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History of Westchester County, New York — Passage 26 (part 2)

Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900) 171 words View original →

[Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)] The grant of the States-General establishing the New Netherland Company, after naming the persons associated in it — these persons being the proprietors and skippers of five designated ships, — describes the region in which its operations are to be carried on as " certain new lands situate in America, between New France and Virginia, the sea-coasts whereof lie between forty and forty-five degrees of latitude, and now called New Netherland." The range of territorial limits in lati-tude thus claimed for Holland's dominion on the American coast is certainly a broad extension of the rights acquired by the discoveries of Hudson and Block, and utterly ignores the sovereignty of England north of the Virginian region proper. On the other hand, the entire coast to which Holland now set up pretensions had already been not only comprehensively claimed by Great Britain, but allotted in terms to the corporate ownership and jurisdiction of two English companies. In 1606, three years before the voyage of Hudson and eight years be-62 HISTORY OF WESTCHESTER COUNTY