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To the honorable and highly esteemed lords, the honorable lord director general and lords councilors of New Netherland.
The current burgomasters and schepens of the city of Amsterdam in New Netherland make known with all due humility and reverence:
Whereas, pursuant to instructions granted to this city, elections of the burgomasters and schepens are to take place yearly on Candlemas,[1] and, according to the custom of our fatherland and the privileges of the outlying villages within this province, a double number are nominated by the ruling burgomasters and schepens of the same [ city ], from which your honors are to elect a single number; therefore, they, petitioners, request, because the election is now at hand, that your honors be pleased to grant to this city such privileges, as the outlying villages enjoy, and consequently to allow that they, petitioners, shall be permitted to nominate a double number of the new burgomasters and schepens of this city from which your honors then are to elect and confirm a single number in due time. Awaiting hereon your honors’ favorable disposition, and remaining (was written below:) your honors’ humble servants, the burgomasters and schepens of the city of Amsterdam in New Netherland (and was signed: Allard Antony, Oloff Stevensz, Johannis van Brugh, Jacob Strijcker, J. Vinge.
The foregoing petition having been read at the session, and after engaging in various pro and con debates thereon, it was decided upon as follows:
Because of the remoteness of the places, and because the director general and councilors would not always be present, and because we would not be able to evaluate the fitness of the persons, the nominations are deferred to the other subordinate benches of justice, save that those serving beforehand are nominated in order to be continued by the director general and councilors, as it may please them, and that fit persons be submitted for those succeeding, who are acceptable rather to the high administration than to opponents, and that the director general and councilors, as it pleases them, may commission someone on their behalf who may attend the nomination, upon which conditions the nomination from now on is to be ceded to the burgomasters and schepens. Done at our session held at Fort Amsterdam in New Netherland, ady ut supra, 18 January 1656.
