This is the second in a series about Commodore Robert F. Stockton, the Founder of Sea Girt.
Robert Field Stockton was born in 1795. He would grow up to be a naval hero, US Senator, and the richest man in New Jersey. His summer home at the Jersey Shore established an estate he called Sea Girt. To better understand his life I have dug into his family history.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;
This is the first clause of the US Bill of Rights, ten amendments to the Constitution enacted in 1791 just four years before the birth of Robert Field Stockton. This most important amendment draws its origins from a document adopted in the New Netherlands colony.
In this chapter of the Stockton Chronicles, we go six generations back to the first of Stockton’s relatives in America, who met in Flushing (Viishing) when it was a Dutch colony. Both his mother, (Mary Field Stockton), and his Father (Richard Stockton) were direct descendants of the neighbors who risked their freedom to protest the intolerance of New Amsterdam Governor Peter Stuyvesant.
Freedom from state-imposed religion and tolerance for other worship was a new concept in 1657. New England had been established as a haven for Puritans. The Pilgrims had left England to escape the state religion. However, they strictly prohibited any other practice of religion and even made the “Keeping of Christmas” a crime. Those seeking to establish their own freedom of worship in the new world found the Providence Plantation Rhode Island, and the Dutch-controlled New Amsterdam significantly more tolerant.
Back in Europe, wars had erupted over a new concept, introduced by Martin Luther in the 1520s and spread by the printing press. Reformation implied that the church, and by extension the monarchs who pressed their national religions, were imperfect.
Luther’s revelation was an emphasis on God as having an ‘agape’ relationship with the individual. Agape is a Greek term for an unselfish, un-asked for, and giving love (vs. brotherly love ‘philia’, or ‘eros’ passionate love). Luther suggests that the individual has worth and liberty and does not owe a duty to the whole, but to other individuals. We are commanded to love our fellow man.
The idea of individual liberty was a threat to both the established religions and to Europe’s kings.
Even in the low counties of the Netherlands, where the most progressive freedoms existed, the Dutch Reformed Church was the state-sponsored religion. They permitted tolerance of other worship and reaped the economic advantages of accepting skilled religious refugees from the Spanish Inquisition, the British civil wars, and the Hapsburg Princes. Thoughtful theological discussion and debate were well-respected characteristics of Dutch society. But in their company-owned colonies, the Dutch wanted order.
New Amsterdam Governor Peter Stuyvesant
Stuyvesant worked for the Dutch West India Company. He had led the company’s affairs in the West Indies at Curacao. But he lost his leg from a Spanish cannonball in an attack on the island of St. Martin. After being fitted for his wooden leg, he was placed in charge of their growing colony at the mouth of the Hudson River, New Amsterdam.
Threatened by his English neighbors and the Native Americans, the governor, whose father was a strict Calvinist minister wanted no internal troubles. He imposed fines for preaching and attending services not in line with the Reformed Church. When Lutherans complained to Amsterdam, the Directors of the company wrote Stuyvesant, “It has always been our intention to let them enjoy all calmness and tranquillity. Wherefore you will not hereafter publish any similar placards, without our previous consent, but allow all the free exercise of their religion within their own houses."
Stuyvesant was reluctant to rescind his standing orders. His intolerance was also a way to support local magistrates. They reported on troublesome neighbors and Stuyvesant threatened those flouting his edicts with expulsion, working alongside slaves or imprisonment with only bread and water.
In 1654, Twenty-three Jewish refugees from the Portuguese conquest of the Dutch colony of New Holland in Brazil arrived in Manhattan. Pirates had robbed them of their money. Stuyvesant sold their remaining furniture to pay for their transport and tried to have them expelled. The company in Amsterdam permitted them to stay.
In 1656 William Wickenden, one of the co-founders of the Providence Plantation arrived in Flushing and baptised several people in the home of William Hallett. Stuyvesant was particularly peeved. Hallet was a government official in his role as sheriff. He had also permitted the Hallett’s to move to New Amsterdam when Hallet’s wife could not secure a divorce from an insane husband by Connecticut authorities.
‘Whereas William Hallett, born in Dorsetshire, in England, about forty years old, a resident of the village of Flushing, and now a prisoner, has had the audacity to call and allow to be called conventicles and gatherings at his house, and to permit there, in contemptuous disobedience of published and several times renewed placats of the Director General and Council of New Netherland, an exegesis and interpretation of God's Holy Word, as be confesses; the administration and service of the sacraments by one William Wickendam…’
Hallett was imprisoned, fined, and ordered to be banished, but he appealed to the New Amsterdam Counsel who overturned the punishment.
When Quakers arrived in New Netherlands in 1657 and began to preach in the streets they were met with cruel and quick punishment. In defiance, a well-respected former resident of Flushing, Henry Townsend was arrested for holding a service in his home, and housing Quakers. The Governor enacted fines for even allowing a Quaker into one’s home.
The community in Flushing banded together. Robert Field, his sons Robert Jr. and Anthony, Richard Stockton and 26 other influential men in the community signed their name to a Remonstrance in 1567. It was an official protest.
The men risked their freedom, not for their own sake, but for their neighbors. Several were arrested and punished, but the spirit of tolerance could not be extinguished, and challenges to the Governor continued.
Their words of tolerance would become a standard for the New World, and 140 years later when the Founding Fathers discussed enshrining inalienable rights into the Constitution, they prioritized religious tolerance as the first part of the First Amendment. They leaned heavily on the concepts found in the Remonstrance:
‘…We are commanded by the law of God to do good unto all men. The law of love, peace and liberty in the states extending to Jews, Turks and Egyptians, as they are considered sonnes of Adam, which is the glory of the outward state of Holland, soe love, peace and liberty, extending to all in Christ Jesus, condemns hatred, war and bondage. And because our Saviour sayeth it is impossible but that offences will come, but woe unto him by whom they cometh, our desire is not to offend one of his little ones, in whatsoever form, name or title hee appears in, 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; for our Saviour sayeth this is the law and the prophets.
Therefore if any of these said persons come in love unto us, we cannot in conscience lay violent hands upon them, but give them free egresse and regresse unto our Town, and houses, as God shall persuade our consciences, for we are bounde by the law of God and man to doe good unto all men and evil to noe man. And this is according to the patent and charter of our Towne, given unto us in the name of the States General, which we are not willing to infringe, and violate, but shall houlde to our patent and shall remaine, your humble subjects, the inhabitants of Vlishing.’
Both the Stockton and Field families would resettle in West Jersey shortly after the English took New Amsterdam. They joined the Society of Friends (Quakers) and found like-minded people in the area around William Penn’s beacon for religious tolerance in Pennsylvania. Commodore Stockton had brave, principled relatives on both his mother and father’s side, and he would embrace their spirit in all of his endeavors.
New Amsterdam 1650