Edward Hart was an early settler of the American Colonies who, as town clerk, wrote the Flushing Remonstrance, a precursor to the United States Constitution's provision on freedom of religion in the Bill of Rights.
[note 1] A man named Edward Hart was one of the early settlers of Rhode Island having obtained a plot of land from Roger Williams and signed an agreement for the government of Providence in 1640.
[3][10][11]: 2 [12] Although there is some level of uncertainty about his prior whereabouts, there is no doubt that on October 10, 1645, Hart was one of 18 men who received a charter from the Dutch governor of New Netherland, William Kieft, to establish the town of Vlissingen (i.e., Flushing) in Long Island.
[note 3] In 1642, after efforts to attract Dutch immigrants had disappointing results, the administration in New Netherland and its parent governors in Amsterdam began to accept applications from English settlers to form towns on Long Island.[15]: 38–39, 41–42, et.
[18] In 1648 Hart, as one of Flushing's landholders, joined with four other men to protest the payment of tithes to the pastor of a state-sponsored church and to question the manner of choosing the town's sole magistrate, the schout, who acted as court officer, prosecutor, and sheriff.
[1]: 231 [18][19] Stuyvesant did not relent in his efforts to require the inhabitants of Flushing to support a pastor of his choosing nor did he change the method for electing a schout.
[15]: 82 However, a few months later he expanded local government by granting the town's freeholders the right to elect three additional magistrates, called schaepens, and a clerk.
Hart's letter said that Flushing was "willing to do that which is reasonable and honest" and proposed an amount of produce ("fiftie scipple of peas and twentie-five of wheat") which was apparently acceptable.
[17]: 167 It also meant that personal beliefs that were contrary to the tenets of the established church would be tolerated so long as they were kept private and expressed only in the narrow circle of the family.
[17]: 3 Although the early settlers of Flushing complied with these strictures, some of them came into conflict with Stuyvesant and the New Netherlands government when charismatic speakers began to come among them proclaiming nonconformist beliefs.
[27][28]: 210 [29]: 38 The schout, magistrates, of Flushing, along with twenty-eight other freeholders of that town and two from neighboring Jamaica recognized that they could not, in conscience, obey this regulation and signed a protest, the Remonstrance, explaining why they could not comply.
[15]: passim [29]: 37–38 The Remonstrance "concretely illustrates the seventeenth century practice of speaking Scripture" and is "an unusually rich display of rhetoric and fine English style.
He acknowledged no offense and made no excuse for writing the Remonstrance but begged mercy and consideration for his "poore estate and Condition" and promised that he would "indeavor hereafter to walke inoffensively.
The record of its decision says something about his performance as town clerk and his standing in the community:[15]: 409 In Council received and read the foregoing petition of the imprisoned Clerk of Vlissingen, Edward Hart, and having considered his verbal promises of better behavior and the mediation of some inhabitants of said village, also that he has always been an efficient officer and as an old resident is well acquainted with divers matters; further whereas the Schout Tobias Feakx has advised him to draw up the remonstrance recorded on the first of January and he is burdened with a large family, The Director-General and Council forgive and pardon his error this time on condition of his paying the costs and misses of law.
[15]: 409 Although they singled out Feake for punishment, the ordinance they passed subsequent to the release from imprisonment and pardoning of the Hart and the magistrates maintains that all four of the town's officials were jointly at fault.
"[36]: 339 Historians who have considered this subject have not agreed about who took the lead in preparing the Remonstrance and, as a result, it is not known which of its signers most inspired its moving appeal for freedom of conscience.