This past year I had the honor of relating to your excellency my wish to travel to America with my family, intending to settle in New York State. You had the goodness of offering me information for the project, adding to it the flattering promise that you would be happy to honor me, if I made the move, with your recommendations.1 At that time, my wife could not resolve to seek asylum in the new world, and my ardent desire to satisfy her wishes led me to take her side in this choice. Fortune, at present, has taken another turn. My unfortunate homeland has been bound in chains. The most upright have fallen victim, and the man whom you were well pleased to honor with your trust during your excellency’s stay in this country was imprisoned after Wyck’s capture by the states of Utrecht, along with his worthy friend, Mr. de Nijs, for twenty-four weeks as prisoners of the states and released 19 December after having paid f45,000.

According to public rumors confirmed by reliable information, there was a plot to take me to Lourestein as soon as I returned to Holland. Following the advice of my friends, and of Jean Luzac, professor at Leyden, I therefore left the territory of the republic, having tendered my resignation 244 beforehand during the month of November at Leyden and obtained it in the most flattering and honorable way possible.2

Now deprived of two thousand florins per year, necessity forces us to come to the decision that, for my part, I would have taken long ago. America and England are at present the only countries where I could settle. America, the object of my most ardent desires, will be our choice if the circumstances of this new empire have not worsened relative to the meager subsistence in Flanders, and if your excellency will still do me the honor to write letters of recommendation for me. Mr. van de Marsch, presently in Brussels,3 and Mr. J. Luzac, in Leyden, can inform your excellency that I am no less worthy of obtaining such a favor from your excellency than before, and the need to give a town inhabited by one hundred and twenty burghers over to 1,500 soldiers provided with an artillery train will not burden our characters with any stain. I await my wife, along with two children and a domestic servant, here, as soon as she sells off my effects—and I hope to leave for America sometime next March. It will mean the happiness of my family and the realization of all of my hopes if I am able to find the means to provide for my family with what little is left of my fortune, whether in the vicinity of Albany or in the plains of New York State. And if we are lucky enough to receive recommendations from your excellency for New York, then you will have the pleasure of having saved a worthy family, of having made their good fortune.

Have the goodness to honor me with your reply and believe that I am, with the most perfect esteem and consideration, sir, your excellency’s most obedient servant