claimed to hold from Connecticut, showed 

 themselves unwilling to acknowledge the Duke's authority 

 over them. 



We have already referred to Thomas Pell's purchase of 

 1654, and to his claim of ownership of Westchester, which 

 was admitted by the settlers there. He now advanced the 

 claim to all the land eastward of the Bronx River, as far as 

 Richbell's purchase at Mamaroneck, and southward to the 

 East River, by virtue of the Indian cession to him and the 

 confirmation of his purchase by the Connecticut authorities. 

 He even tried to oust Mrs. Bridges, daughter of Thomas 

 Cornell, from her property at Cornell's Neck, which she had 

 inherited from her father. She and her husband enjoined Pell 

 from interfering with them or their property, and the case 

 was tried before a jury, September 29, 1665. Pell set up the 

 defence that the Dutch had no right to the land in question, 

 that it belonged to Connecticut, and therefore the Dutch 

 could not give away what they did not own, and that the 

 grond brief of 1646 to Cornell was invalid. In reply, the 

 plaintiffs quoted the terms of surrender as agreed to by Colonel 



