JOURNAL OF JOHN BOWNE: FOLIO 49, VERSO (back)
—Continued from September 12, 1662- The Arrest of John Bowne, Day Two
“So the next day, seeing the Governor about to take horse, I sent the Sergeant of the company to tell him I did desire to speak a few words with him. So the man came and told me in Dutch, and shewed me by his actions, that the General said if I would put off my hat and stand bare-headed he would speak with me. I told him I could not upon that ground. So he sent me word again: then he could not speak with me. So the soldiers did break out in laughter at it.”
(Red star marks the beginning of today’s passage.)
Journal of John Bowne, photostatic copy (Bowne House Archives). Original at N.Y. Historical Society.
Notes on the Text
the Governor: Director-General Peter Stuyvesant, sometimes called “Governor” of New Netherland.
the General: abbrev. of “Director-General”
“if I would put off my hat”: Quaker men were infamous for refusing to doff their wide-brimmed felt hats in deference to their superiors, a custom called the “hat honor.”
This refusal stemmed from their belief in the “Inward Light,” or the spiritual equality of all people, and the corresponding conviction that honor is due only to God. The hat honor was part of an elaborate system of etiquette that also included bowing or curtsying, called “scraping,” and addressing people with honorifics according to their rank and class. These practices governed comportment in the courts, at church, and even in the privacy of the home, which was seen by early Protestants as a microcosm of society. So pervasive was the hat honor in the 17th century that adult sons were expected to always remove their hats in the presence of their fathers, who in turn were expected to keep their heads covered even indoors. Such observances were seen as necessary to uphold the European social order in the 1600s, a time of civil and religious war and social unrest. The Quaker failure to show due respect enraged the authorities on both sides of the Atlantic. Hence Stuyvesant’s refusal to speak to Bowne. The question of hat honor would also loom over Bowne’s trial, set for the following day.
George Fox in his Quaker hat. (Library of Congress)
“Hat, Curtesie, Scraping and Complements … are Customs and Fashions of the World, which will pass away … not that which comes from God.”
- George Fox, founder of the Religious Society of Friends, 1661
Such incidents were very much the product of a fleeting historical moment. By the 1680s, people had come to understand that this peculiar stance of the Quakers was not necessarily intended as disrespect or provocation- simply as fidelity to their reading of the Scriptures. No longer a gesture of subversion, it was regarded as merely eccentric.
Next: September 14, 1662 - John Bowne’s trial before Director-General Stuyvesant
REFERENCES
Watkins, Susan Wareham. Hat Honour, Self-Identity and Commitment in Early Quakerism. Quaker History, Vol. 103, No. 1 (Spring 2014), pp. 1-16