The Company reserves unto itself all great and small tithes, all waifs and estrays, the right of establishing mints, highways and forts, declaring war and making peace, all wildernesses, planting cities, towns and churches, and all according to the Charter and under the supreme sovereign rule of the High and Mighty Lords States General of the United Netherlands and ;
that, saving unchanged and undiminished whatever is heretofore granted to the Patroons in the matter of high, middle and low jurisdiction.
Accordingly, the Company shall appoint and keep there a Director, competent councillors, officers and other ministers of justice, for the protection of the good, and the punishment of the
wicked; which governor and council, now, or hereafter to be, appointed by the Company, shall take cognizance, in the first instance, of affairs appertaining to the freedom, dignity, domain, finance and rights of the General West India Company ; of the complaints which any one, as well strangers, neighbors of the aforesaid countries as inhabitants thereof, may make in cases of privilege, innovation or disuetude of customs, uses, statutes or descents ; with power to declare the same corrupt and to abrogate them as vicious, if such should be found equitable ; of matters appertaining to minor children, widows, orphans and other unfortunate persons who complain first to the Council in order to obtain justice ; of all contracts or obligations; holding prerogative jurisdiction, of personal property, possession of benefices, fiefs, of crimen lesae majestatis, of religion, and of all criminal cases and excesses being prescribed and unchallenged ; and may by prevention receive all persons to be purged of matters brought in accusation against them there, and generally take cognizance of, and administer law and justice in every case afiecting the dignity of the Company. Thus done by the Committee of the General Incorporated West India Company in the Hague the