"a place of great awe as well as authority." This judicial
land wrester forced the town of Southampton to accept the insignificant
sum of L10 for the greater part of forty miles of beach--a singularly
profitable transaction for Smith, who cleared in one year L500, the
proceeds of whales taken there, as he admitted to Bellomont.[17] Henry
Beekman, the astute and smooth founder of a rich and powerful family,
was made a magnate of the first importance by a grant from Fletcher of a
tract sixteen miles in length in Dutchess County, and also of another
estate running twenty miles along the Hudson and eight miles inland.
This estate he valued at L5,000.[18] Likewise Peter Schuyler, Godfrey
Dellius and their associates had conjointly secured by Fletcher's
patent, a grant fifty miles long in the romantic Mohawk Valley--a grant
which "the Mohawk Indians have often complained of". Upon this estate
they placed a value of L25,000. This was a towering fortune for the
period; in its actual command of labor, necessities, comforts and
luxuries it ranked as a power of transcending importance.

These were some of the big estates created by "Colonel Fletcher's
intolerable corrupt selling away the lands of this Province," as
Bellomont termed it in his communication to the Lords of Trade of Nov.
28, 1700. Fletcher, it was set forth, profited richly by these corrupt
grants. He got in bribes, it was charged, at least L4,000.[19] But
Fletcher was not the only corrupt official. In his interesting work on
the times,[20] George W. Schuyler presents what is an undoubtedly
accurate description of how Robert Livingston, progenitor of a rich and
potent family which for generations exercised a profound influence in
politics and other public affairs, contrived to get together an estate
which soon ranked as the second largest in New York state and as one of
the greatest in the colonies.

Livingston was the younger son of a poor exiled clergyman. In currying
favor with one official after another he was unscrupulous, dexterous and
adaptable. He invariably changed his politics with the change of
administration. In less than a year after his arrival he was appointed
to an office which yielded him a good income. This office he held for
nearly half a century, and simultaneously was the incumbent of other
lucrative posts. Offices were created by Governor Dongan apparently for
his sole benefit. His passion was to get together an estate which would
equal the lar