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Captain Seaton having insisted for declaring the ship called the King David, prize, on these grounds, that the documents were false, and contradicted by the skipper; and the skipper and steersman, by their oaths, did acknowledge they were Embdeners, and that the whole loading, and most of the ship, belonged to them;
Whereupon the Lords declared the ship and goods prize, albeit the skipper deponed, that he became a sworn burgess of Frederickstadt in Denmark, in anno 1671, and that his wife was with him five or six weeks that year, and that he had ever since a hired house there, and paid scot and lot, seeing he acknowledged that his wife remained still in Embden since; and that the steersman deponed, that the skipper's wife dwelt in a house severally from her daughter, who is married in Embden; neither was it found relevant, that the skipper offered to prove, that he dwelt in Frederickstadt, and paid scot and lot, seeing he did not transport his family, because the Hollanders might, upon that pretence, make themselves burgesses of any free place, and for some inconsiderable stock there bear burden, when truly they had not changed their domicile, or deserted the enemy, leaving their families there, where it is presumed they did bear burden; nor could the privateer be put to prove, that they did bear bur-den in Embden, it being an enemy's country, to which there was no safe access.
