Document: Petition of skipper and sailors of the Gilded Beaver for permission to export a lot of beaver

Copy.

To the honorable lord director general and the lords councilors of N: Netherland.

Jan Reyersz, skipper on the ship the Vergulde Bever and his crew show with due reverence how they, petitioners, declared and made known to the honorable commissary Nicolaes Varlet the quantity of 210 beavers. Therefore they, petitioners, respectfully request your honors—because usually the voeringe of skippers and sailors is duty-free provided it is declared at the proper place, which his petitioners did and observed— to please mercifully allow and permit them, petitioners, to be free of paying the recognition fee on the amount of beavers mentioned above, if your honors please to order, which doing, we remain,

Your honorable lords’ very obedient subjects and servants, having received and read the above petition, the following opinions were given,

[several lines lost] [ opinion of the honorable lord director general ] [ ] petitioners the first [ ] their beavers have [ ] it is my opinion that for [ now ], but to the discretion of the lords directors, they shall be allowed to take along a hundred beavers free of duties.

Opinion of lord Tonneman.

Lord Tonneman conforms to the lord general’s opinion. Lord Deckere as above.

Follows the resolution on the above petition,

It was never shown to the director general and councilors of New Netherland that the sailors or someone else are allowed to import the value of two months’ worth of wages free of the recognition fee, much less that they are allowed to export the peltries traded for those [ wages ] free of the recognition fee. But because the petitioners are the first sailors who declared their beavers, they are for the present time, but at the lords directors’ discretion, allowed to take along a hundred beavers free of taxes. Dated 13 September 1658.