Note 850 — Chapter XIV · OPTIONAL CIVIL OR ECCLESIASTICAL MARRIAGE IN THE MIDDLE COLONIES

See O'Callaghan, Hist. of New Netherland, II, 345-55, 450-57. Under the lead of the clerical bigots, Drisius and Megapolensis, the Reformed church in New Netherland banished Lutherans and tormented the Quakers. A number of Friends, expelled from Massachusetts, arrived in New Amsterdam in 1657, and were at once persecuted with fiendish cruelty. Nevertheless, the Quakers grew apace in numbers, settling by preference in Jamaica and Flushing on Long Island. Among them was John Bowne, a recent convert and signer of the petition quoted in the text. In 1662 he was fined for allowing his house to be used as a Quaker conventicle; and in the next year he was banished to Holland. This resulted in calling down upon the head of Stuyvesant a severe and just rebuke from the directors. See also Brodhead, Hist. of N. Y., I, 636, 705; O'Callaghan, op. cit., 338-42, 428; Earle, op. cit., 260; and Waller, Hist. of Flushing, 37-47, 77, note. It is a pity that a writer of such merit as Mr. Waller should have reiterated (46, 47) the baseless and long since exposed slanders against the Quakers in New England.