Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

In 1657, 31 citizens in the Dutch colony of New Netherlands signed a petition that became known as the Flushing Remonstrance. This petition was written in response to the religious oppression imposed by the director general on the area and declared citizens' freedom to practice religion without persecution. Though the citizens were protesting the treatment of Quakers, no Quakers signed the document. Fleeing religious persecution in England, Quakers began arriving in Vlissengen (today, Flushing, Queens, New York), a Dutch colony of New Netherlands, in the 1650s. The director general of New Netherlands, Peter Stuyvesant, banned religious institutions except the Dutch Reformed Church, seeing the incoming Quakers in particular as radicals and a danger to the creation of a unified society. Stuyvesant published several oppressive edicts, including one that prohibited citizens from holding Quaker meetings in their homes. He fined, jailed, and sometimes tortured those who disobeyed. On December 27, 1657, Stuyvesant received the petition drafted by Edward Hart, the town clerk. The petition declared a desire not to “offend one of his little ones, in whatsoever form … whether Presbyterian, Independent, Baptist, or Quaker, but shall be glad to see anything of God in any of them, desiring to doe unto all men as we desire all men should doe unto us, which is the true law both of Church and State.” ... log in or subscribe to read full text