WEBVTT

NOTE 41. New Netherland Persecutes the Quakers

1
00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.080
Volume 1, Chapter 41, New Netherland Persecutes the Quakers

2
00:00:06.080 --> 00:00:12.480
As Swedish and Finnish Lutherans were incorporated into the domain of New Netherland, the problem

3
00:00:12.480 --> 00:00:19.320
of theocracy and religious persecution became acute. We have indicated that New Netherland

4
00:00:19.320 --> 00:00:25.680
was largely governed by that wing of Dutch opinion that advocated Calvinist theocracy

5
00:00:25.680 --> 00:00:31.960
as over against the libertarian approach of their republican rivals. The Dutch West India

6
00:00:31.960 --> 00:00:38.960
Company in general and Peter Stuyvesant in particular hated the idea of religious toleration

7
00:00:39.200 --> 00:00:46.200
and desired theocracy under the Dutch Reformed Church as directed by the synod or classes

8
00:00:46.200 --> 00:00:53.200
of Amsterdam. In 1654 Stuyvesant forbade any Lutheran minister from holding services and

9
00:00:53.200 --> 00:01:13.200
The Company decreed that only Dutch Reformed services were permissible in the colony. In 1656 all other religious meetings were prohibited under heavy fine and no baptism was permitted except that of the Dutch Reformed Church.

10
00:01:13.200 --> 00:01:20.300
Indeed, Stuyvesant went so far as to imprison several persons for attending private Lutheran

11
00:01:20.300 --> 00:01:28.680
meetings, but for this he was censured by the State's General, and in 1657 even a commission

12
00:01:28.680 --> 00:01:36.240
from Amsterdam to serve as a Lutheran pastor did not save the newly arrived Reverend Ernestus

13
00:01:36.240 --> 00:01:42.780
Goatwater from being shipped back to Holland by the authorities.

14
00:01:42.780 --> 00:01:51.020
In the campaign of persecution was the influential Dutch Calvinist minister, the Rev. Mr. Megapolensis.

15
00:01:51.020 --> 00:01:56.000
It was at this time that the great wave of Quaker persecutions began in New England and

16
00:01:56.000 --> 00:01:59.680
Peter Stuyvesant was not to be caught lagging.

17
00:01:59.680 --> 00:02:04.760
New Netherland, indeed, was distinguished, even among the colonies, for its extensive

18
00:02:04.760 --> 00:02:11.220
use of torture, particularly the rack, to extract confessions and to whip and mutilate

19
00:02:11.220 --> 00:02:20.340
Runaway Servants and Slaves. Now in 1656 Stuyvesant decreed that Quakers could be tied to a cart's

20
00:02:20.340 --> 00:02:27.300
tail and assigned hard labor for two years. The first Quakers in New Netherland arrived

21
00:02:27.300 --> 00:02:35.500
from England in 1657. Two women, Mary Weatherhead and Dorothy Wall, were thrown into a dungeon

22
00:02:35.500 --> 00:02:41.900
as soon as they began to preach and after a week were sent tied up to Rhode Island,

23
00:02:41.900 --> 00:02:49.700
that sewer of heretics. Robert Hodgson, another English Quaker, found many receptive hearts

24
00:02:49.700 --> 00:02:56.940
in Long Island and prepared to preach at Hempstead. There he was seized by local magistrate Richard

25
00:02:56.940 --> 00:03:03.120
Gildersleeve and imprisoned in the latter's house, but Hodgson was able to preach even

26
00:03:03.120 --> 00:03:09.040
Robert Hodgson under house arrest. Governor Stuyvesant now sent an armed guard to Hempstead,

27
00:03:09.040 --> 00:03:16.480
down Hogson closely, and arrested two women for the crime of giving space to the Quaker.

28
00:03:16.480 --> 00:03:23.880
The three were taken by cart. Hogson dragged at the tail to New Amsterdam. Prevented from

29
00:03:23.880 --> 00:03:29.760
speaking in his own defense, Robert Hodgson, for the crime of being a Quaker, was fined

30
00:03:29.760 --> 00:03:36.080
600 Gilders, and sentenced to two years at hard labor, but Hogson courageously refused

31
00:03:36.080 --> 00:03:42.320
to cooperate in this unjust sentence. He refused to work or pay. Whereupon, he was chained

32
00:03:42.320 --> 00:03:47.880
to a wheelbarrow and beaten with a tarred rope. This treatment continued for three days, and

33
00:03:47.880 --> 00:03:55.160
Hogson still refused to work or pay. For speaking out of turn, the Quaker was hung up and whipped

34
00:03:55.160 --> 00:04:01.480
at Stuyvesant's Order. The director then told him that he would be beaten every day until

35
00:04:01.480 --> 00:04:08.480
he worked and paid the fine. Finally, Hogson yielded and agreed to work in prison. However,

36
00:04:08.480 --> 00:04:13.600
pressures on the director led him to waive the fine and eventually Hogson was permitted

37
00:04:13.600 --> 00:04:19.940
to leave the colony for Rhode Island. A fine of fifty pounds was now proclaimed for any

38
00:04:19.940 --> 00:04:26.020
Anyone found sheltering a Quaker for so much as one night, and the law against meetings

39
00:04:26.020 --> 00:04:32.180
was revived. The first enforcement was against Harry Townsend, the Flushing town on Long

40
00:04:32.180 --> 00:04:37.420
Island. He was thrown into prison when he refused to pay a heavy fine for attending

41
00:04:37.420 --> 00:04:42.900
a Quaker meeting. This spurred a complaint by the English settlers of Flushing. They

42
00:04:42.900 --> 00:04:48.700
protested that they were obliged to do good to all Christians, including Quakers, and

43
00:04:48.700 --> 00:04:55.000
and that they would therefore continue to shelter them as God shall persuade our conscience.

44
00:04:55.000 --> 00:05:00.900
The receptivity of Flushing and other Western Long Island towns to religious freedom and

45
00:05:00.900 --> 00:05:09.180
even to the Quaker Creed itself deserves explanation. These towns were settled by New Englanders,

46
00:05:09.180 --> 00:05:13.980
but the settlers were not the Puritans who peopled the Connecticut and New Haven towns

47
00:05:13.980 --> 00:05:22.300
The fountainhead of this different migration was Lady Deborah Moody. Born in England and

48
00:05:22.300 --> 00:05:27.740
persecuted by the Church of England, this widow had been invited by her friends, the

49
00:05:27.740 --> 00:05:34.660
Winthrops, to move to Massachusetts to gain her religious freedom. Settling at Lynn, Massachusetts

50
00:05:34.660 --> 00:05:42.380
in 1640, but belonging to the Salem Church, Lady Moody and a few followers were harassed

51
00:05:42.380 --> 00:05:50.900
by Massachusetts for Opposing Infant Baptism and Adopting the Baptist Creed. Hence, Lady

52
00:05:50.900 --> 00:05:58.780
Moody, like other heretics, left Massachusetts in 1643. She bought an estate at Graves End,

53
00:05:58.780 --> 00:06:04.500
Long Island, where she was followed by many other families from Lynn.

54
00:06:04.500 --> 00:06:10.260
We have seen that Graves End alone survived the Indian War against Willem Kieft. In the

55
00:06:10.260 --> 00:06:22.260
In the next decade, other Lin-Baptists, as well as Seekers, organized more settlements on West Long Island, Flushing, Jamaica, Hempstead, and Oyster Bay.

56
00:06:22.260 --> 00:06:32.260
By 1653, Peter Stuyvesant was complaining that the Long Island towns were selecting local magistrates without regard to their Calvinism,

57
00:06:32.260 --> 00:06:38.260
and that Gravesend, in particular, was electing Baptists and Freethinkers.

58
00:06:38.260 --> 00:06:44.420
The persecution of the Quakers now worked, as in New England, to multiply greatly the

59
00:06:44.420 --> 00:06:51.060
number of Quaker converts. Lady Moody and many of her followers from Lynn became Quakers

60
00:06:51.060 --> 00:06:58.900
at this time. To return to the flushing protest, this was a remonstrance drawn up in a public

61
00:06:58.900 --> 00:07:06.900
meeting and signed by 31 men headed by the town clerk Edward Hart and the sheriff Tobias

62
00:07:06.900 --> 00:07:21.900
The remonstrance pointed not only to Christian conscience, but also to the fact that their town charter grants liberty of conscience without modification, and that they intended to stand by these rights.

63
00:07:21.900 --> 00:07:30.900
Many of the signers were originally from Lynn. Others were English pilgrims who had lived in Leiden, Holland.

64
00:07:30.900 --> 00:07:37.500
For this heroic act of defiance, Stuyvesant dismissed Fiek and Hart from their official

65
00:07:37.500 --> 00:07:44.140
positions, harshly imprisoned the latter and heavily fined the former and deprived Flushing

66
00:07:44.140 --> 00:07:47.240
of the right to hold town meetings.

67
00:07:47.240 --> 00:07:52.920
But this tyranny was in vain, as the illegal sheltering of Quakers and the conversion to

68
00:07:52.920 --> 00:07:56.780
their creed continued and intensified.

69
00:07:56.780 --> 00:08:02.860
Also in vain were the jailings of Quakers, of whom there were at one time nine imprisoned

70
00:08:02.860 --> 00:08:04.900
in New Amsterdam.

71
00:08:04.900 --> 00:08:11.900
The Dutch Calvinist ministers, Megapalensis and Drosius, despairingly reported in 1658,

72
00:08:12.660 --> 00:08:18.640
the raving Quakers continued to disturb the people of this province. Although our government

73
00:08:18.640 --> 00:08:25.180
has issued orders against these fanatics, nevertheless they do not fail to pour forth

74
00:08:25.180 --> 00:08:40.900
The persecution of the Quakers in New Netherland was finally ended by the case of John Brown.

75
00:08:40.900 --> 00:08:49.100
Brown, a Quaker convert in Flushing, had been fined 25 pounds for holding a meeting and

76
00:08:49.100 --> 00:08:52.940
threatened with banishment for non-payment.

77
00:08:52.940 --> 00:08:59.140
After three months in prison, Brown was deported to Amsterdam, the council deciding on banishment

78
00:08:59.140 --> 00:09:05.380
for the welfare of the community and to crush as far as it is possible that abominable sect

79
00:09:05.380 --> 00:09:10.740
who treat with contempt both the political magistrates and the ministers of God's holy

80
00:09:10.740 --> 00:09:17.180
word and endeavor to undermine the police and religion. But Brown put his case before

81
00:09:17.180 --> 00:09:24.460
of the Dutch West India Company in Amsterdam. Shocked at the excesses, the company directed

82
00:09:24.460 --> 00:09:31.660
Stuyvesant that the consciences of men ought to remain free and unshackled. Let everyone

83
00:09:31.660 --> 00:09:39.020
remain free, so long as he is modest, moderate, and his political conduct irreproachable.

84
00:09:39.020 --> 00:09:47.660
Brown returned to flushing a free man in 1663, and the Quakers were not persecuted again.

85
00:09:47.660 --> 00:09:54.980
As in New England, the Quakers had, by the early 1660s, triumphed over persecution.