HOLLAND DOCUMENTS: VL 455

as ought to have been done. That this is incontrovertibly true and truthful, is more than manifest, for the Director and Council are cliarged by the said letter, dated 12"' April aforesaid, to permit the continuance of the Board of Nine Men until their High Mightinesses' further orders: that is not only disobeyed and slighted, but the instruction and its amplification, granted them by our court, is by you set at nought. The hundred muskets which Jacob van Couw^enhoven brought with him, two or three unstamped ones of which the Director seized and apparently sold the whole to the Indians, were not only not distributed among the people, with the knowledge of tiie Director and Council and the Select men, pursuant to their High Mightinesses' orders and letters, dated 1" April aforesaid, but the Burghers' arms were not inspected every three months, as their High Mightinesses had directed, so that the contempt shown thereto, is incontrovertible, especially as it happened that the officers of the Burgher companies, through good disposition for the public service, requesting the Director to allow them to bring the corps once under arms, in order that they might send a list thereof to their High Mightinesses, received for answer from His Honor: -- "When I want you for that purpose I shall send for you." So that 'tis now the third half year since the Burgher companies have been mustered underarms, and 'tis certainly to be feared that they will be unable properly to defend themselves in time of necessity -- Whilst your Honors' disrespect caused both the stamped and other guns to be sold to the Indians, who were seen running all over the Manhattans with some of them. Wherefore will you with too fluent a pen, multitudinous false accusations, and divers highly embellished fruitless writings, after the ancient custom of the Director away elsewhere, oblige me, as it were, to demonstrate to you the monopoly and imposition which the Director and some of the Board in Amsterdam, and not the Board in general as you by perversion falsely accused me of saying, have so long carried on, to the prejudice of the Hon'''' Company's charter and contrary to your oath and bounden duty.