places being filled by a selection made by the Director and Council from a double nomination by the acting magistrates.
Turning from the Dutch towns, let us look at the government of the English settlements which grew up under the New Amsterdam jurisdiction, and in which an entirely different political atmosphere existed. The earliest mention of settlement by the English within the Dutch territory is in 1640, when eight Englishmen settled near the present site of Hempstead, having bought title to the land from Farret, the American representative of Lord Stirling.[1] The English intruders were arrested by the Dutch and imprisoned in New Amsterdam; but they were subsequently released upon their promise to leave the jurisdiction.[2] The next year, 1641, in response to an inquiry from some Englishmen as to terms of settlement, the reply was made that they would be allowed to select four or five of their ablest men, from whom the governor of the Dutch would select a single magistrate.[3] This exaggerated form of the multiple nominating system would have given the English less liberal government than that later granted to the Dutch towns; but the terms were not accepted.
Soon, however, a marked immigration set into the Dutch territories from New England. In 1642 and the years immediately following, a number of English settlers reached western Long Island.[4] They were well received by Director Kieft, who gave them tracts of land, and authorized the establishment of town governments. Before Brooklyn received its separate local court in 1646, Kieft had granted charters of incorporation to four English towns: Mespath (Newtown),[5] Hempstead,[6] Vlissingen (Flushing)[7] and Gravesend.[8] These charters, granted almost immediately after the settlements were made, defined the territory of the patentees and provided for their political organization. All four antedated the earliest Dutch town charter, and this fact is strong evidence that the communal spirit was more intense among the English than among the Dutch. Ten or twenty years might elapse in the life of the Dutch settlements before they received incorporation or any local govern-
- ↑ N. Y. Col. Doc., II. 145-150; Flint, Early Long Island, 120. Lord Stirling had received from the Plymouth Company a patent for Long Island, and his agent, Farret, sold patents for land on the island to New Englanders. Stirling's patent is printed in N. Y. Col. Doc., XIV. 29, note.
- ↑ Subsequently they settled Southampton in eastern Long Island.
- ↑ N. Y. Col. Doc., XIII. 8.
- ↑ In N. Y. Col. Doc., I. 181, is a Dutch statement of the causes of this English immigration.
- ↑ March 28, 1642.
- ↑ November 16, 1644.
- ↑ October 10, 1645.
- ↑ December 19, 1645.
