Document: Ordinance for the payment of tenths

The director general and councilors of N. Netherland hereby notify and warn all those who, according to patents and bills of sale are indebted for the tenth, that no one shall try to remove his cultivated crops, either grains, corn, or tobacco, before and until they have agreed about the tenth for this year with the director general and councilors or their representatives, the lords Pieter Tonneman and Johan de Deckere; or, in case of non-agreement, until they have shown their crops to the said representatives to select and determine the tenth from those [ crops ] according to usage and custom of our fatherland, on pain of forfeiting 50 guilders above the true value of the tenth to be assessed by impartial men, [ which fine shall be paid by ] those who shall be found to have acted contrary to this. Dated as above.[i]