“...to have and enjoy the Liberty of Conscience, according to the custom and manner of Holland, without molestation and disturbance, from any Magistrate or Magistrates, or any other Ecclesiastical Minister, that may extend Jurisdiction over them...”
— 1645 Charter of Flushing
Title page of Laws and Ordinances of New Netherland, 1638-1674 - Google Books
John Bowne based his defense before the Directors of the Dutch West India Company on a clause of the 1645 Charter of Flushing, which promised the inhabitants of the town “liberty of conscience.” This was the same document referenced by the signers of the 1657 Flushing Remonstrance, in their protest against the anti-Quaker ordinances. Bowne carried a copy of the Patent into exile with him, and presented it to the representatives of the Dutch West India Company who granted him an audience. George Fox, founder of the Society of Friends, even references it in a contemporaneous letter (BFP 2018.1.12-09). The Quakers hoped that the Directors would recognize that the anti-Quaker ordinances passed by Director-General Stuyvesant in the 1650s and ‘60s violated the pre-existing commitments made to the inhabitants of Flushing, set out in black and white.
Unfortunately, the original document, which was compiled in New York Deed Book II at the New York State Archives in Albany, has not been digitized, and Bowne’s personal copy was not preserved. However, the text is faithfully recorded in Laws and Ordinances of New Netherland, 1638-1674, ed. E.B. O’Callaghan (Albany, N.Y.: Weed, Parsons & Co., 1868).