The Flushing Remonstrance was a 1657 petition

Petition

A petition is a request to do something, most commonly addressed to a government official or public entity. Petitions to a deity are a form of prayer....

 to Director-General

Director-General of New Netherland

This is a list of Directors, appointed by the Dutch West India Company, of the 17th century Dutch province of New Netherland in North America...

 of New Netherland

New Netherland

New Netherland, or Nieuw-Nederland in Dutch, was the 17th-century colonial province of the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands on the East Coast of North America. The claimed territories were the lands from the Delmarva Peninsula to extreme southwestern Cape Cod...

 Peter Stuyvesant

Peter Stuyvesant

Peter Stuyvesant , served as the last Dutch Director-General of the colony of New Netherland from 1647 until it was ceded provisionally to the English in 1664, after which it was renamed New York...

, in which several citizens requested an exemption to his ban on Quaker

Religious Society of Friends

The Religious Society of Friends, or Friends Church, is a Christian movement which stresses the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. Members are known as Friends, or popularly as Quakers. It is made of independent organisations, which have split from one another due to doctrinal differences...

 worship. It is considered a precursor to the United States Constitution

United States Constitution

The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. It is the framework for the organization of the United States government and for the relationship of the federal government with the states, citizens, and all people within the United States.The first three...

's provision on freedom of religion

Freedom of religion

Freedom of religion is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or community, in public or private, to manifest religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance; the concept is generally recognized also to include the freedom to change religion or not to follow any...

 in the Bill of Rights

United States Bill of Rights

The Bill of Rights is the collective name for the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution. These limitations serve to protect the natural rights of liberty and property. They guarantee a number of personal freedoms, limit the government's power in judicial and other proceedings, and...

.

According to Kenneth T. Jackson

Kenneth T. Jackson

Kenneth Terry Jackson is a professor of history and social sciences at Columbia University. A frequent television guest, he is best known as an urban historian and a preeminent authority on New York City, where he lives on the Upper West Side....

, the Flushing Remonstrance was remarkable for four reasons: it articulated a fundamental right that is as basic to American freedom as any other, the authors backed up their words with actions by sending it to an official not known for tolerance, they stood up for others and were articulating a principle that was of little discernible benefit to themselves, and the language of the remonstrance is as beautiful as the sentiments they express.

Events

Flushing

Flushing, Queens

Flushing, founded in 1645, is a neighborhood in the north central part of the City of New York borough of Queens, east of Manhattan.Flushing was one of the first Dutch settlements on Long Island. Today, it is one of the largest and most diverse neighborhoods in New York City...

, now in Queens, New York, was then part of the Dutch colony of New Netherland

New Netherland

New Netherland, or Nieuw-Nederland in Dutch, was the 17th-century colonial province of the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands on the East Coast of North America. The claimed territories were the lands from the Delmarva Peninsula to extreme southwestern Cape Cod...

. Stuyvesant had formally banned the practice of all religions outside of the Dutch Reformed Church

Dutch Reformed Church

The Dutch Reformed Church was a Reformed Christian denomination in the Netherlands. It existed from the 1570s to 2004, the year it merged with the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Kingdom of the Netherlands to form the Protestant Church in the...

, the established church of the Netherlands, in the colony. In 1656 William Wickenden

William Wickenden

William Wickenden was an early Anglo-American Baptist minister, co-founder Providence, Rhode Island, and signer of the Providence Compact. Wickenden Street in Providence marks where he originally settled in the seventeenth century and is named in his honor.-Immigration to New England:Wickenden...

, a Baptist minister from Rhode Island, was arrested by Dutch colonial authorities, jailed, fined, and exiled for baptizing Christians in Flushing. Many other similar incidents took place prior to the Remonstrance.

The Flushing Remonstrance was signed on December 27, 1657, by a group of English

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 citizens who were affronted by persecution

Persecution

Persecution is the systematic mistreatment of an individual or group by another group. The most common forms are religious persecution, ethnic persecution, and political persecution, though there is naturally some overlap between these terms. The inflicting of suffering, harassment, isolation,...

 of Quakers and the religious policies of Stuyvesant. None of them were Quakers

Religious Society of Friends

The Religious Society of Friends, or Friends Church, is a Christian movement which stresses the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. Members are known as Friends, or popularly as Quakers. It is made of independent organisations, which have split from one another due to doctrinal differences...

 themselves. The Remonstrance ends with:

Therefore if any of these said persons come in love unto us, we cannot in conscience lay violent hands upon them, but give them free egresse and regresse unto our Town, and houses, as God shall persuade our consciences, for we are bounde by the law of God and man to doe good unto all men and evil to noe man. And this is according to the patent and charter of our Towne, given unto us in the name of the States General, which we are not willing to infringe, and violate, but shall houlde to our patent and shall remaine, your humble subjects, the inhabitants of Vlishing.

Four who signed were arrested by order of Stuyvesant. Two immediately recanted, but the writer of the remonstrance, Edward Hart, and sheriff of Flushing Tobias Feake remained firm in their convictions. Both men were remanded to prison where they survived in isolation on rations of bread and water for over a month. After friends and family petitioned Stuyvesant on behalf of the elderly Hart, the clerk was released on penalty of banishment. Feake held out for a few more weeks, but eventually recanted and was pardoned after being fined and banned from holding public office. The town government of Flushing was removed and Dutch replacements were appointed by Stuyvesant.

Subsequently, John Bowne

John Bowne

John Bowne was an English immigrant residing in the Dutch colony of New Netherland, who is honored today as a pioneer in the American struggle for religious liberty....

 of the colony allowed Quakers to meet in his house

John Bowne House

The John Bowne House is an historic home located in Flushing, Queens, New York.Built around 1661, it was the location of a Quaker meeting in 1662 that resulted in the arrest of its owner, John Bowne. Since 1947, Bowne House has been a museum....

. He was arrested in 1662 and brought before Stuyvesant. Unrepentant, Bowne was sentenced to banishment to Holland, though he was of English descent and spoke no Dutch. After several months in the foreign land, Bowne petitioned the directors of the Dutch West India Company

Dutch West India Company

Dutch West India Company was a chartered company of Dutch merchants. Among its founding fathers was Willem Usselincx...

. After a month of deliberation, the Dutch West India Company agreed to support Bowne, and advised Stuyvesant by a letter (1663) that he was to end religious persecution in the colony. One year later, in 1664, the colony fell to British control.

Signers

The 30 signers were:

• Nicolas Blackford
• George Clere
• Elias Doughtie
• Edward Farrington, magistrate
• Tobias Feake, sheriff
• Antonie Field
• Robert Field, Sr.
• Robert Field, Jr.
• John Foard
• Edward Griffine
• Edward Hart
• Nathaniel Hefferd
• Benjamin Hubbard
• John Mastine
• Michael Milner
• William Noble, magistrate
• Nicholas Parsell
• William Pidgion
• Henry Semtell
• Richard Stocton
• John Store
• Edward Tarne
• William Thorne Sr.
• William Thorne, Jr.
• John Townsend
  John Townsend (Norwich)
  John Townsend was an early settler of the American Colonies who emigrated from England about 1630. Townsend was a signatory to the Flushing Remonstrance, a precursor to the United States Constitution's provision on freedom of religion in the Bill of Rights...
  
  
• Henry Townsend
  Henry Townsend (Norwich)
  Henry Townsend was an early settler of the American Colonies.-Biography:Disagreement exists surrounding the facts of Henry Townsend's place of birth and his parentage...
  
  
• Nathaniel Tue
• Micah Tue
• Phillip Udall
• George Wright

Later history

The earliest copy of the document dates also from 1657 as an official copy of the original, but the original has been lost.

The Queens Borough President's Office held a celebration of the 350th anniversary of the Remonstrance in 2007. Descendants of the signers, Bowne, Stuyvesant, and the arresting officer were invited and in attendance, and the original copy of the Remonstrance was brought down from the State Archives in Albany for display.

External links

• Text of Flushing Remonstrance and information
• http://web.archive.org/web/20021213231104/http://thorn.pair.com/thorn/thornlineage/remonstr.htm Flushing Remonstrance]
• John Bowne house and historical material
• http://www.queensbp.org/remonstrance/documents/GarmanT080506f.pdf

"The Flushing Remonstrance and Religious Freedom in America" A thesis presented to the
faculty of the Department of History East Tennessee State University In partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree Master of Arts in History by Tabetha Garman