Document: Dutch colonial council minutes, 9 March 1648

Whereas Elisabet Feax, on account of adultery committal by her, was before our arrival legally divorced from her husband Robbert Peax by the former honorable director general and council, but since that time has lived and kept company with her lover, the adulterer, and, as the witnesses declare, has also had carnal conversation with him, contrary to all good laws and the order issued by us, and furthermore with his has also attempted to alienate, sell and dispose of the lands, cattle, furniture and other effects left by her former husband Robbert Feex to his four children, even to others who reside outside of our jurisdiction, whereby the children would be impoverished and become a charge either on the Company or on the community, which in a good and well regulated government neither can nor ought to be tolerated and suffered; therefore, both for the maintenance of justice and the preservation of the minor children and fatherless orphans, we hereby declare the aforesaid Elisabet Feax incompetent and powerless to dispose of any property, whether belonging to her former husband or her children, much less to alienate, estrange or sell the same, and, although she deserves a much heavier penalty and punishment, we nevertheless, out of special favor and for a private reason us thereunto moving, consent that with her children she may dwell and live at Groenwits,[1] under such curators as we have already appointed, or may hereafter appoint for the benefit of her children, and be supported out of the property left behind and still available, provided that she remain separated both as to bed and board and common intercourse from her lover, Willem Hallet, and abstains from keeping company with him, on pain of corporal punishment; as we hereby sentence and condemn the adulterer, Willem Hallet, to remain banished from our jurisdiction and the government entrusted to us and to leave the same within one month from the date hereof and not to trouble or molest any one within our jurisdiction on pain of corporal punishment, declaring further his pretended effects confiscated for the benefit and advantage of his child procurated by her, provided that a sum for traveling expenses at the discretion of the director and council be allowed him and that in addition he pay the costs of these proceedings. Thus done in council in Fort Amsterdam in New Netherland, the 9th of March anno 1649.