[Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)] This code " established a very unmistakable autocracy, making the governor's will supreme, and leaving neither officers nor measures to the choice of the people." Among its detailed features were " trial by jury, equal taxation, tenure of land from the Duke of York, no religious estab-lishment but requirement of some church form, freedom of religion to all professing Christianity, obligatory service in each parish on Sunday, a recognition of negro slavery under certain restrictions, and general liability to military duty." The legitimacy and propriety of owning negro slaves was never questioned in New York or elsewhere in America in those days. Bondmen, both black and white, were brought here during the earli-est period of settlement by the Dutch; and with the arrival of Director 11)4 HISTORY OF WESTCHESTER COUNTY Kieft, in 1638, the practice of furnishing negroes to all who desired them had become a thoroughly established one. A distinct article providing for the furnishing of blacks to settlers was incorporated in the " Freedoms and Exemptions " of the Dutch West India Com-pany, a series of regulations adopted to promote colonization. All the leading English families who came to the province after the con-quest owned negroes, both as laborers and as house servants.