TITLE: Petition from John Bowne & Henry Willis to the Governor and Council at New York [Photostat copy]
DOCUMENT ID: BHHS 2008.521
DATE: 4 September 1680 (Old Style) / 14 September 1680 (New Style)
This photostatic copy of the document is from the Early Bowne and Historic Flushing Research Collection. The original is presumably housed in the New York State Archives British Colonial Records.)
DESCRIPTION & NOTES
This petition from John Bowne and Henry Willis of Flushing to the Governor and Council of New York (Colony) shows that not all religious persecution ceased with the takeover of New Netherland by the English Crown. Although the colonial government agreed not to impose the Church of England, they nonetheless struggled to accept some of the Quakers’ unorthodox, if harmless, practices. In this case, Quaker marriage customs occasioned fines and confiscations of Bowne and Willis’ grain and cattle, as punishment “for suffering our daughters to marry contrary to their law.” Quakers took their marriage vows before the Friends’ Meeting, without an ordained minister or Justice of the Peace officiating, and the authorities did not recognize these unions as lawful. This sometimes caused problems with inheritance and the legitimacy of children, even when the participants (or their parents) were not punished directly as they were here. John Bowne’s daughter Mary wed Joseph Thorne in August 1680 of that year, just a month before the petition. Presumably Henry Willis’ daughter Elizabeth also got married around that time, occasioning the penalties.