Document: Petition of the Lutherans of New Amsterdam asking that they may not be prevented continuing their religious exercises

Anno 1656, 24 October, Tuesday.[i]

Present at the session: the lord director general Petrus Stuyvesant and the lord fiscal Nicasius de Sille [several lines lost] make known with proper humility how we, honorable members of the unaltered Augsburg Confession here in New Netherland, have obediently adhered to your honors’ prohibition and postings of placards forbidding gathering at any place in order to further practice our divine service with reading and singing; however, having requested this from our friends in the fatherland, who as solicitors for us in this matter with the honorable lords directors of the West India Company, our superiors, according to whose report and letters to us, have obtained what they requested through their honors, and that the same was resolved and established by the same in full assembly; and that in the West Indies and New Netherland, under their honors’ jurisdiction, the doctrine of the unaltered Augsburg Confession would and might be tolerated as it is in the fatherland under the laudable government there. Which is why we hereby turn to your honors now, desiring as humble obedient servants to inform your honors thereof with prayer that they be pleased no longer to continue to hinder us in our worship (exercises/studies), which we, with the blessing of God, want to practice with readings and singing until the time, for which we both hope and expect, in the following spring, next to God, a qualified person for our [remainder lost]