7. New York Land Monopoly

As early as the turn of the eighteenth 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 they thus 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, saw 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 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. Lieutenant Governor Cadwallader Colden 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 and 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 tracts and other people will not become their vassals or tenants.” Colden 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.” And Chief Justice Lewis 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 apace. Governor George Clarke (1736–43), for example, evaded the maximum limit of 2,000 acres per grant by giving himself land through dummy associates. Thus, Clarke granted William Corry 100,000 acres in the Mohawk Valley, which Corry promptly transferred back to Clarke’s personal ownership. In this way, Clarke was able to amass a fortune of 100,000 pounds’ worth of land during his term of office. Clarke’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 thirteen pounds for each 1,000 acres given away. Through such means, Clinton was able to amass a fortune of 100,000 pounds in his decade of rule.

As the eighteenth century wore on, the discontent of the tenants increased, along with the extent of manorial landholdings. The farmers—significantly, generally referred to by the European name “peasants”—were subjected not only to rent payments, but also to juries constituted 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 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 could pay the expenses of registry and of hiring lawyers to do the job. And, finally, feudal entail and primogeniture were imposed to keep the huge manors intact and to prevent them from being divided. Thus, Frederick Philipse, 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, etc., forever.

The dominant manors of New York in the eighteenth century were those of Livingston, Philipse, Van Rensselaer, and Van Cortlandt. The Philipse 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 all of Putnam County. The Philipse 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 was reserved for Philipse.

The Van Rensselaer manor of Rensselaerswyck was, of course, the pioneer manor in the colony, having been the only holdover from the Dutch policy of creating feudal patroonships. Amassing one million acres and covering most of Albany County by the turn of the century, Rensselaer leases were even shorter term than Philipse’s, amounting to a thirteen-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 marry the widow of his former employer, the Van Rensselaer patroon, and later rose to become Speaker of the New York Assembly and mayor of Albany. Livingston had his own assemblymen from 1715 on. Livingston’s rules were slightly more liberal than those of others. Terms of leases varied, but most ranged from life to the lives of three generations of tenants. 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 Cortlandt manor, which began with 86,000 acres of Westchester County granted in 1697, was the most liberal of the large manors, especially after the 1750s. For one thing, the Van Cortlandts 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 Van Cortlandts, 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 Cortlandt lands was greatly accelerated by equal division among their heirs. Alone of the large manors, the Van Cortlandts eschewed the privileges of entail and primogeniture. With the combined pressure of subdividing inheritance and sales in fee simple, the Van Cortlandt 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 Cortlandt and Philipse 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 Duanes, the Beekmans, and the Heathcotes.

With the renewal of arbitrary land grants in the eighteenth 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 thirty-three 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 ironclad stronghold of the big landlords. Of twenty-eight councillors from 1750 to 1776, fully twenty-five were connected with large landlord families. On the other hand, domination of the Assembly, the lower house, was less overwhelming; of seventy assemblymen during this period, fifty-two came from the great landed families. One-third of the representatives outside New York City came from pocket boroughs—from the manors —and a forty-pound-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, eighty percent, or 110, were connected to large landed families, while five percent, or six, were small landholders.

By the middle of the eighteenth century, rising resentment against the manorial lords set off tenant uprisings against their masters. In 1750, a tenant-settler 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 “Levellers’ 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.* As is the norm in ruling aristocracies, the leading landed families were widely interrelated.

After midcentury, 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 interests, while the New York City interests tended to join the DeLancey faction. In addition, the Dissenters tended to support the Livingstons and the Anglicans the DeLanceys.

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 Hallenbeck 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 court action against Hallenbeck. Armed conflict broke out in 1753 when Livingston sent a troop of sixty armed men to burn the houses and destroy the crops of the leaders of the tenants who had refused to obey Livingston’s order to leave, especially Josiah Loomis and George Robinson. The rebels, led by Joseph Paine, retaliated by chopping down over a thousand of 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 Hallenbeck, attracted by Massachusetts support of tenant claims, escaped to the Bay Colony. There they were appointed to a committee of the General Court engaged in granting New York land titles to settlers. Albany County and the governor of New York swung into action against the rebels, but failed to quell the uprising.

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 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 Massachusetts troops and armed tenant rebels against the private armies of Livingston and Van Rensselaer. Only a boundary proclamation by the Crown in 1757 effectively ended the Massachusetts claims to the tenants.

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 eighty-four-square-mile grant to the Reverend Godfridus Dellius. 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 largesse were James Duane and Goldsbrow 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 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 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, 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 furs, 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 Palatines were kept on Nutten 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 6,000 acres of Livingston manor for the Crown, as well as rights to some pine trees on Livingston land. Livingston also profited not only by wider markets for the products of his manor, but more directly by obtaining the victualing contract for the Palatines as well as an appointment as their inspector. The Crown and Livingston had joined to exploit the labor of the Palatines, but 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 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 the job, the unfortunate Palatines were worked in labor gangs under strict supervision; 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 victualing account. Furthermore, the artificially encouraged naval-stores program was going very badly 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 victualing account between the government and Livingston, the Palatines began to raid Livingston’s storehouse to obtain food.

Finally, with a new government in Britain reluctant to pour good money after bad in further subsidy, Governor Hunter was forced to abandon the disastrous naval-stores program in the fall of 1712. 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 Schoharie country, where they purchased land from the Mohawk Indians.

But the persecuted Palatines were not yet free. The various land 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 Schoharie, who included a Livingston and a Schuyler, 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.

But 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 Schoharie settlement and gave Sheriff Adams a thorough trouncing. Hunter retaliated by ordering the Palatines to submit to the designated landlords or be removed, and as defiance continued he prohibited all further cultivation of the land by the Palatines.

Weiser 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 Schoharie and moved westward, 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.

*Carl Becker 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 principal means by which this bond was established... was the marriage relation. An effective political influence 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” (Carl L. Becker, The History of Political Parties in the Province of New York, 1760–1776 [Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1906], p. 12).