2S6 HISTORY OF THE COUNTY OF WESTCHESTER. 



introduced their own government over the said plantation, they drove away such 

 as would not submit to their pretended authority, to their great endangerment, 

 and the enslaving of such as remained. 



6th. That when in May, 1663, the said plantation was reduced to the king's 

 authority, by virtue of his letters patent to Connecticut, the pretended powers 

 aforesaid, sent in hos f ile manner for certain inhabitants of Westchester, whom 

 they confined in Manhatoes, and the next day sent for one Mr. Richard Mills, 

 whom they cast into their dungeon, and afterwards so used him for thirty dayes 

 space, as there are yet strong and crying presumptions they caused his death, 

 which followed soone after. 



7th. That the unreasonable damage of the purchaser, and the low estate of the 

 plantation occasioned by the premises, hath had no other recompense to this day, 

 but new threatening-;, and thereby an utter obstruction from the peopling and 

 improveing of a hopeful country, all which is an insuperable abuse to his royal 

 majestie's, and our English nation, is humbly offered to the consideration of the 

 hon. commissioners, "a 



The difficulties between Connecticut and the New Netherlands con- 

 tinued to increase, until the subjugation of the latter by the British forces 

 under Governor Richard Nicolls, on the 27th of August, 1664. 



" When Governor Nicolls visited Westchester, shortly after the sur- 

 render, the inhabitants complained to him, and, as a matter of course, 

 were adjudged to belong to New York." Subsequently the towns of 

 Westchester, Hampstead and Oyster Bay constituted the north riding of 

 Yorkshire.* 



Upon the 16th of June, 1664, we find the inhabitants of Westchester 

 surrendering all their rights to Thomas Pell, in the following manner : — 



'•Know ail men by these presents, that whereas there was an agreement made 

 on the fourteenth of November, 1654, between Thomas Pell and divers persons, 

 i..d called Westchester, c which was and is Thomas Pell's, bound- 

 an instrument bearing date as above expressed, wherein the un- 

 dertakers engaged the payment of a certaine summe of money, present pay, for 

 the said land expressed in the covenant, by reason of some troubles which hin- 

 dered the underwriters possession, the agreement was not attended, the present 

 inhabitants considering the justnessc and right of the above said title of Thomas 

 Pell, doe surrender all their rights, titles, and claimes, to all the tract of land 

 aforesaid, to bee at the disposal of the said Thomas Pell, as being the true and 

 proper owner thereof. 



Witness our hande, this 15th day of June in the yeere of Lord one thousand 

 six hundred and sixty -four. 



Jons QviMBiE, John Winter, 



COHSTDBB WoOD, RlOHASD PoNTON, 



ii.\- Halle, bis )A mark. 



a Alb. Rec. Gen. Entries, p. 11. Also Alb. Rec. vol. 1. 120, 121. 



b Westchester continued to form a portion of the nortti riding until 1CS3, when the present 

 county was ei 

 c At this period Westchester embraced the present town of Eastchester. See vol. i. 122. 



