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The World’s First Stock Exchange Page 7 (16 of 305)
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A New Company
2
A New Company
at just before ten in the evening of Saturday, August 31,
1602, the notary Jan Fransz Bruyningh closed the door of his
house on Heintje Hoekssteeg behind him. He walked along the
narrow alley toward Warmoesstraat and turned left. A few min-
utes’ walk brought him to his destination, the house of the mer-
chant Dirck van Os on Nes, where two men were waiting for him.
Jacques de Pourcq and Anthony van Breen would be assisting him
as witnesses.
Dirck van Os was one of the directors of the Dutch East India
Company (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, or VOC),
which had been founded earlier that year. When the notary
knocked on the door, van Os was sitting with some of the other
directors—Isaac le Maire was there, as were Louis del Beecke,
Reinier Pauw, and Pieter Dircksz Hasselaer. The bookkeeper of
the Amsterdam chamber of the VOC, Barent Lampe, was seated
behind an imposing volume with deckle-edged pages and a vel-
lum cover, the Amsterdam chamber’s subscription share register.1
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