Document: Dutch colonial council minutes, 4 July 1647

The honorable director general and council having heard the signed and written criminal complaint against Michiel Piquet, born in Rouen, and made an examination of the interrogatives whereby it appears that the above named Michiel Piquet has most foully slandered with his tongue the late director, Kieft, calling his honor a betrayer, a villain and a traitor, also saying if no one would shoot him, he, Piquet, would do it himself; that his legs would not carry him out of the country and that within a short time a great shedding of blood would occur at the place where the former director transferred his authority to General Petrus Stuyvesant and that Cornelis Melyn had fully one hundred men on his side; also if the Honorable Petrus Stuyvesandt did not behave himself better than the former director, he too would have to pay the penalty, striking under his arm; all of which more fully appears by divers depositions of creditable witnesses; wherefore he was arrested by the fiscal and brought before the court for that scandalous and godless act. He, the culprit, has dared to break jail and to escape from imprisonment and although he has been three times summoned by the ringing of the bell to come and defend his case and to hear all such charges as the fiscal should ex-officio bring against him, he has failed to appear. Therefore, then, after invoking God's holy name, having duly considered and found it to be a matter of grave consequence which cannot be tolerated in a well ordered republic where it is customary to maintain justice, we declare the said Michiel Piquet, as he has not appeared on the third summons, to be debarred from all exceptions, defenses and pleas of which he might make use in this case, and condemn the said culprit to be banished for the rest of his life from the province of New Netherland, with confiscation of all his property, from which what is due to the honorable Company shall first be deducted, one-third to be applied to the honorable Company, one-third to the church and one-third to the benefit of the honorable fiscal, and in addition his name is to be affixed to the gallows as an example to other such turbulent persons.

Thus done in council in the presence of the Honorable P. Stuyvesandtt, the honorable ex-dlrector, Willem Kieft, Mr. Dincklagen, Mr. La Montangne, Captain Lieutenant Nuton, Paulus Leendersz, Jan Claesz Bol and Jacob Looper, the 4th of July anno 1647, in Fort Amsterdam in New Netherland.

Ordinance imposing an excise on wines and spirituous liquors[1]