Volume 1, Chapter 41, New Netherland Persecutes the Quakers
As Swedish and Finnish Lutherans were incorporated into the domain of New Netherland, the problem
of theocracy and religious persecution became acute. We have indicated that New Netherland
was largely governed by that wing of Dutch opinion that advocated Calvinist theocracy
as over against the libertarian approach of their republican rivals. The Dutch West India
Company in general and Peter Stuyvesant in particular hated the idea of religious toleration
and desired theocracy under the Dutch Reformed Church as directed by the synod or classes
of Amsterdam. In 1654 Stuyvesant forbade any Lutheran minister from holding services and
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.
Indeed, Stuyvesant went so far as to imprison several persons for attending private Lutheran
meetings, but for this he was censured by the State's General, and in 1657 even a commission
from Amsterdam to serve as a Lutheran pastor did not save the newly arrived Reverend Ernestus
Goatwater from being shipped back to Holland by the authorities.
In the campaign of persecution was the influential Dutch Calvinist minister, the Rev. Mr. Megapolensis.
It was at this time that the great wave of Quaker persecutions began in New England and
Peter Stuyvesant was not to be caught lagging.
New Netherland, indeed, was distinguished, even among the colonies, for its extensive
use of torture, particularly the rack, to extract confessions and to whip and mutilate
Runaway Servants and Slaves. Now in 1656 Stuyvesant decreed that Quakers could be tied to a cart's
tail and assigned hard labor for two years. The first Quakers in New Netherland arrived
from England in 1657. Two women, Mary Weatherhead and Dorothy Wall, were thrown into a dungeon
as soon as they began to preach and after a week were sent tied up to Rhode Island,
that sewer of heretics. Robert Hodgson, another English Quaker, found many receptive hearts
in Long Island and prepared to preach at Hempstead. There he was seized by local magistrate Richard
Gildersleeve and imprisoned in the latter's house, but Hodgson was able to preach even
Robert Hodgson under house arrest. Governor Stuyvesant now sent an armed guard to Hempstead,
down Hogson closely, and arrested two women for the crime of giving space to the Quaker.
The three were taken by cart. Hogson dragged at the tail to New Amsterdam. Prevented from
speaking in his own defense, Robert Hodgson, for the crime of being a Quaker, was fined
600 Gilders, and sentenced to two years at hard labor, but Hogson courageously refused
to cooperate in this unjust sentence. He refused to work or pay. Whereupon, he was chained
to a wheelbarrow and beaten with a tarred rope. This treatment continued for three days, and
Hogson still refused to work or pay. For speaking out of turn, the Quaker was hung up and whipped
at Stuyvesant's Order. The director then told him that he would be beaten every day until
he worked and paid the fine. Finally, Hogson yielded and agreed to work in prison. However,
pressures on the director led him to waive the fine and eventually Hogson was permitted
to leave the colony for Rhode Island. A fine of fifty pounds was now proclaimed for any
Anyone found sheltering a Quaker for so much as one night, and the law against meetings
was revived. The first enforcement was against Harry Townsend, the Flushing town on Long
Island. He was thrown into prison when he refused to pay a heavy fine for attending
a Quaker meeting. This spurred a complaint by the English settlers of Flushing. They
protested that they were obliged to do good to all Christians, including Quakers, and
and that they would therefore continue to shelter them as God shall persuade our conscience.
The receptivity of Flushing and other Western Long Island towns to religious freedom and
even to the Quaker Creed itself deserves explanation. These towns were settled by New Englanders,
but the settlers were not the Puritans who peopled the Connecticut and New Haven towns
The fountainhead of this different migration was Lady Deborah Moody. Born in England and
persecuted by the Church of England, this widow had been invited by her friends, the
Winthrops, to move to Massachusetts to gain her religious freedom. Settling at Lynn, Massachusetts
in 1640, but belonging to the Salem Church, Lady Moody and a few followers were harassed
by Massachusetts for Opposing Infant Baptism and Adopting the Baptist Creed. Hence, Lady
Moody, like other heretics, left Massachusetts in 1643. She bought an estate at Graves End,
Long Island, where she was followed by many other families from Lynn.
We have seen that Graves End alone survived the Indian War against Willem Kieft. In the
In the next decade, other Lin-Baptists, as well as Seekers, organized more settlements on West Long Island, Flushing, Jamaica, Hempstead, and Oyster Bay.
By 1653, Peter Stuyvesant was complaining that the Long Island towns were selecting local magistrates without regard to their Calvinism,
and that Gravesend, in particular, was electing Baptists and Freethinkers.
The persecution of the Quakers now worked, as in New England, to multiply greatly the
number of Quaker converts. Lady Moody and many of her followers from Lynn became Quakers
at this time. To return to the flushing protest, this was a remonstrance drawn up in a public
meeting and signed by 31 men headed by the town clerk Edward Hart and the sheriff Tobias
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.
Many of the signers were originally from Lynn. Others were English pilgrims who had lived in Leiden, Holland.
For this heroic act of defiance, Stuyvesant dismissed Fiek and Hart from their official
positions, harshly imprisoned the latter and heavily fined the former and deprived Flushing
of the right to hold town meetings.
But this tyranny was in vain, as the illegal sheltering of Quakers and the conversion to
their creed continued and intensified.
Also in vain were the jailings of Quakers, of whom there were at one time nine imprisoned
in New Amsterdam.
The Dutch Calvinist ministers, Megapalensis and Drosius, despairingly reported in 1658,
the raving Quakers continued to disturb the people of this province. Although our government
has issued orders against these fanatics, nevertheless they do not fail to pour forth
The persecution of the Quakers in New Netherland was finally ended by the case of John Brown.
Brown, a Quaker convert in Flushing, had been fined 25 pounds for holding a meeting and
threatened with banishment for non-payment.
After three months in prison, Brown was deported to Amsterdam, the council deciding on banishment
for the welfare of the community and to crush as far as it is possible that abominable sect
who treat with contempt both the political magistrates and the ministers of God's holy
word and endeavor to undermine the police and religion. But Brown put his case before
of the Dutch West India Company in Amsterdam. Shocked at the excesses, the company directed
Stuyvesant that the consciences of men ought to remain free and unshackled. Let everyone
remain free, so long as he is modest, moderate, and his political conduct irreproachable.
Brown returned to flushing a free man in 1663, and the Quakers were not persecuted again.
As in New England, the Quakers had, by the early 1660s, triumphed over persecution.