[3] O'Callaghan, 1:124. Although it was said that Kiliaen van Rensselaer visited America, it seems to be established that he never did. He governed his estate as an absentee landgrave, through agents. He was the most powerful of all of the patroons. [4] Ibid., 125. [5] Colonial Documents, 1:41. The primary object of this company was a monopoly of the Indian trade, not colonization. The "princely" manors were a combination fort and trading house, surrounded by moat and stockade. [6] Colonial Documents, 1:86. [7] "Annals of Albany," iii:287. The power of the patroons over their tenants, or serfs, was almost unlimited. No "man or woman, son or daughter, man servant or maid servant" could leave a patroon's service during the time that they had agreed to remain, except by his written consent, no matter what abuses or breaches of contract were committed by the patroon. [8] "Burghers and Freemen of New York":29. CHAPTER II THE SWAY OF THE LANDGRAVES While this seizure of land was going on in New Netherlands, vast areas in New England were passing suddenly into the hands of a few men. These areas sometimes comprised what are now entire States, and were often palpably obtained by fraud, collusion, trickery or favoritism. The Puritan influx into Massachusetts was an admixture of different occupations. Some were traders or merchants; others were mechanics. By far the largest portion were cultivators of the soil whom economic pressure not less than religious persecution had driven from England. To these land was a paramount consideration. Describing how the English tiller had been expropriated from the soil Wallace says: "The ingenuity of lawyers and direct landlord legislation steadily increased the powers of great landowners and encroached upon the rights of the people, till at length the monstrous doctrine arose that a landless Englishman has no right whatever to enjoyment even of the unenclosed commons and heaths and the mountain and forest wastes of his native country, but is everywhere in the eye of the law a trespasser whenever he ventures off a public road or pathway."[9] By the sixteenth century the English peasantry had been evicted even from the commons, which were turned into sheep walks by the impoverished barons to make money from the Flemish wool market. The land at home wrenched from them, the poor English immigrants ardently expected that in America land would be plentiful. They were bitterly disappointed. The various English companies, chartered by royal command with all-inclusive powers, despite the frequent opposition of Parliament, held the trade and land of the greater part of the colonies as a rigid monopoly. In the case of the New England Company severe punishment was threatened to all who should encroach upon its rights. It also was freed from payment for twenty-one years and was relieved from taxes forever. THE COLONIES CARVED INTO GREAT ESTATES.