The House of Representatives [Assembly] have past two bills in favour of Mr. Vesie and ye Church of New York [Rector Vesey of Trinity Church]. They
want only my Lords [Governor Cornbury] assent to pass them into Acts.  I have inclosed ym. for the Societies perusall. The Queene has a farme of about 30
Acres of Land which. rents for 36 pounds per annum. Ye Church Wardens and vestry have petitioned for it and my Lord four months Since gave them A
promise of it. The proceeding has been so slow that they begin to feare the Success wont Answer the Expectation. I believe her Majestie would readily grant
it to ye Societie for asking. New York is ye Center of English America And A proper place for A colledge and that farme in a little time will be of
considerable Value and its pity such a thing should be lost for want of asking for which at another time won't be so easily Obtained.

Lewis Morris (1671-1746), prominent New Jersey and New York landholder, politically identified with the "country party," centered in the New York
Assembly,  in opposition to the "court party, "  centered on successive governors and the Governor's Council. Although at this time a member of Trinity
Church, Morris, writing from New York,  seems to be urging Chamberlayne,  in London,  to see if the land in question -- the Queen's Farm -- could be given
to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts instead of  to Trinity Church, which had temporary control over it.  Morris was at the time
the Society's sole New York-New Jersey representative in these "foreign parts.' The SPGFP was a newly created missionary arm of the Church of England
and planned to be active in England's American colonies.

Source: Eugene R. Sheridan, ed., The Papers of Lewis Morris, Vol. 1., 1698-1730 (Newark: New Jersey Historical Society, 1991), pp. 48.

The date of the Morris letter is incorrectly given as 1702 in John Henry Van Amringe, A History of Columbia University, 1754-1904,  p. 2.

Clement Clark Moore also erred in dating the letter from 1703, in his  The Early History of Columbia College (1825), p. 4