Sullivan - History of New York State 1523-1927 "Hisotry of New York State 1523-1927" HISTORY OF NEW YORK STATE 1523-1927 EDITOR-IN-CHIEF DR. JAMES SULLIVAN Former State Historian; Present Assistant Commissioner for Higher and Professional Education of the New York State Department of Education; Author of "An Elementary History of England, 1904," "The Government of New York State, 1906"; Editor of "Washington's and Webster's Addresses, 1908," "American Democracy- Washington to Wilson, 1919," "Sir William Johnson Papers"; Editor of the Quarterly Journal of the New York State Historical Association. ASSOCIATE EDITORS E. MELVIN WILLIAM EDWIN P. CONKLIN BENEDICT FITZPATRICK VOLUME V LEWIS HISTORICAL PUBLISHING COMPANY, INC. NEW YORK CHICAGO Sullivan - History of New York State 1523-1927 "History of New York State 1523-1927" CHAPTER XII. THE BENCH AND BAR. Dutch Period, 1609-1664. Hudson discovered the river known by his name in 1609. During the next ten years many Dutch ships were in New York waters, and Manhattan Island had a small settlement of traders. Magisterial authority, if there was any in this little trading community, probably followed the rules of the sea, with sea captains as arbiters, and with the certainty that capital offenses would be referred to the home government. In 1621 the Dutch West India Company was chartered, with wide powers and charged with the keeping of "good order, police, and justice." The charter contained many guarantees of freedom in social, political and religious life, but reserved final judicial authority for the States General. Next in magisterial authority were the directors of the company, who exercised supervision of, and accepted responsibility for, the judicial acts of their provincial officials, the superintendents of the trading posts and the ship captains. This system of judicial administration in all probability prevailed until the appointment of a local director. In 1623 the first party of colonists came, the Walloons crossing in the good ship "New Netherland," commanded by Cornelis Jacobsen May (Mey), of Hoorn, who was also to be the first director. There were thirty families, one hundred and ten men, women and children in all; and, upon arrival in New York waters, they were distributed over as much territory as possible. Some settled on Manhattan Island, some on Long Island, some on the Fresh (Connecticut) River, some in the Esopus country, some on the North (Hudson) River at what became Albany, and others along the Delaware tributaries. In these isolated settlements a degree of parental control was probably the only magisterial power called for. At all events, Captain May and his lieutenants had to apply themselves, chiefly to the development of the trading possibilities of the region. In that time of war between the United Netherlands and Spain, the States General had, at home, vital matters of such grave moment as to occupy almost the whole of their thoughts. The National situation, however, was less critical in 1625, and it was then arranged to send out to New Netherland a Director-General, to bring the provincial establishment more into line with the legal and civil systems of the homeland. It was planned to admit New Netherland to the union of provinces, making it a county of Holland, with provincial status to all intents like that of any other of the United Provinces. Peter Minuit was commissioned as Director-General, and sailed on December 19, 1625, in the vessel "Het Meetje," accompanied by more immigrants. Upon arrival at Manhattan in May, 1626, he set the new plan of government in operation. [1] It called for the appointment of a Council of five, "who, with himself, were to be invested with all legislative, executive and judicial powers, subject to the appellate jurisdiction of the chamber (of the company) at Amsterdam." This council was to have jurisdiction in all criminal cases, to the extent of fine, but each capital offender was to be sent, "with his sentence, to Holland," where his sentence would be reviewed, and where, if sustained, he would be punished. The Director-General and Council, therefore, constituted the local judicial body. An important functionary of the provisional government was the Schout-Fiscaal, who was expected to be the Sullivan - History of New York State 1523-1927 expert in all matters of law. He was, to all intents, the Attorney-General, public prosecutor, and, when given his full authority, presiding magistrate. Numerous other less dignified duties rested upon him. He was expected to act as constable or sheriff, as excise officer, as clerk of the courts, and sometimes, it seems, had duties not unlike [2] those of a supervisor of stevedores. He was, in fact, expected to be the "Eye of the Law," the "Encyclopedia of Jurisprudence," the Vigilance Committee of the Province, and be able to cite every law, detect every infraction of it, and bring to justice every violator. There is record that at least one schout was expected to be the Keeper of the Pigs, and that when he dared to rebel against such an indignity, pointing out that such a duty might well be performed by a negro slave, he provoked the irate Governor to reach for a bastinadoe. Jan Lampo was the first schout-fiscaal of New Netherland, though he was not the bastinadoed Oracle of the Law. The first magistrates were the members of Minuit's Council. They were: Peter Bylvelt, Jacob Elbertsen Wissinck, Jan Janszen Brouwer, Simon Dirckson Pos and Reynert Harmenssen. They knew little of law, and in other respects hardly constituted an ideal court of justice, inasmuch as all were servants of the Dutch West India Company. In 1629 a new system of colonization was devised in the Charter of Freedom and Exemptions, which introduced the patroons and the feudal system of land tenure. The intention was that this system of local government should be subservient to the provincial authority of the Director-General, just as the latter was subservient to the Amsterdam directors of the West India Company, and these in turn were controlled by the College of the Nineteen (delegates drawn from all the shareholders of the company) . All were expected to recognize the over- lordship of the States General of the United Provinces of the Netherlands. To what extent the patroon system interfered, in New Netherland, with the judicial authority of the early Directors-General will never be positively known, for the official company records of the period 1626-37 have been lost. Neither can it be stated, with assurance, how judicial proceedings were conducted under Directors Minuit, Krol, or Van Twiller, the first three Directors-General. It is quite clear, however, that authorities clashed, and that while the directors may have been arbitrary, they had little power in the patroonships. Such a system as that which the patroons were permitted to set up would be considered tyrannical in these days. The life of the immigrants in the patroonships would be looked upon as a kind of bondage, for, it seems, the colonists were bound to serve the patroons for a period of years after emigration,--ostensibly to repay the latter for the expense incurred in transportation to, and establishment upon, the land of the patroons. The most extensive and successful patroonship-in fact the only successful one-was that founded by Kiliaen van Rensselaer. In it, the patroon system is seen at its best and its worst. Upon the manor of Rensselaer were, in time, established, by their own means or by the assistance of the Van Rensselaer family, hundreds of tenant- farmers who accepted the system of manorial land-tenure, which demanded of the occupying farmer, for life and through succeeding generations, payment of a portion of each year's product of the land they tilled. It was a perpetual rental, the tenant, no matter how prosperous, never being able to own the land he tilled. The manor embraced parts of several of the present counties in the vicinity of Albany, and, surprising as it may seem, this near feudal system was maintained with the Van Rensselaer family for over two centuries, long after the time when, one would suppose, all traces of feudalism and monarchical government had, by the Revolution, been swept away from all parts of the United States. When the Dutch West India Company, in 1629, made public its plans for, or sanction of, a charter of "Privileges, Freedoms, and Exemptions to all patrons, masters or individuals who should plant any colonies and cattle in New Netherland," the proposals were not viewed as an impossible system by either the moneyed class or the emigrants. Life in the homeland had been a constant struggle for two or three generations, the sea vieing with Spain in an attempt to wrest from the Dutch their home. Furthermore, the alluring new land, a mysterious and possibly vast treasure-house of gold, silver, and precious stones, a National treasury more precious and potential than that which had been enriching Spain for a century, was the hope of the adventurous. So, several of the wealthy directors of the West India Company hastened to claim such privileges, receiving large land grants and making colonization plans to meet the conditions of such grants. [3] Much happened, in 1630 and 1631. Minuit in these land transactions came into conflict with the home authorities, for alleged excess of zeal in the interests of certain Amsterdam directors of the company who Sullivan - History of New York State 1523-1927 [4] became patroons, and for not showing enough consideration for the interests of the company. Although the privileges of the Charter of 1629 were open to "all persons, peasants or nobles," who could meet the conditions, they were in reality only within the reach of the wealthy; hence, the grants made were to men who, while not of the nobility, were of the great burgher class-wealthy merchants.