[Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)] It is a coincidence, and very presumably no accidental one, that this offer was volunteered in the same year that the Pilgrims sailed from Holland in the "Mayflower" and landed at Plymouth. Indeed, it is well known that the original intention of the " Mayflower" company was to proceed to New Netherland, and their landing on the New England coast instead was the result of a change of plan almost at the last moment. It will heme be observed that it was by the merest cir-cumstance of fortune that our State of New York did not become the chosen seat of the Puritan element. Yet New Netherland as originally settled was just as distinctly a place of refuge for persecuted religious sectarians as New England, the Walloons who came to New York Bay being no less pilgrims for reasons of belief than the much-sung pas-sengers of the " Mayflower." If should be borne in mind that the confines of New Netherland, as that territory was understood by the Dutch government, were not limited to the shores of the Hudson River, New York Bay and its To HISTORY OF WESTCHESTER COUNTY company