The States, and So On

To the city of Zurich in Switzerland

Noble, very respectable, wise, prudent lords, special good friends and neighbors. From the complaints of various persons, delegated by their respective churches, who here in this land are called Mennonists, citizens and inhabitants of the cities of Dortrecht, Harlem, Leyden, Amsterdam, Goude, and Rotterdam, all situated in the province of Holland, we have learned that their fellow believers, under the name of Anabaptists, have suffered great persecution at Zurich and everywhere in your dominion, by virtue of very rigorous edicts enacted against them, and that they have thereby been compelled to leave everything and to move to other countries, to their great inconvenience and total ruin.

All this has moved us to Christian compassion, and we could therefore not refrain, but on the contrary deemed it good, hereby to request you very kindly and neighborly, also most earnestly, that you, following the good example of the magistrates of the city of Schaffhausen, release the property of the fellow believers of the supplicants, which you have now for several years had managed by directors appointed over them, drawing the fruits of it, and deliver it to the persons named above who have an interest in it, or to those authorized by them, to be sold within a certain sufficient time, and turned into money for their benefit.

(The rest is word for word the same as the preceding letter.)

Besides the two letters mentioned above from the States General to the lords of Berne and Zurich, which are dated the same day, namely the 19th of February, 1660, there followed yet a third letter, on the 9th of March of the same year, serving partly as a passport for the ambassador and bearer of those two letters to the cities of Berne and Zurich, and partly to request the neighboring potentates near and around those parts to promote the matter for the protection of the Anabaptists. The contents of it are as follows: