Document: Sentence of Thomas Gridy to be banished the province for 12 years, with costs

Whereas Tomas Gridy bom in [left blank], residing in Gravesande, presently a prisoner, has been so bold, in the company of a Negro, at the request (so he says) of Gorge Baxter, at that time imprisoned for serious crimes, to fetch his animals that had been placed in the hands of the magistrate of Gravesande by the fiscal, and very early in the morning before daybreak without the knowledge or consent of the aforesaid magistrates feloniously to steal them from the enclosure of Gems Hubert and to take them out of the village, and to drive them there to where the prisoner Baxter had no jurisdiction over them and consequently could not give an order to have them returned; whereby the aforesaid Baxter’s creditors have been significantly injured because of his escape. All of which the prisoner Tomas Gridy has confessed to without torture and manacles, for which the fiscal brought in the indictment and decision against the aforesaid Gridy; the director general and councilors having seen and heard the criminal indictment of the fiscal, and heard the defense of the aforesaid Gridy and his acquaintances, done without torture and manacles, and having examined everything that there was to examine herein; therefore, the director general and councilors, after evoking God’s holy name, dispensing justice in the name of the honorable high and mighty lords States General and the honorable lords directors of the chartered West India Company (beforehand taking into consideration his advanced age, reaching into the seventies, and consequently mitigating his well-deserved punishment), condemn the aforesaid Tomas Gridy, as they hereby so do, to be banished from this jurisdiction and government of New Netherland for the period of twelve years and to pay the costs and expenses of justice. Thus done, resumed, and confirmed, ady ut supra, in our session held at Fort Amsterdam in New Netherland. (Was signed:) P. Stuyvesant, Nicasius de Sille, La Montagne.