John Bowne

The Quaker of Flushing whose banishment by Peter Stuyvesant led the Dutch West India Company to order that consciences be left free in New Netherland. Grandfather of Hannah (Prior) Frost.

From Matlock to Flushing. He was born at Matlock in Derbyshire, where the Bownes lived at the Lime Tree (“At night I came to Matlock to the Lintree,” his diary, 1663; source, p. 114), and came to Boston in 1649 with his father Thomas and his sister Dorothy. His journal begins: “Monday 23d Jany 1649 — I entered into Mr. Philips’ Service, for which Service I am to have five Shillings for every week, one half in money and one half in wine” (source, p. 45). He went back to England in October 1650, returned to Boston in May 1651, and that June visited Flushing with his brother-in-law Edward Farrington, Dorothy’s husband, and settled there (source, p. 282).

Hannah Feake. On 12 April 1656 Capt. John Underhill wrote to John Winthrop Jr.: “I ware lateli at Flushing. Hannah Feke is to be married to a verie gentiele young man of good abilitie of a loveli fetture and good behayiour” (source, p. 114). They married on 7 May 1656. Hannah joined the Friends who met in the woods; her husband, “attracted by curiosity, went on an occasion when this little company were met, to look at them, and while there was so struck by the beauty and simplicity of their worship that he invited them to meet at his own house in future,” and joined them himself (source, p. 45). His house at Flushing, built in 1661 or 1662, still stands; George Fox stayed there in 1672 (source, plate facing p. 283).

Arrest. On 24 August 1662 the magistrates of Rustdorp (Jamaica, Long Island) told the Director-General “that the majority of the inhabitants of their village were adherents and followers of the abomnible sect, called Quakers, and that a large meeting was held at the house of John Bound, in Vliasingen [Flushing], every Sunday” (source, p. 46). He was arrested and taken to Fort Amsterdam, and on 14 September 1662 the Council fined him twenty-five pounds Flemish, “Because John Bowne, at present prisoner, dwelling at Flushing, upon Long Island, has made no scruple in contempt of the orders of the Director General and Council of the New Netherlands, made and published against the Quakers, not only to lodge and entertain some of that heretick and abominable sect called Quakers, but, moreover, has condescended unto them at several times to hold their conventicles and meetings in his house, where he, not alone, but his whole family, have been present” (p. 47). He refused to pay, “was confined in a dungeon on bread and water, day and night, no one being allowed access to him,” and was then moved to another prison where his wife could see him. Offered his freedom if he would pay or promise to leave the country, he declined, and “On the 31st of 10th Month (December), 1662, he was carried on board a ship bound for Holland” (p. 48). Stuyvesant’s council wrote to the Company in January that “one of their principal leaders, John Bowne,” had been “under arrest more than three months for his unwillingness to pay, obstinately persisting in his refusal,” and had been shipped off “in the hope that others might by it be discouraged” (p. 49).

Amsterdam. He reached Amsterdam in April 1663 (p. 50). The Company’s officers drew up a paper for him to sign, and he answered: “For which of you being taken from your wife and family, without just cause, would be bound from returning to them unless upon terms to act contrary to your conscience, and deny your faith and religion, yet this in effect do you require of me and not less” (source, p. 283). The Directors had already written to Stuyvesant, on 16 April 1663: “Your last letter informed us that you had banished from the Province and sent hither by ship a certain Quaker, John Bowne by name: although we heartily desire, that these and other sectarians remained away from there, yet as they do not, we doubt very much, whether we can proceed against them rigorously without diminishing the population and stopping immigration … You may therefore shut your eyes, at least not force people’s consciences, but allow every one to have his own belief, as long as he behaves quietly and legally, gives no offence to his neighbors and does not oppose the government” (record, p. 526). The older translation, the one the family books quote, has “the consciences of men, at least, ought ever to remain free and unshackled.” Released in the 4th month, he went home by England and the West Indies and reached Flushing “on the 30th of 1st month, 1664” (source, p. 113).

Later years. In 1672 he witnessed Anthony Wright’s gift of land at Oyster Bay for the Friends’ meeting house (source, p. 36). Hannah left on a ministry to Britain in 1675; he wrote to her there, “Dear heart, to particularize all that desire to be remembered to thee would be exceedingly large, but this I may say for all Friends in general, relations and neighbors, and people, the like largeness of love for one particular person I have seldom found amongst them, as it is for thee,” joined her in 1676, and was with her when she died in London in January 1677/8 (source, p. 284). He married Hannah Bickerstaff in 1679 and, after her death, Mary Cock of Matinecock in 1693, a great-aunt of Mary (Cock) Frost. Captain Underhill’s will of 1671 calls him “my Brother John Bound” (record, p. 78). At his death the Friends wrote: “he did Freely Expose him self his house and Esteate to ye service of Truth And had a constant Meeting In his house neare About forty yeares hee allso suffered very much for ye truths seak” (source, p. 284).

His children by Hannah Feake: John (1656-1673); Elizabeth (1658), who married John Prior; Mary (1660), who married Joseph Thorne; Abigail (1662), who married Richard Willets; Hannah (1665), who married Benjamin Field; Samuel (1667); Dorothy (1669), who married Henry Franklin; and Martha Johanna (1673), named for her mother’s half-sister Martha Johanna Winthrop. By Hannah Bickerstaff he had Sarah, John and Abigail who lived, and by Mary Cock, Amy and Ruth (source, p. 285).

Not the Capt. John Bowne of Middletown. The Capt. John Bowne who married Lydia Holmes, daughter of Rev. Obadiah Holmes (the Hatten research), and died at Middletown, New Jersey, in 1683/4, was the son of William Bowne of Salem, Gravesend and Middletown, “said to have come from Yorkshire”: a different family, with no known kinship to the Bownes of Matlock and Flushing (source). He is Unrelated.

Research: research/mcmillan/Frost_Underhill_Bowne_Feake.md.

Open questions

• Whether his birth in the journal is March or May 1627 (the “3rd month”).