Volume 2, Chapter 7, New York Land Monopoly
As early as the turn of the 18th century, New York, in its large Hudson River manors,
was the only colony where feudal landholding retained an important foothold. In this colony,
the few receivers of huge land grants persisted in renting instead of selling their domains,
And thus they formed, along with the royal bureaucracy, a ruling oligarchy of the colony.
Robert Hunter, the relatively liberal governor of New York during the second decade of the
seventeenth century, solved the problem and warned of the oppression of the tenants and
the crippling of growth in the colony.
The problem grew acute again with an accession to the governorship of John Montgomery in
1728. Montgomery renewed the old policy of granting huge tracts of land in return for
monetary reward, the main sale of such privilege being a grant of 50,000 acres in eastern
Dutchess County to Thomas Hawley in 1731 in return for 750 pounds sterling. The new rash
The rush of land grants reached full flower in the regime of William Cosby, 1732-36, who took the precaution of giving himself one-third of the total amount of his grants.
This orgy of special privilege even moved two of the leading officials of the colony to protest to England.
Planet Governor Cadwallader Calden noted in 1732 that enterprising youth were leaving New York in large numbers, driven by the land monopoly to seek land of their own elsewhere.
While much better in every way more convenient lands lie useless to the king and country, the reason for this is that the grantees themselves are not in a capacity to improve such large tracks
Cold and eloquently pointed out that a leading reason that so many people had left Europe for the New World was to avoid the dependence on landlords and to enjoy a fee simple to descend to their posterity that their children may reap the benefit of their labor and industry.
Chief Justice Louis Morris deplored the engrossing of great tracts of land into few hands, making it very difficult and expensive to settle these lands.
In contrast, better and far cheaper lands were available in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, which were thus attracting far more immigrants.
Despite these warnings, the venal policy of land engrossment continued to pace.
Governor George Clark, 1736-43, for example, evaded the maximum limit of 2,000 acres per
grant by giving himself land through dummy associates.
Thus, Clark granted William Corey 100,000 acres in the Mohawk Valley, which Corey promptly
transferred back to Clark's personal ownership.
In this way, Clark was able to amass a fortune of 100,000 pounds worth of land during his
term of office. Clark's successor in the lucrative post, George Clinton, 1743-53, also granted
much land to himself through numerous dummy intermediaries. For grants to others, Clinton
charged the high fee of 13 pounds for each 1,000 acres given away. Through such means,
was able to amass a fortune of £100,000 in his decade of rule.
As the 18th century wore on, the discontent of the tenants increased, along with the extent
of manorial land holdings. The farmers, significantly generally referred to by the European name
peasants, were subjected not only to rent payments, but also to juries constituted by
by the Manor Lord, as well as to various feudal fees and privileges. Unable to purchase their
land, the farmers also faced insecurity of renewal of lease, and the increasing rents
of any new lease ate into any farm prosperity they might have enjoyed. The farmers had therefore
little incentive to improve the land, since they would only in the end have to pay more
more rent to the manor lord. Furthermore, the large feudal manors enjoyed their own
direct representation in the provincial assembly with their own private rotten boroughs.
In addition to these numerous privileges, the New York government propped up the feudal
manors in other significant ways. For one thing, New York did not adopt the significant
English Common Law realization that the mortgager is the true owner of the land. Failure to
do this preserved New York landlords from any compulsion to yield property to their
creditors in case they could not pay. Also, New York established an elaborate system of
registry of land titles, which being costly, favored the large and wealthy landlords who
who could pay the expenses of registry and of hiring lawyers to do the job.
And finally, feudal entail and promogenitor were imposed to keep the huge manors intact
and to prevent them from being divided.
Thus, Frederic Phillips, one of the great manorial lords of New York, made a will in
1751 compulsorily entailing all his land to his firstborn and then to the latter's firstborn.
The dominant manors of New York in the 18th century were those of Livingston, Phillips,
Van Rensselaer and Van Cortlandt.
The Phillips Manor, the Highland Patent, began with a grant by Governor Benjamin Fletcher
in 1697.
The grant soon amounted to over 200,000 acres, covering some of Dutchess County and almost
The Phillips Manorial System was highly oppressive. Leases lasted only for the life of the tenant. At which point the land, along with its improvements, reverted to the manor lord. If any tenant wished to transfer his tenancy to another, he was forced to pay a one-third alienation fee. In addition, all property of mines and minerals were reserved for the Phillips.
The Van Rensselaer manor of Rensselaerwijk was, of course, the pioneer manor in the colony,
having been the only holdover from the Dutch policy of creating feudal patron ships. Amassing
one million acres and covering most of Albany County by the turn of the century, Rensselaer
leases were even shorter term than Phillips's. Amounting to a 13-year term, rents were exacted
in kind and in service, as in the Middle Ages, as well as in money. The Manorial Lord also
reserved all rights of milling and mining and timber, and the tenants were liable for
all taxes on the manor. But while the tenants paid the taxes, the Lord, Van Rensselaer,
virtually had the right to pick his own assemblymen by the 1680s. The tenants who voted in this
and other manorial elections had, it should be noted, no such protection from landlord
wrath as the secret ballot. Livingston Manor began with a grant in the 1680s and was stretched,
like the other grants, through dubious legality from Indian purchases to include 160,000 acres
in Columbia County. Robert Livingston, the original grantee, was fortunate enough to
to marry the widow of his former employer, the Van Rensselaer Patroon, and later rose
to become Speaker of the New York Assembly and Mayor
In contrast to the other large manors, some subdivisions were actually sales of property, in fee simple, to the farmers.
As in the other cases, tenants were responsible for payment of taxes.
Van Courtland Manor, which began with 86,000 acres of Westchester County, granted in 1697,
1777 was the most liberal of the large banners, especially after the 1750s. For one thing,
the Van Cortlands were the most willing to sell their land in fee simple, for a high
price of course, but at least they were willing. In addition, the lot of the tenant was greatly
eased by permitting transfer of leases with almost no alienation fees. Furthermore, the
The Van Cortlands allowed their own assemblymen after 1717, permitted their freeholders on
the manor to select an additional representative.
Most important, the process of subdividing the ownership of Van Cortland lands was greatly
accelerated by equal division among their heirs.
Alone of the large manors, the Van Cortlands eschewed the privileges of entail in promogenitor.
With the combined pressure of subdividing inheritance and sales in fee simple, the Van
Cortland Manor very gradually disintegrated into legitimate settler ownership.
But this was to take time.
In the meanwhile, in 1769, five-sixths of the inhabitants of Westchester were the subjects
of Six Manorial Lords, with one-third of them on Van Courtland in Phillips Manors. Other
leading Manorial Lords of the province were the Schuylers, whose leases were long, covering
three lives, and who were willing to sell land in fee simple, the Dwaynes, the Beekmans
and the Heathcoats.
With the renewal of arbitrary land grants in the 18th century, domination of the entire
governing machinery of New York by the landed oligarchs was far stronger than in the previous
century. The leading lawyers of the colony, and hence the main politicians, were connected
by intimate family ties with the great manorial lords. Of the 33 lawyers licensed to practice
In New York, from 1730 to 1776, the remarkable number of thirty were connected with the great
landlord families and two of the remaining three were smaller landlords.
This also meant that almost all the judges and attorneys general of the colony were closely
tied to the big landlords and such landlord connected judges as Robert R. Livingston and
William Smith never hesitated to decide cases in which they or their relations were involved.
Of the eight governors of New York from 1750 to 1776, six were large landlords. As we might
expect, the council, the upper house of the New York legislature, was an iron-clad stronghold
of the Big Landlords. Of 28 councillors from 1750 to 1776, fully 25 were connected with
large landlord families. On the other hand, domination of the assembly, the lower house
was less overwhelming. Of 70 assemblymen during this period, 52 came from the great landed
families. One-third of the representatives outside New York City came from pocket boroughs,
from the Manners, and a £40 sterling property qualification for voting added to the factors
making for landlord domination.
Of a total of 137 executive, legislative, and judicial officers of New York from 1750
To 1776, 80 percent or 110 were connected to large landed families, while 5 percent
or 6 were small landholders. By the middle of the 18th century, rising resentment against
the manorial lords set off tenant uprisings against their masters. In 1750, a tenant-settler
Similar revolt occurred in Dutchess County, and in the 1760s similar revolts occurred
in the manors of Albany and Westchester.
Discontent centered in the largest manors of the Big Four Landlords and the movement
of the New York peasantry was to culminate in the General Hudson River Uprising, or Leveller's
Uprising of 1766.
Apart from such eruptions, from below, politics in New York reflected the aristocratic feudalism
of the social structure. Parties vying for control were largely personal factions within
the landed oligarchy. Sharing a common ideology and a common devotion to the basic social
structure, political struggles became mainly squabbles of family and place. Carl Becker
Boehm-Bawerk put the point very well. For political purposes, the organization of the
aristocracy rested upon the surviving feudal principle of the personal relation. Personal
loyalty, rather than faith in a proposition, was the key to political integrity. The principle
means by which this bond was established was the marriage relation. An effective political
was established not by securing control of a machine within a party, but by interrelating one's family with the aristocracy as advantageously as possible.
As is the norm in ruling aristocracies, the leading landed families were widely interrelated.
After mid-century, however, this situation began to change, as will be seen further below.
The two leading factions of the province came to be headed by the Livingston and the Delancey families.
To the Livingston camp began to gravitate the upstate interest, while the New York City interest tended to join the Delancey faction.
In addition, the dissenters tended to support the Livingstons and the Anglicans, the Delancies.
New York's system of land monopoly greatly aggravated the colony's territorial disputes
with its neighbors, Massachusetts and New Hampshire.
In upstate New York, the rebellious tenants of the manorial lords took advantage of the
Territorial Claims of Massachusetts to a Boundary on the Hudson River. In 1751, the
tenants of Livingston Manor refused to pay their rents and argued that they owned the
land outright in fee simple under the authority of Massachusetts. Tenants of Livingston and
Van Rensselaer petitioned to Massachusetts to include them in its jurisdiction and ignored
Livingston's orders to leave their land. The embattled tenants were led by Michael
Hollenbeck and Josiah Loomis, and the encouragement of Massachusetts was particularly given to
them by David Ingersoll, the manorial Lord Robert Livingston, Jr., retaliated by burning
the house of one of the tenants and throwing the tenant himself into jail. He also began
The Rebels, led by Joseph Payne, retaliated by chopping down over a thousand of living
Livingston's Manorial Trees. In addition, Massachusetts stepped into the fray, pushing
its own jurisdiction by arresting a Livingston tenant who refused to take a Massachusetts
title and finally forcibly transferring his land to another claimant. Loomis and Hollenbeck,
attracted by Massachusetts' support of tenant claims, escaped to the Bay Colony. There they
In fact, the land conflict was aggravated the following year as both Massachusetts and New York sent troops into the area to battle Indians, and both sets of troops remained to take opposite sides in the battle.
and Boundary Dispute. Van Rensselaer Tenants, led by Hallenbeck and Robert Noble, formed
an alliance with Massachusetts militia in Albany County to battle New York troops, and
warfare raged throughout the area until 1757, with numerous armed raids and daring captures
on either side. The armed conflict reached peaks in early 1755 and in 1757, pitting the
New York's other great land dispute was with New Hampshire, over its western territory,
now Vermont.
New York had begun the arbitrary parceling out of New Hampshire lands in 1696 with an
84-square-mile grant to the Reverend Godfredus Delius. But it was in the late 1760s that the
carving up of Vermont land was pursued in earnest in a wild race with the New Hampshire
Government From 1765 to 1776, New York governors handed
out claims to over 2.1 million acres of Vermont land, and over 2.4 million additional acres
were military grants purchased by the New York grantees.
Of the grantees, eight New York lawyers, merchants and land speculators were given over 375,000
Acres. Leading recipients of New York's law guests were James Duane and Goldsbrough Banyar.
One of the most unfortunate groups of sufferers from New York's policy of land monopoly was
a band of German refugees from the Palatinate who were known as the Palatines. England had
England had prided itself on admitting all Protestant refugees from Europe, and the French
Huguenots, mainly businessmen and financiers, were a welcome dividend from this policy.
But in 1709, a group of several thousand Protestant, Palatinate refugees fled to London from the
devastation of their homes and lands that was ravaging Germany during the War of the
and the Spanish Succession. Now that the Palatines were there, what could be done with these
poor and homeless peasants? With England's own land engrossed by feudal lords, there
seemed to be no room for the Palatines there. The British government decided to combine
humanitarianism with profit by shipping the Palatines as indentured servants to New York,
New York, a colony with a severe shortage of labor and an abundance of land. The catch,
of course, was that the land was also being engrossed there and that the shortage of immigrants
to the colony was largely because of that preemption of land. Indeed, Britain decided
to kill several birds with one stone. New York was eager to develop a staple product
other than FERS and the Crown was also interested in increasing production of naval stores such
as tar and pitch for the Royal Navy. What better way than to force the Palatines to
produce such naval stores? And so the hapless Palatines, who wanted nothing but to farm
land of their own, were shipped to New York and coerced into working for the Crown and
for Robert Livingston to produce naval stores, a product about which they knew nothing.
There they were forbidden to engage in the one thing they did know, farming. On the first
leg of their journey, three thousand were herded into ten ships, with fully one-fourth
of the passengers dying en route. When they landed the unhappy, Palantines were kept on
from Nutton Island, now Governor's Island, in New York Bay for five months while their
fate was being decided. The Palatines were originally scheduled to go to the Mohawk Valley,
but after they arrived in New York in early 1710, it was suddenly discovered that the
Mohawk land was unsuitable for naval stores production. Governor Hunter thereupon purchased
The crown and Livingston had joined to exploit the labor of the Palatines, but Livingston
Livingston's gains were seemingly more certain and immediate. And so the Palatinate peasants,
trustingly fleeing from devastation in Germany to a supposed haven in England, now found
themselves in remote, upstate New York surrounded by pine trees and forced to produce naval
stores for the Crown. As if this were not enough of a cross to bear, neither Livingston
Livingston, nor the government, was particularly conscientious about feeding the Palatines.
When Livingston found that a supply of his beef was spoiling, he quickly shipped two
months' supply to the Palatines, with the full connivance of the New York government.
On to the job, the unfortunate Palatines worked in labor gangs under strict supervision. Moreover,
Moreover, the children of those who had died at sea were forcibly separated from their remaining relatives and sent by the government to be apprenticed far away in other colonies, and even children of living parents were seized in the same way.
The Palatines, understandably, began to grow restive at this treatment.
Led by John Conrad Weiser, they threatened to mutiny, that is to leave their wretched circumstances.
Governor Hunter, failing to persuade the Palatines to become resigned to their fate,
sent for an armed troop, disarmed the Palatines, ordered them treated as the Queen's servants,
and appointed a court to dictate their affairs.
and troops were sent in periodically to try to force the Palatines to keep working.
Thieves fall out, however, and Livingston was betrayed by his own partner,
the Royal Government, in the oppression of the Palatines.
The Government refused to pay Livingston's vittling account.
Furthermore, the artificially encouraged Naval Stores program was going very badly
Sadly, and the Crown officials decided to heap all the blame on Livingston. Governor
Hunter's pet naval stores project was collapsing. And what with the squabbling over the vitaling
account between the government and Livingston, the Palatines began to raid Livingston's
storehouse to obtain food. Finally, with the new government in Britain reluctant to pour
good money after bad in further subsidy, Governor Hunter was forced to abandon the disastrous
A government program of artificially stimulated production with the use of forced labor had
failed ignominiously.
The governor told the Palatines that they were free to work where they wished during
the winter, provided that they reassembled in the spring, but a large number of Palatines
used their newfound freedom to escape to the Schoharie country in New York, to New Jersey
and Pennsylvania and to other parts of New York Colony. Before long the government abandoned
the whole project and the palatines were released from bondage to the Crown. The bulk of the
palatines moved happily during 1713 to the Skahari country where they purchased land
from the Mohawk Indians. But the persecuted palatines were not yet free. The various land
The Palatine speculators managed to obtain monopolistic grants from the governor of the very lands on which the Palatines had settled.
The would-be land engrossers of Skowhary, who included a Livingston and a Shuler, demanded that the Palatines take out leases and pay rent to their designated landlords.
They were aided and abetted by Governor Hunter, who for one thing was angry at the Palatines' escape from their servitude.
And while the full force of the government created and tried to sustain the land monopoly,
the doughty Germans, led by Weiser, insisted on defending their hard-earned land by force.
The rebel palatines drove their would-be overlords out of the Skahari settlement and gave Sheriff
Adams a thorough trouncing. Hunter retaliated by ordering the palatines to submit to the
and as defiance continued, he prohibited all further cultivation of the land by the Palatines.
Wiser shipped secretly to England to try to win the support of the Crown for free possession of their land, but the attempt failed.
Driven off their land by monopolistic land grants, half the Palatines left Skahari and moved westward,
of the World, settling along the Mohawk River during the 1720s. But Weiser and his followers
thoroughly disgusted with New York policies, left for Pennsylvania and settled there. As
a matter of fact, New York's treatment of the Palatines discouraged all further German
immigration into New York, and from then on, Pennsylvania was much more heavily favored.