Document: Judgment for plaintiffs in the case of Anthony Jansen and Robert Pinoyer et al. vs. the town of Gravesend

The director general and councilors of New Netherland, after having on Wednesday last, the 21st of this month, personally inspected the enclosures or posts and rails put up lately by the inhabitants of Gravesand and also compared them on the spot with the tenor of title deeds, find that the posts and rails are not put up or placed in accordance with their patent, which begins at the kil or creek next to Conijnen Island and not at the middle of the bay as their fences stand now, and stretches thence not along the shore of the bay, but to the point, where the land of Anthony Jansz and Robbert Pinoyer join each other, [ thence to the western side of a pond in an old Indian’s land, which meets and bounds have evidently not been adhered to by the people of Gravesand; therefore the director ] general and councilors direct the magistrates of the said village upon receipt hereof to take up the posts and rails lately set and to put the land lately fenced in by them on their own responsibility [propria auctoritate] to the prejudice of the partnership of Anthony Jansz and Willem Bredenbent into its former condition [in statu quo prius]; after this has been done, the director general and councilors or their impartial committee shall assign to them, according to their patent, the limits of the village to be enclosed in obedience to the patent. In case of refusal and further defiance, the fiscal is directed to do it or have it done, nomine officii, and to proceed according to law in regard to the damages already suffered or yet to be suffered by their insubordination. Thus done in the session of director general and councilors of New Netherland held at Fort Amsterdam the 24th of June anno 1656.[i]

(:was signed:) P. Stuyvesant.

Nicasius de Sille, La Montagne