Dossier № 26: Damn dog!
Noord-Hollands archief, Kerkvoogdij van de Nederlands-hervormde gemeente te Haarlem. 1561, inventarisnummer 472. f. 49r-49v.
Modern Translation
Regest: 9 January 1575. Wouter van Bekesteijn and Jan van Schoten, aldermen of Haarlem confirm that they found four charters that had been gnawed at by a dog. They insert a copy of the fourth charter. First, four letters, three of which are no longer legible, but the fourth follows below in copy. A transfix letter inserted and confirmed by these said four letters
We, Wouter van Bekesteijn and Jan van Schoten, aldermen in Haarlem,
certify that we have been requested and invited to come to the house
of prayer, standing on the south side of the parish church in
Haarlem. There, on the tide-house table, covered with a green cloth,
we found four aldermen's letters, with which the present letter had
been pierced and which had recently, just before our entry, been
gnawed and bitten to pieces by a little dog that had been
accidentally locked in the same house the night before, so that it
had gnawed and bitten off the seal. For we saw the gnawing and hair
of the aforementioned dog lying on the same rug. There with the same
aforementioned seals lay the ones which, to our knowledge seem to be
no other seals, than those found in the aforementioned alderman
letters of Haarlem. In charter this letter sealed with our seal in
the year of our Lord 1475 on the ninth day of January.
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