A row has broken out over who should be the custodian of a bone and a lock of hair belonging to Piet Hein, an admiral in the Dutch West India Company and raider of the Spanish treasure fleet.

The Oude Kerk in Delft, where a renovation of Hein’s grave is still ongoing, wants the Rijksmuseum to relinquish the bone and hair which the museum currently keeps in its archive.

The renovation is the perfect time to “rectify a mistake made in the past,” director of the Oude Kerk Nyncke Graafland told broadcaster NOS.

The bone and hair are thought to have been taken by someone who was involved in an earlier renovation in 1880. The Rijksmuseum was gifted the relics in 1893 by an anonymous donor who later turned out to be a former navy minister.

What happened in 1880 is nothing less than grave robbery, Graafland said. “If you’re dead who do you belong to? Can you not stay quietly where you are?” she said.

 The Rijksmuseum said it would not be returning the bone and hair. “It is not clear whether or not these are part of human remains and if they come from Piet Hein’s grave,” a spokesman for the museum said. The museum also said there are no other sources that prove the bone and hair were stolen from the grave.

The museum has said it will investigate the remains to discover if the bone and hair belong to Hein. It is too late to unite Hein with the supposed rest of him because the grave itself has already been sealed. “But at the moment we could still get to the coffin”, Graafland said.

Piet Hein dealt the Spanish a big blow by robbing the Spanish Silver Fleet in 1628, a feat immortalised in song .The money was later used to occupy Brazilian land for its sugar plantations.  As is the case with other colonial figureheads, admiration for his deeds is now on the wane as the Netherlands reviews its colonial past.