the River St. Lawrence, including the lands
on Lake Champlain, was owned by the Iroquois, or Five Nations,
and that these tribes, by treaty, had submitted to the sovereignty
and protection of Great Britain, and had been considered sul)jects,
all the possessions of the French on Lake Champlain, including the
erection of the forts at Crown Point and Ticonderoga, were an in-
trusion and trespass, and of course that government had no right to
make grants there, and therefore the British government denied
the claim of Lotbiniere, as they did all others, for lands south of
latitute 45*^, but consented to give him lands in Canada.
In the meantime, all the lands, which had been gi'anted by the
French government east of Lake Champlain, had been granted
anew by the governor of New Hampshire, in the name of the Brit-
ishcrown, and the governor and council of New York liad spread
their grants to the reduced officers and soldiers of the army, which
HISTORY OF ADDISON COUNTY. 49
had been disbanded after the conquest of Canada, on the top of
the New Harapshh-e grants.
And previous to all these, and many years even before the settle-
ment of the French, in 1696, Godfrey Dellius purchased of the
Moha>Yks, who claimed the whole of this territory, a large tract of
land extending from Saratoga along both sides of Hudson RiA'cr and
Wood Creek, and on the east side of Lake Champlain, to twenty
miles north of Crown Point, and the purchase was confirmed under
the great seal of New York; but in 1699, the grant was repealed
by the legislature, " as an extravagant favor to one subject."
The Mohawks also, on