The Quakers, 1656–1723: The Evolution of an Alternative Community 9780271085746

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Th e Qua ke r s , 16 56 – ­1 723

4 The New History of Quakerism The first historical series in Quaker studies in over a century, these volumes offer a fresh, comprehensive, up-to-date treatment of the history of Quakerism from its seventeenth-century origins to the twenty-first century. Using critical methodologies, this limited series emphasizes key events and movements, examines all branches of Quakerism, and explores its global reach.

The

Quaker s

1656–­1723

The Evolution of an Alternative Community

Richard C. Allen and Rosemary Moore with specialist contributors

The Pennsylvania State University Press University Park, Pennsylvania

Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­ Publication Data Names: Allen, Richard C., 1963–­editor. | Moore, Rosemary Anne, editor. Title: The Quakers, 1656–­1723 : the evolution of an alternative community / edited by Richard C. Allen and Rosemary Moore. Description: University Park, Pennsylvania : The Pennsylvania State University Press, [2018] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Summary: “Explores the second period of the development of Quakerism, specifically focusing on changes in Quaker theology, authority and institutional structures, and political trajectories”—­Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2018029764 | ISBN 9780271081205 (cloth : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Society of Friends—­ History—­17th century. | Society of Friends—­History—­18th century. Classification: LCC BX7631.3.Q36 2018 | DDC 289.609/032—­dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018029764

Copyright © 2018 The Pennsylvania State University All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Published by The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, PA 16802-­1003 The Pennsylvania State University Press is a member of the Association of University Presses. It is the policy of The Pennsylvania State University Press to use acid-­free paper. Publications on uncoated stock satisfy the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—­Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Material, ANSI Z39.48-­1992.

Contents

Acknowledgments vii Abbreviations ix Introduction 1 Richard C. Allen and Rosemary Moore

1 The Early Development of Quakerism  8 Rosemary Moore



2 Quakerism Beyond England to 1666  29 Richard C. Allen



3 Gospel Order: The Development of Quaker Organization  54 Rosemary Moore



4 Living as a Quaker During the Second Period  76 Richard C. Allen



5 Beyond Britain: The Quakers in the European Continent and the Americas, 1666–­1682  98 Richard C. Allen



6 Quakers and Dissenters in Dispute  124 Raymond Brown and Alan P. F. Sell

vi



7 Quaker Expressions of Belief in the Lifetime of George Fox  148 Rosemary Moore



8 The Quakers and Politics, 1660–­1689  170 George Southcombe



9 Adjusting to New Conditions in Britain and America, 1690–­1700  191 J. William Frost



10 Quaker Life and Communities at the Turn of the Century  216 Emma Lapsansky-­Werner



11 The Friends and Business in the Second Period  238 Richard C. Allen and Rosemary Moore



12 The Quakers and the Law  263 Erin Bell



13 Into the Eighteenth Century  287 Robynne Rogers Healey Appendix: Timeline  313 Selected Bibliography  321 List of Contributors  327 Index 331

Contents

Acknowledgments

We want to thank the many people who have contributed to the making of this book. First, we are indebted to the contributors for their diligence and patience in responding to the editors’ requests. It is a matter of sorrow that one author, Alan Sell, did not live to see the final publication. Thanks are due, as always, to the staff of Quaker libraries: the Library of the Religious Society of Friends at Friends House, London; Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre; the Friends’ Historical Library at Swarthmore College; and Haverford College Special Collections. We are also grateful to the Friends Historical Society, the Friends Historical Association, and anonymous donors for their generous financial support of this study. British Quaker records are deposited in county record offices and libraries throughout the country, and we thank members of staff for their help. We have received important assistance in accessing these records, particularly in relation to chapter 3, from Quaker historians and other volunteers who have answered questions, checked archives, and in some cases spent a considerable amount of time transcribing documents, and for this we thank Margaret Baxter, Peter Bevan, Christopher Bullard, Erica Canela, Sheila Cole, John and Margaret Crompton, Chris Fellowes, Patricia Griffith, David Hitchin, Nickie Johnson, Adrian Law, Don McQueen, David Milner, Oliver Pickering, Brenda Rigby, Judith Roads, Chris Skidmore, Margaret Smith, Marjorie Trotter, and Martin Wyatt. We also thank the readers of Pennsylvania State University Press, who made valuable suggestions, and Kathryn B. Yahner, acquisitions editor of the press, who has exercised great patience with us over a considerable period of time. R i c ha rd C . A l l e n Ro s e ma ry M o ore

Abbreviations



BA Barbados Department of Archives, Black Rock

Barclay, Apology Robert Barclay, An Apology for the True Christian Divinity (Aberdeen: John Forbes, 1678; Glenside, Pa.: Quaker Heritage Press, 2002) Besse, Sufferings Joseph Besse, A Collection of the Sufferings . . . , 2 vols. (London: Luke Hinde, 1753)

BL British Library



BLO Bodleian Library, Oxford



BPL Boston Public Library, Massachusetts

Braithwaite, BQ William C. Braithwaite, The Beginnings of Quakerism (London: Macmillan, 1912; 2nd ed., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1955) Braithwaite, SPQ William C. Braithwaite, The Second Period of Quakerism (London: Macmillan, 1919; 2nd ed., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961)

BRO Berkshire Record Office, Reading CSP Calendar of State Papers DHC Dorset History Centre, Dorchester FHLD Friends’ House Library, Dublin FHLSC Friends Historical Library, Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania

Fox, Journal (ed. Nickalls) George Fox, The Journal of George Fox, ed. John L. Nickalls (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1952) Fox, Journal (ed. Penney) George Fox, The Journal of George Fox, ed. Norman Penney, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1911)

Fox, Journal (ed. Smith) George Fox, The Journal, ed. Nigel Smith (London: Penguin, 1998)

x

Fox, Works The Works of George Fox, 8 vols. (New York: Hopper; Philadelphia: Gould, 1831; new ed., ed. T. H. S. Wallace, Philadelphia: New Foundation, 1990)

GA Glamorgan Archives, Cardiff, Wales



GBS Great Book of Suffering



GLA Gloucestershire Archives, Gloucester



HCLSC Haverford College Library, Special Collections, Pennsylvania



IGM Ironbridge Gorge Museum, Library and Archives



JA Jersey Archives



JBMHS Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society



JFHS Journal of the Friends’ Historical Society



LA Lancashire Archives, Preston



LSF Library of the Religious Society of Friends, London



LYM London Yearly Meeting

Moore, Light Rosemary Moore, The Light in Their Consciences: Early Quakers in Britain, 1644–­1666 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000)

MS Meeting for Sufferings



NA National Archives, Kew, London



NAS National Archives of Scotland, Edinburgh



NLS National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh



NYPL New York Public Library

ODNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

PWDRO Plymouth and West Devon Record Office

PWP Richard S. Dunn and Mary M. Dunn, eds., The Papers of William Penn, 5 vols. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981–­87) QH Quaker History

QS Quaker Studies



SA Shropshire Archives, Shrewsbury



SDMM Second Day’s Morning Meeting



SHC Surrey History Centre, Woking



TWA Tyne and Wear Archives, Newcastle

Abbreviations

Introduction Richard C. Allen and Rosemary Moore

The large blue volumes of the Rowntree History series, the first and only comprehensive study of Quaker history, were published around a hundred years ago and are still a feature of many Quaker meeting house libraries. Arguably the greatest of them, still valued by scholars today, is William Charles Braithwaite’s The Beginnings of Quakerism (1912, partially revised second edition 1955), covering the years up to 1660, the so-­called first period of Quakerism. In the past fifty years, this period has received much attention from scholars, and Braithwaite’s Beginnings has been supplemented by a number of more recent works. The situation regarding the second period, approximately 1660–­1720, is another matter. The Rowntree Histories dealing with these years were, for Britain, Braithwaite’s The Second Period of Quakerism (1919, partially revised second edition 1961) and, for America, Rufus Jones’s The Quakers in the American Colonies (1909). Since then, research has moved on regarding both mainstream history and particular aspects of Quakerism, but there has not been a one-­or two-­volume work on the Quaker history of that period. The time seems to have come for a new book on the second period as a whole, which is the aim of the present volume.1 1. This point was raised by Sylvia Stevens in the joint conference of the Quaker Historians and Archivists and the Quaker Studies Research Association held at Woodbrooke College, Birmingham, in 2008.

2

Where to begin and end? The restoration of King Charles II in 1660 is often taken as a convenient dividing line, and it was used by the Rowntree historians and by many others. However, Rosemary Moore, in The Light in Their Consciences, found no clear punctuation mark in Quaker history around 1660.2 The Quakers were affected, inevitably and seriously, by the changing political scene, but as regarded their organization and ideas, there were no obvious developments during the early 1660s; rather, these first show signs of shifting in the late 1650s. The major changes followed the release of George Fox from Scarborough Castle in September 1666, when within a few years the Quakers acquired a new organization, a new headquarters, and several of its most important exponents, notably William Penn and Robert Barclay. It marked a new beginning for the Quakers, but the impact of the political developments of the early 1660s makes it impossible to understand later developments in Quakerism without reference to the earlier period. The next punctuation mark in Quaker history occurred in the two years around 1690, with the introduction of religious toleration in Britain and the death of George Fox. This could be taken as the endpoint of the second period, but there was a long coda—­an intermediate period continuing well into the next century—­which ended with the death of George Whitehead, the last survivor of the original Quaker preachers. This has a convenient political equivalent in the Affirmation Act of 1722, confirming and clarifying the right of British Quakers to affirm rather than to take judicial oaths. Such is the justification for the end date in the collection, although there is contextualizing information that predates 1656 and postdates 1723. The Rowntree Histories had two volumes for the period, one for Britain and one for America. Works of this length are no longer feasible, and in any case, splitting British and American Quaker history is a false dichotomy. At least to the end of the seventeenth century and perhaps afterward, British and American Quakerism were two sides of the same story. The Quakers were settling along the Eastern Seaboard of the Americas from the 1650s, with major migrations in the 1670s and 1680s, and they kept close ties with their friends and relations in Britain. As Frederick B. Tolles, author of the introduction to the second edition of The Second Period, wrote, “Friends on both sides of the Atlantic came to feel that they were members

2. Moore, Light, xii.

The Quakers, 1656–­1723

of a single community, an Atlantic community of Friends.”3 This collection of essays therefore deals with both sides of the Atlantic. Although there is no recent single book dealing with Quakerism at this time, there has been a good deal of fresh work on various aspects of the period, updating Braithwaite and Jones.4 The interpretation of mainstream history has changed greatly, and this book will endeavor to place Quakerism firmly within the current understanding of late Stuart politics. Women’s studies did not exist a hundred years ago, and there are recent studies of the position of women in seventeenth-­century Quakerism, which will be taken into consideration.5 In this context, the decision was made not to have a separate chapter on the position of women in Quakerism but rather to include them and their important roles in the various chapters as appropriate. Local history, as a subject in its own right, has developed enormously, and there have been many studies of the history of British Quaker communities and meetings, varying from major scholarly works through a number of smaller books to short pamphlets.6 This collection makes use of these sources and others in chapters on the life of Quakers during these years. There is still only a small body of work 3. Frederick B. Tolles, The Atlantic Community of the Early Friends (London: Friends Historical Society, 1952), 14. 4. For an accessible general history of the seventeenth century, see D. L. Smith, A History of the Modern British Isles 1603–­1707 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998). For the second period, special mention should be given to Tim Harris, Restoration: Charles II and His Kingdoms, 1660–­1685 (London: Allen Lane, 2005), and Revolution: The Great Crisis of the British Monarchy, 1685–­1720 (London: Allen Lane, 2006). 5. Among the most important items are Phyllis Mack, Visionary Women: Ecstatic Prophecy in Seventeenth-Century England (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992); Mary Garman, Judith Applegate, Margaret Benefiel, and Dortha Meredith, eds., Hidden in Plain Sight: Quaker Women’s Writings, 1650–­1700 (Wallingford, Pa.: Pendle Hill, 1996); Christine Trevett, Women and Quakerism in the 17th Century (York: Ebor Press, 1991), and her Quaker Women Prophets in England and Wales 1650–­1700 (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 2000); Catherine M. Wilcox, Theology and Women’s Ministry in Seventeenth-­Century English Quakerism: Handmaids of the Lord (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 2005); Catie Gill, Women in the Seventeenth-­Century Quaker Community: A Literary Study of Quaker Identities (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005); Michelle Lise Tartar and Catie Gill, eds., New Critical Studies on Early Quaker Women, 1650–­1800 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). 6. Three important scholarly books are Richard T. Vann, The Social Development of English Quakerism, 1655–­1755 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969); Nicholas Morgan, Lancashire Quakers and the Establishment, 1660–­1730 (Halifax: Ryburn, 1993); and Adrian Davies, The Quakers in English Society, 1655–­1725 (Oxford: Clarendon, 2000).

Introduction

3

4

relating to the Friends on the European continent but much concerning the other side of the Atlantic.7 American research output reflects the experiences of the Friends in the former colonies. Although information is available relating to the settlement of the Friends in the Eastern Seaboard and elsewhere, there is still much left to be uncovered in how settlements were established, the way cultural characteristics were transferred, and how the Friends were able to retain contacts with their former meetings, relatives, and neighbors.8 From the late twentieth century onward, Caribbean Quakerism has received significant attention, and the origins and decline of the Friends in the region have been explored, as well as the missionary visits paid to these Quaker communities. Among other things, these studies have scrutinized the religious observances of the Barbadian islanders and the disagreements the Quaker community had with the authorities. Significantly, the importance of Fox’s visit to Barbados in 1671 and the ambiguities of his guidance to the islanders have been identified.9 An important book on the development of the Quaker peace testimony is Meredith Baldwin Weddle’s Walking in the Way of Peace, which will be useful for context in this current study.10 There is as yet no published study as such about the institutionalization of Quakerism in the later seventeenth century, although it comes into other

7. This includes William Hull’s work on Dutch Quakerism (see 98n2). Additional and more recent work by Claus Bernet, Sarah Hutton, Sunne Juterczenka, and others will be referred to. 8. Kenneth L. Carroll, Quakerism on the Eastern Shore (Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 1970); Jerry Frost, The Quaker Family in Colonial America: A Portrait of the Society of Friends (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1973); E. Digby Baltzell, Puritan Boston and Quaker Philadelphia: Two Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Class Authority and Leadership (Boston: Beacon, 1979); Arthur J. Worrall, Quakers in the Colonial Northeast (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1980); Barry Levy, Quakers and the American Family: British Settlement in the Delaware Valley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988); and Carla Pestana, Quakers and Baptists in Colonial Massachusetts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), and numerous articles. 9. Harriet Frorer Durham, Caribbean Quakers (Hollywood, Fla.: Dukane Press, 1972); Larry Gragg, The Quaker Community on Barbados: Challenging the Culture of the Planter Class (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2009); Kristen Block, Ordinary Lives in the Early Caribbean: Religion, Colonial Competition, and the Politics of Profit (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2012). 10. Meredith Baldwin Weddle, Walking in the Way of Peace: Quaker Pacifism in the Seventeenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).

The Quakers, 1656–­1723

works, especially some of the works on women.11 This is hardly surprising, as, apart from well-­documented controversies, it is the story of what was going on locally, in every monthly and quarterly meeting, and how this related to the center of administration in London. The local and regional studies of recent years have proved essential in teasing out some of the history. For the present work, the assistance of a number of volunteers who gathered information from county archives has been invaluable, providing opportunities to explore new fields of research and propose new areas on which to follow up.12 This book will look at the position of the Quakers in relation to the society in which they lived. The understanding of the Quaker position in relation to the law has been completely changed by Craig W. Horle in his work on the Friends and the English legal system,13 and this remains the standard text. There will be chapters on the Quakers in relation to the law of the land and to contemporary politics in general. Braithwaite and Jones, and many other historians of Quakerism, were Quakers writing from the Quaker point of view, so it is pleasing to note that two senior scholars in the field of dissenting history, Raymond Brown and Alan Sell, agreed to write a chapter on the Quakers’ conflicts with contemporary dissenters. Relating to disputes between the Baptists and the Quakers, there is one key text, Ted Underwood’s Primitivism, Radicalism and the Lamb’s War,14 and Brown has added to Underwood’s findings from his own research. Alan Sell very sadly died before he could advise about the background literature for his sections of this chapter. The end of the second period overlies the beginning of industrial development, a fact ignored by Braithwaite and Jones. George Whitehead could have seen a steam engine. The business interests of the Friends expanded during the eighteenth century, but their roots lie earlier. The pioneering work was Arthur Raistrick’s 1950 Quakers in Science and Industry, since when the burgeoning science of industrial archaeology has uncovered much of interest concerning Quaker industrialists, while American historians 11. Caroline L. Leachman, “From an ‘Unruly Sect’ to a Society of ‘Strict Unity’: The Development of English Quakerism c.1650–­1689” (PhD diss., University of London, 1998), is certainly very relevant. 12. See acknowledgments. 13. Craig W. Horle, The Quakers and the English Legal System, 1660–­1688 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988). 14. T. L. Underwood, Primitivism, Radicalism and the Lamb’s War: The Baptist-­Quaker Conflict in Seventeenth-­Century England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).

Introduction

5

6

have explored the commercial instincts of the Friends involved in transatlantic trade.15 A chapter on the Quakers in business summarizes present knowledge and looks at the histories of some individual enterprises and industrial entrepreneurs. Regarding the main figures in late seventeenth-­century Quakerism, there are a good number of recent studies relating to Margaret Fell, and Larry Ingle’s biography of George Fox is one of several that have analyzed the significance of this leading Quaker spokesperson.16 There is no good modern biography of William Penn, but The World of William Penn, edited by Richard S. Dunn and Mary M. Dunn, contains a great deal of useful background material, and the Dunns’ multivolume Papers of William Penn provides an invaluable resource.17 Melvin B. Endy’s William Penn and Early Quakerism remains valuable, and his journal articles and book chapters comprise much of the best recent work on Penn.18 Currently, there are no comprehensive modern studies of George Keith, Robert Barclay, or George Whitehead. Until recently, there has been no major study of theological developments in our period, but this has been largely remedied by the appearance of Early Quakers and Their Theological Thought.19 There has been some discussion among Quaker historians as to the merits of “insider” versus “outsider” history, comparing the advantages of 15. Arthur Raistrick, Quakers in Science and Industry, Being an Account of the Quaker Contributions to Science and Industry during the 17th and 18th Centuries (London: Bannisdale Press, 1950); Frederick B. Tolles, Meeting House and Counting House: The Quaker Merchants of Colonial Philadelphia, 1682–­1763 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1948), and “Atlantic Community of the Early Friends,” JFHS, supplement 24 (1952); James Walvin, The Quakers: Money and Morals (London: John Murray, 1997); Simon Dixon, “Quaker Communities in London, 1667–­c.1714” (PhD diss., University of London, 2005); Jordan Landes, London Quakers in the Trans-­Atlantic World: The Creation of an Early Modern Community (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). 16. H. Larry Ingle, First among Friends: George Fox and the Creation of Quakerism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994). Also see Hilary Hinds, George Fox and Early Quaker Culture (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011). 17. Richard S. Dunn and Mary M. Dunn, eds., The World of William Penn (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986); and PWP. 18. Melvin B. Endy, William Penn and Early Quakerism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973). Also see his “George Fox and William Penn: Their Relationship and Their Roles within the Quaker Movement,” QH 93, no. 1 (2004): 1–39, and his “William Penn’s Contributions to Early Quaker Thought,” in Early Quakers and Their Theological Thought, 1647–­1723, ed. Stephen W. Angell and Pink Dandelion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 239–­55. 19. Angell and Dandelion, Early Quakers.

The Quakers, 1656–­1723

knowing from the inside how Quakerism actually works with the advantages of a fresh perspective from outside.20 The outstanding example of the merits of “outsider” history is the earlier work of Christopher Hill and other historians of the “Marxist” school, which established beyond doubt that the political nature of early Quakerism had been largely overlooked by Quaker historians. The contributions from both Quaker and non-­Quaker scholars thereby helps avoid any insularity of outlook, particularly as they come from both sides of the Atlantic. Moreover, to avoid an inward-­looking denominational work, some chapters are written by scholars whose expertise is in fields other than Quaker studies, which intersected with Quaker history at this period in time. The collection is broadly chronological in that the opening chapters explore the early growth of Quakerism, while the last one reviews the transition to the eighteenth century. In between, the first half of the book mainly considers developments in Quaker faith and practice, particularly during the reign of Charles II, and the latter part deals with the changes in Quakerism posed by external and internal threats in the final years of the Stuart age. It was conceived to be accessible to the specialist and nonspecialist reader alike. It is to be understood that this present volume has limitations. It is far too short for its subject matter, and some significant themes are barely touched on or are omitted altogether. Yet if it serves to awaken interest and to suggest topics for further investigation, it will have served its purpose.

A Note on Dating Dates in this book have been rendered in the New Style, adopted in the mid-­ eighteenth century, by which the New Year begins on January 1. In the seventeenth century, the New Year began on March 25. Care is needed in dating Quaker primary sources from March 1 to 24. The New Style date March 20, 1670, normally written at that time as March 20, 1669, would usually be given by the Quakers as 20 1st month 1670. From about 1680, the convention developed of showing such dates as March 20 (or 1st month) 1682/83.

20. See Pink Dandelion, ed., The Creation of Quaker Theory (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004); Robynne Rogers Healey, “Speaking from the Centre or the Margins? Conversations between Quaker and Non-­Quaker Historical Narratives” (2016 George Richardson lecture), QH 22, no. 1 (2017): 3–­20.

Introduction

7

C ha p t e r 1

The Early Development of Quakerism Rosemary Moore

The Quaker movement arose in the East Midlands of England in the late 1640s at the time of the civil wars. Its early history is obscure, but an account has survived of strange happenings at a small religious meeting “separated from the national worship.” A young man named Oliver Hooton described what occurred: “About the year 1647 George ffox came amongst them in Nottinghamshire . . . where ye mighty power of ye Lord was manifest that startled their former separate meeting & some Came noe more, but most yt were Convinced of ye truth stood of wch my mother was one, and Imbraced it.”1 The “mighty power of the Lord” was the “quaking” that later gave the Quakers their name. “Startled” was a stronger word in the seventeenth century than it is today, and those who “came no more” had been utterly shocked and horrified. Those who “stood” were convinced that God had come among them in great power. Oliver’s mother, Elizabeth Hooton, became the first of many powerful women Quakers, preaching the Quaker message in Britain and America, several times whipped and imprisoned, and dying in Jamaica in 1672.2 1. LSF, MS Portfolio 10, 42, fragment of Oliver Hooton’s lost “History.” 2. Emily Manners, Elizabeth Hooton: First Quaker Woman Preacher (London: Headley, 1914), is informative but underrates Hooton’s early importance. See LSF, MS Portfolio

George Fox (1624–­91), the preacher who had set off this train of events, was born at Fenny Drayton, a village some twenty miles northeast of Birmingham.3 His conversion experience—­when after much wandering and doubt he became aware that “there is one, Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition”—­took place about the same time as his meeting with Elizabeth Hooton. He soon became known as a charismatic preacher in that area, and in 1649, he interrupted a church service in Nottingham, crying out that the scriptures were not the chief authority for faith, and was arrested. Released from a further spell in prison in Derby, where he had been committed for alleged blasphemy, he moved in the autumn of 1650 to Yorkshire, and between 1651 and 1652, he brought together a collection of individuals and small “seeker” or “separated” churches to form the nucleus of the movement that by this time was known as “Quaker.”4 They themselves called each other Friends or, sometimes, “Children of Light.” Their behavior caused alarm among more conventional people, especially among parish ministers when members of their congregations were lured away, and a pamphlet was published describing what was happening. People “all over Yorkshire” were being drawn into “absurd and unreasonable . . . principles and practices; by running up and down the country to act in quakings and trances, and drawing many people after them.” “Wandering ministers” left their homes to preach and cry in the streets, “everyone that will, imagining he is called to it . . . Men, women, boys and girls, may all turn into prophets . . . [according to] Quakers, and all other preachers and ministers are but deluded and without calling.” They looked for “extraordinary raptures, inspirations, miracles,” and they promised “the casting out of Devils.” The author mentions, and may have witnessed, an

16, 74, testimony of George Fox concerning Elizabeth Hooton, 1690; Fox, Journal (ed. Smith), 12. 3. Except for a few brief manuscript notes, the sole source of information about Quakerism up to 1650 comes from the first pages of Thomas Ellwood’s 1694 edition of Fox’s Journal, the early pages of the underlying manuscript having been lost. These pages are reproduced in modern versions of Fox’s journal edited, respectively, by John L. Nickalls and Nigel Smith, which otherwise are based on Norman Penney’s transcription of the LSF, MS 376–­77 (Spence MSS I and II) and published as The Journal of George Fox (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1911). The best secondary source for information on Fox is H. Larry Ingle, First among Friends: George Fox and the Creation of Quakerism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994). 4. For the possible origins of these groups, see Richard Hoare, Balby Beginnings: The Launching of Quakerism (York: Sessions, 2002).

The Early Development of Quakerism

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occasion when shopkeepers burned their stock of ribbons as a testimony against worldly ways.5 In the late spring of 1652, Fox and two significant new converts, Richard Farnworth and James Nayler, traveled west from Yorkshire. Farnworth (c. 1627–­66), previously a member of a separated church in Balby, near Doncaster, had been in correspondence with Fox before he left Derby in the autumn of 1650.6 Farnworth later traveled widely in England as a preacher and was the author of more than thirty pamphlets, some publicizing Quaker ideas and some related to disputes with opponents of Quakerism. Nayler was an older man (c. 1616–­60), second only to Fox and described as the Quakers’ “principal spokesman.”7 He had once been quartermaster to General John Lambert, but at the time he became a Quaker he was working his farm and a member of an Independent church in Wakefield. His background is unknown, but he became a most effective preacher; a capable, presumably self-­taught theologian; and the author of many books, being especially effective in the “pamphlet wars” between the Quakers and their doctrinal opponents.8 Some people took him to be the leading figure among the Quakers. The travelers passed from Yorkshire through the old county of Westmorland (now part of Cumbria), preaching and gathering new adherents. One of these was a separatist preacher, Francis Howgill (c. 1618–­69), who probably brought his church along with him. He became the first leader of the Quaker mission in London and was the author of a number of pamphlets, many of them characterized by powerful Old Testament–­style denunciation.

5. Querers and Quakers Cause at the Second Hearing (London: Nathaniel Brooke, 1653), 39, 44; see LSF, MS 352 (Swarthmore MSS, vol. 1, part 2), 373, Thomas Aldam to George Fox, York, July 1652, for the ribbon-­burning incident. 6. LSF, MS 353 (Swarthmore MSS, vol. 2), 55, George Fox to Richard Farnworth, 1652, asking Farnworth to return letters he had written to him during his imprisonment in Derby. 7. Francis Higginson, A Brief Relation of the Irreligion of the Northern Quakers (London: T. R., 1653), 19. 8. James Nayler, Works, ed. Licia Kuenning, 4 vols. (Glenside, Pa.: Quaker Heritage Press, 2004–­9). There is a considerable secondary literature on Nayler, and at present the most important items are probably Leo Damrosch, Sorrows of the Quaker Jesus: James Nayler and the Puritan Crackdown on the Free Spirit (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996); and David Neelon, James Nayler: Revolutionary to Prophet (Becket, Mass.: Leadings Press, 2009).

The Quakers, 1656–­1723

Continuing westward, in June 1652, Fox and his companions were invited to stay at Swarthmoor Hall, near Ulverston, then part of Lancashire.9 Its mistress, Margaret Fell (1614–­1702), was soon “convinced,” to use the Quaker term, and with the permission of her husband, Thomas Fell, member of Parliament and judge of assize, she provided the first Quakers with a base and became their highly efficient organizer and fundraiser, besides administering discipline.10 In the course of the next few months, there were further additions to the list of influential Quakers. Richard Hubberthorne (1628–­62), who had been a soldier in the parliamentary army and remained politically motivated as a Quaker preacher and writer, became one of Fox’s most trusted supporters.11 Edward Burrough (1633–­63) was the movement’s leading author and theologian between 1656 and 1663. Last in this group was George Whitehead (c. 1636/37–­1723), who showed his ability as an author and debater before he turned twenty.12 It is worth looking at the dates of death of these early converts. One of the factors differentiating the first phase of Quakerism from the second was a major change in personnel. Among these early Quaker leaders, only three—­George Fox, Margaret Fell, and George Whitehead—­survived beyond the 1660s to play a major part in the “second period.” As they knew direct access to God—“experimentally,” as Fox put it— the Quakers found no need for a professional ministry.13 Their word for this experience was light, the light that lighteth every man, the light in their consciences that was subtly different from conscience itself. They spoke 9. The seventeenth-­century spelling was “Swarthmore,” which is retained in “Swarthmore manuscripts” and related documents. 10. For Margaret Fell, see Elsa F. Glines, Undaunted Zeal: The Letters of Margaret Fell (Richmond, Ind.: Friends United Press, 2003); Isabel Ross, Margaret Fell, Mother of Quakerism (London: Longmans, 1949; repr., York: Sessions, 1984); Bonnelyn Kunze, Margaret Fell and the Rise of Quakerism (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1994); Sally Bruyneel, Margaret Fell and the End of Time: The Theology of the Mother of Quakerism (Waco, Tex.: Baylor University Press, 2010). 11. H. Larry Ingle, “Richard Hubberthorne and History: The Crisis of 1659,” JFHS 56 (1992): 189–­200. 12. Modern biographical studies of most early Quaker leaders are lacking, but see ODNB and relevant chapters in Stephen W. Angell and Pink Dandelion, eds., Early Quakers and Their Theological Thought, 1647–­1723 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015). 13. For a new study of the emergence of Quakerism, see Hilary Hinds, George Fox and Early Quaker Culture (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011).

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of living in the light. This light fell on men and women alike, so there was spiritual equality between men and women. Women could be preachers, and many were. This light was also Christ, and unity with Christ, which Fox and some others took to the point of quasi-physical unity, meant that Quakers could share in Christ’s perfection.14 The way the Quakers expressed their unity with Christ led to several trials for blasphemy until they learned to adapt their language. But Christ had come again, they said, and it seemed that the Kingdom of God that so many people were expecting was actually arriving. “The Kingdom of God is come and coming” was a favorite phrase. Particularly in the years up to 1653, the Kingdom of God seemed very close. Some of the Quakers “walked naked as a sign,” or in sackcloth and ashes, as a warning of God’s coming wrath.15 From this fundamental idea came several others. A main one was uncompromising hostility to the parish ministry, to the very idea of a paid ministry and of the church being a building.16 This related very well to contemporary agitation against tithes, levies on agricultural produce intended for the support of local church ministers, which the Quakers normally refused to pay. Following the example of Fox, they frequently disrupted church services.17 Since the Quakers felt themselves to be directly inspired by Christ, the Bible to them was less authoritative than it was to other Christians. They knew their Bible, and frequently quoted it in support of their ideas, but said that it could only be properly understood by the spirit of God and that Christ, not the Bible, was God’s Word. Like most radical groups of the time, they had a social message. This is reflected in the language of two early pamphlets: [Priests and professors are]  .  .  . heady high-­minded ones that fare sumptuously, grinding the poor to powder in taxation and oppression . . . The poor starve in the streets . . . Did you but know

14. This is necessarily a very brief description of a main tenet of early Quaker theology. See Richard Bailey, New Light on George Fox and Early Quakerism: The Making and Unmaking of a God (San Francisco: Mellen, 1992); and Hinds, George Fox and Early Quaker Culture, 17–­18, for the physicality of early Quaker ideas of union with Christ. 15. Kenneth L. Carroll, “Early Quakers and ‘Going Naked as a Sign,’” QH 67, no. 2 (1978): 69–­87. 16. See Brown and Sell in chapter 6. 17. Moore, Light, 30.

The Quakers, 1656–­1723

Christ you would not suffer him to want in his members, you would not imprison him to satisfy your lusts.18 Woe unto you that are called Lords, Ladies, Knights . . . Your fellow creatures must labour like slaves under you . . . that must hunger and thirst and labour when you are eating, drinking, and sleeping, and here like Dives you sit at ease, and poor Lazarus lying starving without.19

But unlike their contemporaries, the Diggers, the Quakers never advocated the abolition of private property, nor did they advocate revolution as did the Fifth Monarchists. From the beginning they had well-­to-­do and even wealthy supporters who did not feel threatened. They argued that measures should be taken to assist the poor and that wealthy people should not live in an ostentatious manner, but the right to ownership of property was not in question. But wealthy or not, they believed, all people were equal in the sight of God. Conventional signs of respect were therefore not to be practiced. The Quakers addressed everyone with the familiar “thou” and would not bow or remove their hats in the presence of supposed social superiors. This caused trouble when they were arrested for causing disturbances, and in addition, the warlike language of some pamphlets and the behavior of some of the Quakers caused alarm. “If thou and Fox had us in your power, you would soon have your hands imbrewed in blood,” said one magistrate.20 The word truth had a particular resonance for the Quakers, which probably derives from Fox. “Does truth prosper?” became a question put to Quaker meetings, and they often called themselves the Friends of Truth. This was one source of their objection to judicial oaths (the other source being their insistence on equality, since rich people were rarely required to take such oaths). A plain yes or no, they said, should be sufficient. From the same belief came their insistence that Quaker businesspeople should give a fixed price for their goods and services and not haggle.

18. Richard Farnworth, Brief Discovery of the Kingdome of Antichrist . . . (London: s.n., 1653?), 15–­16. 19. James Parnell, The Trumpet of the Lord Blowne . . . (London: Giles Calvert, 1655), 1. 20. William Dewsbury, A Discoverie of the Ground from which Persecution Did Arise . . . (London: s.n., 1655), 13.

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Modern Quakers are known for their pacifist witness, but it was less characteristic of the early stage.21 Those who became explicitly pacifist were few.22 It is a fact that some of the first Quakers had served in the army, and most of them found no need to repudiate their service.23 It is also a fact that Fox told the army council that one Quaker soldier was said to be worth seven ordinary ones.24 It is likewise a fact that very unpacifist language can be found in some early Quaker tracts. Much of it should be taken metaphorically, as an echo of Old Testament language, but it is difficult to take this view of a passage such as this, referring to Dublin, which appears to be a direct and approving reference to events in Ireland a few years previously: “I made thy walls as iron, and thy gates as bronze, and thy batteries strong, and guarded thee . . . and delivered thee by my outstretched arm . . . and brake the teeth of thy enemies . . . and I gave their carcasses to fall by the sword and for the fowls of the air to feed on.”25 The ability to adapt to practical realities was one of the things that distinguished Quakerism from other contemporary radical movements and certainly assisted its long-­term survival. Even in its first years, Quakerism was modified to accord with current events. Quaker language altered slightly after 1653, avoiding prosecutions for blasphemy by emphasizing the “light within” rather than union with Christ. The calmer, more settled political situation after the failure of the Nominated Parliament, which was followed by the foundation of the Protectorate in 1654, was reflected in Quaker pamphlets published between 1654 and 1658, which showed a more spiritualized view of the Kingdom of God and less emphasis on radical politics. 21. Gerard Guiton, The Early Quakers and the Kingdom of God (San Francisco: Inner Light, 2012), considers that Quaker pacifism does go back to the earliest period. 22. Notably William Dewsbury, Thomas Lurting, and John Lilburne. See William Dewsbury’s autobiographical work, The Discovery of the Great Enmity of the Serpent against the Seed of the Woman . . . (London: Giles Calvert, 1655), 16–­17; Thomas Lurting, A Fighting Sailor Turned Peacable Christian . . . (London: J. Sowle, 1710), 18–­21; John Lilburne, The Resurrection of John Lilburne . . . (London: Giles Calvert, 1656), 14. 23. Evidence for exact numbers is hard to come by. Some names can be found from entries in Richard L. Greaves and Robert Zaller, eds., Biographical Dictionary of English Radicals, 3 vols. (Brighton: Harvester, 1982–­84). Most of those named fought on the parliamentary side. 24. George Fox, To the Council of Officers of the Armie, and the Heads of the Nation . . . (London?: s.n., 1659?), 5. 25. Edward Burrough and Francis Howgill, A Visitation of the Rebellious Nation of Ireland . . . (London: Giles Calvert, 1656), 7.

The Quakers, 1656–­1723

During 1654 and 1655, Quaker missionaries, traveling the country two by two, established meetings throughout England and beyond. One valuable convert was John Crook (1617–­99), a Bedfordshire magistrate, whose house was for many years used for Quaker regional meetings. Bristol became a major center, and an important new adherent there was George Bishop (d. 1669), educated and affluent, who joined with the Quakers during their first campaign in Bristol in 1654.26 He had been an officer in the parliamentary army and was later employed in Cromwell’s intelligence-­gathering operation. He remained politically active and was the author of many Quaker works, notably an account of the Quaker sufferings in New England. The meetings now became quieter affairs, with less actual quaking, to the point that Fox warned the Friends against falling asleep in meetings.27 An ad hoc system developed for managing the Quaker mission in different parts of the country by appointing senior Quakers to take charge of an area. In the regions where the Quakers were longest established, there were now regular monthly meetings. In London, a men’s meeting was in place by 1656, followed by a women’s meeting a year or so later.28 In the Northwest of England, Margaret Fell set up the Kendal Fund for financial support for the mission and to assist Quakers suffering for their faith,29 for the Quakers were frequently in trouble with the law—­in the first days often for interrupting church services and for vagrancy and throughout their early history for refusing to take oaths and for nonpayment of tithes.30 A considerable “sufferings” literature developed, through which the Quakers sought to win public support, describing their mistreatment at the hands of the authorities.31 26. For Bishop, see Maryann Feola, George Bishop: A Seventeenth Century Soldier Turned Quaker (York: Ebor Press, 1996). 27. LSF, MS 353, 95, a paper given by Geo Fox at a general meeting, c. 1656; and Fox, Works, 7:126, Epistle 131. 28. For the setting up of the men’s meetings, see LSF, MS 344 ( John Penington MS 4), 29–­34, a letter written by Burrough shortly before his death. For the full text, see A. R. Barclay, Letters of Early Friends (London: Harvey and Dalton, 1841), 287–­310. William Crouch, Postuma Christiana . . . (London: Assigns of J. Sowle, 1712), 22, describes the beginnings of both men’s and women’s meetings and is reproduced in Barclay, Letters of Early Friends, 285–­86. Also see Anne Whitehead and Mary Elson, An Epistle for True Love, Unity and Order in the Church of Christ . . . (London: Andrew Sowle, 1680); Braithwaite, BQ, 340–42. 29. Moore, Light, 24. 30. Moore, 24, 30, 136–­40. 31. Moore, 157.

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Debates with local ministers made it necessary for the Quakers to refine their theological thinking, for it soon became clear that their insistence that the way to God was directly through the light within, whatever that meant precisely, put them at odds with much contemporary Christian teaching.32 Fox was not effective at theological debate, and the first Quakers active in this field were Richard Farnworth and James Nayler. Samuel Fisher (1604/5–­65), university educated and minister of a parish in Kent before becoming a Baptist preacher, who converted to Quakerism in 1655, proved a weighty addition to Quaker debating power. He was the first trained theologian to join the Quakers, the author of several serious works of theology, and a major participant in doctrinal disputes.33 That is a summary of Quaker beginnings. The title of this book suggests that Quakerism’s second period began in 1656. In that year the Quaker movement suffered a major upheaval. The trouble began in London, which had become a main center of Quakerism since Howgill and Burrough arrived there in 1654. In 1655, the size and importance of the London mission led to them being joined by Nayler, by far the most effective Quaker preacher, who soon established a considerable following.34 During the winter of 1655–56, Burrough and Howgill departed for a tour in Ireland, leaving Nayler in charge and presumably under a good deal of pressure. During the early summer of 1656, after the return of Burrough and Howgill, a problem developed concerning a London Quaker named Martha Simmons, who was married to Thomas Simmons, one of the printers regularly employed by the Quakers to produce their books. Martha Simmons had assisted with Quaker activities in Essex and London, and all had been well, but in 1656, something went wrong, and Howgill considered her ministry unacceptable. Other people became involved. The details are unknown, but a furious letter from Burrough has survived, claiming that Simmons and her friends were “out of ye truth, out of ye way, out of ye power, out of ye wisdom, and out of ye life of God” and condemning them as “goats, rough and hairy.”35 32. See Brown and Sell in chapter 6 and Moore in chapter 7. 33. Stephen W. Angell, “Renegade Oxonian: Samuel Fisher’s Importance in Formulating a Quaker Understanding of Scripture,” in Angell and Dandelion, Early Quakers, 137–­54. 34. The events that followed can only be summarized here. Scholars are not all agreed as to their significance. 35. LSF, MS Box C4/1, A booke of severall papers and letters belonging to William Markey, London, 120. The Bible reference is to Matthew 25:32–­33.

The Quakers, 1656–­1723

It seems that Nayler initially supported his colleagues but then became doubtful. He began to avoid contact with other Quaker leaders in London. Fox at that time was imprisoned in Cornwall, and the London Quaker leaders decided that the best solution was to persuade Nayler to meet with Fox. The party went by way of Bristol, where Simmons followed them and caused a disturbance, being ejected from a meeting by local Friends. Nayler then continued his journey but was intercepted by the authorities and imprisoned in Exeter. Simmons followed and managed to visit Fox, haranguing him and telling him to bow down to Nayler. Fox thought that Nayler had sent her, and consequently when Fox was released, and after some delay met with Nayler, they utterly misunderstood one another and parted on very bad terms.36 Fox wrote in strong terms to Nayler, “judging” his behavior and “denying” Martha Simmons and her friends.37 Nayler then traveled around the Southwest with some companions, making a ceremonial entrance into Wells and finally entering Bristol in October, riding a horse in the style of Christ’s entry into Jerusalem. Precisely what was going on in the minds of the participants is a matter of debate. Nayler and his party were promptly arrested. The Bristol Quakers, under the powerful leadership of George Bishop, disassociated themselves from these activities, as did George Fox and Margaret Fell. Nayler was taken to London and, after a famous trial before Parliament, was sentenced to be flogged, branded, and imprisoned.38 He was released in 1659 and again joined in the Quaker ministry, though Fox grudged his rehabilitation. He died in 1660, having been attacked while traveling. The Quakers had always claimed to be united in the light, and this claim was now seriously compromised. Enemies of the Quakers took pleasure in pointing it out.39 Something had to be done quickly. Already in the autumn of 1656, the first Quaker code of discipline appeared. This is known as the Epistle from the Elders of Balby, and it was probably written by Farnworth. It was followed by several more such documents in succeeding 36. Ingle, First among Friends, 143–­46, considers that Fox deliberately delayed the meeting, perhaps because he was unsure of how to handle the situation. 37. LSF, MS 354 (Swarthmore MSS, vol. 3), 195 and 193, George Fox to James Nayler, September and October 1656. The second of these was found on Nayler when he was arrested and probably saved Fox from legal proceedings. 38. Moore, Light, 35–­40. 39. Moore, 43–­44.

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years.40 George Fox traveled the country, holding a number of meetings at which he tried to repair the damage and give the Quakers a better idea as to how to manage their affairs. Changes would be needed to Quaker publishing, for Nayler was no longer available as the main theological writer, while Farnworth disappeared to the North, possibly because he was uncertain about his attitude toward recent events, and little was heard of him until 1661.41 It is evident that there was new thinking about forthcoming Quaker publicity, for the pamphlets of 1657 and 1658 took on a noticeably more moderate tone. William Caton’s The Moderate Enquirer Resolved, a description of Quaker faith and practice intended to reassure the general public, was the outstanding example. There was less emphasis on apocalyptic prophecy. The number and quality of publications by Fox greatly increased, with a range of subject matter, thus making it clear that he and no other was the leader of the Quakers. The bulk of the theological writing now fell to Edward Burrough, assisted later in the decade by George Whitehead. Burrough seems in due course to have been recognized as second in status to Fox, as indicated by his introduction to Fox’s major work of 1659, The Great Mistery of the Great Whore.42 The proportion of Quaker pamphlets authored by women had always been small, but during these years it became less.43 The pioneering mission within Britain was over, so there was no longer occasion to publish accounts of the particular work of women missionaries and preachers, while women had always tended to produce prophetic works, which were now falling 40. Rosemary Moore, “The Epistle from the Elders of Balby,” Friends Quarterly 32, no. 5 (2001): 215–­18. It was first published, together with several other similar documents, in Barclay, Letters of Early Friends, 275–­82. 41. Moore, Light, 44. For Farnworth’s activities at this time, see Michael Birkel and Stephen W. Angell, “The Witness of Richard Farnworth: Prophet of Light, Apostle of Church Order,” in Angell and Dandelion, Early Quakers, 92–­93. 42. George Fox, The Great Mistery of the Great Whore Unfolded . . . (London: Thomas Simmons, 1659). 43. There has been a great deal of work recently on Quaker publishing and in particular that of women. Emphasis on the importance of the Quakers in seventeenth-­century women’s writing may obscure the fact that women’s writing was a very small proportion of Quaker writing as a whole. See Mary Garman, Judith Applegate, Margaret Benefiel, and Dortha Meredith, eds., Hidden in Plain Sight: Quaker Women’s Writings, 1650–­1700 (Wallingford, Pa.: Pendle Hill, 1996); Kate Peters, Print Culture and the Early Quakers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Catie Gill, Women in the Seventeenth-­ Century Quaker Community: A Literary Study of Quaker Identities (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005). As far as I am aware, the decrease in women’s writing from 1656 to 1658 has not previously been noted.

The Quakers, 1656–­1723

out of favor. Ignoring the work of Margaret Fell, who produced a regular trickle of pamphlets from 1655 onward, there were six pamphlets written by women in 1655, several of which had two authors, from a total of just over one hundred, but only six were written in the years between 1656 and 1658 out of a total of about 260.44 There are also indications that some unease about women’s ministry developed in the wake of the Nayler affair.45 Overall, it looks as though women Quakers in England were now mainly occupied with the running of their own meetings, as indicated by the setting up of the London women’s meeting about 1657. As early as 1655, there is the example of a circular letter on the management of meetings from Burrough and Howgill addressed to “Fathers, elders and honourable women.”46 At the same time, the Quakers improved their organization.47 County meetings were set up to facilitate the management of Quaker “sufferings,” with a request from Fox to send regular reports to London, which now replaced Swarthmoor as the center of the organization. The administration of finance also moved from Swarthmoor to London. A paid clerk, Ellis Hookes, was appointed to attend to the business. He was in effect the first of the recording clerks, the British Quakers’ chief executive, though he himself did not bear this title. This had the effect of to some extent sidelining Margaret Fell, who was no longer involved in the day-­to-­day administration.48 This new, quieter Quakerism attracted converts of a different sort, who by their presence reinforced the new outlook. Stephen Crisp (1628–­92) had joined with the Friends in 1655 but now became well known as a traveling minister, writer, and leading figure in Dutch Quakerism. William Smith (d. 1673) had been an Independent minister in Nottingham, bringing to Quakerism his old pastoral skills and writing a number of books

44. The figures given in Moore, Light, 241, include books partially authored by women and Margaret Fell’s works. 45. Moore, Light, 39, 125; Catie Gill, “‘Ministering Confusion’: Rebellious Quaker Women 1650–­1660,” QS 9, no. 1 (2004): 17–­30. 46. Edward Burrough and Francis Howgill, To the Camp of the Lord in England . . . (London: Thomas Simmons, 1656). 47. See Fox, Journal (ed. Smith), 213–­14, for Fox’s original dispositions at this time. Also see Ingle, First among Friends, 156–57; and Caroline L. Leachman, “From an ‘Unruly Sect’ to a Society of ‘Strict Unity’: The Development of Quakerism in England c.1650–­89” (PhD diss., University College London, 1997), 125, both citing LSF, MS Portfolio 16, 2, for early developments in the north. 48. Moore, Light, 138–­41.

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expounding Quakerism to non-­Quakers.49 Isaac Penington (1616–­79), university educated and son of a wealthy London merchant, came to the Quakers in 1658 by way of the Independents and Seekers and is one of the few early Quakers whose works, mainly theological and devotional, have been kept in print.50 His wife Mary’s memoir is a valuable record of their life.51 Last in this group, Thomas Ellwood (1639–­1713) first encountered the Quakers when visiting the Peningtons with his father. He became a writer and a wise influence behind the scenes and later edited Fox’s journal for publication. His account of his own life is an important source for the second period of Quakerism.52 In 1657, the Fifth Monarchist Thomas Venner planned a revolt against Cromwell’s government, leading to a number of arrests, and it may have been a perceived need to distance themselves from Fifth Monarchists that caused the Quakers to become more explicit regarding their own ideas about the coming of God’s kingdom.53 Probably most Quakers had always thought that civil strife was not the right way to bring in the Kingdom of God, and Fox had assured Cromwell that the Quakers would not take up arms against his government.54 Now Edward Burrough put it into words: “The Kingdom of Christ is setting up, and it is not of this world, neither shall be exalted, nor advanced, by worldly policy, and worldly wisdom, nor by carnal weapons . . . You that are waiting for the Kingdom of Christ . . . seek for it where it may be found . . . Through suffering must the Kingdom of Christ be set up, and not by rebellion through crafts, and plots, and secret policy, and turbulent arisings.”55 These developments toward a 49. See Rosemary Moore, “The Rediscovery of William Smith,” Friends Quarterly 32, no. 3 (2000): 117–­23. 50. Isaac Penington, Works, 4 vols. (Glenside, Pa.: Quaker Heritage Press, 1995–­97). Biographical information is in R. Melvin Keiser and Rosemary Moore, eds., Knowing the Mystery of Life Within: Selected Writings of Isaac Penington in Their Historical and Theological Context (London: Quaker Books, 2005); Richard L. Greaves, “Penington, Isaac (1616–­1679),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, http://www.oxforddnb .com/view/article/21841 (accessed January 16, 2017). 51. Mary Penington, Experiences in the Life of Mary Penington, ed. Norman Penney (London: Headley, 1911; repr., Friends Historical Society, 1992). 52. The History of the Life of Thomas Ellwood, Written by Himself (London: Assigns of J. Sowle, 1714; repr., ed. Rosemary Moore, Walnut Creek: Altamira, with the International Sacred Literature Trust, 2004). 53. Bernard S. Capp, The Fifth Monarchy Men (London: Faber and Faber, 1972), 116–­17. 54. Fox, Journal (ed. Penney), 1:161. 55. Edward Burrough, A Measure of the Times . . . (London: Thomas Simmons, 1657), 34–­35.

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more moderate and regulated Quakerism were brought to an abrupt end by the political chaos of 1659. Oliver Cromwell died in September 1658, and the Protectorate did not long outlast him. Apocalyptic hopes revived. The Quakers joined the militias formed in some parts of the country, and their meetings came under attack as dangerously revolutionary. More than two hundred Quaker pamphlets, calling for a new earth as well as a new heaven, were published that year, including thirteen by women other than Margaret Fell. Among these, Dorothy White (c. 1630–­86) was a new voice, writing in verse as well as in prose, and the only woman Quaker writer of the time whose output for a while equaled Margaret Fell’s.56 Fox became ill, probably from a sense that the Quaker movement was running out of control, and retired to Reading, where he was cared for by two wealthy Friends, Thomas and Ann Curtis.57 The London organization was in effect now left under the control of Burrough—­able and confident, but young and politically inexperienced. His stream of pamphlets during that year mirrors the changing political situation. During the autumn of 1659, it became evident that stable government was not attainable, and the situation was watched from beyond the Scottish border by General Monck, in charge of the only remaining disciplined army. In January 1660 he marched on London, arriving on February 3.58 It soon became clear that the only feasible government would be a restoration of the monarchy, and King Charles II returned in May 1660.59 The Quakers, and other radical elements, were apparently astonished by the rapid change of events. A statement from Burrough in May 1660 probably expresses the official Quaker view. The Quakers had nothing against the proclamation of the king, because the fall of the previous government had resulted from the purposes of God. The Quakers would be his obedient servants, being “sober, innocent and harmless.” They hoped that the new government would offer liberty of conscience, but the Quakers would bear persecution if necessary and would in any case not use “carnal weapons” against

56. For White, see Michele Lise Tartar, “‘That You May Be Perfect in Love’: The Prophecy of Dorothy White,” in Angell and Dandelion, Early Quakers, 155–­72. 57. For later developments concerning the Curtises, see Moore in chapter 3. 58. Also see Allen in chapter 2. 59. For this period, see Ronald Hutton, The Restoration: A Political and Religious History of England and Wales, 1658–­1667 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986); Tim Harris, Restoration: Charles II and His Kingdoms, 1660–­1685 (London: Allen Lane, 2005).

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any government.60 Other Quakers proffered personal advice to the king or wrote publicity pamphlets to explain the nature of Quakerism and that the Quakers posed no threat. The change in government had come so quickly after the excitements of 1659 that the Quaker leaders were anxious, with reason, about their followers’ reactions. Burrough distributed a general epistle to the Friends, warning them that they were in God’s hands and should wait upon the Lord and should not take part in plots, for their kingdom was inward and their weapons spiritual.61 Meanwhile, Fox was traveling in the North. Given the probable involvement of Quakers in the conspiracy known as the Northern Plot two years later, it is likely he was aware of disaffection and was trying to ensure calm. The authorities caught up with him at Swarthmoor, where he was arrested as a potential troublemaker and imprisoned in Lancaster Castle. Margaret Fell came to London to try to obtain his release. She saw the king and published a declaration, signed by a number of leading Quakers, that although the Quakers would take no oaths, they declared their allegiance to the government, for their weapons were “not carnal but spiritual,” and they asked for liberty of conscience.62 Some Quakers, among them George Bishop, are on record as objecting to the publication of a statement that had not been agreed on by the Friends in general.63 Fox was released in September and came to London, where discussions on a national religious settlement were taking place. Then, in January 1661, came a rising of Fifth Monarchists led by Thomas Venner. Orders were immediately issued banning all Quaker, Baptist, and Fifth Monarchist meetings, and anyone suspected of such opinions was arrested, so four thousand Quakers were crowded into prisons. Fox acted quickly, and in a few days he prepared and had printed the Declaration from the Harmless and Innocent People of God Called Quakers, a strong statement of Quaker abhorrence of violence, assuring the king that Quakers, on principle, would

60. Edward Burrough, A Visitation and Presentation of Love unto the King . . . (London: s.n., 1660). 61. Edward Burrough, A General Epistle to All the Saints . . . (London: Robert Wilson, 1660?), 15. 62. M. Fell and others, A Declaration and Information from Us the People of God Called Quakers, to the Present Governors, the King and Both Houses of Parliament . . . (London: Thomas Simmons and Robert Wilson, 1660). 63. George Bishop, A Few Words in Season . . . (London: Robert Wilson, 1660), 2.

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not fight.64 But all hope of a settlement favorable to the Quakers and Baptists had disappeared. In May 1661 a new Parliament assembled and was determined to establish the worship of the Church of England and admit no other. Parish ministers who refused to conform to the new prayer book and associated regulations were dispossessed of their livings, an event that became known as the Great Ejection of 1662.65 The Quaker Act of the same year declared it unlawful to refuse to take a legally tendered oath, or to campaign against oath taking, and made it an offense for persons over sixteen to take part in a Quaker meeting. A third offense could be punished by transportation. The Conventicle Act of July 1664 extended these provisions to all nonconforming worship. Many Quakers remained in crowded, unhealthy prisons, and soon there were deaths. Richard Hubberthorne, arrested in the summer of 1662, died in August. The next loss was even more serious, for Edward Burrough died in February 1663. Fortunately, persecution was less in the early months of that year, and George Fox and Margaret Fell were able to travel across the country, presumably to try to keep the Quakers quiet and prevent them from becoming involved in plots against the government. It was about this time that the authorities became aware of the coming Northern Plot. The plotters were incompetent, and the plot came to nothing, but it was followed by a number of executions for treason, and although nothing was proven, there was suspicion, probably justified, that some Quakers were involved.66 Fox and Fell were arrested in January 1664 and imprisoned in Lancaster Castle. Fox was then transferred to Scarborough Castle in May 1665, where the authorities held him isolated from his friends in very harsh conditions.67 Francis Howgill was arrested in July 1664 and imprisoned until his death in January 1669. All dissenters felt the effects of the persecution, and theological disputes, which had been a feature of the previous years, practically ended, for the Baptists, Independents, and Presbyterians were now occupied with their own troubles. But for the Quakers, persecution came as less of a shock, 64. George Fox and others, A Declaration from the Harmless and Innocent People of God Called Quakers . . . (London: s.n., [1660]). 65. See Brown and Sell in chapter 6. 66. Richard L. Greaves, Deliver Us from Evil: The Radical Underground in Britain, 1660–­1663 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 173, 177, 181–­82, 190, and especially 200–­201. 67. Moore, Light, 185.

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for they were accustomed to being at odds with the law. During the 1650s they had developed various tactics to make their lot easier, and these now proved their worth.68 First, there was publicity.69 This included writing accounts of trials and sufferings in prison, some addressed to king and Parliament and some intended for the general public. In addition, a number of pamphlets were written with the intention of giving a positive image of Quakerism. The second technique was the use of a disciplined organization to relieve the afflicted. The central organization, managed by Ellis Hookes, maintained effective links with the regions by using underground printing as a substitute for a traveling ministry. The London business meetings, both men’s and women’s, continued to be operative, and it is probable that regional groupings survived, even if unable to meet regularly. Local meetings functioned, sometimes despite great difficulties. There is a good deal of evidence that the Quakers met persecution in a highly disciplined way, assembling outdoors if the meeting house was inaccessible, caring for those imprisoned, and with the women and children (and at Reading, the children alone) maintaining the meetings if the other adults were in prison.70 Thomas Ellwood, arrested in London in October 1662 for attending a supposedly illegal meeting, bore witness to this efficiency: But an excellent order, even in those early days, was practised among the Friends of that city, by which there were certain Friends of either sex appointed to have the oversight of the prisons in every quarter, and to take care of all Friends, the poor especially, that should be committed thither. This prison of Bridewell was under the care of two honest, grave, discreet, and motherly women . . . both widows. They, so soon as they understood that there were Friends brought into that prison, provided some hot victuals, meat and broth, for the weather was cold; and ordering their servants to bring it them, with bread, cheese, and beer, came themselves also with it, and having placed it on a table, gave notice to us that it was provided for all those that had not others to provide for them, or were not able to 68. For Quaker tactics in resisting persecution, see Moore, 155–63, 185–92. 69. For underground resistance and, in particular, the underground press in the Restoration period, see Greaves, Deliver Us from Evil, and Enemies under His Feet: Radicals and Nonconformists in Britain, 1664–­1677 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1990). 70. Details in Braithwaite, SPQ, 39–­54, 223–­28; Hutton, Restoration, 211–­12.

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provide for themselves. And there wanted not among us a competent number of such guests.71

A third stratagem for dealing with persecution concerned the use of the law, lobbying for changes and arguing that certain procedures were unlawful.72 Quaker pamphleteers, notable among them Richard Farnworth, suggested that the Quaker and Conventicle Acts did not apply to Quaker meetings because their meetings were not, in fact, seditious gatherings. A silent meeting, they argued, was not a conventicle. Juries were warned to be very careful on convicting in cases leading to transportation. Persons in a position to inform on conventicles were to note that there was no penalty for not informing. Lastly, the persecuted looked to their faith. Quakers and other dissidents made much use of their belief that suffering is the way to the Kingdom of God. The Quakers now saw themselves as standing in the tradition of earlier British martyrs, and Ellis Hookes wrote two books to encourage this sense of unity with those who had gone before.73 But their faith also suggested that a dire fate awaited those who persecuted the godly. There is much strong apocalyptic language, warning of a coming catastrophe, in the pamphlets of the early 1660s. In 1665, at last, it seemed that the Lord was taking action, for a serious plague epidemic broke out in London. Pamphlet after pamphlet ascribed the plague to the Lord’s doing. However, the Quakers as well as their enemies were victims of the plague and wondered why the Lord should treat them so. Samuel Fisher was one of those who died. Leaders, such as George Whitehead, assured them that all was part of the loving plan of God. The Great Fire of London in September 1666, when most of the city and a considerable area west of the city wall was burned in a four-­day blaze, was thought to be another instance of the Lord’s intervention. Overall, the plague and the fire gave encouragement to all dissenters that the Lord had not forgotten them. And shortly afterward, persecution, which was never applied consistently over the whole country, began to ease following a change of government ministers in 1667. 71. Moore, History of the Life of Thomas Ellwood, 91. 72. See Craig Horle, The Quakers and the English Legal System, 1660–­1688 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988), for developments in the Quaker attitude toward the law in this period. Also see Bell in chapter 12. 73. Ellis Hookes, The Spirit of the Martyrs Revived . . . (n.p.: s.n.), and The Spirit of the Martyrs Is Risen . . . (London: Thomas Simmons), both dated about 1664–­65.

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At the same time as enduring persecution, the Quakers had to cope with a major internal upheaval. Incompatibility between the individual Friend’s light and the corporate light of a meeting, which was at the root of the Nayler affair, was (and is) a potential source of difficulty among the Friends. The next episode of this recurrent problem resulted from the activities of John Perrot, an Irish Baptist turned Quaker.74 In 1658, Perrot had gone to Italy to travel in the Quaker ministry, and he suffered a long and harsh imprisonment, being released and returning to England in 1661. Among his writings from these years was a paper questioning the practice that Quaker men should remove their hats when prayer was offered during a meeting. It was then customary in most churches for men to keep their hats on except during prayer and the singing of psalms, and while the Friends had discarded most conventions in worship, they had kept this one. Men Friends felt that keeping on one’s hat during prayer was unacceptable, for it showed a lack of humility toward God. Perrot, however, thought this practice was just another formality and should be discontinued, and he published his opinions without submitting his ideas to the judgment of Fox and other leading Friends. This caused great offense to George Fox—first because Perrot’s suggestions would affect the regular conduct of Quaker meetings and second because there were disturbing reminders of the Nayler affair. Keeping on one’s hat indicated disunity with the prayer being offered, and it had been one of the signs of disapproval used by Nayler and his friends in 1656. The Friends who had been Nayler’s supporters now reappeared as supporters of Perrot, who was a very popular preacher, and they sometimes met separately from other Friends. They questioned other Quaker traditions and suggested that meetings should be held when the spirit moved, not at set times. This could offer an easy option for the Friends looking for a way to avoid the law, whereas the policy of Fox and other leaders was to hold meetings at a regular time whatever the consequences. Moreover, it was important for the Quakers, the people of God, to remain visibly united in all respects if they were to maintain credibility. Their obvious lack of unity at the time of the Nayler affair had given much pleasure to their opponents.

74. Kenneth L. Carroll, John Perrot: Early Quaker Schismatic (London: Friends’ Historical Society, 1971); Carla Gardina Pestana, “The Conventionality of the Notorious John Perrot,” in Angell and Dandelion, Early Quakers, 173–­89; Clare J. L. Martin, “Tradition versus Innovation: The Hat, Wilkinson-­Story and Keithian Controversies,” QS 8, no. 1 (2003): 5–­22.

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Perrot was one of many Quakers arrested and imprisoned in June 1662, and he decided to obtain his freedom by accepting the government’s offer of voluntary exile.75 He departed for Barbados in October and never returned to Britain, but his English friends continued the dispute.76 Although none of the leading Friends gave Perrot full support, there were some who thought that Fox was being unnecessarily authoritarian, notably Isaac Penington. Francis Howgill, William Smith, and Richard Farnworth all cautiously remonstrated with Penington, who retracted his opinion.77 Dorothy White was one of those involved with Perrot, and between 1663 and 1683, she disappears from all Quaker records.78 Before these problems could be resolved, Fox had been imprisoned and was isolated in Scarborough Castle. The followers of Perrot continued to give trouble, and the campaign against them was led by Richard Farnworth, now in London and again active on behalf of the Quakers. In May 1666 a meeting of the Quaker leaders was held in London, and they issued a lengthy document, signed by Farnworth, Whitehead, and nine others and probably written by Farnworth, his last work for the Friends before his sudden death in June of that year. It is usually referred to as “The Testimony of the (Eleven) Brethren.”79 Not to the taste of modern Quakers, and not now well known, it was nevertheless an important milestone in Quaker development. It declared that those who had departed from “the constant practice of good ancient Friends” should not be allowed to hold any position of authority, nor be allowed to judge any matters in dispute, nor be admitted to the business meetings. It continued: If any difference arise in the church . . . we declare and testify, that the church, with the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ, have power . . . to hear and determine the same. And if any pretend to be of us, and in case of controversy, will not admit to be tried by the church of Christ Jesus, nor submit to the judgement given by the spirit of truth in the elders and members of the same; but kick against their judgement as 75. Carroll, John Perrot, 64. 76. See Allen in chapter 5. 77. There is a full account of this episode in Keiser and Moore, Knowing the Mystery, 39–­45, 54–­55, 65–­66. 78. Tartar, “‘That You May Be Perfect,’” 165–­66. 79. LSF, MS Portfolio 41, 94; LSF, MS 344, 43–­45, and printed in Barclay, Letters of Early Friends, 318–­24, with a few differences from the manuscript.

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27

only the judgement of man . . . then he or she . . . ought to be rejected, having erred from the truth.

28

It cannot be known whether the authors of the “Testimony,” unsupported, would have had sufficient authority to carry out their proposals, which met with considerable opposition. George Bishop again objected, as he had over the publication of Margaret Fell’s “Peace Testimony” in 1660, but it may be that his main complaint was about not being consulted rather than about the proposals themselves. In the event, the arrangements proposed in the “Testament” were not put to the test, for George Fox was released from Scarborough Castle in September 1666 and added his weight to the call for discipline.80 More than any other event, this marked the move into Quakerism’s second period. The early history of Quakerism does not, therefore, divide neatly into successive chronological periods. The clearest break occurred in 1656, when the Nayler affair brought to the fore the question of authority within the Quaker movement, and it reverberated for the rest of the century. The Nayler affair was also followed by the beginnings of a London-­centered formal organization, together with deliberate attempts to make the Quaker message more moderate and acceptable to the general public. The political events of 1659 and the early 1660s interrupted this process—first in 1659 by a reversion to the habits and ideas of earlier Quakerism and second after the Restoration by the sheer struggle to survive. But there was no change in Quakerism itself that corresponded with the 1660 change in government. During the 1660s most of the early Quaker leaders died, the main survivors being George Fox, Margaret Fell, and George Whitehead. Together with new converts, most notably William Penn, George Keith, and Robert Barclay, they transformed the Quaker movement. Before the end of the 1660s, Quakerism was clearly moving in a new direction.

80. See Moore in chapter 3.

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C ha p t e r 2

Quakerism Beyond England to 1666 Richard C. Allen

In 1659, Robert Benbricke wrote to Margaret Fell from London, observing how Quaker preachers were having a positive impact. He explained that “ye truth doth spread abroad much daily.”1 This was not uncommon, as correspondents noted their success in attracting adherents and establishing self-­reliant communities.2 The early Friends may not have had a distinct philosophy, but there was “an unmistakable emergent Quaker sensibility with a levelling, democratic tone, articulated by a growing band of preachers.”3 In this context, these missionaries challenged the prevailing social order and sought to create a society based on equality. This was a period where the landscapes of religious conformity were again being altered, and not just in England, but elsewhere in the British Isles, Europe, the Caribbean, and the American colonies. The intention here is to draw attention to the clash between state religious orthodoxy and dissent, particularly the provocative activity of these independent-­minded missionaries and the hostile reception to their beliefs. It will be demonstrated that the Friends, originating as 1. LSF, MS 351 (Swarthmore MSS, vol. 1, part 1), 183, Robert Benbricke to Margaret Fell, London, July 22, 1659. 2. See Moore in chapter 1. 3. James Walvin, The Quakers: Money and Morals (London: John Murray, 1997), 15.

an English group, harnessed the burgeoning print culture that existed and attempted to spread their beliefs beyond national borders and ideological boundaries and create a new international community of believers with the settling of meetings.

30 The Further Parts of the British Isles The Quaker message came to Wales in the early 1650s. The administration of Wales had been increasingly assimilated to that of England between 1535 and 1542 under the Laws in Wales Acts during the reign of Henry VIII, but Wales was differentiated from England by history, geography, culture, and language. The first recorded Welsh convert was John ap John, an Independent from Denbighshire, who visited Swarthmoor in 1653.4 After his convincement, a number of Quaker preachers were dispatched, and they were able to hold gatherings throughout the country.5 Those who became convinced were often critical of Anglicans and other dissenters for failing to satisfy their spiritual needs and regularly challenged clergymen and preachers in public disputations or in published tracts. After an initial meeting with Vavasor Powell, a leading Welsh Baptist, at the Welsh border town of Chirk in November 1653, several disputations took place, and in 1654, Richard Hubberthorne and John Lawson published Truth Cleared, which justified the actions of the Quakers in North and Mid Wales.6 These disputations throughout Wales probably left congregations confused, but the printed version of these events suggest how 4. LSF, MS 366, Meditations upon a Summer’s evening, July  21, 1673. Also see William G. Norris and Norman Penney, eds., “John ap John, and Early Records of Friends in Wales,” JFHS, supplement 6 (1907); Thomas Mardy Rees, A History of the Quakers in Wales and Their Emigration to North America (Carmarthen: Spurrell and Sons, 1925), 16–­22. 5. These included Thomas Holme, Richard Hubberthorne, John Lawson, John Audland, Thomas Ayrey, Elizabeth Leavens-­Holme, and Alice Birkett. See Fox, Journal (ed. Nickalls), 174, and their correspondence in LSF, MS 355 (Swarthmore MSS, vol. 4, part 1), 66, John Lawson to Margaret Fell, Chester c. 1653; LSF, MS 359 (Swarthmore MSS, vol. 7), 4, John Audland to George Fox, Bristol, May 8, 1654; LSF, MS 359, 18, Journal of John Audland, June 27–­­September 30, 1654; LSF, MS 351, 194, Thomas Holme to Margaret Fell, Grange, Warrington, December 10, 1654; LSF, MS 356 (Swarthmore MSS, vol. 4, part 2), 247, Thomas Holme to George Fox, Cardiff, February 27, 1655; LSF, MS 351, 197, Thomas Holme to Margaret Fell, Chester, August 28, 1655. 6. Richard Hubberthorne and John Lawson, Truth Cleared . . . [to] Certaine Untruths and False Aspersions . . . (London: s.n., 1654). Also see Richard C. Allen, Quaker

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the Quaker preachers sought to create a deeper impact. For the audience, it was a matter of who was the more persuasive and who the “false seducer” was. This could not always be determined during the heat of theological debate, and the printed account, therefore, might prove to be the difference. The Interregnum dissenters were deeply at odds with one another over theological matters, and quarrels were commonplace.7 This infighting does warrant careful analysis, especially as the accounts help determine whether such disputations had any direct impact on the fledging Quaker movement. The Quakers were certainly successful in recruiting from Independent and Baptist congregations. The use of missionaries and “gathered” meetings clearly attracted many to Quakerism during the Interregnum.8 The success of Quakerism in Wales may have turned more upon their ability to exploit the situation than upon the benefits of a new religious ideology, particularly as they articulated their opposition to tithe payments and “hireling” ministers. Indeed, they were able to adopt the radicalism formerly associated with the Baptists and were critical of their failure to stand firm. The Friends abhorred their acceptance of “benefices” and ministers who “read sermons which they finished at appointed times, rather than preaching as the Spirit moved them.”9 So did these disputations and pamphlets have the desired effect? In some cases, the Quaker presence was not to be borne. In Brecon in 1657, the magistrates called on the townsfolk to attack preachers, and as George Fox recalled, “if the Lord’s power had not prevented them they might have plucked down the house and us to pieces.”10 A similar response was recorded in West and North Wales.11 At Wrexham, they were met by many members of Morgan Llwyd’s “very rude and wild” congregation,12 and their “threshing” meetings aroused the wrath of the authorities. Irrational

Communities in Early Modern Wales: From Resistance to Respectability (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2007), 21–­22. 7. For examples, see Joshua Miller, Antichrist in Man, the Quakers Idol  .  .  . (London: L. Lloyd, 1655); John Miles, An Antidote against the Infection of the Times . . . (London: T. Brewster, 1656); James Nayler, Antichrist in Man, Christ’s Enemy . . . (London: Giles Calvert, 1656); John Moone, The True Light . . . (London: Giles Calvert, 1657); and John Price, The Sun Out-­S hining the Moon  .  .  . (London: printed for the author, 1658). 8. Allen, Quaker Communities, 26–­29. 9. Craig Horle, “Quakers and Baptists 1647–­1660,” Baptist Quarterly 26 (1976): 354. 10. Fox, Journal (ed. Smith), 219–­20. 11. Fox, 225–­33; Allen, Quaker Communities, 29–­30. 12. Fox, Journal (ed. Smith), 233.

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fears of the Quakers provoked alarm, and the scale of the response far outweighed the actual strength of the movement.13 The Restoration did not provide any respite, as twenty of the Friends were arrested after they refused to swear the oaths of allegiance and supremacy. By 1661 the level of persecution, probably as a result of the abortive uprising of Thomas Venner, was “so violent . . . that the very name of Quaker exposed the person to loss of liberty.” In Carmarthenshire, John Husband was savagely beaten and nearly had his nose cut off.14 The intensity of the missionary work, particularly the distances traveled, and the frequent imprisonment certainly had implications for both the missionaries and the indigenous Quaker population. In his correspondence with Margaret Fell in 1663, Thomas Holme observed that his wife, Elizabeth, was ill. She died two years later, and Holme shortly afterward.15 Increasingly, meetings had to look to their own ministers to progress their communities, but persecution in the 1660s seemed to be relentless, and the example of four Quakers being forced to walk through “dirt and mire more like cattle to a market” while the guards used “many opprobrious reproachfull and provoking words” was not uncommon.16 Fox returned to Wales in the mid-­1660s and addressed many gatherings throughout the country, including Dolobran, the home of the ironmaster Charles Lloyd.17 His visit certainly helped safeguard fledgling meetings, and according to his journal, there was “a great reformation” in the country.18 The Isle of Man and the Channel Islands are semi-­independent administrations under the English Crown. The Great Book of Sufferings records not only the persecution of both missionaries and indigenous Quakers on the Isle of Man from the mid-­1650s onward but also the creation of meetings and regular visits from missionaries. These accounts reveal how the civil and ecclesiastical authorities loathed these “hot” dissenters. In 1656, the magistrates were “prepossessed with an Aversion to the Quakers and 13. See Francis Gawler, Record of Some Persecutions . . . (London: Thomas Simmons, 1659). 14. LSF, GBS, II, 6, 10; M. Fay Williams, “Glamorgan Quakers 1654–­1900,” Morgannwg 5 (1961): 57. 15. LSF, MS 356, 251, Thomas Holme to George Fox, Kendal, March 1663; Norman Penney, ed., The First Publishers of Truth (London: Headley Bros., 1907), 260; NA, Society of Friends Registers (Monmouthshire), 677, 42. 16. LSF, GBS, II, 1. 17. See Moore in chapter 3 for Fox’s visit and Allen and Moore in chapter 11 for the Lloyds of Dolobran. 18. Fox, Journal (ed. Smith), 373–­81.

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their Doctrine” and forced them to leave the island.19 The Friends had already been routinely punished, including the dragging of Katherine Evans from her bed and the imprisoning of several others. Their maltreatment continued into the 1660s as they were arrested for the nonpayment of tithes, holding meetings, and nonattendance at Anglican services (recusancy).20 In the Channel Islands, particularly Jersey, there were also residents who began to adhere to the message of Quakerism. For example, Thomas Le Marinel and Michel de Ste Croix were brought before the royal court early in 1662 and accused of attending Quaker meetings “in contempt of orders made for good government and maintenance of the public peace in the island” and faced imprisonment or worse.21 Across the English border in Scotland, from the early 1650s onward, English religious radicals were making their presence felt. Indeed, there is a rich body of evidence from both sides of the border that the Quaker message had penetrated, and small communities of the Friends were quickly established.22 Successive waves of proselytizing Friends were dispatched from Swarthmoor,23 and it is estimated that there were at least fifty English Quaker missionaries in Scotland between 1654 and 1657.24 The authorities took these missionaries seriously, and considerable anti-­Quaker literature was produced.25 In December 1655 William Caton, working alongside John Stubbs, described the great opposition he faced. Moreover, those who had been converted in Edinburgh either had abandoned the Friends or were living in contravention of their accepted code of behavior. Both men set about rectifying the situation, and they had some notable successes, particularly the conversion of William Osborne, a former lieutenant-­colonel, and they held discussions with General Monck, who was initially “moderate” toward the Quakers.26 19. Besse, Sufferings, 1:269. 20. LSF, GBS, I, 515–­21. 21. JA, D/Y/F1/50, Cour de Samedi, February 2, 1661/2. 22. George B. Burnet, The Story of Quakerism in Scotland, 1650–­1950 (London: James Clarke, 1952), 14. 23. See R. Scott Spurlock, Cromwell and Scotland: Conquest and Religion, 1650–­1660 (Edinburgh: John Donald, 2007), 174–­78. 24. Burnet, Quakerism in Scotland, 27. 25. See John Gilpin, The Quakers Shaken . . . (London: S. G., 1655); John Stalham, Contradictions of the Quakers . . . (Edinburgh: s.n., 1655); James Brown, Antichrist (in Spirit) Unmasked . . . (Edinburgh: Christopher Higgins, 1657). 26. William Caton, Journal  .  .  . (London: Thomas Northcott, 1689), 27–­2 8; NAS, CH10/1/65, Sufferings, 1656–­98, 1–­2; Besse, Sufferings, 2:495.

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In March 1657 John Hall interrupted John Seaton’s sermon at Aberdeen and faced the censure of members of the gathered churches there.27 Significantly, this is the first mention of activity in what would become an important center. At this time, Monck received reports that the Friends were having a noticeable impact on the army, including Captain Davenport (who had “turned Quaker” at Inverness), three other officers, and “the greatest part of their troops.” Monck, in a letter to Oliver Cromwell, stated, “I think they will prove a very dangerous people, should they increase in your army,” and believed that they were a distraction—­or worse, mutinous. He thereby sought to end this “growing evill.” Additional letters to Monck and Secretary John Thurloe from officers in 1657 and 1658 confirm the presence of the Quakers throughout Scotland, the hiring of rooms to hold meetings in at Leith and Edinburgh, and early signs of what developed into the peace testimony. Such men as these were perceived to be “dangerous in the armie; for I think it not be there principall to fight.”28 Many Quakers in the army were thereafter purged despite the pleas of Francis Howgill and others.29 It is not surprising that on his visit to Scotland in September 1657, Fox was ordered to appear before the council at Edinburgh, where he was told to leave the country within the week.30 Caton returned to Scotland in 1659 and held meetings in Edinburgh and Leith but noted the sparse numbers of Quakers who attended. Persecution, particularly excommunication, was recorded by several West-­of-­Scotland Friends who petitioned Parliament to halt the abuse, including forced removal from homes and an undermining of businesses, while others lobbied for religious toleration alongside other dissenters.31 It has been argued by earlier historians of Scottish Quakerism, notably James Torrance, William Miller, and George Burnet, that the movement never really took root, but these views have recently been challenged as “misleading and myopic.” Although the Friends never had the same number of adherents as they had across the border, they “represented the only 27. Spurlock, Cromwell and Scotland, 176–­77. 28. Elsie M. Smith, ed., “State Papers of John Thurloe,” JFHS 8, no. 4 (1911): 157–­67. 29. Norman Penney, ed., Extracts from State Papers Relating to Friends, 1654 to 1672 (London: Friends’ Historical Society, 1913), 29; Francis Howgill, To All You Commanders and Officers of the Army in Scotland . . . (London: s.n., 1657); Burnet, Quakerism in Scotland, 40–­43. 30. Besse, Sufferings, 2:495; Burnet, Quakerism in Scotland, 34–­39. 31. William Osbourne, To You the Parliament Sitting at Westminster . . . (London: s.n., 1659); Barry Reay, The Quakers and the English Revolution (London: Temple Smith, 1985), 49, 141n5; Spurlock, Cromwell and Scotland, 189–­93.

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religious group introduced into Scotland during the interregnum to survive uninterrupted to the present day.”32 Beyond the Interregnum, the Quakers continued to proselytize and enriched the lives of the small meetings they had established. A small but significant group of the Quakers met in Aberdeen from 1663 onward, including George Keith, a gifted spokesperson and writer.33 As elsewhere in Scotland, they were subjected to intimidation with regular beatings, while Keith and two other “traffiquying Quakers” were banished from the town, and on his return, Keith was arrested and detained in the Tolbooth for ten months. Similar attention was paid to Andrew Jaffrey, the former provost of Aberdeen, who was kept under house arrest and fined.34 A further convert at this time was Colonel David Barclay, the laird of Urie, near Stonehaven, and a renowned soldier. In August 1665 he and several other Scottish dignitaries were arrested during the war with the Dutch on suspicion that they might be in alliance with the Dutch military. Barclay was imprisoned in Edinburgh Castle and, while incarcerated, was convinced by a fellow prisoner, John Swinton, the laird of Swinton.35 It was Robert, David’s son, who would be remembered for providing further layers of Quaker theology.36 Over the sea in Ireland, proselytizing began in 1653, when Major Miles Bousfield convinced William Edmundson, an Englishman now settled in Ireland.37 The evidence for the early development of Quakerism in Ireland 32. Spurlock, Cromwell and Scotland, 195. 33. See NAS, CH10/3/36, Alexander Skene et al., “A Brieff Historicall Account . . . [of ] Quakerism in and about Aberdeen”; Burnet, Quakerism in Scotland, 51–­55; Gordon DesBrisay, “Catholics, Quakers and Religious Persecution in Restoration Aberdeen,” Innes Review 47 (1996): 136–­68 (particularly 144–­45, 153); Gordon DesBrisay, “The Civil Warrs Did Overrun All,” and with Michael Lynch and Murray Pittock, “The Faith of the People,” in Aberdeen before 1800: A New History, ed. Patricia Dennison, David Ditchburn, and Michael Lynch (East Lynton: Tuckwell Press, 2002), 238–­66, 289–­308; Alasdair Raffe, The Culture of Controversy: Religious Arguments in Scotland, 1660–­1714 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2012), 38–­39. 34. Besse, Sufferings, 2:497; Burnet, Quakerism in Scotland, 53–­54. 35. BL, Add. MS 23, 1234, fol. 169; “Committal of David Barclay to Edinburgh Castle,” JFHS 5 (1908): 199; “The Record Book of Friends of the Monethly Meeting at Urie,” JFHS 7, no. 3 (1910): 91–92. 36. See Moore in chapter 7 and Frost in chapter 9. 37. William Edmundson, A Journal of the Life, Travels, Sufferings . . . of . . . William Edmundson . . . , 2nd ed. (London: Mary Hinde, 1774), 6, 11–­15. Also see John Rutty, A History of the Rise and Progress of . . . Quakers in Ireland, 1653–­1700 (Dublin: I. Jackson, 1751); John M. Douglas, “Early Quakerism in Ireland: Presidential Address, 1955,” JFHS 48, no. 1 (Spring 1956): 3–­32.

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is largely recorded by missionaries themselves and in the accounts of their persecution. Edmundson himself suffered, but his journal acknowledges Cromwell’s efforts to promote toleration, which, for a brief time at least, enabled the Quakers to proselytize without molestation and achieve some notable conversions, including Captain William Morris, the commander of three garrisons and an elder of the Baptist community.38 Quaker missionaries were strengthened in mid-­1655 by the arrival of Edward Burrough, Elizabeth Fletcher, Elizabeth Holmes, and Francis Howgill.39 Burrough nevertheless wrote that in Dublin, few “hunger after god; & blindnes & deafnes hath possessed all” and that it was “a Bad place a very Refuge for the wicked.”40 Howgill embarked on a wider missionary tour and, despite his antipathy for the Irish countryside, held relatively successful meetings at Kinsale, Bandon, and Cork. It seems that these Quaker itinerants seized every opportunity “to declare and spread their Doctrine, to the Convincement of many,” including the later preacher William Ames, a former soldier and Baptist minister, and the governor of Cork also attended a meeting.41 It is been argued that the Quaker “viewpoints were congenial to many in the Cromwellian Army.”42 Burrough began preaching in Waterford and Kilkenny but found the Irish to be a “rebellious people . . . the scum of England & other nations,” 38. Edmundson, Journal, 29–­36; LSF, MS 357 (Swarthmore MSS, vol. 5), 34, William Morris to all you particular Baptists in Ireland, June 1655; Besse, Sufferings, 2:462. Also see Kenneth L. Carroll, “Quakerism and the Cromwellian Army in Ireland,” JFHS 53, no. 3 (1978): 135–­54. 39. LSF, MS 358 (Swarthmore MSS, vol. 6), 6; LSF, MS 351, 197, Thomas Holme to Margaret Fell, Chester, August 28, 1655. 40. LSF, MS 354 (Swarthmore MSS, vol. 3), 17, Edward Burrough to Margaret Fell, Dublin, c. 1655; LSF, MS 354, 16, Edward Burrough to Margaret Fell, Dublin, January 5, 1656. For Fletcher and Holmes, see LSF, MS S81 (Caton MSS, vol. 3), 92 (273–­74), Alexander Parker to Margaret Fell, London, May 29, 1655. 41. LSF, MS 323 (A. R. Barclay MSS, vol. 1), 65, Francis Howgill to Margaret Fell, c. 1655; Besse, Sufferings, 2:457. For Howgill’s views concerning the Irish and the persecution he faced, see Francis Howgill, The Visitation of the Rebellious Nation of Ireland . . . (London: Giles Calvert, 1656), 8; Francis Howgill and Edward Burrough, We the Servants and Faithfull Witnesses . . . (Dublin: s.n., 1655); Francis Howgill, A General Epistle to the Dispersed and Persecuted Flock . . . (London: s.n., 1665); Kevin McKenny, “Radical Religion in Ireland, 1641–­1660,” in Ireland from Independence to Occupation, 1641–­1660, ed. Jane H. Ohlmeyer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 212–­20. 42. Richard S. Harrison, “Spiritual Perception and the Evolution of the Irish Quakers,” in The Religion of Irish Dissent, 1650–­1800, ed. Kevin Herlihy (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1996), 70.

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while in Waterford he was accused of being a vagabond and a Jesuit. To counter such allegations, he asked Margaret Fell to send over some books “wch might be very serviceable, in spreading forth ye truth.”43 Burrough and Howgill were arrested in Cork and subsequently banished by Henry Cromwell, the lord deputy of Ireland.44 The same fate awaited others.45 While Burrough and Howgill were banished to England, Barbara Blaugdone [Blagdon], another ministering Friend, was on her way to Dublin and, upon landing, secured a meeting with Henry Cromwell. Later, she was accused of witchcraft and arrested, but her impact was noticeable, for “wheresoever she published the Truth her preaching was with Demonstration . . . [and] Divers of her Acquaintance, with whom she had been formally conversant, were now afraid of her, because she sometimes spake to them in so solemn and awful a Manner, that her Speech caused them to tremble.”46 The authorities took a dim view of the missionaries’ activities, particularly their public debates and the challenge they posed to popular customs that might lead to disorder. These Friends were at the mercy of local magistrates and constables and were often denied food, bedding, and visitors while imprisoned or treated as vagabonds and regularly banished.47 The last years of the Interregnum did not offer any respite for missionaries, or for the Irish Quakers, as there are numerous recorded cases of imprisonment, banishment, or distrained property, while others were systematically undermined in their businesses.48 This was certainly a response to their growing numbers. By 1660 there were no fewer than thirty meetings in Ireland.49 43. LSF, MS 354, 16. This prompted the Bristol Quakers to issue a certificate acknowledging Burrough’s good standing as a preacher. See Braithwaite, BQ, 214. 44. For Burrough’s response, see LSF, MS 357, 7, Edward Burrough to Henry Cromwell, c. 1655. 45. LSF, MS 358 (Swarthmore MSS, vol. 6), 29, containing a paper written by Robert Turner entitled “An Hue & Cry after a Robbery Committed in the Temple Being in Short the Fruits of the High Priest’s Sermon,” January 23 (11 mo.), 1658/59; Besse, Sufferings, 2:460–­61. 46. Besse, Sufferings, 2:458–­59; Barbara Blaugdone, An Account . . . of Barbara Blaugdone (Shoreditch: T. S., 1691), 21–­37. 47. Besse, Sufferings, 2:461–­62, 467; Phil Kilroy, “Women and the Reformation in Seventeenth-­Century Ireland,” in Women in Early Modern Ireland, ed. Margaret MacCurtain and Mary O’Dowd (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1991), 186–­87. 48. Besse, Sufferings, 2:463–­64. 49. LSF, MS 156 (Spriggs Collection), 11; Phil Kilroy, Protestant Dissent and Controversy in Ireland, 1660–­1714 (Cork: Cork University Press, 1994), 90–­91.

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There were occasions after the Restoration when a “restrained approach” toward dissenters was exercised, particularly by the Duke of Ormond, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, when “those who proved to be moderate enjoyed toleration even if it was not de jure.”50 But there was considerable opposition from Anglicans, and this was a troublesome time.51 Proclamations against Catholics, dissenters, and other “fanatical persons” were issued, and consequently many Friends were imprisoned (306 between 1660 and 1662), were fined, or had their property distrained.52 They also faced severe beatings53 and excommunication for the nonpayment of tithes or meeting in conventicles. But despite these privations, they continued to thrive as a close-­knit community, and it has been estimated that circa 1660–­1714, their numbers would have been between 5,000 and 6,500.54

The Americas The settling of a Quaker community in the Caribbean—particularly on Barbados, Jamaica, Antigua, and Nevis, as well as in the Bahamas—and the experiences of the Friends there has increasingly been studied.55 In 1627, Barbados 50. Sandra M. Hynes, “Changing Their Path: Quaker Adaptation to the Challenge of Restoration, 1660–­1680,” in Restoration Ireland, ed. Coleman Dennehy (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), 85–­98 (87). 51. Edmundson, Journal, 45–­58; Besse, Sufferings, 2:464–­75. 52. R. P. Mahaffy, ed., CSP Relating to Ireland . . . 1660–­1662 (London: HMSO, 1905), 101, for the 1661 proclamation; Besse, Sufferings, 2:467; LSF, MS 355, 78, William Edmundson to Margaret Fell, April  9, 1661; LSF, MS 357, 5, William Edmundson to the Magistrates of Ireland, c. 1661; LSF, MS 357, 91, By the Lord Justices in Council . . . May 4, 1661; Thomas Holme and Abraham Fuller, A Brief Relation of . . . Sufferings . . . in Ireland . . . 1660 until 1671 (s.l.: s.n., 1672), and their A Compendious View of . . . Sufferings . . . in the Kingdom of Ireland, 1655–­1731 (Dublin: Samuel Fuller, 1731), 126; Douglas, “Early Quakerism in Ireland,” 18–­19, 27. 53. Edmundson, Journal, 81–­82; Besse, Sufferings, 2:464, for the account of Miles Gray of Cavan preaching in Carrickfergus (c. 1663). 54. Kilroy, Protestant Dissent, 90. 55. H. J. Cadbury, “Negro Membership in the Society of Friends,” Journal of Negro History 21 (1936): 151–­213; “Barbados Quakers—­1683 to 1761: Preliminary List,” JBMHS 9, no. 1 (November 1941): 29–­31; “An Account of Barbados 200 Years Ago,” JBMHS 9, no. 2 (February 1942): 81–­83; E. M. Shilstone, “Some Early Records of Friends in Barbados,” JBMHS 34, no. 1 (May 1971): 43–­52; Harriet Frorer Durham, Caribbean Quakers (Hollywood, Fla.: Dukane Press, 1972). More recently, see Larry Gragg, The Quaker Community on Barbados: Challenging the Culture of the Planter Class (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2009); Kristen Block, Ordinary Lives in the Early

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was colonized by English settlers who recognized the island’s potential for growing sugar cane and the substantial profits that could be made from slave owning.56 The island had approximately ten thousand inhabitants in 1641, and this rose to more than fifty thousand by the mid-­1670s.57 By 1661, under various governors, the islanders had established eleven parish churches58 and at least thirty Anglican clergymen had taken up posts between 1637 and 1660.59 Despite the strong presence of organized Anglican congregations and other religious communities, allegations were being made by mid-­seventeenth-­ century visitors that these early colonists were dishonest, frequently indulged in bouts of drunken excess, and were prone to all manner of moral and sexual depravity.60 It was to this allegedly debauched society that Quaker missionaries felt drawn in the mid-­1650s, as there was an expectation that these settlements could prosper if the Friends were vigilant against corrupting forces. The Quaker community in Barbados can be dated from circa 1655, and early converts were Lieutenant-­Colonel Thomas Rous, a plantation owner, and his wife.61 These Barbados Friends rejected the paraphernalia of the Caribbean: Religion, Colonial Competition, and the Politics of Profit (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2012), particularly 149–­80. There were also Quaker meetings in the Bahamas, notably Bermuda. See LSF, MS 323, 62, George Rofe to Richard Hubberthorne, Barbados, November 18, 1661. For details of persecution and the Quaker condemnation of the alleged self-­indulgent life of priests in Bermuda, see Richard Pinder, The Spirit of Error Found and Discovered in the Accounted Pastors and Teachers of . . . Bermuda . . . (London: Robert Wilson, 1660), 3, 9, 12, 16–­17, 23, and his The Captive . . . Visited . . . (London: Thomas Simmons, 1660); LSF, MS 355, 39, Richard Pinder to George Fox, Bermuda, August 1660; Besse, Sufferings, 2:366–­67; A. Day Bradley, “Friends in Bermuda in the Seventeenth Century,” JFHS 54, no. 1 (1976): 3–­11. 56. See W. Noel Sainsbury, ed., CSP, Colonial Series, America and West Indies, 1675–­1676 (London: HMSO, 1893), 445 (no. 1022); Richard S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies (New York: W. W. Norton, 1973); Larry Gragg, Englishmen Transplanted: The English Colonization of Barbados, 1627–­1660 (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2003). 57. Sainsbury, CSP . . . 1675–­1676, 324 (no. 757), 349 (no. 812), Whitehall, December 23, 1675; Barbados, 1676. 58. W. Noel Sainsbury, ed., CSP, Colonial Series, America and West Indies, 1661–­1668 (London: HMSO, 1880), 29 (no. 84). 59. See P. F. Campbell, The Church in Barbados in the Seventeenth Century (St. Michael: Barbados Museum and Historical Society, 1982). 60. Gragg, Englishmen Transplanted, 154–­55. 61. LSF, MS 351, 66, Henry Fell to Margaret Fell, November 3, 1656. Larry Gragg has observed that the Barbados Friends, like those in England, were increasingly drawn from among the middling sorts, such as skilled artisans, professionals, and merchants. In general, his research concurs with the findings of those who have studied the demography of Quakerism, and this was also the case, so far as is known, on the

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parish church and prevailing popular culture of seventeenth-­century society and expressed the importance of good behavior and simplicity. Publications such as John Rous’s eight-­page tract in 1656 denouncing the “pride, drunkenness, covetousness, oppression and deceitful dealings” of some of the islanders were calculated to deter the Friends and the wider population from slavishly following traditional customs and their undignified influences.62 At least six hundred copies were produced and dispersed around the island.63 In the previous autumn, Henry Fell, assisted by John Rous and Peter Head, arrived on the island, but they had a very difficult time despite the moderate behavior of the governor.64 Fell stated that Barbados was “an exceedingly wicked place,” imprisonments were rife, and the magistrates were “exceedinge envyous and filthy whereby the hands of evill doers are strengthened.” He also felt that the clergy were “rude & brutish,” and he experienced the intrigues of Joseph Salmon, “a ringleader of the ranters in England.” Moreover, he was aware that some newly converted and wealthy Quakers struggled to resist the temptations of Barbados society.65 He nevertheless believed that the Quaker community would develop, and he received significant physical and financial support from some of the newly convinced Friends, such as Thomas Rous.66 In the last years of the 1650s, other Quaker preachers from the British Isles joined them as well as venturing farther afield,67 but the level of hostility faced by the Quaker missionaries was borne out in the experience of John Taylor, who was attacked in 1659 by “Rude and Uncivill” clergymen and their congregations.68 These privations did not stop the Friends from holding several meetings a week; neither did it prevent them from recruiting among the wealthy sugar

American continent as well as in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. See Gragg, Quaker Community on Barbados, 62–­65. Also see Moore and Allen in chapter 11. 62. John Rous, A Warning to the Inhabitants of Barbadoes . . . (London: s.n., 1656), 1–­2. 63. LSF, MS 351, 79, John Rous and Henry Fell to Margaret Fell, Barbados, May 24, 1657. 64. LSF, MS 351, 67, Henry Fell to Margaret Fell, Barbados, December 19, 1656. 65. LSF, MS 351, 66; LSF, MS 351, 68, Henry Fell to Margaret Fell, Barbados, February 19, 1657. 66. LSF, MS 351, 79. 67. LSF, MS 351, 67, referring to the work of Mary Fisher, Peter Head, and John Rous on Antigua and Nevis; LSF, MS 351, 65, Henry Fell to George Fox, Barbados, c. 1658 (incorrectly dated in transcripts as c. 1655). Also see Jonas Langford, A Brief Account of the Sufferings . . . Antegoa . . . (London: Tace Sowle, 1706). 68. John Taylor, An Account of Some . . . Labours . . . (London: Jane Sowle, 1710), 9; Besse, Sufferings, 2:278–­378, 388–­91.

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plantation owners who held positions on the island’s assembly and council.69 They were also prepared to publish their thoughts and condemn what they saw as ungodly.70 That the Quaker community was able to function as if it were in Britain can be demonstrated by the regularity of recording Quaker births, marriages, and burials. Moreover, Henry Fell, after a brief visit to Surinam, returned to Barbados and informed Margaret Fell that the governor, Daniel Searle, had released two Quakers from prison after their refusal to bear arms.71 For missionaries, Barbados and other Caribbean Islands remained a challenge. With the restoration of Charles II in England in 1660, persecution became an increasing feature of the Quaker testimony. In 1661, Josiah Coale gave an account of his efforts in Virginia and his three months on Barbados as well as his intention to return to the American colony. He informed George Fox that his lengthy stay on the island was necessary, as he provided remedial preaching to curtail the debauched culture of the planters. He noted the movements of other Quakers, whose activities in Jamaica were rewarded in October 1662 when Thomas, Lord Windsor, the governor, and his council allowed the Friends to hold meetings if they paid their taxes and helped subsidize the defense of the island, irrespective of whether they would bear arms or not.72 The numerical strength of Quakerism in the Caribbean is difficult to determine up to the mid-­1660s,73 but it is clear that the missionaries had some success and established meetings, some of which became permanent. Moreover, although not intended to boost the Quaker population, the action of Charles II’s government in terms of exiling recalcitrant Quakers as indentured servants to plantations in the Caribbean

69. See Barbara Ritter Dailey, “The Early Quaker Mission and Settlement of Meetings in Barbados, 1655–­1700,” JBMHS 39 (1991): 24–­46 (28). 70. Richard Pinder, Bowells of Compassion towards the Fettered Seed . . . (London: M. W., 1659), and his A Loving Invitation (to Repentance, and Amendment of Life) . . . (London: Robert Wilson, 1660). 71. Between 1658 and 1659, Henry Fell had visited Surinam but noted the hostility of the governor and the difficulty of convincing the people there. See LSF, MS S81, 3, 81, 82, 88; Henry Fell to Margaret Fell, the Downs, July 12, 1658; Barbados, December 1658; Barbados, May 8, 1659; Kenneth L. Carroll, “Early Quakers in Surinam (1658–­1659),” QH 62, no. 2 (Autumn 1973): 83–­89. 72. Sainsbury, CSP, Colonial, America and West Indies: 1661–­1668, 111. 73. For the number of Quakers on Barbados and their social status in the seventeenth century, see Gragg, Quaker Community on Barbados, 38–­39, 58–­74.

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between December 1664 and June 1666 helped increase their numbers in Jamaica, Nevis, and particularly Barbados.74 Other missionaries ventured to the North American colonies and sought to settle meetings.75 Elizabeth Harris, a London Friend, preached in the Chesapeake Bay region in 1655/56 and had notable success in Maryland, where she convinced Charles Bayly, the governor.76 These were not easy times. In November 1656 Henry Fell referred to the imprisonment of Mary Fisher and Ann Austin in Boston and the allegation that they were witches. Their books were burned, they were not allowed visitors, and they were subsequently banished to Barbados.77 Other Quaker missionaries were barred from visiting New England, although in February 1657, Fell noted that in Salem, Massachusetts, the Friends were welcomed and held silent meetings.78 His subsequent visit to Plymouth, Massachusetts, was cut short, as he was forced to stay on board the ship for nearly eleven weeks. Not only did he have to contend with a difficult crew and fellow passengers, but he had to overcome severe seasickness.79 Moreover, missionaries like Fell who crisscrossed the Atlantic and the Caribbean could face abduction by foreign enemies or pirates.80 As shown, the early Quaker missionaries fared little better after they reached mainland America. In 1658, John Rous and Christopher Houlder were imprisoned, while John Copeland had part of his right ear cut off on the instruction of the Boston authorities.81 Yet, in the same year, Thomas Thurston, Josiah Coale, and Thomas Chapman traveled from Virginia to New England, and after one hundred miles they encountered the Susquehanna tribe, who treated them well. They received help to navigate rivers, were provided with food and water, and were offered medical assistance when Thurston fell ill. They were not treated so well when they encountered Dutch settlers on Mantua Creek in West Jersey, where they were imprisoned and then banished. Indeed, Coale observed 74. Acts of the Privy Council . . . Colonial Series, I: 1613–­1680 (London: HMSO, 1908), 388, 393–­94, 402, 414–­15. 75. William Dewsbury, The Mighty Day of the Lord, Is Coming . . . (London: Giles Calvert, 1656), 1–­3. 76. Charles Bayly, A True and Faithful Warning unto the People and Inhabitants of Bristol . . . (London: s.n., 1663), 11–­14; Kenneth L. Carroll, “Elizabeth Harris, the Founder of American Quakerism,” QH 57 (1968): 96–­111. 77. LSF, MS 351, 66; Besse, Sufferings, 2:177–­78. 78. LSF, MS 351, 68. 79. LSF, MS 351, 70. 80. LSF, MS 351, 71. 81. LSF, MS 356, 182.

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that they “found more favor and Christian lik[e] carage amongst them [the Indians] who releeved us in a necessity, then wee did amongst ye Dutch,” and on further meetings with them at Martha’s Vineyard and Plymouth Colony—particularly with Sagamore, chief of the Algonquians—Coale recorded that they were well respected. Sagamore had stated that the Quakers were “honest men and doe noe harme, and this is noe Englishman’s sea nor land, and Quakers shall com[e] here and [be] welcom[e].”82 At the same time as these men were traveling toward New England, there was intensive persecution of Maryland and Massachusetts Quakers until 1661. This included vicious treatment at the hands of magistrates, along with subsequent banishment of itinerant Quaker preachers, the seizure of property of those convinced, and significantly the execution in Boston of four Friends: Marmaduke Stevenson, William Robinson, William Leddra, and Mary Dyer between 1658 and 1659.83 The Puritan authorities (and those of the Dutch-­controlled New Netherlands) believed that the Quakers were undermining their community with their frequent disruption of church services and the purported lack of respect for colonial governance.84 82. LSF, MS 323, 13, an account of the passages of Tho. Thurston, Josiah Cole and Thomas Chapman by land and water, c. 1658. Also see Kenneth L. Carroll, “Quakerism on the Eastern Shore of Virginia,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 74, no. 2 (April 1966): 170–­89, and his “Robert Pleasants on Quakerism: Some Account of the First Settlement of Friends in Virginia,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 86, no. 1 ( January 1978): 3–­16. For other examples of interaction between the Quakers and native peoples, see Stephen W. Angell, “‘Learn of the Heathen’: Quakers and Indians in Southern New England, 1656–­1676,” QH 92, no. 1 (Spring 2003): 1–­21. 83. Rufus Jones, The Quakers in the American Colonies (London: Macmillan, 1911), 63–­89; Kenneth L. Carroll, Quakerism on the Eastern Shore (Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 1970), and his “Persecution and Persecutors of Maryland Quakers, 1658–­1661,” QH 99, no. 1 (Spring 2010): 15–­31; Arthur Worrall, Quakers in the Colonial Northeast (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1980), 11–­15; David W. Jordan, “‘God’s Candle’ within Government: Quakers in Politics in Early Maryland,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 41 (1984): 213–­40; Carla Gardina Pestana, Quakers and Baptists in Colonial Massachusetts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 25–­43, and her “The Quaker Executions as Myth and History,” Journal of American History 80, no. 2 (September 1993): 441–­69; Johan Winsser, “Quieting Mary Dyer: Edward Burrough and Dyer’s Letter to the Massachusetts General Court, October 26, 1659,” QH 105, no. 1 (Spring 2016): 22–­47; Madeleine Ward, “Transformative Faith and the Theological Response of the Quakers to the Boston Executions,” QS 21, no. 1 ( June 2016): 15–­32. 84. For New Amsterdam (New York), see Hugh Barbour et al., Quaker Crosscurrents: Three Hundred Years of Friends in the New York Yearly Meetings (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1995), 7–­12.

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Moreover, they strongly argued that Quaker beliefs were heretical. Meetings were nevertheless established, including locations in southern Maryland and in Salem, Massachusetts,85 but the impact of persecution had a lasting effect. In January 1661 Coale perceived that although persecution had died down, there was “a greate weaknes . . . and greate confusion and distraction” in the Maryland meetings, as they were making ill-­judged decisions concerning the disciplining of the Friends. Coale also recorded that he was going to visit the “remnant” in Virginia before embarking on a missionary visit to Barbados and thereafter New England. With an eye to the future, he provided evidence of the attempt to buy land from the Susquehanna Indians, but in his letter he explained that the toxic political atmosphere after the dismissal of Captain William Fuller, the Puritan governor of Baltimore, was a cause for concern and risked potential conflict between tribes in the area. As such, he felt that this was not the time to undertake such a hazardous venture.86 Other centers of Quaker activity in the northern colonies included Rhode Island, which had a legacy of toleration to different religious practices and provided fertile ground for Quaker missionaries, such as Robert Hodgson and Ann Clayton. When the United Colonies of New England appealed in 1657 to the authorities to help them rid the land of the Quakers, they were disappointed. Moreover, in the following year, Rhode Island reiterated that it would support freedom of conscience in the colony, and over the course of the next fifteen years, the Quakers assumed greater religious and political influence than their numbers would suggest. It also became a “haven” for refugees from Massachusetts, and the migration of the Quakers into the colony helped Rhode Island to become a highly significant Quaker territory.87 From the mid-­1650s, there was also activity in the southern colonies, although there is some ambiguity as to who was the first missionary to visit Virginia. It is possible that Elizabeth Harris would have been there in 1656, for Gerrard Roberts wrote to Fox in July 1657 that an unspecified Quakeress had been “gladly received.”88 Yet Rufus Jones 85. Worrall, Quakers in the Colonial Northeast, 24. 86. LSF, MS 323, 53, Josiah Coale to George Fox, Province of Maryland, January 21, 1661. 87. Worrall, Quakers in the Colonial Northeast, 18–­20. For details of one emigrant family (the Buffums) and their settlement, see Massachusetts Historical Society, MS N-2085 (Buffum Family Papers, 1676–­1824). Also see Allen in chapter 5. 88. LSF, MS 354, 127, Gerrard Roberts to George Fox, July 1657.

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was adamant that this referred to her activities in Maryland rather than Virginia.89 What is more certain is that during 1657, Coale and Thurston, two other English missionaries who had been active in the northern colonies, traveled to Virginia, where they stayed for at least six months. Despite rough treatment, including imprisonment, their missionary work was successful. Like all other Quakers, they were subjected to harsh laws for their failure to adhere to the prevailing religious practices of the colony, and the newly converted faced continual harassment with their refusal to pay tithes. Moreover, fines were imposed on shipmasters if they allowed the Quaker missionaries to disembark.90 The continued presence of the Quakers in the colony certainly provoked the Virginia General Assembly to observe a few years later that the Quakers were in “greate numbers in several parts of this colony” and that they were “an unreasonable and turbulent sort of people.”91 Further punitive measures were taken against Virginian Quakers in the 1660s, including the enactment of the first Conventicle Act and a fine of two hundred pounds of tobacco for unlawful assembly, with banishment imposed after a third offense. This was the fate of George Wilson in 1660. He nonetheless returned the following year but was arrested and imprisoned in Jamestown, where he died (c. 1663) after his leg became infected from the chains he had to wear.92 In June 1663 Governor Berkeley decreed that the “abominate seede of ye Quakers” was not to spread and targeted the large Quaker community in Lower Norfolk County.93 Despite further missionary visits with the intention of establishing meetings,94 only slowly did the Virginian Friends create the organizational structures that were a hallmark of meetings elsewhere.95 89. Jones, Quakers in the American Colonies, 266–­68. See also Carroll, Quakerism on the Eastern Shore, 8–­9; Carroll, “Quakerism on the Eastern Shore,” 170–­71; Also see Carroll, “Persecution and Persecutors of Maryland Quakers,” 15–­17. 90. See Jay Worrall, The Friendly Virginians: America’s First Quakers (Athens, Ga.: Iberian, 1994), 1–­66. 91. Jones, Quakers in the American Colonies, 270–­71; Bliss Forbush, A History of Baltimore Yearly Meeting of Friends (Sandy Spring: Baltimore Yearly Meeting, 1972), 9. 92. Carroll, “Quakerism on the Eastern Shore,” 173. For details of his imprisonment, see Besse, Sufferings, 2:381. 93. Jones, Quakers in the American Colonies, 274. 94. “An Epsitle . . . to Friends in Long Island and Barbados, July 23, 1666,” in Truth Exalted . . . , by John Burnyeat (London: Thomas Northcott, 1691), 254–­57; Jones, Quakers in the American Colonies, 273–­74. 95. The first monthly meeting was established in the early 1670s.

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The European Continent and Beyond

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Quaker missionaries traveling in an easterly direction, unlike those operating in the British Isles and the Americas, soon found themselves operating among peoples of very different traditions. But the northern European seaports and trade centers in the mid-­seventeenth century were focal points for the Friends to proselytize. Ports such as Calais and Amsterdam offered a mixture of different peoples and religions, allowed the spread of ideas and devotional literature, and acted as potential recruitment grounds.96 Early Quaker preachers, particularly William Caton, William Ames, and Benjamin Furly, settled a number of meetings in northern Europe, but many were rather short-­lived, and most had disappeared from the religious landscape by the first quarter of the eighteenth century. Although the records of these achievements are largely confined to correspondence and contemporary printed literature, retrospective accounts related their activities.97 Missionary Friends visited Holland as early as 1654 and sought converts among the Mennonites and Rijnsburger Collegiants (an association of Arminians and Anabaptists founded in 1617).98 The Collegiants, who saw similarities in their theological beliefs, initially welcomed them. In 1655 and 1656, Caton, Ames, and John Stubbs traveled widely in Holland and established a meeting at Amsterdam, but they were subjected to violent assaults99 and later imprisoned on a ship, where the crew abused

96. William I. Hull, The Rise of Quakerism in Amsterdam, 1655–­1665 (Swarthmore, Pa.: Swarthmore College, 1938), 5–­16. Also see Sünne Juterczenka, “Von Amsterdam bis Danzig. Kommunikative Netze der europäischen Quäkermission im 17. und frühen 18, Jahrhundert,” in Atlantic Understandings: Essays on European and American History in Honor of Hermann Wellenreuther, ed. C. Schnurmann and H. Lermann (Hamburg: Lit Verlag, 2006), 139–­57; “Crossing Borders and Negotiating Boundaries: The Seventeenth-­Century European Missions and Persecution,” QS 21 (2007): 39–53, and her wider study, Über Gott und die Welt: Endzeitvisionen, Reformdebatten und die europäische in der Frühen Neuzeit (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2008). 97. Henry J. Cadbury, “First Settlement of Meetings in Europe,” JFHS 41, no. 1 (1952): 11–­12 (11). 98. Andrew Cooper Fix, Prophecy and Reason: The Dutch Collegiants in the Early Enlightenment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014), 154. William Hull believed that there was ambiguity about the date of the first series of missionary visits. See Hull, Rise of Quakerism in Amsterdam 17, 200–­201. 99. Caton, Journal, 20–­21; LAF, MS 323, 12, the account by John Stubbs . . . in Holland, c. 1655; Cadbury, “First Settlement,” 11; Claus Bernet, “Quaker Missionaries in Holland and North Germany in the Late Seventeenth Century: Ames, Caton, and Furly,” QH 95, no. 2 (Fall 2006): 1, 3. Also see LSF, MS 323, 3, William Ames to Margaret Fell,

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them.100 As Caton explained, the Quakers needed a reliable interpreter, as they were regularly misinterpreted.101 In contrast, Ames’s increasing ability to speak Dutch proved to be invaluable, as he convinced some of the Mennonites, and others wanted additional missionaries to visit them.102 In 1657, Ames and Caton conducted further missionary visits throughout Holland and into Germany. Caton acknowledged that the civic and religious authorities in both Amsterdam and Utrecht were increasingly hostile to proselytizing. Seemingly, there were disruptive elements in the Quaker community, possibly because of the Nayler affair. Female preachers had been present in Amsterdam from 1655 onward, notably Jane Wilkinson and later Hester Biddle and Elizabeth Cox, with Ann Gargill, who had been disowned by the London Friends prior to going to Holland.103 The latter three women (and possibly Wilkinson) were troublemakers in the Amsterdam meetings.104 Significantly, Caton was instrumental in procuring books for the Dutch Friends, which he hoped would strengthen their knowledge of Quakerism, and also condemned Gargill’s “evill projects.”105 The initial hospitable reception the Friends received in Amsterdam turned sour over time. In April 1657 the Dutch Reformed Consistory complained to the mayor that the Friends were an unwholesome presence and were causing religious tensions. As Ames observed, “The beast rageth much hear,” and many “filthy pamphlets and bookes toe darken the truth” were published.106 Consequently, the Friends countered this by distributing translated copies

Bristol, September 2, 1656, where Ames described his experiences at Rotterdam and the threat of violence as he was suspected of being a Jesuit. 100. LSF, MS S81 3, 3, William Caton to Margaret Fell, Hull, November 9, 1656. 101. Caton, Journal, 23–­25. 102. These included the parents of William Sewel, Jan Willemszoon, and Judith Zinspenning. In a letter to Fox, Ames explained the relative importance of using the vernacular language. See LSF, MS 323, 3, and compare with LSF, MS S81 3, 10, William Caton to Margaret Fell, Amsterdam, September 26, 1656, where Caton informed her that “I suffer for want of an interpreter.” 103. Phyllis Mack, Visionary Women: Ecstatic Prophecy in Seventeenth-Century England (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 202. 104. Caton, Journal, 43–­44; LSF, MS S81 3, 14, William Caton to Margaret Fell, Amsterdam, April 19, 1657; LSF, MS 355, 28, William Ames to Margaret Fell, Utrecht, April 17, 1657; LSF, MS 323, 55, George Rofe to George Fox, near Amsterdam, June 23, 1659; LSF, MS S81 3, 21, William Caton to Margaret Fell, Amsterdam, November 13, 1657; Hull, Rise of Quakerism in Amsterdam, 201n390, 273–­84. 105. LSF, MS S81 3, 14, 172, William Caton to Margaret Fell, Leiden, March 15, 1658. 106. LSF, MS 355, 28.

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of Quaker texts.107 Along with Humble Thatcher, a preacher and interpreter, Ames was brought before the magistrates, but the charges against both men were dropped. Nevertheless, they were told to leave the city within twenty-­four hours. After they refused, both men were imprisoned before being forcibly removed from the city two days later and told not to return or face further punishment.108 Not surprisingly, Ames did not accept such restrictions, returned within the year, and faced opposition in southern Holland, where he was abused and eventually sent to a House of Correction in Rotterdam.109 Caton was allowed to remain in Amsterdam, where he debated with the Portuguese Jews and wrote several books.110 Between 1657 and 1666, missionary Friends regularly visited small gatherings throughout Holland, Denmark, northern Germany, Bohemia, and Poland.111 Caton returned to Holland in 1659 and observed that the Friends in Rotterdam had grown “bold and valiant” and held well-­ordered meetings.112 Yet the religious tensions increased.113 He recorded that in Amsterdam, there was “no public toleration,” while former moderate Collegiants were critical of the Quakers in the early 1660s, as evidenced in the large number of pamphlets that were published.114 Caton’s own credibility was 107. LSF, MS S81 3, 17, 18, William Caton to Margaret Fell, Amsterdam, June 26, 1657, July 30, 1657. 108. LSF, MS S81 3, 14. 109. Hull, Rise of Quakerism in Amsterdam, 46–­55, and his Benjamin Furly and Quakerism in Rotterdam (Swarthmore, Pa.: Swarthmore College, 1941), 207–­12. 110. These included The Moderate Enquirer  .  .  . (London: Thomas Simmons, 1658), which he wrote in Zeeland. For his experiences of engaging with the Jewish community in Holland, particularly in Rotterdam, see LSF, MS S81 3, 11, William Caton to Margaret Fell, Rotterdam, October 20, 1656; Caton’s Journal, 46–­47; LSF, MS S81 3, 14, William Caton to Margaret Fell, Schiedam, June 5, 1657; LSF, MS 355, 28; R. H. Popkin, “Spinoza’s Relations with the Quakers in Amsterdam,” QH 73, no. 1 (1984): 14–­28. William Ames had similarly attempted to convert the Jews, and by 1658, he had translated A Visitation to the Jewes . . . (London: Giles Calvert, 1656) into Dutch and sought to have it translated into Hebrew. See LSF, MS S81 3, 172; LSF, MS 323, 6, William Ames to George Fox, Friesland, April 14, 1658. 111. LSF, MS S81 3, 23, William Caton to Margaret Fell, Amsterdam, January 15, 1658, which refers to John Hall’s work in Copenhagen; LSF, MS 323, 4, William Ames to Margaret Fell, Amstelveen, near Amsterdam, August  13, 1658; LSF, MS 323, 5, William Ames to William Caton, near Amsterdam, July 22, 1658; LSF, MS 356, 195, William Ames to George Fox, Kriegsheim, February 14, 1661. 112. Caton, Journal, 52–­53. 113. See LSF, MS 323, 5. 114. LSF, MS S81 3, 172; Hull, Rise of Quakerism in Amsterdam, 233–­66; Caton, Journal, 66.

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enhanced by his willingness to speak Dutch. He remained in Holland for some time and traveled to numerous towns and cities. His linguistic dexterity, being well versed in the classical languages as well as Dutch, was certainly central to his ability to debate with European scholars and theologians.115 The close relationship between these pioneers and the host peoples was not just centered on the ability of the missionary to preach and convert. As young men and women, they naturally might be attracted to those they were working closely with. Clearly, Caton had formed an attachment to Niesje Derricks (Derrix) of Amsterdam in the late 1650s / early 1660s, but this was cut short by her premature death in 1661. Grieving, Caton wrote that she had been “a dear extraordinary and special Friend of mine” and that his “heart was very much saddened, and broken within me, and indeed it was more than I could well bear.” Her sister, Annekin, who Caton then fell in love with, took up her place as confidant and fellow missionary. He explained the emotional turmoil he went through as he sought “to expel all such Cogitations out of my mind, yet behold, by how much the more I seem to extinguish the appearance of such a thing, by so much the more did it prevail in me . . . Thus did the thing for a pretty long time remain very fresh in me . . . and an abundance of Objections came in my mind.” He kept these private thoughts to himself for many months before seeking approval from the Dutch Friends. After their approval, he sought the approbation of Annekin, explaining that he had limited wealth, would continue his missionary work, and might suffer at the hands of magistrates and even her own relations. Despite these reservations, she accepted him, and they were married in October 1662. The period after his marriage was complex, as he departed for England before briefly returning to Holland. On a subsequent visit to England, he was arrested and imprisoned between October 1663 and April 1664. After his release, Caton resumed his mission in Holland, occasionally with his wife supporting him before they succumbed to the hardships of their missionary lives. The incessant missionary work, threats and abuse, imprisonment, and general fatigue naturally took its toll on these early Friends. Ames had died a few years earlier in 1662.116

115. LSF, MS S81 3, 19, William Caton to Margaret Fell, Schiedam, September 11, 1657, where he noted that he had a “very good interpreter” in Humble Thatcher but had also learned to speak some Dutch. 116. Caton, Journal, 71–83. Also see George Fox’s testimony concerning William Caton, August 4, 1688, in Caton, preface. See Caton, 76.

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The leniency of the authorities in Amsterdam toward sectaries at this time provided the Friends with opportunities to proselytize and convert. Caton observed just before he died in December 1665 that the various sectaries in Amsterdam could now “goe in peace, & return in peace.” Significantly, he noted that these religious groups “injoy their meetings in peace. And all are kept in peace in ye Citie, and that wthout any trouble to the Rulers of ye Citie . . . & are much more at peace & quietnes than the magistrates in England, who first are troubled with making of ye Lawes to take away Lybertie of Conscience, & then more than a Little wth executing these Lawes . . . I doe not perceive that ye rullers here doe trouble themselves wth such matters, though it may soon be otherwise.”117 Elsewhere in their correspondence and journals, these itinerant preachers present evidence of additional activities in northern and central Europe. In Germany, Ames and George Rofe visited Kriegsheim in the Palatinate in 1657,118 and although they worked tirelessly to secure support for their efforts, they were initially able to convince only a few people. Here they were routinely attacked and subjected to “scoffing, cursing, reviling, throwing Stones and Dirt at them, and breaking their Windows.”119 Furthermore, until Charles Louis, the Elector Palatine, allowed the Friends to preach, the local population were informed that if they harbored any Quakers, they would be fined. However, the prince warmly welcomed their outspokenness, particularly against “drunkards, whoremongers and swearers.”120 Greater success was had among Dutch settlers on the Rhineland, who would later relocate to Pennsylvania.121 There is a record of the Friends’ meetings in Hamburg from 1659, and in 1661, Caton and Ames, with Peter Hendrickz, a Dutch Quaker, were again in Germany.122 This was not just an opportunity to provide support for the small Quaker groups; it was the means to influence the authorities. 117. LSF, MS 352 (Swarthmore MSS, vol. 1, part 2), 333, William Caton to Margaret Fell, Amsterdam, October 19–20, 1665. 118. See LSF, MS S81 3, 17. 119. Besse, Sufferings, 2:450–­51. 120. LSF, MS S81 3, 20, William Caton to Margaret Fell, Amsterdam, October  30, 1657. 121. William I. Hull, William Penn and the Dutch Quaker Migration to Pennsylvania (Swarthmore, Pa.: Swarthmore College, 1935), 178–­392. 122. Caton, Journal, 63; LSF, MS 356, 195; LSF, MS 323, 2, William Ames and William Caton to Margaret Fell, Frankfurt, April 18, 1661. For details of the impact of Hendrickz, see his The Backslider Bewailed, the Careless Warned: And the Faithful Encouraged . . . (London: s.n., 1665). Caton translated this work.

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Indeed, they had several audiences with the Elector Palatine at Heidelberg and other leading dignitaries en route and were able to persuade them that the English Quakers were not rebellious or involved in any plot against Charles II. Ames felt confident enough to expose “the wickednes of the priests, the falsenes of [their] doctrine, the unjustnes of tithes and the suffering of my Friends.” In what seems to have been a friendly discussion, the elector questioned the Quaker about the valuable role of priests in state management, but Ames explained that he felt they were “destructive to good government.” The cordiality of the meeting was such that the elector provided an escort for Ames and invited him to return.123 Caton made further travels in Germany, disputing with both Jews and Catholics,124 while in 1661 Ames and Jan Hendrickz preached in parts of Bohemia, Danzig, and other towns and cities in Poland.125 Nevertheless, rumors of Quaker involvement in plots against Charles II had circulated, and in Bohemia, Ames faced a hostile audience. Again in Poland there was opposition, particularly from the Baptists, who Ames suggested were “a very wicked people,” while he equated the Poles with the Irish as immoral, as they allegedly lived “in all wickedness and especially drunkenness, adultery and murder.” The level of animosity had increased when Ames and Hendrickz returned to Danzig. Various Dutch translations of Quaker texts and correspondence between the Friends had made the magistrates suspicious of their intentions. The magistrates nevertheless returned their letters but initially refused to give back the books, as they were fearful that they would be used for propaganda.126 Despite such setbacks, the Friends continued to have a presence in central and northern Europe throughout the remainder of the 1660s and into the 1670s.127 Quaker missionaries also ventured farther afield. In the spring of 1658, Elizabeth Cowart and Elizabeth Harris secured passage to Venice, where they paraded, presumably among bemused onlookers, in sackcloth and ashes.128 In a letter from John Stubbs to Ames (c. 1658), it is clear that other 123. LSF, MS 323, 2; LSF, MS 323, 7, William Ames to George Fox, Amsterdam, September 3, 1661. Also see LSF, MS 323, 55. 124. LSF, MS 356, 195; Caton, Journal, 64–­70. Also see Hull, William Penn and the Dutch Quaker Migration, 260–­78. 125. LSF, MS 323, 8, William Ames to George Fox, Danzig, June 1, 1661. 126. LSF, MS 323, 7. 127. Cadbury, “First Settlement,” 12; Allen in chapter 5. 128. LSF, MS 351, 71, Henry Fell to Margaret Fell, London, November 3, 1657; George Fox, An Answer to a Paper . . . from the Papist Lately out of Holland . . . (London:

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Friends had already visited the city and other parts of Italy, particularly Rome, where John Perrot and John Luffe, who planned to visit the pope, were facing the Inquisition. Luffe disappeared, and Perrot ultimately returned to England after a long imprisonment.129 A similar fate befell Katherine Evans and Sarah Cheevers in 1659, as they were imprisoned in Malta for twenty months and interrogated by the Inquisition.130 Such hostility intensified after George Fox wrote to Pope Alexander VII in 1661 condemning Catholic practices as keeping people in ignorance.131 Not content on visiting distant areas of Catholic influence, missionaries—­notably Perrot, Luffe, Mary Fisher, and several other Friends—­labored in the Aegean and sought to preach in Alexandria, Constantinople, and Jerusalem.132 Mary Fisher even obtained an audience with Sultan Mehmed IV, who received her kindly.133 The impact of these missionary Friends in the Islamic world can be gauged in various ways, particularly in the writings of these missionaries. Indeed, early modern Quakers “developed a relationship and dialogue with Islam, unique among Christians of the time.” Their ability to accept difference rather than judge Muslims/“Turks” as “other” gave them an opportunity to develop a closer relationship, as indicated in their published works and correspondence.134 As has been pointed out, these missionaries believed that Muslims could be “friends and share in a brotherhood of humanity,” while

Thomas Simmons, 1658), 17. 129. LSF, MS 323, 5; J. P., A Narrative . . . in the City of Rome (London: Thomas Simmons, 1661). Also see Henry J. Cadbury, “Friends and the Inquisition of Venice, 1658,” JFHS 52, no. 1 (1968): 39–­45; Kenneth L. Carroll, “Quakers in Venice, 1657–­1658,” QH 92, no. 1 (Spring 2003): 22–­33; Stefano Villani, Tremolanti e Papisti: Missioni Quacchero nell’Italia del Seicento (Rome: Edizione di Storia e Letteratura, 1996), 61–­62. 130. LSF, MS 351, 184, Henry Fell to Gerrard Roberts and George Fox, Alligant Road, June 18, 1661. Also see Stefano Villani, ed., A True Account of the Great Tryals and Cruel Sufferings Undergone by Those Two Faithful Servants of God, Katherine Evans and Sarah Cheevers / La vicenda di duo quacchere prigioniere dell’inquisizione di Malta (Pisa: Scuola Normale Superiore, 2003). 131. LSF, MS 351, 143, George Fox “to the pope & papesh,” 1661. 132. Carroll, “Quakers in Venice,” 25, 27. For Alexandria, see Caton, Journal, 70. 133. LSF, MS 320 (Caton MSS, vol. 1), 1 (164), Mary Fisher to Thomas Killam et al., March 13, 1659; David Thomas and John Chesworth et al., eds., Christian-­Muslim Relations, a Bibliographical History, vol. 8, Northern and Eastern Europe (1600–­1700) (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 373. 134. For example, John Perrot, A Visitation of Love  .  .  . of the Turk  .  .  . (London: Thomas Simmons, 1658).

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the Muslim belief system could be used as a counterpoint “to shame Christians for failing to live up to their claims of moral superiority.”135

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Before the end of this transitional period, the Quaker expansion within the British Isles was complete. The desire to proselytize and settle Quaker communities beyond England had certainly been successful, with numerous missionary Friends either establishing or helping to reinforce small groups in remoter parts of the British Isles, in the various colonies of the Caribbean and North America, and in northern Europe and beyond. In doing so, they challenged orthodox religious practices and the traditional social order. Their actions and provocative behavior naturally brought them into conflict with the authorities, both civil and religious, and persecution was subsequently a regular feature of their missionary work. Their attempt to transform the religious landscape nevertheless met with success, as a significant number of those meetings settled by the mid-­1660s continued to exist for much of the seventeenth century and beyond. These achievements were strengthened by the strong leadership shown by these early missionaries to frustrate their opponents and prevent internal threats, with the assistance of numerous tracts to disseminate their beliefs. What is clear is that these interlocking features of early Quakerism would continue to be much sought after in the years beyond 1666.136

135. David Vslablom, “Islam in Early Modern Quaker Experience in Writing,” QH 100, no. 1 (Spring 2011): 1–­21 (15). 136. See Allen in chapter 5.

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C ha p t e r 3

Gospel Order The Development of Quaker Organization Rosemary Moore

George Fox was released from Scarborough Castle on September 1, 1666, the day before the Great Fire of London broke out. After the fire, plague, persecution, and divisions caused by the Perrot affair (concerning men wearing hats during prayer), the movement was in need of strong leadership, and Thomas Ellwood, one of many attracted by John Perrot, recalled attending a great meeting held in London for the reuniting of the movement.1 During the years following, Fox used his authority to form the Quaker movement into a strong interlocking structure, resistant to both dissidence and persecution. Quaker organization developed differently from that of other dissenting bodies. Although there were other Quaker leaders besides Fox, notably Margaret Fell and James Nayler, it was Fox who provided inspiration and vision when it was needed.2 Presbyterians, Independents, and Baptists had 1. H. Larry Ingle, First among Friends: George Fox and the Creation of Quakerism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 222–­23; Thomas Ellwood, The History of the Life of Thomas Ellwood (1st ed., London: J. Sowle, 1714; new ed., ed. Rosemary Moore [Walnut Creek, Calif.: Altamira (International Sacred Literature Trust), 2004]), 147; Braithwaite, SPQ, 255n2. 2. Moore, Light, 22–­25, 30–­35.

no such single outstanding leader. Independents and Baptists were congregational in organization, their churches developing from local initiatives and based on their interpretation of the Bible. They had regional links and some national gatherings but did not develop central organizations as did the Quakers.3 Quakerism was a unitary body from its very early days—first because of the national mission based in Swarthmoor and second because it soon became obvious that a spirit-­based church needed some agreed-­upon means of distinguishing between true and false leadings if the movement was not to disintegrate. In the early 1660s, the organization was not fully developed. Some areas, especially in the north, did have regular meetings for business, but many did not. Business meetings lacked the authority to enforce the discipline envisaged by the “Testimony of the Brethren,” the paper issued by the leading Friends during the summer of 1666 before Fox’s release.4 For the next developments, inquirers must rely on Fox’s journal together with scattered information in records of local meetings. Fox began with London. A twice-­weekly meeting of men Friends had existed since 1655 or 1656, followed a year or two later by a women’s meeting, but the men’s meeting was no longer adequate, and five monthly meetings were set up, covering the whole London area.5 It was generally the custom for both men and women to attend these meetings.6 Fox then proceeded to set up a similar

3. The chief Independent statement on church government is the Savoy Declaration of 1658. For Baptists, see B. R. White, English Baptists of the Seventeenth Century (Didcot: Baptist Historical Society, 1996); Raymond Brown, English Baptists of the Eighteenth Century (Didcot: Baptist Historical Society, 1986), 14–­45; Raymond Brown, “‘Relating and Resourcing’ in Difficult Times: A Historical Perspective,” in Challenging to Change: Dialogues with a Radical Baptist Theologian. Essays Presented to Dr Nigel G. Wright on His Sixtieth Birthday, ed. Pieter J. Lalleman (London: Spurgeon’s College, 2009), 20–­24. Also see Caroline L. Leachman, “From an ‘Unruly Sect’ to a Society of ‘Strict Unity’: The Development of Quakerism in England c. 1650–­1689” (PhD diss., University College London, 1997), 204–­24. 4. See Moore in chapter 1; and Braithwaite, BQ, 325–39, for organization before 1666. 5. Fox, Journal (ed. Smith), 370. This passage also mentions a London quarterly meeting whose early history is not easy to establish. See William Beck and T. Frederick Ball, The London Friends Meetings (London: F. Bowyer Kitto, 1869), repr. with introduction, illustrations, and index by Simon Dixon and Peter Daniels (London: Pronoun Press, 2009), 70–­71. 6. Beck and Ball, London Friends Meetings 252, 353–­54, 386; Irene L. Edwards, “The Women Friends of London: The Two Weeks and Box Meetings,” JFHS 47, no. 1 (1955): 3–­21.

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system throughout the country, with the exception that the new meetings were normally for men only. The journal tells how Fox spent most of 1667 and 1668 traveling throughout England, Wales, and Ireland, setting up monthly meetings and sending written instructions where he could not visit personally. He wrote later that he settled the men’s monthly meetings in “the joyful order of the joyful gospel: the comfortable order of the comfortable gospel: and the everlasting order of the everlasting gospel: the power of God which will last for ever and outlast all the orders of the Devil and that which is of men or by men.”7 Doubtless this reflects the words he used in the meetings when the monthly meetings were “settled.” Monthly meetings were part of the “gospel order,” integral to the eternal purposes of God. One of the duties of these meetings was to keep proper minutes, and some of the early minutes have survived.8 Fox started from the existing county meetings set up in 1657, which were already beginning to be called quarterly meetings, when they were held quarterly, but were also known as general meetings. Fox used this network as the foundation of his new order. A decision would be made as to how the county could be divided into convenient monthly meeting areas. A list would be drawn up of men, “as are judged meete to keep the mens meetings . . . upon the account of the poor and affaires of the church,” chosen from the whole county and divided into monthly meeting sections.9 New books for keeping minutes were purchased, but in some cases, it is clear from the first minutes that there was continuing business and that previously existing monthly meetings had been reconstituted.10 Sometimes the divisions were revised after a few years if they proved 7. Fox, Journal (ed. Smith), 383, 387–­88. Compare Fox’s Epistle 316, written Swarthmoor December 1675 (Fox, Works, 8:76), which has similar language. 8. The minutes of the British Quaker meetings, apart from those of London, are held in county record offices. Some typed transcripts and photocopies are available in the LSF Meeting Records. Some records have been researched in connection with local histories, and others have been newly checked by volunteers acknowledged at the beginning of this collection. 9. Stephen C. Morland, ed., The Somersetshire Quarterly Meeting of the Society of Friends, 1668–­1699 (Yeovil: Somerset Record Society, 1978), 55. 10. This seems to have been the case in Somerset, Bristol, Plymouth, and Gainsborough. See Morland, Somersetshire Quarterly Meeting, 54–­57; Russell Mortimer, ed., Minute Book of the Men’s Meeting of the Society of Friends in Bristol, 1667–­1686 (Bristol: Bristol Record Society, 1971), 1; LSF, Meeting Records, 3.b.4 and 3.b.2, anonymous typed transcripts, initial minutes of the North Somerset and South Somerset Monthly Meetings; PWDRO, 1444/4/1, first minute of Plymouth Men’s Monthly Meeting; Harold W.

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inconvenient.11 At other times, the three-­month interval between quarterly meetings was found to be too long, so Lancashire Quarterly Meeting had a six-­weekly meeting for “sufferings” business, and Somerset Quarterly Meeting appointed eighteen men, six from each monthly meeting, “to attend the service of Truth between quarterly meetings.”12 To begin with, there was no clear division between the functions of the quarterly and monthly meetings, but a pattern emerged. Quarterly meetings corresponded with London, delivered collections, and passed to monthly and thence to the local “particular” meetings any letters and instructions. Disciplinary matters were dealt with in the first instance by monthly meetings, but difficult cases, where delinquents refused to abide by the monthly meetings’ instructions, were referred to quarterly meetings. Marriage inquiries, by which those wishing to marry were checked for previous engagements or responsibilities, were handled by monthly meetings, which also generally dealt with poor relief and sometimes the apprenticing of orphans or poor children. If a good deal of expense was involved, quarterly meetings would arrange apprenticeships. Some meetings regularly disbursed considerable sums.13 Fox did not leave these new meetings to manage on their own. He sent them quantities of advice, some printed in his collected epistles, some only known from papers painstakingly copied into monthly and quarterly meeting minute books. Probably the most important was a paper usually known by its introductory words: “Friends fellowship must be in the Spirit.”14 Copies are found in a number of early minute books. It contains nineteen points, covering most of the duties of Quaker business meetings. This paper was printed not by the Friends at the time but by someone with no love for the Quakers, who acquired a copy and published it, with a strongly Brace, ed., The First Minute Book of the Gainsborough Monthly Meeting of the Society of Friends, 1669–­1719 (Lincoln: Lincoln Record Society, 38 [1948], 40 [1949], 44 [1951]), preliminary typed note in LSF copy. 11. Examples from DHC, NQ1/D1, note at the beginning of the Bridport Monthly Meeting minute book, 1690–­1783; Patricia May Griffith, “Early Quakers in Cornwall, 1656–­1750” (PhD diss., University of Exeter, 2008), 93–­94; PWDRO, 1176/5, varying lists of meetings in the Devonshire Quarterly Meeting minutes around 1676. 12. LA, FRL 1/1/22/5, Letter from Thomas Camm and James Fell, February 3, 1691; LSF, Meeting Records, 3.b.4, North Somerset Monthly Meeting minutes, October 29, 1686. 13. For example, LSF, Meeting Records, 3.b.4, North Somerset minutes, examples on September 29, 1674, and July 30, 1675. 14. Most conveniently accessed in Beck and Ball, London Friends Meetings, 47–­52.

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critical introduction, as Canons and Institutions Drawn Up as Agreed by the General Assembly or Meeting of the Heads of the Quakers from All Parts of the Kingdom, at Their New Theatre in Gracechurch Street, in or about January Last, George Fox Being Their President.15 This would most likely be the national Meeting of Ministers, which took place from December 1668 to January 1669.16 Supporters of Fox replied with a pamphlet titled The Innocent Assemblies of the People of God Called Quakers. What is lacking from Fox’s instructions is any guidance on the actual conduct of meetings. Edward Burrough had given advice in 1663 that the Friends’ meetings should be held “not in the way of the world . . . by hot contests, by seeking to outspeak and over-­reach one another in discourse, as if it were controversy between party and party of men . . . not deciding affairs by the greater vote, or the number of men . . . But in the wisdom, love and fellowship of God, in gravity, patience, meekness, in unity and concord, submitting one to another in lowliness of heart . . . to determine of things by a general mutual concord.”17 This process did not always work as it should have. One experienced but cantankerous Friend lamented that the Friends did not have a chairman as other bodies did and thus put an end to twenty or thirty speaking at once, with the loudest voice prevailing.18 In one difficult case, the Bristol Men’s Meeting, following Acts 1:23–­26, drew lots to decide on the site of a new meeting house and the people who were to build it.19 But there were already indications that the value of a gifted Friend, who could put into words what came to be called “the feeling of the meeting,” was being recognized. It was

15. Published anonymously 1669, sometimes cataloged under Fox, but the work of either Nathaniel Smith or Randolph Yearwood. See Braithwaite, SPQ, 673, for supposed printing of the Canons by the Friends. 16. Braithwaite, 276. 17. LSF, MS 344 ( John Penington MS 4), 29–­34, and printed in A. R. Barclay, ed., Letters of Early Friends (London: Harvey and Darton, 1841), 287–­310. For the Quakers on voting, see also George Fox the Younger, A Few Plain Words (London: Thomas Simmons, 1659), 1–­3. For other dissenting procedure, see E. B. Underhill, ed., The Records of the Churches of Christ gathered at Fenstanton, Warboys and Hexham (London: Hanserd Knollys Society, 1854); R. B. Wordsworth, ed., The Cockermouth Congregational Church (Kendal: Titus Wilson, 2012). 18. Harold Fassnidge, The Quakers of Melksham (Trowbridge: Bradford on Avon Friends, 1992), 55. 19. Mortimer, Bristol Minutes, 25 (November 2, 1669).

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observed that Thomas Ellwood had “a peculiar gift for government in the church, and ordering things in Monthly and Quarterly Meetings.”20 London, because of its size, needed further attention.21 In 1671, Fox set up the Six Weeks Meeting, composed of “grave and antient” Friends—­solid, well-­established Quakers chosen from all meetings in the London area—­to attend to matters of common interest and act as a final court of appeal. The Six Weeks Meeting included both men and women, forty-­nine men and thirty-­five women.22 At the same time, the national organization was developing. The Quaker center at the Bull and Mouth Inn had been lost in the Great Fire, but fortunately rooms in a large empty mansion called Devonshire House became available. Quakers later purchased the freehold of the whole site, and it served as their headquarters until the opening of Friends House in Euston Road in 1926.23 During the 1650s, there had been several national meetings of the Friends in the traveling ministry, but these had ceased during the main persecution.24 The meeting held over Christmas 1668 arranged for a national collection for overseas work and book production and appointed a further meeting for Easter 1670.25 There had been collections since the early days, but after they were transferred from Swarthmoor to London in 1657, no details survive as to their management. But now a group of “keepers” were appointed. Three of them were Amor Stoddard, who had been managing the Friends’ printing since early 1653; Gerrard Roberts, whose house had been the administrative center after the move from Swarthmoor; and John Bolton, an established Quaker who, as a goldsmith, may have been expert in financial management. It looks as if existing arrangements were being formalized. Thereafter a national meeting was held every year, and in 1671 it was decided that this should be made up of representatives from the counties to 20. Joseph Wyeth’s supplement to first edition of Ellwood’s History, and cited in Moore’s edition, 208; Michael J. Sheeran, Beyond Majority Rule (Philadelphia: Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, 1996), 19–­43. 21. Beck and Ball, London Friends Meetings, 88; Fox, Journal (ed. Smith), 370. 22. Beck and Ball, London Friends Meetings, 91–­102. 23. John Punshon, Portrait in Grey: A Short History of the Quakers (London: Quaker Home Service, 1984; 2nd ed., London: Quaker Books, 2006), 243–­44; Beck and Ball, London Friends Meetings, 142–­43, 167–­70. 24. Moore, Light, 28–­29, 138, 141; Braithwaite, BQ, 177, 325–­39. 25. Reproduced in Barclay, Letters of Early Friends, 324.

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meet annually in Whitsun week, normally late May or early June, “to advise about the managing of the public affairs of Friends throughout the nation.” A minute of Plymouth Monthly Meeting of March 1676 explains how such decisions were implemented locally: “It is agreed upon by friends of this County meeteing that upon notise given by our friends at London that some one friend out of this County be there present at a meeteing appoynted by them to Consider of things Relating to the service of truth . . . & wee shall bee Assisting with them in bareing the Charge of that Friend to his Jorney.”26 The nascent “Yearly Meeting” was not the only national organization founded around this time. The production of a constant stream of publications had been a feature of Quakerism from its very early days, and monitoring and editing these pamphlets had always been a problem.27 It had been hoped that Fox would review what was to be published, but this was impractical, and most of the time, publications seem to have been managed between the “clerk to Friends,” Ellis Hookes, and the London Men’s Meeting.28 The 1666 Testimony of the Brethren had made a point of insisting that only properly approved books should be published under the Friends’ auspices, but the mechanism to ensure that this happened was lacking. During Fox’s absence in America, the yearly meeting of 1672 appointed a small group, the Committee of Ten, as an interim measure to oversee publications, and after Fox’s return, the “Second Day’s Morning Meeting” was set up, with the twin duties of monitoring proposed publications and overseeing the provision of ministry in the London area.29 As a weekly meeting of powerful male Quakers, the “Morning Meeting” became very influential in the governance of British Quakerism, and its sphere of activity was soon extended.30 Previously, when there had been a need for a national Quaker body to take action, London men Friends had taken the initiative, but now this function fell to the Morning Meeting.31 George Whitehead was prominent in its activities, as was the new adherent William Penn. 26. PWDRO, 1444/4/1. 27. Kate Peters, Print Culture and the Early Quakers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 28. Thomas O’Malley, “Press and Quakerism 1653–­1659,” JFHS 54 (1979): 169–­84; Moore, Light, 26, 65, 187. 29. Braithwaite, SPQ, 279–­80, with references to evidence for early practice. 30. The Morning Meeting was involved in the arrangements for setting up the Meeting for Sufferings and appointed a delegation to meet with the Wilkinson-­Story dissidents. See LSF, SDMM, I (7–­8, May 31, June 14, and October 18, 1675). 31. Replies to anti-­Quaker pamphlets were first issued by “Quakers” in 1655.

The Quakers, 1656–­1723

Arguably the most influential Quaker of all time, even including Fox, Penn (1644–­1718) was the son of Sir William Penn, one of Oliver Cromwell’s admirals who had assisted in the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 and was in high favor at the Restoration court.32 Young Penn went to Oxford University at sixteen but was required to leave in his second year, apparently for dissenting tendencies, although the exact circumstances are not clear. Penn’s father was extremely angry and sent him off to France. He ended up at the Protestant Academy at Saumur, then a center of both Protestant and Catholic learning, where he came under the influence of the French Protestant theologian Moses Amyraut. Penn’s belief in and advocacy of religious toleration may date from this time.33 After returning to England, he spent a short period studying law in London, and then in 1666 his father sent him to Ireland to manage the family estates. There he became involved with the Quakers and was imprisoned for attending a Quaker meeting. His father ordered him home but failed to persuade him to change his ways. Before the end of 1667, he was an established Quaker activist, and in 1672 he married Isaac Penington’s stepdaughter, Gulielma Springett. Being an effective speaker and quick thinker, he was often employed in controversies and debates. The final part of the national organization, the Meeting for Sufferings, was set up in 1676 and differed from other Quaker institutions in that it did not evolve from earlier structures and was not directly inspired by Fox. Since 1657, the county organizations, now quarterly meetings, had been entrusted with collecting details of local persecution (“sufferings”) of the Friends and sending them to London, where they were collated by Hookes for possible use in publicity or appeals to civil authorities. This system did not always work efficiently. The matter was discussed at the yearly meeting 32. There is no good modern biography of Penn. Mary K. Geiter, “Penn, William (1644–­1718),” http://​www​.oxforddnb​.com​/v​ iew​/a​ rticle​/2​ 1857 (accessed November 10, 2015), is a good summary. Also see Melvin B. Endy, William Penn and Early Quakerism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973), 93–­109; Richard S. Dunn and Mary M. Dunn, eds., The World of William Penn (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986); Hugh S. Barbour, William Penn on Religion and Ethics: The Emergence of Liberal Quakerism, 2 vols. (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 1991). 33. Stephen W. Angell, “William Penn’s Debts to John Owen and Moses Amyraut on Questions of Truth, Grace and Religious Toleration,” QS 16, no. 2 (2012): 157–­73. Also see other articles in this special issue on William Penn, including J. William Frost, “William Penn: Quaker Humanist,” 174–­89, and Kenneth R. Morris, “Theological Sources of William Penn’s Concept of Religious Toleration,” 190–­212.

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of 1675, and it was agreed to hold a special conference in October to consider improvements. This conference recommended setting up a permanent body representing quarterly meetings, where the persecution of the Quakers would be considered and action taken. The yearly meeting of 1676 accepted this recommendation, and this body, which became known as the Meeting for Sufferings, first met in September 1676.34 It included representatives not only from Britain but also from America. It was clearly impracticable for representatives drawn from such a huge area to meet regularly, so from the start, arrangements were made for distant meetings to be represented by men living in or near London. A committee of the whole meeting was to meet weekly, and inevitably, it was mainly London men who attended.35 As a representative body, the Meeting for Sufferings, rather than the Morning Meeting, became in effect the national committee and in later years was given control over financial matters between yearly meetings. A remarkably small staff, consisting of Hookes and one assistant, backed up these activities. By his death in 1681, Hookes was clerk to the Morning Meeting, Meeting for Sufferings, and Six Weeks Meeting with its cash committee besides his work as executive officer of the yearly meeting and the person responsible for recording “sufferings.”36 As already mentioned, the new constitutional arrangements aroused opposition. John Pennyman, a somewhat eccentric, wealthy draper always on the fringes of Quakerism, was refused admittance to a meeting at Devonshire House and wrote four pamphlets about it in 1671.37 More serious was the revival of the Perrot controversy about men wearing hats during prayer, which was raised again in 1673 in an anonymous pamphlet called The Spirit of the Hat, most probably written by William Mucklow.38 As with all the internal Quaker disputes of these years, it was a variation on the theme of the freedom of the spirit versus the need for controlling its more eccentric manifestations. William Penn took on the task of dealing with

34. See Allen in chapter 4 for the workings of the Meeting for Sufferings. 35. All the details are in Braithwaite, SPQ, 281–­86. The founding document is in Barclay, ed., Letters of Early Friends, 346–­53. Also see Ingle, First among Friends, 255–­59, for a somewhat jaundiced view of the governance of British Quakers at this time. Ingle may be right. 36. Braithwaite, SPQ, 282, 288. 37. Caroline L. Leachman, “Pennyman, John (1628–­1706),” http://​www​.oxforddnb​.com​ /​view​/​article​/​21886 (accessed November 10, 2015). 38. See Moore in chapter 1 for the Perrot dispute.

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Mucklow, and they had a sharp and strongly worded exchange of pamphlets in 1673–­74.39 Mucklow had harked back to a previous dispute. The coming move to establish women’s business meetings parallel to the men’s was the catalyst for a longer-­lasting rift in the Quaker movement. There had been a women’s meeting in London since the 1650s, but outside London, practically nothing is known about early women’s meetings. Fox’s Epistle 248, the first of several undated epistles placed between November 1666 and September 1667, implies that women’s meetings already existed and supports their establishment. It has been cited as showing Fox’s interest in women’s activities as early as autumn 1666, but the injunction near the end, to “read this in your monthly meetings,” suggests a later date.40 There was certainly a women’s meeting in Bristol, mentioned first in the men’s minutes for October 7, 1667.41 There may well have been others, but it is unlikely that, in the 1660s, women’s meetings were numerous. At this point, it is necessary to consider what had been happening to Margaret Fell. In August 1668 Fell was released from Lancaster Castle, where she had been imprisoned since 1664. During the following winter, she spent time in London and met again with Fox. Presumably, it was then that they discussed marriage, though neither of them told the details. They were married on October 27, 1669, at a large meeting in the Bristol Broadmead meeting house.42 This marriage was significant for the Quaker movement and posed potential problems owing to the differing social positions of the participants, so Fox was very careful to ensure that Margaret’s children would not suffer. It therefore deserved special treatment, and the proposal

39. In order of appearance, William Mucklow, The Spirit of the Hat . . . (London: F. Smith, 1673); William Penn, The Spirit of Alexander the Coppersmith . . . (London: Andrew Sowle, 1673); William Mucklow, Tyranny and Hypocrisy Detected  .  .  . (London: F. Smith, 1673); William Penn, Judas and the Jews Combined . . . (London: s.n., 1673); William Mucklow, Liberty of Conscience Asserted . . . (London: s.n., 1674). Both Penn’s publications included contributions from other Quakers. 40. Ingle, First among Friends, 224, gives 1666 as the beginning of Fox’s interest in women’s meetings, basing this on Epistle 248. See Fox, Works, 7:283–­84. 41. Mortimer, Bristol Minutes, 4. 42. Isabel Ross, Margaret Fell, Mother of Quakerism (London: Longmans, 1949; repr., York: William Sessions, 1984), 203–­4, 211–­19; Ingle, First among Friends, 225–­27; Bonnelyn Kunze, Margaret Fell and the Rise of Quakerism (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1993), 53–­54.

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was laid before “several meetings both of the men and women assembled for that purpose.”43 Fox recorded that the previous winter he had instructed that proposed marriages in London should be checked by both men’s and women’s meetings.44 Owing to the large and possibly transient population in London, there were problems in making sure that persons wishing to marry were not escaping from “entanglements” elsewhere, and the Quakers were very sensitive about the propriety of marriages, having often in the past been accused of sexual misbehavior. There is a record from 1663 of a proposed marriage being investigated by the London women’s meeting, and it may have been the regular practice.45 Outside London, so far as is known, the Fox-­Fell marriage was the first such occasion when women were consulted. However, it is possible that Fox was already considering extending the London system to other areas and was using his own marriage as a trial. Nothing significant happened immediately. Fell returned to Swarthmoor and was again imprisoned from 1670 to 1671. In 1671, Fox began preparations for a voyage to the Americas, and in June, before leaving, he issued an epistle in which he suggested that the Friends should consider setting up women’s meetings “as is the custom elsewhere.”46 Fell, now free again, was with Fox in London at that time and may or may not have been involved with the writing of this epistle.47 Fox suggested that the duties of these meetings would be concerned with help for the poor together with any particular matters relating to the women of the meeting. He then departed for Barbados, where he set about organizing the local Quakers. One of his companions wrote several letters to England during the winter of 1671–­72, among them a list of Fox’s instructions to the Barbados Quakers, including marriage procedures. There had been reports of some very irregular marriages, and Fox ordered that all proposed marriages should be approved twice by the men’s meeting and twice by the women’s meeting. It is an indication of the direction in which Fox’s mind was working, for this was the 43. Fox, Journal (ed. Smith), 401. 44. Fox, 378. 45. Mentioned in John Harwood, To All People That Profess the Eternal Truth of the Living God . . . (London: s.n., 1663), 7, where the impression is given that this was a regular practice; and George Fox, The Spirit of Envy Lying and Persecution . . . (London: s.n., 1663), 10. 46. Copy in Arthur J. Eddington, “The First Fifty Years of Quakerism in Norwich” (typescript, in LSF and other Quaker libraries, 1932), 273–­74. 47. Ingle, First among Friends, 349n17.

The Quakers, 1656–­1723

system ultimately adopted in Britain. This letter would have been read by the leading London Friends and quite probably copied to Margaret Fell.48 Swarthmoor, unsurprisingly, was among the first women’s meetings founded in response to Fox’s epistle of June 1671 in the following October. As women’s minutes were rarely kept as faithfully as the men’s, their absence does not necessarily imply that there was no women’s meeting. The Plymouth men’s minutes mention an apparently well-­established women’s meeting early in 1672.49 Over the next few years, references in men’s minutes indicate that more women’s meetings were being set up. The Devonshire Quarterly Meeting on March  21, 1677, gave an example of the process: “Whereas at our County meeting some time since, the desire of some women friends of this county was signified to us of haveing a womens Meeting set up amongst them, which thing being considered of by us, and the meeting Findeing noe cause to hinder it, wee did therefor leave them to their liberty.”50 In Bristol there was a contretemps. Fox’s epistle of June 1671 was mistakenly delivered to the women’s meeting instead of to the men’s meeting, and the women decided to set up a monthly meeting in accordance with Fox’s proposals. The men were horrified. The existing women’s meeting apparently worked well and was responsible for such business as registering births, but the men evidently thought that the new proposal for a “monthly meeting” was different in kind. A delegation of six men attended the next women’s meeting, and it was agreed that the proposal would go no further until all, both men and women, were agreed.51 No doubt the men were alarmed at the women getting above themselves, and it may not have helped that one of the women was Isobel Yeamans, a daughter of Margaret Fell. But there was also a church order aspect to the affair. New meetings of any sort could only be set up with the permission of the men’s meeting. The Buckinghamshire Upperside Meeting was similarly fierce when a group of 48. See Allen in chapter 5; Fox, Journal (ed. Penney), 2:187–­96. Ingle, First among Friends, 254, considers that this letter was intended to apply to all the Quakers everywhere. This seems unlikely. The rest of this letter has specific references to conditions in Barbados. 49. PWDRO, 1444/1, Plymouth Monthly Meeting minutes, February 6, 1672. Also see A. D. Selleck, “Plymouth Friends: A Quaker History,” Transactions of the Devonshire Association 98 (1966): 306–­7. 50. PWDRO, 1176/5, Devonshire Quarterly Meeting minutes. 51. Mortimer, Bristol Minutes, 54–­55 (November 27 and December 11, 1671). Ingle, First among Friends, 253, does not consider the church order aspect.

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the Friends attempted to set up a new local meeting without the monthly meeting’s consent.52 Related to the institution of women’s meetings, though not entirely caused by it, was the trouble that began in the North in 1673, leading to the movement of revolt known as the Wilkinson-­Story separation.53 Its beginnings are obscure, and what happened must be pieced together from the differing accounts written some years later by representatives of the parties in dispute.54 Sometime in the autumn or winter of 1671–­72, Margaret Fell sent out an epistle to northern meetings on the subject of women’s meetings. This is known from a letter written in 1672 from Jean Simcock of Cheshire referring to Fell’s epistle and asking for advice in dealing with an obstructive men’s meeting.55 During 1672 Fell made a two-­month journey through Yorkshire, and it may reasonably be presumed that a major part of her business concerned the formation of women’s meetings.56 It is helpful to understand the historical geography. The modern map shows the county of Cumbria, which was created in 1974. Before that time, Swarthmoor Hall and the whole coastal area south of the English Lake District was in Lancashire. Northeast of Swarthmoor, there used to be the county of Westmorland, its county town being Kendal. Yorkshire lies farther to the east. The Quaker quarterly meetings normally corresponded with the counties. The Kendal Monthly Meeting had set up a women’s meeting in October 1671. It seems that at some time during 1672 or early 1673, Margaret Fell visited Kendal and spoke to the Westmorland men’s quarterly meeting. Accounts differ as to what happened, but two things are certain: first, the Kendal women’s meeting considered its first marriage proposal in January 1673, and second, two men, John Wilkinson and John 52. Beatrice Saxon Snell, The Minute Book of the Monthly Meeting . . . for the Upperside of Buckinghamshire, 1669–­1690 (Aylesbury: Upperside Monthly Meeting, 1938), 72–­73 (September 3 and October 1, 1679). 53. For this dispute, see Claire J. L. Martin, “Tradition versus Innovation: The Hat, Wilkinson-­Story and Keithian Controversies,” QS 8, no. 1 (2003): 5–­22; Leachman, “From an ‘Unruly Sect,’” 101–­9. Braithwaite, SPQ, 290–­323, has all the details, but with a strong proestablishment bias. 54. Notably, William Rogers, The Christian-­Quaker . . . (London: s.n., 1680 and further supplements); and John Blaykling and others, Anti-­Christian Treachery Discovered . . . (London?: s.n., 1686). 55. LSF, MS 352 (Swarthmore MSS, vol. 1, part 2), 365; and cited in Ross, Margaret Fell, 286. 56. Rachel Fell’s itinerary of this journey is in LSF, Temp MSS 747/7 (Cash MS), and reprinted in JFHS 9 (1914): 110–12. See Ross, Margaret Fell, 240.

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Story, strongly objected to what was going on and to Fell’s part in particular. Wilkinson and Story had been Quaker traveling ministers in the 1650s, and their working area had been in Wiltshire and neighboring parts in the Southwest and South of England. There were personal bad feelings between Fell and Story.57 Over the next few years, the Westmorland dispute became increasingly bitter, involving not only women’s meetings but the issue of “papers of condemnation” regarding backsliders and a local dispute over the propriety of holding concealed meetings in times of persecution, which leading national Quakers disapproved of. This led to the general question of the right of the national leadership to rule on the conduct of local meetings.58 The yearly meeting of Ministers in May 1673, concerned about dissension in the country, issued a lengthy epistle to the quarterly meetings, hoping that disagreements would be settled “in the spirit of meekness and condescension.” Significantly, they affirmed that “the Lord hath not laid it upon every member, tending the good order and government in the church,” but rather that “the Lord hath laid it more upon some, in whom he hath opened counsel for that end, and particularly in our dear brother and God’s faithful labourer, George Fox.” However much they might declare that they did not seek “dominance over your faith,” this was the conclusion that some readers would draw.59 The theoretical justification for this position was given by the leading Quaker theologian Robert Barclay, a signatory of the 1673 epistle, in The Anarchy of the Ranters, published in 1676, and his argument is best summarized in this passage: Firstly . . . where there is any Gathering or Assembly, which truly and properly may be called the Church of Christ, the infallible Judgment will never be wanting in Matters of Controversie. Secondly, That ordinarily God hath in the communicating of his Will under his Gospel, 57. Ingle, First among Friends, 255, is quite sure what happened and gives a graphic account, while Kunze, Margaret Fell, 149–­50, is more circumspect. Braithwaite, SPQ, does not mention this meeting, nor does Ross, Margaret Fell. Clare Martin, “Controversy and Division in Post Restoration Quakerism: The Hat, Wilkinson-­Story and Keithian Controversies and Comparisons with the Internal Divisions of Other Seventeenth-­ Century Nonconformist Groups” (PhD diss., Open University, 2003), 129–­30, follows John Blaykling et al., Antichristian Treachery Discovered . . . (London: s.n., 1686?). The Westmorland Quarterly Meeting minutes are no help. 58. Ingle, First among Friends, 255–­56. 59. Barclay, Letters of Early Friends, 336–­42.

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imployed such whom he had made use of in gathering of his Church . . . ; for as in a natural Body to which the Church of Christ is compared, the more substantial and powerful Members do work most effectually, and their Help is most necessary to supply any Defect or Trouble in the Body.60

The dispute worsened. Fox was arrested and imprisoned in Worcester soon after his return to England, and in January 1675, Story visited him there, where they had a long and acrimonious argument. Dissidents in Westmorland were now holding separate meetings. Letters and epistles went back and forth. Fell was subject to especially fierce attacks, and Fox advised her to leave Westmorland alone for a while. Penn, who took a major part in the dispute, advised Fox to moderate his language to the disputants. It seemed that a meeting in the North in 1676 might settle the matter when a compromise document was agreed upon, but the Fox party treated it as a complete withdrawal and apology and publicized it as such, causing more problems in the North. A separate meeting continued in Westmorland until the early eighteenth century. Now the authority of the central Quaker bodies was not absolute. Barclay himself qualified his analysis, noting that while the will of God usually expressed itself through the most experienced members, this was not necessarily so. Fox and the Second Day’s Morning Meeting might exhort, but they could not compel. The pronouncements of the yearly meeting were advisory, and while it was expected that they would be followed, this did not always happen. In practice, the men’s monthly meetings had a good deal of autonomy. Even within a quarterly meeting, there could be variations in practice. The Upperside Monthly Meeting in Buckinghamshire had a functioning women’s meeting in 1675, which from 1678 examined proposed marriages, but the adjacent Lowerside meeting had no women’s meeting until 1700.61 Where women’s meetings were established, they did not necessarily include the consideration of proposed marriages among their duties. It was well into the eighteenth century before women’s meetings were universal, despite Fox’s known opinions and advice on several occasions from the yearly meeting.

60. Robert Barclay, The Anarchy of the Ranters . . . (London: s.n., 1676), 70–­71; Sheeran, Beyond Majority Rule, 31–­35. 61. Martin, “Controversy and Division,” 113.

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The scanty minutes and indications of poor attendance at some women’s meetings suggest a lack of enthusiasm. Much of the work proposed for the women would be conducted locally, and many women, especially in rural areas, may have thought that their time would be better spent getting on with this work rather than making awkward journeys to talk about it. Initially, Mary Penington was very dubious about these meetings, knowing that they were a cause of dissension. She thought they could be useful in towns, but not in rural areas.62 However, she came to change her mind and concluded that there were great advantages in having the women’s meeting consider proposed marriages: “The having the marriages brought before them in the first place, it being more modest and comely, and more suitable to the bashfulness of a woman, to lay her intention before those of her own sex: for the laying it in the first place before the men puts a force on their bashfulness more than is right.”63 Sometimes the women’s meetings were set up and included consideration of marriages in their business without controversy, or at least without any controversy that filtered through to the minutes. On July 9, 1675, the Horsham Men’s Monthly Meeting “ordered that there be a women’s monthly meeting orderly kept.” The next month, the women recorded their first meeting, and from September they began to look at proposed marriages. These can be followed in the corresponding men’s minutes, and nowhere is there any indication that anybody objected to the activities of the women’s meeting.64 Similar minutes from Owstwick in Yorkshire, from 1676, show the same characteristics.65 Dissension about women’s meetings occurred only where there was a serious division of opinion within a meeting and where vocal individuals, powerful men used to having their own way, disliked the idea of women getting together to conduct business.66 Such situations did occur in a number of Quaker meetings around the country. 62. LSF, MS 344, 159, “In a Tender Sense of the Lord’s Leading of Us His Handmaids,” [1678]. 63. LSF, MS 344, 149, Mary Penington to Women Friends at Armscote, September 7, 1678; and reprinted in R. Melvin Keiser and Rosemary Moore, eds., Knowing the Mystery of Life Within: Selected Writings of Isaac Penington in Their Historical and Theological Context (London: Quaker Books, 2005), 109–­13. 64. SHC, 6189/2/1, Horsham Monthly Meeting men’s and women’s minutes. 65. Gareth Shaw, “‘The Inferior Parts of the Body’: The Development and Role of Women’s Meetings in the Early Quaker Movement,” QS 9, no. 2 (2005): 191–­219. 66. Phyllis Mack, Visionary Women: Ecstatic Prophecy in Seventeenth-Century England (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 299.

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Wiltshire was a main center of dissidence, perhaps not surprisingly in view of Wilkinson’s and Story’s link with that area.67 The leader was Nathaniel Coleman, a substantial farmer from the north of the county, whom Fox met soon after his return to England in 1673, when Coleman argued it was the law of God that a man should rule over his wife, and he intended to do so.68 Then at the quarterly meeting in Wiltshire in 1678, some of the dissidents “in a very unfriendly manner . . . katched up and carried away ye Quarterly Booke from ye Meeting to an Inn, and would not send it again or Returne themselves Although some Friends went to them from ye Meeting and earnestly desired it of them.” The quarterly meeting funds were also taken and never recovered. Coleman also took the monthly meeting minute book for Chippenham at the same quarterly meeting.69 The Upperside Monthly Meeting in Buckinghamshire had attempted a women’s meeting in 1671, but it was not successful and lapsed until 1675. Then, in 1678, the men’s meeting, which was clerked by Ellwood, began to refer marriages to the women’s meeting.70 Ellwood had no problem with strong women, being Mary Penington’s estate manager and having a wife described as “a solid weighty woman who had a public testimony for the Lord and his Truth, in meetings.”71 But before long, there was trouble. Conscientious objections to women’s meetings might be allowable, but not “contempt & disrespect.” One minute of the men’s meeting reads, “Ye said Edmund and Mary had before laid their business before ye Womens Meeting . . . and had since, in contempt of ye womens Meeting, not only refused to go there again to receive their Answer, but yt ye said Edmund had with reproachful and slanderous words abused and vilified ye said Meeting.” The men’s meeting refused to consider the marriage further until Edmund apologized, which, in due course, he did. In 1682, there was an open breach, in which certain members of the High Wycombe Meeting 67. For early Wiltshire Quakerism, see Kay S. Taylor, “Society, Schism and Sufferings: The First 70 Years of Quakerism in Wiltshire” (PhD diss., University of the West of England, 2006), 150–­74, for the Wilkinson-­Story dispute and Coleman’s part in it. 68. Fox, Journal (ed. Smith), 423–­24. 69. Minutes of Wiltshire Quarterly Meeting at Devizes, April 1678; and cited in Fassnidge, Quakers of Melksham 14, no. 122; Martin, “Controversy and Division,” 100; Braithwaite, SPQ, 317. 70. Saxon Snell, Minute Book of . . . Upperside, v–­vi. 71. From the original supplement to Ellwood’s History by Joseph Wyeth and cited in Moore’s edition, 208.

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supported couples in their resistance to the women’s meeting. A separate meeting in High Wycombe lasted to the end of the century.72 There were similar problems elsewhere in the country.73 In Hertford, north of London, an attempt was made to compromise by agreeing that to prevent marriage by a priest or living in sin, marriages without reference to the women’s meeting might be allowed, and the women might have their meetings separately or with the men as they wished.74 Later there was trouble in Yorkshire, initially over a local issue as in Westmorland, but involving the same principles of the independence of a local meeting.75 There were sporadic problems in Bristol, lasting some years without the meeting actually splitting.76 In 1682, a year of severe persecution, the Bristol Meeting began to submit marriage proposals to the women’s meetings and to those Friends in prison, and in 1686, it was noted that submitting marriages to the women’s meetings was “usual.”77 The most formidable publicist for the dissenting party was William Rogers of Bristol, who took particular exception to Barclay’s Anarchy of the Ranters. He wrote an enormous book called The Christian-­Quaker, published in 1680, which described the whole dispute from the dissidents’ point of view. Story died in 1681, and little more was heard of Wilkinson, but Rogers continued the conflict. He published supplements to The Christian-­ Quaker and was answered by Whitehead, Ellwood, and others. Rogers at one point broke into execrable verse, and Ellwood answered him in somewhat better verse: What drew thee, William, to this Rhiming fit, Having no more propensity to it? Couldst think such hobling and unequal Rhimes, That make a Jangling, like disordered Chimes, 72. Saxon Snell, Minute Book of . . . Upperside, 76 (February 4, 1680), 83–­84 ( June 26 and July 7, 1680), xvi–­xviii, 103–­33 (March 6, 1682–­February 4, 1684); Martin, “Controversy and Division,” 111–­14. 73. Martin, “Controversy and Division,” 91, 115; Braithwaite, SPQ, 475–­78; LSF, MS 344, 148–­51. 74. Martin, “Controversy and Division,” 115; and citing Hertford minutes 1.290 (May 18, 1679). See also LSF, MS 344, 148, 150, 151. 75. Martin, “Controversy and Division,” 91; Braithwaite, SPQ, 475–­78. 76. Braithwaite, SPQ, 474–­81; Leachman, “From an ‘Unruly Sect,’” 174–­75. 77. Mortimer, Bristol Minutes, 172ff. (April 1, 1683, and up to October that year), 187 (May 24, 1686).

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Could of a Poem e’er deserve the name Or e’er be read without the Author’s shame.78

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Other Quakers, both rebels and orthodox, published their views. Altogether in the period 1673–­85, some thirty books and pamphlets by disgruntled ex-­Quakers were published,79 mostly concerned with women’s meetings, but some with more general aspects of what was perceived as the growing Quaker bureaucracy, and these were answered by a similar number of publications written by supporters of Fox and the Second Day’s Morning Meeting. Francis Bugg, an ex-­Quaker with a venomous style, was a particularly unpleasant opponent whose attacks continued into the next century. Another notable troublemaker was Robert Rich, a wealthy Barbados merchant and a friend of both Nayler and Perrot, who added to current controversies in 1678 by publishing an account of both disputes, with original documents, called Hidden Things Brought to Light.80 The tone of the disputes was generally acrimonious, the letters of the gentle Isaac Penington to his former friends in Reading, High Wycombe, and Hertford being an exception.81 The best known of the separated meetings is that of Reading, where the sequence of events can be followed, as the minutes of both parties survive.82 Thomas and Ann Curtis were long-­standing and wealthy Quakers, the main subscribers to the meeting house built in 1671. When the Westmorland controversy spread to other areas, the Curtises took the side of the dissidents. John Story was well known and well liked in Reading, where he had supported the Friends during persecution, and in 1675, the Curtises accompanied him on his visit to Fox in Worcester prison. The Reading Monthly Meeting, meanwhile, had set up its own way of integrating women’s activities into the general work of the meeting by instituting joint men’s and women’s meetings. Reading was not the only meeting to try the experiment of joint men’s and women’s meetings. Apart from the notable example of the Six Weeks 78. Thomas Ellwood, Rogero Mastix, or a Rod for William Rogers . . . (London?: s.n., 1685), 1. 79. At the time of writing, figures for later years have not been estimated. 80. [Robert Rich], Hidden Things Brought to Light . . . (London: Francis Smith, 1678). 81. LSF, MS 344, 141–­53. 82. BRO, separatist or Curtisite minutes; BRO, D/F2B3/1, Reading Monthly Meeting Men’s Minutes, 1668–­1716, orthodox or pro-­Fox minutes; BRO, D/F2B3/2, Reading Monthly Meeting Men’s Minutes, 1685–­1733 (typewritten transcriptions by Nina and Beatrice Saxon Snell in BRO, and LSF, Meeting Records, 2a1).

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Meeting in London, several others are recorded around this time. Hertford has been mentioned. The Vale of White Horse Monthly Meeting, in the same quarterly meeting as Reading, sometimes listed both men and women as being at the monthly meeting, and the minutes of the Reigate and Dorking Monthly Meeting, in Surrey, indicate a similar practice from 1674 to 1680.83 Both men and women attended the small, remote monthly meeting of Broseley, Shropshire, at least to the late 1690s.84 Bristol held joint meetings for disciplinary matters.85 It seems therefore that the holding of joint meetings was not in itself the cause of the trouble in Reading; rather, it was the divided opinion within the meeting and the extreme partisanship of the Curtises. Isaac Penington tried to mediate and wrote four times to Thomas Curtis in 1677 and 1678 to this effect: “If G.F. hath received from the Lord power and authority in his name to establish men’s and women’s meetings, among his gathered people, in such a way as the Lord hath shown him, and to which his witness in our heart answers: then that spirit and wisdom which opposes it, or sets up any thing else in the stead of it, is not of God.”86 This was not likely to commend itself to Curtis. By the early 1680s, disagreement within the meeting became more pronounced. In May 1682 there was a complaint about certain Friends keeping their hats on during prayer, a sure sign of disunity. Matters deteriorated. Contentious papers were circulated, some Friends sat in meeting with their backs turned to the others, and some began to meet separately. A renewal of persecution in 1684, with damage done to the meeting house, did not help matters. Finally, in September 1685, the Curtis group decided to close the meeting house and meet elsewhere, as there was a risk of being fined for, in effect, providing a meeting place for the other group. So by the beginning of 1686, the Curtis group, who naturally considered themselves to be the true Reading Meeting, were not using the meeting house, while those who disagreed, who likewise considered themselves the true Reading Meeting, and were indeed the true Reading Meeting in 83. LSF, L097.183 VAL, Vale of White Horse Minutes (transcribed by Nina Saxon Snell, with several women listed in attendance records from 1674 to 1678); SHC, 6189/1, Reigate and Dorking minutes. 84. SA, 4430/PM/1/1, Minute Book of Broseley Meeting 1690–­1719, late eighteenth-­or early nineteenth-­century copy. 85. Mortimer, Bristol Minutes, xvi, references surviving minutes of the joint men’s and women’s meetings for discipline, 1669–­81, which are also mentioned from time to time in the men’s minutes. 86. LSF, MS 344, 144; and provided in Keiser and Moore, Knowing the Mystery, 104–­5.

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the eyes of establishment Quakerism, found themselves locked out. They started their own minute book, and for some years, in protest, they met in the yard outside the meeting house. Attempts at reconciliation in 1693 failed, and the separate meetings continued until the early eighteenth century, after the Curtises had died. The women’s meetings never had equal status to the men’s. That would have been impossible in the seventeenth century. As a contribution to the dispute in Reading, William Loddington produced the argument that the separate women’s meeting ensured the subordination of women, for if men and women met together, as at Reading, then if a women ventured to speak (and it is made clear that this was not expected), her voice would be equal to a man’s.87 Control of the purse in the women’s meetings was a particular issue. Only the London women’s Box Meeting is known to have had extensive funds of its own. Mary Penington suggested a solution: As for our disposing of money to several uses without the men, it is just: we have a right to a share of our husband’s substance, and may dispose of it to lawful and serviceable uses as well as they. But . . . if the husband be not given up to serve the Lord with his substance, then we take none of his for such uses; but what such husbands give to us to lay out in superfluous things, either in the house or upon our bodies, we being moderate in all such things, give that money to the Lords service.88

Theological principle was involved in the formation of women’s meetings, for Fox believed strongly that the spiritual equality of men and women should extend to their participation in the practical work of the church, and in the seventeenth century, it would generally be more efficient for men and women to meet separately. The women’s meetings met a need. With no regular clergy and under the threat of persecution even after 1689, it made sense for all members of the meetings to be involved with their good ordering, and the Quakers had no inhibitions about circumventing awkward

87. William Loddington, The Good Order of Truth Justified . . . (London: Andrew Sowle, 1685), 5. 88. LSF, MS 344, 159.2. Also see Keiser and Moore, Knowing the Mystery, 109–13.

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biblical texts such as 1 Corinthians 14:34–­35 and 1 Timothy 2:11–­12, which restricted the development of women’s work in other dissenting bodies.89 By the end of the nineteenth century, the women’s meetings had outlived their usefulness and were discontinued. The Second Day’s Morning Meeting was laid down in 1901, and its functions were taken over by the Meeting for Sufferings, which today is the body entrusted with the general care of matters affecting Britain’s yearly meeting. The original monthly (now known as area) and quarterly meetings were revised geographically over the years as needed, tending to become larger, until quarterly meetings were abolished in 1967. The Six Weeks Meeting, the body responsible for the properties of the London meetings, survived to January 2017, when it morphed into the London Quakers Property Trust. Worldwide, George Fox’s gospel order remains the basic organizational pattern in the Quaker yearly meetings, and despite considerable local variation, it is functional to this day.

89. White, English Baptists, 134–­58, for the position of women in the Baptist and Separatist churches.

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C ha p t e r 4

Living as a Quaker During the Second Period Richard C. Allen

At the Edinburgh Monthly Meeting on November 30, 1680, James Brown, a tanner, explained what it meant to be a Quaker (“a poore and despised people above all the nationes of the earth”). Brown declared that he had not truly known God until he came into contact with the Friends; he now understood God’s plan and how he ought to live his life. He accepted that the “light shines within, and his kingdome is within, and the anoynting is within, and the true baptisme is within, and the true supper, the true enjoyment of thirst, and the eating of his flesh, and drinking of his blood is spirituall and within.” His association with the Friends had conditioned his life, and now, as he prepared for death, he endorsed their code of conduct, observing that the “honest people called quakers” should receive his body and “put it in a plaine Coffine and carry it to our own buryall ground . . . without a black cloath or ringing of a bell.”1 The life of a Friend such as Brown was conditioned from birth to death, especially as the meetings established a code of behavior that regulated their lives. This code is evident in their domestic activities, in their relationship with their meetings, and in their interactions with the wider community. 1. NLS, CH10/1/2, Edinburgh Monthly Meeting, 1669–­1713, 1.

What follows is an exploration of the way the Friends were expected to behave throughout the second period. It examines their belief system in meetings for worship as well as how they built a close-­knit, cohesive community via their meetings for business. Moreover, the minutes of such meetings show that there was a considerable prehistory of well-­established local and, in some cases, regional meetings that provided the distinctive Quaker communities with guidance. Throughout this study, the significant role of women Friends in the maintenance of these meetings will be acknowledged, particularly in matters of discipline. Attention will be drawn to the structured procedural framework from the recording of births to a meaningful process for regulating courtship and marriage and a dignified response to death and funeral arrangements.2 Indeed, meetings carefully policed their community, as demonstrated in the considerable paper trail occasioned by such accurate record keeping. The Friends also gave assistance to those in need—­those who were persecuted or whose circumstances necessitated help. Evidence will be extracted from pastoral writings as well as the memorializing of the Friends. Additional light will be thrown on the disciplinary responses to infringements of the code and whether such discipline was consistently enforced. The growth of the movement from its earliest years as an amorphous gathering of like-­minded individuals in the late 1640s and 1650s is in stark contrast to the increasingly orchestrated and highly disciplined community of the post-­Restoration period. This was, in part, a response to the levels of persecution that occasionally overwhelmed the Quaker meetings in Britain, Europe, and the Caribbean and the personal and financial sacrifices many of the Friends faced.3 With the isolation of George Fox at Scarborough Castle from May 1665, it became the concern of other Friends, particularly Richard Farnworth, Alexander Parker, and George Whitehead, to provide leadership. The “Testimony of the (Eleven) Brethren” (1666) provided a document that helped meetings regulate their communities,4 while the gradual codification of behavior enabled meetings to provide the Friends with a richer fellowship.5 By embracing such a clear set of values, they were determined 2. Also see Lapsansky-­Werner in chapter 10. 3. See Allen in chapters 2 and 5. 4. Moore, Light, 224–­26, and in chapter 1. 5. David J. Hall, “The Discipline of the Society of Friends” (MA thesis, University of Durham 1972); C. F. Carter, “Unsettled Friends: Church Government and the Origins of Membership,” JFHS 51, no. 3 (1967): 143–­53; Michael Mullett, “‘The Assembly of the

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that no Friend would bring their meetings into disrepute.6 Over the course of the second period, the condemnation of a Friend’s actions could vary from petty transgressions, such as falling asleep in meetings,7 to more significant breaks with Quaker conventions, particularly neglecting meetings, failing to uphold their testimony against the payment of tithes, participating in popular pastimes, or refusing to accept the judgment of the meeting when internal disputes occurred.8 Leading Friends were tasked with looking into the activities of their co-­religionists whose behavior contravened Quaker values, ensuring that the Friends’ business dealings with the wider community were transparently fair-­minded, and insisting on limited fraternization with non-­Quaker neighbors. If a Friend refused to publicly condemn his actions, he could face expulsion, but disownment was a last resort and was only enforced if he refused to submit to counseling.9









People of God’: The Social Organization of Lancashire Friends,” in Early Lancaster Friends, ed. Michael Mullett (Lancaster: Centre for North-­West Regional Studies, 1978), 12–­22; Michael Mullett, “From Sect to Denomination? Social Developments in Eighteenth Century Quakerism,” Journal of Religious History 13 (December 1984): 168–­91. 6. Richard T. Vann, The Social Development of English Quakerism, 1655–­1755 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969), 138–­39. Also see Sandra M. Hynes, “‘Walk According to the Gospel Order’: Theology and Discipline in the Quaker Meeting System, 1650–­1700” (PhD diss., Trinity College, Dublin, 2003). 7. In his letter to Friends, George Fox stated that “all take heed of Sleeping in Meetings, and Sottishness, and Dulness; for it is an unsavoury thing to see one sit Nodding in a Meeting, and so to lose the Sense of the Lord.” See A Collection of Many Select and Christian Epistles of . . . George Fox, 2 vols. (London: Tace Sowle, 1694–­98), 2:257 (Epistle 257). 8. For examples and statistical information, see Nicholas Morgan, Lancashire Quakers and the Establishment, 1660–­1730 (Halifax: Ryburn, 1993), 194–­243; Adrian Davies, The Quakers in English Society, 1655–­1725 (Oxford: Clarendon, 2000), 252–­60; George B. Burnet, The Story of Quakerism in Scotland, 1650–­1950 (London: James Clarke, 1952), 143–­46; Maurice J. Wigham, The Irish Quakers: A Short History of the Society of Friends in Ireland (Dublin: Historical Society of the Religious Society of Friends in Ireland, 1992), 37–­43. Transatlantic indiscretions are examined in J. William Frost, The Quaker Family in Colonial America (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1973), 52–­56, and particularly 187–­211; Carla G. Pestana, Quakers and Baptists in Colonial Massachusetts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 94–­101. For specific cases related to tithe demands, see Richard T. Vann, “Friends’ Sufferings—­Collected and Recollected,” QH 61, no. 1 (Spring 1972): 25–­27; Helen Forde, “Derbyshire Quakers, 1650–­1761” (PhD diss., University of Leicester, 1977), 115–­25. 9. For examples drawn from the regional Quaker meeting, see Roger S. Mortimer, “Quakerism in Seventeenth Century Bristol” (MA thesis, University of Bristol, 1946), 169–­84.

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In their rejection of traditional modes of behavior connected with the rites of passage,10 the Friends were often at odds with the prevailing customs of their neighbors. Quaker midwives were appointed to ensure that there was no contamination with “the world’s people” as well as to stop any attempt to baptize the child, particularly if the newborn was unlikely to survive.11 Equally, Quaker mothers refused to be “churched,”12 and leading Friends counseled them against such superstitious practices, while the registration of the birth was conducted in a dignified way without excess revelry.13 Throughout their lives, the Friends were counseled about such modes of behavior, and this was reflected in their attitudes toward courtship and marriage as well as preparation for death and attendant funeral arrangements. From the Restoration onward, the rules on marriage, particularly to non-­ Quakers, were enforced.14 This reflected a concern that mixed marriages would weaken the integrity of the meetings, but the large number of disownments for marrying non-­Quakers (“walking disorderly”) would suggest that many Friends struggled to comply. In 1686, the Baltimore Friends were eager to avoid such drastic actions. In the case of Sarah Jones, who had married contrary to the accepted rules, they counseled her but eventually concluded that they “could not find hir in yt wightly sence of hir transgretion as she ought to be.” Nevertheless, they gave Sarah more time that she 10. Quaker meetings kept careful records of all births, marriages, and burials, but some registers either have been lost or were not adequately maintained. 11. Davies, Quakers in English Society, 37–­38, 203. Also see Hilary Marland, ed., The Art of Midwifery: Early Modern Midwives in Europe and North America (London: Routledge, 1993); Elaine Hobby, “‘Secrets of the Female Sex’: Jane Sharp, the Reproductive Female Body, and Early Modern Midwifery Manuals,” Women’s Writing 8, no. 2 (2001): 201–­12; Samuel S. Thomas, “Early Modern Midwifery: Splitting the Profession, Connecting the History,” Journal of Social History 43, no. 1 (Fall 2009): 115–­38. 12. The “churching” of women was a Christian rite whereby a blessing was administered to mothers after childbirth, even if child was stillborn or had died unbaptized. For example, the Anglican Book of Common Prayer had a section entitled “The thanksgiving of women after childbirth.” For further details, see William Coster, “Purity, Profanity and Puritanism. The Churching of Women 1500–­1700,” in Women in the Church, ed. W. J. Sheils and Diana Wood (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990): 377–87; and David Cressy, “Purification, Thanksgiving and the Churching of Women in Post-­Reformation England,” Past and Present 141 (1993): 106–­46. 13. W. K., A Letter on George Keith’s Advertisement of an Intended Meeting at Turners-­Hall, the 29th of April, 1697 (London: Tace Sowle, 1697), 6. 14. Jacques Tual, “Sexual Equality and Conjugal Harmony: The Way to Celestial Bliss. A View of Early Quaker Matrimony,” JFHS 55, no. 6 (1988): 161–­74; Kristianna Polder, Matrimony in the True Church: The Seventeenth-­Century Quaker Marriage Approbation Discipline (Farham: Ashgate, 2015).

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might “seecke ye Lord night & day” and significantly “be Saved,” as this was the “desire of friends for hir from ye bottom of ther hearts.”15 Helen Forde’s study of the Derbyshire Friends, however, noted that of eighty-­five testimonies recorded between 1650 and 1761, thirty-­six concerned inappropriate relationships or marriage. Such was the anxiety of the Friends that in 1714, the quarterly meeting wrote to the London Yearly Meeting that marriage to outsiders was causing distress. The clerk warned that such activity was “making an Inroad on our Young Generation,” while it was alleged that Quaker parents were not taking responsibility for such behavior or simply taking too much interest in community affairs.16 Endogamy nevertheless deprived meetings of a different generation of young people and thereby reduced the opportunities to recruit new adherents. Indeed, as a young man in 1708, the English Quaker John Kelsall Jr. (1683–­1743) accepted that any relationship should be divinely inspired and not “of man’s or of my own contrivance.” In his poem “On a Wife,” he exclaimed, “Let not my heart, let not my roving mind / Be from thy will unto it if inclin’d / But let thy power and thy constraining love / Cause it to follow, and thy choice approve.”17 Investigations from both sides of the Atlantic from the end of the seventeenth century demonstrate the extent of declining membership and the impact of endogamy on the Quaker community.18 Nevertheless, for many American meetings, the decline in numbers was not an issue until after the mid-­eighteenth century, when they deployed 15. HCLSC, 1116/11, Baltimore Women’s Half-­Yearly Meeting, 1677–­1790, 38 (October 5, 1686). 16. Forde, “Derbyshire Quakers,” 140–­41. 17. LSF, MS 194, 1 (A Journal . . . of the chief passages, concerns and exercises of my life . . .), 103, 105. Also see Richard C. Allen, “‘An Alarm Sounded to the Sinners in Sion’: John Kelsall, Quakers and Popular Culture in Eighteenth-­Century Wales,” in Faith of Our Fathers: Popular Culture and Belief in Post-­Reformation England, Ireland and Wales, ed. Joan Allen and Richard C. Allen (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009), 66. For insights into courtship and marriage, see Elizabeth A. Foyster, Manhood in Early Modern England: Honour, Sex and Marriage (London: Longman, 1999). 18. Details about the decline of Quakerism and the various reasons for it are provided in Michael Watts, The Dissenters: From the Reformation to the French Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), 288–­89, 385–­90, 509; Vann, Social Development, 183–­88; Richard T. Vann and David Eversley, Friends in Life and Death: The British and Irish Quakers in the Demographic Transition, 1650–­1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 17–­21, 249. For other Quaker communities and explanations for decline, see Larry Gragg, The Quaker Community on Barbados: Challenging the Culture of the Planter Class (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2009), 142–­64.

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the same disownment practices as the British.19 That is not to suggest that relationships among the Friends could not cause problems. In October 1678 the Baltimore women Friends counseled Obadiah Judkins that he ought to wait for a certificate of clearness for his intended spouse, Obedience Jenner, a recent English emigrant. The meeting thought it was “requisett yt they should stay tell a Cirtificate can be prcured & in ye meen time they dwell asunder.” The men’s meeting at Third Haven concurred but observed that Jenner had attempted to persuade Judkins “to take her contrary to ye order of ye truth and agreeable to ye way of the world.” He refused to accept this, as he recognized that such a step would contravene the discipline of the Friends. Subsequently, Jenner broke off the engagement, but the meeting nevertheless insisted that “ye neglect of her Solemn Ingagement to the meeting is chargable only upon her Selfe and She must bear her own burthen for the truth is cleere.”20 Three years later the same Friends requested Obadiah to attend their meeting to discuss his ongoing relationship with another woman, Elizabeth Barden, in order to “clear ye truth & stand to the judgemt of ye meeting.” The Friends were determined to ensure that due propriety was observed, as Barden had recently been widowed.21 Nearly half a century later in 1721, Isaac Bond of Scotby in Cumberland (England) acknowledged his failure to uphold the principles of the local meeting. He had waited a considerable time for the parents of Jane Bowman to accept him as a suitor before he took the matter into his own hands by “imparting my minde to the young woman.” This was “not in contempt to the order in the least,” yet he realized that his actions had made the Friends “uneasye with me that I canot have their unitye in my marrying until I acknowledge my miss: for which mis I am sory.”22 19. Kenneth L. Carroll, Quakerism on the Eastern Shore (Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 1970), 93–­127; Henry C. Peden Jr., Quaker Records of Southern Maryland . . . 1658–­1800 (Westminster, Md.: Willow Bend Books, 2006), 72–­78. These contrast the decline in southern Maryland with the growth in the central and northern counties. Also see Frost, Quaker Family, 57–­61; Arthur J. Worrall, Quakers in the Colonial Northeast (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1980), 59–­60, 81–­95. 20. HCLSC, 1116/11, 23 (October 3, 1678); FHLSC, RG2/Ph/T5 1.1, Third Haven Men’s Meeting, 1676–­93, 13 ( January 24, 1679). 21. HCLSC, 1116/11, 26 (October 6, 1680); FHLSC, RG2/Ph/T5 1.1, 23 (April 19, 1680). On June 11, 1681, Judkins nevertheless married Joan Huntington. See Carroll, Quakerism on the Eastern Shore, 221. 22. Vann, Social Development, 186. For other examples, see Barry Levy, Quakers and the American Family: British Settlement in the Delaware Valley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 73–­74.

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Living as a Quaker also often meant enduring intense periods of persecution, and this often looms large when discussing the first and second periods of Quakerism. Yet maltreatment was dependent on local conditions, sporadic periods of limited toleration (such as the Declaration of Indulgence in March 1672),23 and the interpretation of laws applied against the Friends by court officials, constables, and those sent to break up meetings, harass itinerant preachers, or arrest those they believed had contravened such laws.24 On occasion the local authorities would conveniently look the other way, which allowed the Quakers to hold meetings as well as proselytize without severe punishment. The second Conventicle Act of 1670 is clearly a case in point, as its application was irregularly enforced at best, while “neighborly benevolence” was also practiced.25 Naturally, there were periods when religious and political tensions boiled over, particularly during the uncertainties of the late 1650s and fear of radicals threatening the restoration of the monarchy, the uncertainty surrounding the Exclusion Crisis and the alleged Popish Plot in the late 1670s and early 1680s, and the Rye House Plot in 1683. Although the penal code was not uniformly implemented, these periods led to local persecution, long-­term imprisonment for many, and death for 450 others during the reign of Charles II. These were recorded as a matter of course, and there are many examples in the years before the introduction of the Act of Toleration in 1689 of constables or armed soldiers dragging the Quakers out of meetings or from their homes, apprehending them on the road, and seizing their property. Others were subjected to public humiliation in stocks and pillories or physical abuse by local mobs. The situation was aggravated by the use of paid informers who intimidated local communities.26 The recording of these “sufferings” served a strategic purpose, as it gave the Friends a legacy that they could draw on and thereby helped strengthen 23. Watts, Dissenters, 247–­48. This measure was removed a year later when the dual fear of Catholicism and widespread dissent forced the king to repeal the measure. See Craig Horle, The Quakers and the English Legal System, 1660–­1688 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988), 79–­83. 24. See Bell in chapter 12. 25. Horle, Quakers and the English Legal System, 73–­81, 264–­66. For statistical evidence, see 281–­84. 26. LSF, GBS, passim; John Miller, “‘A Suffering People’: English Quakers and Their Neighbours c.1650–­c.1700,” Past and Present 188, no. 1 (2005): 72–­73, 97–­100. For informers, see A. W. Braithwaite, “Early Friends and Informers,” JFHS 51, no. 2 (1966): 107–­14. Also see Allen in chapter 5 and Southcombe in chapter 8.

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the resolve of those who were enduring deprivations. The Quakers responded in other ways as well. Although the Friends were prepared to suffer for their faith as early Christians had done,27 they were not prepared to do so where they could legally challenge the state and its laws. There is evidence of the Friends seeking to reduce the impact of persecution during the Interregnum, while post-­1660, and particularly during the 1670s, additional measures were introduced to help them cope with fines for nonattendance of church services, gathering in clandestine meetings, distraint of property for the nonpayment of tithes, and the long-­term imprisonment of leading Friends.28 For example, they challenged the legality of the Quaker Act (1662) and the two Conventicle Acts by contesting the claim that Quaker meetings were seditious gatherings.29 Fox’s imprisonment between 1673 and 1675 provided further impetus for a more cohesive response. The Meeting for Sufferings was the result. From 1676 the clerk regularly requested the various meetings to send in their records of persecution and offered substantial legal guidance to those Friends who were being illegally detained in prison, distrained of their goods, and hounded in the courts. These reports had been collected from as early as 1657/58, but the formalizing of the system and the legal advice that was given was certainly innovative.30 The Friends therefore became skillful at revealing the ambiguities and impracticalities of the penal code as well as procedural anomalies. The Meeting for Sufferings also lobbied parliamentarians and called on the Friends to assist in the relief of their co-­religionists.31 Throughout their lives, the Friends sought to prepare for death by assessing their lives and making suitable provisions for any dependents.32 Surviving probates show that the Quakers were confident in their salvation. Thus, in 1674, Thomas Richards, the Barbadian Quaker, believed he would receive 27. Miller, “A Suffering People,” 71. 28. Moore, Light, 157–­61, 185–­92. Also see Davies, Quakers in English Society, 169–­84. 29. Moore, Light, 228. 30. See Moore in chapters 1 and 3 and Bell in chapter 12. 31. Horle, Quakers and the English Legal System, 173–­81, and particularly 187–­253 for Quaker legal defense. Also see his “Changing Attitudes toward Legal Defense: The George Fox Case and the Establishment of the Meeting for Sufferings,” in Seeking the Light: Essays in Quaker History in Honour of Edwin B. Bronner, ed. J. William Frost and John M. Moore (Wallingford, Pa.: Pendle Hill, 1980), 17–­39; Davies, Quakers in English Society, 184–­90. 32. For Quaker inheritance, see Frost, Quaker Family, 41–­44; Jack Goody, Joan Thirsk, and Edward P. Thompson, eds., Family and Inheritance: Rural Society in Western Europe, 1200–­1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978).

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remission from his sins and a “real and full assurance of peace.” Clearly other Friends on the island, such as Oliver Hooton, felt they would be redeemed by “the sweet fellowship of . . . [the] heavenly communion.”33 Any land or property was usually bequeathed to the spouse, their children, or other family members. In November 1698 Evan Bevan, a Dublin skinner, bequeathed property and goods for Evan, his son, and Elizabeth, his wife, “to breed up our children,” while an additional provision was made for those “younger children who are unmarried and has not some provision made them by me, as I have done for those that are marryed.”34 There were, however, cases when sons or daughters were cut out of the provision. In February 1693 Cuthbert Fetherston of Westmeath, Ireland, was prepared to support four of his children as well as his “disobedient” daughter Amy. Nevertheless, he drew a sharp distinction between them and his “apostate daughter” Elioner Fetherston. He accused Elioner and her husband of “rasping, stealing and robbery [of ] much of my substance.” After this terse statement, he simply stated that they would receive “nothing.”35 Other Friends were equally specific in their bequests and required family members, relatives, or neighbors to act as guardians to any offspring by ensuring their education, apprenticeships, or employment. Naturally, the provision for any children had to be carefully coordinated to ensure that there was no ambiguity after the death of the testator(s). In May 1689 the family of William Neale of Maryborough, Cork, sought to clarify the earlier bequests of their father and mother and were prepared to ensure that any children were left to the “care of relations.”36 The Baltimore Friends were equally concerned for their children’s welfare. In April 1680, prior to the marriage of William Dixon and Elizabeth Christison, a widow, the monthly meeting convened a committee to ensure that the estate of her husband would be used for the benefit of any future children.37 Quaker funerals were conducted in a solemn fashion, with the meeting ensuring that there was no extravagance in manner or form.38 Indeed, in 1682 33. BA, RB6/40, 516 (Oliver Hooton, 1686). For this and other wills, see Gragg, Quaker Community on Barbados, 80. 34. FHLD, D.4.54; P. Beryl Eustace and Olive C. Goodbody, eds., Quaker Records, Dublin. Abstracts of Wills . . . (Dublin: Irish Manuscripts Commission, 1957), 11–­12. 35. FHLD, G.3.49; Eustace and Goodbody, Quaker Records Dublin, 34–­35. 36. FHLD, G.3.40; Eustace and Goodbody, Quaker Records Dublin, 71. 37. FHLSC, RG2/Ph/T5 1.1, 24 (April 19, 1680); Carroll, Quakerism on the Eastern Shore, 79. 38. For wider assessments, see David Cressy, Birth, Marriage, and Death: Ritual, Religion, and the Life-­Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).

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Fox refuted the allegation that they buried devotees “like Dogs” but stated that the Friends should shun “superfluous and needless things” on coffins and the “vain Pomps or Glory of the world.” He particularly wanted them to avoid “great white and black Cloth . . . with Arms or Scutcheons upon it,” dressing in black, and hanging “Scarfs on their Hats, pretending mourning.” They should resist providing gold rings, twigs of rosemary, or ringing bells, “which is more like going to a Wedding than to a Burying.”39 The body was to be covered in a woolen shroud (a linen sheet in America) and placed in a plain wooden casket. This complied with the Burial in Woollen Acts (1666, 1678, and 1680) and was observed by the Northumberland (England) Friends in 1688.40 Nevertheless, not all of the Friends fully accepted plainness, and there are various examples of expensive mahogany coffins with silver handles and other ornamentation.41 Revelry was prohibited, but occasionally this was ignored, with some meetings complaining that the provision of ale, wine, and food contravened the discipline of the Friends.42 In contrast, there were calls for a dignified, usually silent, meeting to reflect on the life of the deceased and the Friends’ behavior more generally. Thus, much earlier in 1660, William Caton stated that after the burial of the Kent Quaker Thomas Housegoe, many gathered for “a very gallant and precious Meeting.”43 A later public meeting would reinforce this, where a testimony to the deceased would be offered.44 Even after a Friend had been buried, there were restrictions concerning memorializing. Indeed, meetings increasingly refused to sanction the use of gravestones, as this might be interpreted as pandering to wealth or social rank. It is nevertheless clear that not all meetings acted in accordance to this request. Thus, in 1696, the Welsh Yearly Meeting opposed the use of 39. George Fox, An Encouragement for All to Trust in the Lord . . . (London: John Bringhurst, 1682), 12–­13. 40. TWA, Mf. 218, Northumberland Quarterly Meeting, 1680–­1727 (no pagination), 1. This was after the burial of Jane Williamston of Allendale (May 1688). 41. Frost, Quaker Family, 43. 42. In 1719, the Philadelphia Quakers warned local Friends of the dangers of “offensive and, unsuitable Custom of large provision of strong Drink, Cakes etc. and the formal repeated serving and offers thereof.” They were an “indecent” and “indiscreet custom” and had “run to such excess.” See Frost, 44. 43. William Caton, Journal . . . (London: Thomas Northcott, 1689), 60–­61. 44. Also see Lapsansky-­Werner in chapter 10; Sandra Hynes, “Becoming Convinced: The Use of Quaker Testimonies in Late Seventeenth-­Century Ireland,” in Converts and Conversion in Ireland, 1650–­1950, ed. Michael Brown, Charles I. McGrath, and Thomas P. Power (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2005), 107–­28.

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gravestones, and in 1701, the clerk recorded that gravestones should be removed “to avoid giving occasion to say that the relics of popery is among us.”45 By the early decades of the eighteenth century, many Friends were increasingly using small marker stones. In many cases they made explicit requests for burials in their wills, and phrases such as “to be buried in the burying place of my friends called Quakers,” as the Friends “shall think fit,” or similar were commonly used.46 The lifelong guidance offered by meetings was a progression from the early pastoral advice provided by traveling evangelists who continued to nurture the meetings for which they were particularly responsible.47 The heavy persecution of the 1660s, however, made traveling hazardous, and a new form of Quaker writing developed—­the pastoral epistle.48 Ministers wrote many from prison to their meetings. Later in the second period, they became a vehicle for many little-­known Friends to appear in the Quaker records, with short pamphlets probably developed from ministry addressed to meetings.49 Most of the titles are a variation on a theme, “An Epistle to Friends.” In this genre, women Quaker writers—including Anne Docwra, Dorcas Dole, Mary Elson, Mary Forster, Elizabeth Stirredge, Mary Wade, Ann Whitehead, and Katharine Whitton—­also left their mark and produced substantial works of guidance.50 An outstanding early example of Quaker writing is that of William Smith of Nottinghamshire, who was skilled in verse as well as prose.51 Stephen Crisp was a notable writer of the epistles, and his posthumously published volume of sermons gives some 45. GA, D/DSF/2 506, 523. For transatlantic attitudes, see E. Digby Baltzell, Puritan Boston and Quaker Philadelphia: Two Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Class Authority and Leadership (Boston: Beacon, 1979), 104; Gragg, Quaker Community on Barbados, 87–­88. On the practice of using gravestones in the eighteenth century, see Hall, “The Discipline of the Society of Friends,” 79. 46. FHLD, D.5.25, F.6.25, F.6.27, F.6.30, F.6.46; Eustace and Goodbody, Quaker Records Dublin, 1, 18, 22, 38, 88. 47. See Allen in chapter 2. 48. Moore, Light, 204, 208–­13. 49. See Thomas Carleton, A General Epistle . . . to Friends in Ireland . . . (London: s.n., 1676); William Bingley, An Epistle of Tender Love . . . (London: Andrew Sowle, 1683); James Parke, A General Epistle to Friends Every Where . . . (London: s.n., 1682). 50. For example, Ann Whitehead, An Epistle for True Love, Unity and Order  .  .  . (London; Andrew Sowle, 1680); Katharine Whitton, An Epistle to Friends Everywhere . . . (London: Benjamin Clark, 1681); Anne Docwra, An Epistle of Love and Good Advice . . . (London: s.n., 1683). 51. Moore, Light, 210–­13, and her “The Rediscovery of William Smith,” Friends Quarterly 32, no. 3 ( July 2000): 117–­23.

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idea of the ministry that meetings might receive. These lengthy texts were frequently reprinted later in the seventeenth century.52 William Penn produced a devotional classic with the second edition of No Cross, No Crown (1682), while several editions of William Shewen’s Counsel to the Christian Traveller were published in the period.53 Many of Isaac Penington’s pastoral writings remained unpublished during his lifetime, as they consisted of personal letters to meetings and individual Friends. Naturally, Fox’s output significantly enhanced pastoral supervision. More than twenty from this period were printed during his lifetime in addition to the many not published until after his death. Alongside these printed texts, regional meetings closely observed the social activities of the Friends. That they encouraged literacy and sought a solid educational foundation for their offspring is evident.54 Quaker parents were ordinarily expected to instruct their children about the principles and practices that (they hoped) would lead to their children’s “convincement” in adulthood as well as avoid the contamination, as the Friends saw it, of the wider community. In 1678, George Keith pressed upon his own meeting in Aberdeen the importance of private devotional Bible reading: Seeking and searching . . . must be in our hearts, and inward parts, for there hath God placed this hidden treasure, which is Christ Jesus, to wit, a measure of his Divine Spirit, Life, and Light . . . and it will cause thee, when, at any time, thou readst the Scriptures, as this Living 52. Adrian Davies, “Crisp, Stephen,” http://www.oxforddnb​.com​/​view​/​article​/​6707 (accessed April 1, 2015). 53. Beth Lynch, “Shewen, William,” http://www.oxforddnb​.com​/​view​/​article​/​25400 (accessed April  1, 2015); William Shewen, Counsel to the Christian-­Traveller  .  .  . (London: John Bringhurst, 1683). 54. LYM, Extracts from the Minutes and Advices of the Yearly Meeting of Friends . . . (London: James Phillips, 1783), 48, 219; R. Randles, “‘Faithful Friends and Well Qualified’: The Early Years of the Friends’ School at Lancaster,” in Early Lancaster Friends, ed. Michael Mullett (Lancaster: University of Lancaster, 1978), 33–­42; Thomas Woody, Early Quaker Education in Pennsylvania (New York: Teachers College, Columbia University, 1920), and his Quaker Education in the Colony and State of New Jersey (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1923); Frost, Quaker Family, 93–­132; David Hackett Fischer, Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 530–­38. Also see Dorothy G. B. Hubbard, “Early Quaker Education, 1650–­1780” (MA thesis, University of London, 1940); Leslie John Stroud, “The History of Quaker Education in England, 1647–­1903” (MEd thesis, University of Leeds, 1944); Gillian Mason, “Quaker Women and Education 1642–­1840” (MA thesis, University of Lancaster, 1987).

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Fountain opens in thee, to read them livingly, and with a living sense and understanding . . . and when thou dost meditate upon them, or upon the things declared in them, as upon the Love of God, and Christ Jesus, and what Christ hath done and suffered for thee, and how he died, and rose again, and is gone to Heaven, there to appear in the presence of God for us, and that he is to return again to judge the quick and the dead, and to give the reward of Everlasting Life to all that have served him, but to punish with everlasting destruction all, that have not believed in him, nor been obedient unto his Gospel, or whatever other things, recorded in the Scriptures, the Fountain of Life in thy self will give Life unto all those Meditations.55

Such specific information about Quaker reading habits and the provision for education more generally is illuminating, but the evidence is very limited in many cases. In 1673, Bishop Lucy of St. David’s in Wales wrote to the archbishop of Canterbury objecting to James Picton, a Quaker from Carmarthen, as an unlicensed teacher. He had been allowed to hold a school for at least seventy scholars56 while, in 1678, George Fox called on Richard Gawith of Cork to act as a schoolmaster, and it was left to the Friends “to take care to provide a suitable school house for him.”57 In the colonies, too, the Friends were active in promoting education. In 1679, the Baltimore women Friends at West River secured the services of a schoolmaster/ schoolmistress to provide a wholesome education for their children. They requested that any Friend who was a schoolmaster ought to “teach ther Children in ye practice boath in words ways & actions wch becomes ye Blessed truth, & yt we cannot . . . allow them to practise any of ye worlds liberty,” and further asked them to provide Quaker books and “Scripture Boockes.”58 In Barbados, Quaker planters occasionally left bequests for educational provision, following a pattern the non-­Quaker community had established from the early years of the colony.59 In a letter from Ralph Fretwell to Fox in the early 1680s, there is also a tantalizing remark that Fretwell had heard of an Irish Friend and “schoolmaster” who intended to travel to the island, 55. George Keith, The Way to the City of God Described . . . (Aberdeen: s.n., 1678), preface (letter to the “Friendly Reader . . . Aberdeen . . . 15 of the 4 Month, 1678”). 56. BLO, Tanner MS 146, fol. 138 r–­v. 57. David M. Butler, The Quaker Meeting Houses of Ireland . . . (Dublin: Irish Friends Historical Committee, 2004), 12. 58. HCLSC, 1116/11, Baltimore Women’s Half-­Yearly Meeting, 1677–­83, 23 ( June 11, 1679). 59. Gragg, Quaker Community on Barbados, 91–­92.

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but this is not supported by evidence from elsewhere.60 In contrast, with the establishment of Pennsylvania, there was a more concerted effort to provide education for the colony’s inhabitants. The first Frame of Government (1682) outlined the means for the governor and council to “erect and order all public schools, and encourage and reward the authors of useful sciences and laudable inventions.” In 1683, there was a further requirement that all children (under the age of twelve) should be taught to read and write and have sufficient training in a trade irrespective of social status.61 In conjunction with educational foundations, the Friends secured suitable apprenticeships or employment for their children with fellow Quakers as a way of deterring indulgence in popular pastimes. In 1722, Reese Meredith was apprenticed to Samuel Southall, a Herefordshire mercer. His indenture for a five-­year apprenticeship specified that Meredith would “serve” his master, “his Secrets keep, his Commandments every where gladly do, [and] he shall do no Damage to his Master—­nor see to be done to others.” He was also to ensure that he did not waste Southall’s merchandise or enter into any unlawful selling of his goods. Such behavior was indicative of early modern apprenticeships, and the youthful Meredith was cautioned not to frequent taverns or play popular alehouse games.62 Yet the lure of the outside world could prove too much. John Kelsall Jr. recorded his unease at having to take a hard line when employed as a clerk for Abraham Darby I. In 1714, he wrote that he gave “no offence to any” and was determined to “wrong none, and to keep my word with all,” but he became increasingly exasperated with the unscrupulous people he had to trade with and their “wickedness and hypocrisy.” After Darby’s death, Samuel Bewdley of Worcestershire employed him but concluded that Kelsall was not robust enough to engage in business dealings. Indeed, Kelsall agreed, privately observing that he was “too easie and mild & not . . . severe enough.”63 60. LSF, MS 324 (A. R. Barclay MSS), 145, Ralph Fretwell to George Fox, n.d. In his transcripts, Craig Horle suggests that this is circa 1682. 61. Frame of Government of Pennsylvania, May 5, 1682, XII, provided at http://​avalon​.law​ .yale​.edu​/​17th​_century​/​pa04​.asp (accessed February 1, 2015); Frost, Quaker Family, 95–­96. 62. NYPL, MS 577 (Clymer-­Meredith-­Read Family Papers), Box 11, Indenture of Apprenticeship of Reese Meredith, January 20, 1722. For apprenticeships, see Joan Lane, Apprenticeship in England, 1600–­1914 (London: University College London Press, 1996). 63. LSF, MS 194 1, 150–­56, 173–­74, 193–­94. Also see Allen and Moore in chapter 11.

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Despite such reservations about early modern capitalist activity, there is considerable evidence that many of the Friends were conscientious in business transactions and supported the less affluent in their communities. In Barbados in 1669, where the Friends were “among the most prosperous in the Atlantic world,” they demonstrated social awareness by petitioning the governor, council, and assembly to acknowledge the poor among their religious community. As such they were adhering to Fox’s 1658 pronouncement to merchants that they should remember “their poor brethren,” as they were “made of the same blood and mould.”64 Fox advocated a society where there was no poverty and where former country houses, abbeys, and churches should become almshouses. He called on London magistrates to assist the needy by establishing a common storehouse, give up their fineries and powdered wigs, and see that no poor person “may lie up and down your streets while it is in your power to do good . . . For there is so much destroyed in your superfluity and vanity, that would maintain the weak, lame and blind, that is spent upon your lusts.”65 The wills of the Friends, including those who settled in Barbados, contained a number of charitable bequests, notably Thomas Foster of St. Philip, who in 1684 left £200 for poor Quakers, while others bequeathed either money, land, or goods to be sold to alleviate poverty.66 Philanthropy increasingly became an intrinsic part of the Friends’ activities, as testified by numerous examples on both sides of the Atlantic. The Essex Friends bequeathed clothing, including burial attire, staple foodstuffs, household linen, and cooking utensils, as well as money for rents and apprenticeships. Moreover, nearly one-­fifth bequeathed money for the relief of the meeting’s poor.67 The Nailsworth (Gloucestershire) Meeting minutes contain references to similar beneficence, whereby the Friends produced a list of legacies to poor Quakers at the back of the volume as well as specific assistance: the 64. Besse, Sufferings, 2:287; George Fox, A Warning . . . to Nourish the Poor (London: Thomas Simmons, 1658), 4. 65. See George Fox, An Instruction to Judges and Lawyers . . . concerning the Poor Mans Cry . . . (London: Thomas Simmons, 1657); To the Parliament of the Comon-­wealth of England . . . (London: Thomas Simmonds, 1659), 8; Gospel-­Truth Demonstrated . . . (London: Tace Sowle, 1706), 105–­6. 66. BA, RB6/8, 566 (Elizabeth Barnes, 1676); RB6/14, 82 (Ronald Hotton, 1679); RB10, 349 (Thomas Foster, 1684); RB6/12, 527 (Robert Richards, 1684); RB6/3, 250 (Elizabeth Savery, 1693). Also see Gragg, Quaker Community on Barbados, 63, 73; Kristen Block, Ordinary Lives in the Early Caribbean: Religion, Colonial Competition, and the Politics of Profit (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2012), 277n30. 67. Davies, Quakers in English Society 64, no. 82–­84, 203.

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“placing” (apprenticeship) of Mary Horwood’s son in 1691 and money for the passage of one poor Friend to Pennsylvania in 1713.68 Significantly, there was a meaningful role for female Friends, as they were allowed to preach in public and to mixed gatherings, and this gave them “an alternative to the models of submission and domesticity.”69 The women’s meetings were also an essential support network. They offered counsel for erring Friends and took the lead in assisting the poor, the elderly, the sick, and orphaned children. In February 1685 the women of Radnor, Pennsylvania, collected £1.10s.8d. for the use of the poor, while a few months later they collected corn and other grain for every township and offered additional financial or practical help where possible. Their charitable work continued with the building of a chimney for one Friend in November 1687 as well as medical treatment and clothing.70 Undoubtedly, philanthropic works were costly, and over time, many regional meetings were overwhelmed by the numbers of recipients. The more prosperous meeting at Falmouth and Liskeard, Cornwall, certainly provided the majority of the poor funds for the quarterly meeting, while smaller meetings that were incapable of providing support had to appeal directly to the quarterly meeting for any assistance rather than to local Friends.71 Toward the end of the seventeenth century, more concerted efforts were taken to provide systematic provision. John Bellers, a London Friend, outlined his views on good health, education, and the importance of assisting the poor. In 1695, he proposed that a workhouse would better serve the needs of the Quaker community.72 In the following year, the Bristol Friends rented accommodation to act as a workplace, and in 1702, the Friends in Clerkenwell, London, established a workhouse for the large number of poor Quakers in the city.73 These institutions certainly provided a degree of relief, notably to poor children who 68. GLA, D1340/B1/M1, Nailsworth Monthly Meeting minutes, 1668–­1743. 69. Robynne Rogers Healey, “Quietest Quakerism, 1692–­c.1805,” in The Oxford Handbook of Quaker Studies, ed. Stephen W. Angell and Pink Dandelion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 48. 70. They also made a collection for those Friends who were held captive at Maquinas by the emperor of Morocco. See FHLSC, MR-­Ph 504, Radnor Women’s Meeting 1685–­1711, 40, 42–­43 45, 51 69, 101. 71. Patricia Griffith, “Early Quakers in Cornwall, 1656–­1750” (PhD diss., University of Exeter, 2004), 65, 95. 72. John Bellers, Proposals for Raising a College of Industry . . . (London: Tace Sowle, 1695). 73. Russell Mortimer, ed., Minute Book of the Men’s Meeting . . . Bristol, 1686–­1704 (Bristol: Bristol Records Society, 1977), 100–­112, 127, 152, 160–­61. The proposal went first to the Meeting of Ministers and then to the Meeting for Suffering, and it finally was endorsed

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received a basic education or training, but they also drew some criticism. In the case of Bristol, poor Friends were alarmed that their children were being enslaved. Such criticism forced the Friends to review the workhouse regime and provide better conditions.74 Where disputes between the Friends arose, they were expected to bring their individual grievances before the meeting rather than involve outsiders or seek legal advice. The impact of the charismatic preacher John Perrot in the Caribbean certainly led to disagreements among the Friends, particularly after the “hat controversy,” which challenged the authority of meetings and Foxian centralization in the 1660s.75 In Barbados, elders attempted to restrict the authority of disruptive Friends (“Dark Spirits”) by publicly disowning them and calling for silent meetings. Yet there was a price to pay, as these ideological differences undermined “the sticky business of evangelization.”76 In the early 1680s, a serious dispute between a number of Barbados Friends led to a series of heated exchanges (“needlesse disputes”) in the quarterly and Six Weeks Meetings on the island, particularly in response to the published dispute between William Rogers and Thomas Crisp and the rejoinder of Fox, George Whitehead, and Alexander Parker.77 John Rous initially thought the Friends could resolve their differences and “forget all that is past and if anything still rests yt cannot be buried and forgiven, to discourse it in coolnes.” He sought to counsel John and Mary Weale and Thomas Clark, who had been influenced by Alice Lear, herself “in great opposition to Friends.” Although the meetings were increasingly riven by disputes, Rous felt that the “unseemly practice of contention wch . . . may well be tearmed a custome” could be resolved.78 by the yearly meeting. See LSF, SDMM, III 93, no. 101 (March 15, 1695); LSF, MS, X, 218 ( June 4, 1697). I am grateful to Jerry Frost for these references. 74. Mortimer,“Quakerism in Seventeenth Century Bristol,” 241–­48; T. Hitchcock, Richard Hutton’s Complaints Book . . . Quaker Workhouse at Clerkenwell, 1711–­1737 (London: London Record Society, 1987). 75. See Kenneth L. Carroll, John Perrot: Early Quaker Schismatic (London: Friends’ Historical Society, 1971), 66–67; and Moore in chapters 1 and 3. 76. Block, Ordinary Lives, 171. 77. LSF, MS 323 (A. R. Barclay MSS), 50, Richard Ford’s Copy of Epistle to London Friends, [Barbados], January 14, 1682; LSF, MS 323, 51, John Rous et al. to George Fox, George Whitehead, and others, [Barbados], January 14, 1682. 78. Rous noted the ranting behavior of Mary Weale, “who sometimes speakes [a] few words in meetings, will run out in prejudice, soe yt she is oft times almost choked.” See LSF, MS 323, 48–­49, John Rous to George Whitehead and Alexander Parker, Barbados, December 26, 1681; William Rogers, The Christian-­Quaker . . . (London:

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London-­based missionary Solomon Eccles had attempted to mediate, but he was unable to resolve the long-­running dispute before the governor charged the Quaker with sedition and banished him. The dispute centered on the difficult relationship between John Weale and Ralph Fretwell. Rous sought to calm the situation, but to no effect. He observed that “it was hard to have a freindly correspondence with him [Weale] . . . without being frequently troubled with hearing his discontents agst diverse friends.” It was suggested that a meeting could be held near Weale’s home once “his spirit was cooled, & love uppermost,” but the level of disagreement was such that Weale would not accept any compromise. At the same time, recent publications were generating discontent, especially those of Rogers and Crisp. The vast majority of the Friends on the island nevertheless recognized that these works were “som peice of Revenge” written by the spokesmen for the Wilkinson-­Story faction, and Rous subsequently penned a lengthy response.79 Disputes on the island continued, but a letter from Richard Ford, surveyor of Bridgetown, to James Harrison of Philadelphia in May 1687 claimed that such matters could be dealt with internally. He wrote,“We have lately had some exercise here occasioned by some Travellers, more especially by one; but at present [we are] willing to conceal mentioning who to thee. We have none to depend on but ye Lord for help against his disorderly Spirit.”80 This was not the only occasion when the Friends had to resolve disputes. Fox intervened during this period of unease, explaining to Henry Birch that disruptive forces might cause further disunity. Fox referred to Birch’s assessment that Henry Currer was “a ffamous troubler of our Israel ye Chief Speaker & alwayes Busy Mouth of our Meetings” and attempted to mediate. He wrote, “Now I Desire thee [Birch] . . . Study to be Quiet & let all these things be Judged for they will Destroy thee & eate thee out but Strive to Live in ye peaceable truth.”81 Equally telling are examples whereby internal disputes that could not be resolved led to the growth of factionalism. Between 1695 and 1703, the Wiltshire Quarterly Meeting cooperated s.n., 1680); Thomas Crisp, Babel’s Builders Unmasking Themselves . . . (London: s.n., 1681). 79. LSF, MS 323, 45, Oliver Hooton to George Fox, Barbados, April 8, 1682; LSF, MS 323, 46, John Rous to George Fox, Barbados, January 30, 1682; LSF, MS 323, 47, John Rous in answer to Babel’s Builders . . . , Barbados, January 28, 1682. Also see Allen in chapter 5. 80. BPL, MS U.1.14, 7. 81. LSF, MS 324, 196, George Fox to Henry Birch, London, November 6, 1688.

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with the Purton Friends over a lengthy dispute between two Friends (William Grimes and Hopeful Vokins) that had resulted in an “open contest” between the two factions. Eventually, Grimes was disowned for stubbornly refusing to accept the decision of the quarterly meeting even though others, including Vokins, were not censured.82 Foxian centralization was apparent throughout the last quarter of the seventeenth century, but equally, the Friends consistently opposed the contaminants, as they saw them, of the period. In many respects, by increasingly imposing a set of exacting regulations, they rejected many popular customs, such as theatrical performances, dancing, music, and sporting events, and this served to set them apart from the wider community. This is illustrated in the experiences of Solomon Eccles, who, upon becoming a Quaker circa 1659, turned his back on playing and composing music, as he felt this was a vain pastime. Initially, he sold his instruments before repurchasing them, and he attempted to burn them on Tower Hill in London. His rationale was that this would avoid the corruption of other people.83 In 1667, he wrote, What effects hath Musick brought forth, that men so highly esteem it? What fruit did Nebuchadnezzars Musick bring forth in his day, was it not to murder? But the three servants of the Lord would not bow to his Image at the sound of his Pipes and his Fiddles, though others did. And how did Musick and Dancing take the heart of the foolish King Herod, by means whereof he committed murder, and caused John Baptists’s Head to be cut off . . . because he reproved him for having his Brothers Wife, rankor lay in the heart of the Damsels Mother, and when the Fidlers did strike up, and the Wench began to dance, his affectionate love began to be enflamed to the Girle, that he killed the Lords servant in coole blood. O ye Fidlers and Dancing-­Masters, let this President break you off from your filthy practice? .  .  .  What President have you in Scripture for your Danceing? . . . You set their Bodies in postures to enflame and take with the lustful Nature in men, and with proud Apparrel, and Spots 82. Kay S. Taylor, “Society, Schism and Sufferings: The First 70 Years of Quakerism in Wiltshire” (PhD diss., University of the West of England, 2006), 204–­9. 83. Also see William Edmundson, who, while preaching at Derry in the late 1650s, denounced stage-­players and rope-­dancers. See William Edmundson, A Journal of the Life, Travels, Sufferings . . . of . . . William Edmundson . . . , 2nd ed. (London: Mary Hinde, 1774), 42–­44.

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on their Faces . . . If my Calling was unlawful, much more is yours; O do not provoke the Lord any more.84

Many other Friends distanced themselves from “sinful” pursuits, such as the Englishman John Kelsall Sr., whose 1682 tract was titled Testimony against Gaming, Musick, Dancing, Singing, Swearing.85 His son, John Jr., was similarly concerned for the well-­being of the young. In one of his poems, written in 1717, he cautioned the Friends against Christmas festivities, plays, sports, and gambling. His poem called for a reformation of manners, as No day nor season the whole year around With more profane and idle sports abound Than at this time, methinks I ever see The people loose full reins to vanity With singing, dancing, jollity and mirth The heavens ring and shakes ye hollow earth The noise of oaths and roaring drunkards pierce Th’ astonish’d skies, and vex the universe Oh! Horrible! Such wickedness to act Under pretence of a religious fact.86

On countless occasions, the Friends struggled to comply with such exacting measures as their conduct fell short of the standard of behavior expected. Those who participated in cockfights were routinely criticized, while it was assumed that the Friends who attended horseraces and fairs would inevitably slide into vice and gambling. Meetings, aware of the attraction of such events to the young and impressionable, were certainly eager to educate Quakers and non-­Quakers alike. In a petition to the provincial council of Pennsylvania (c. 1696), the Friends called for restrictions

84. Solomon Eccles, A Musick-­Lector . . . (London: s.n., 1667), 12, 14–­15. 85. John Kelsall, A Testimony against Gaming, Musick, Dancing, Singing, Swearing . . . (London: Andrew Sowle, 1682). Also see Erin Bell, “‘Vain Unsettled Fashions’: The Early Durham Friends and Popular Culture, c.1660–­1725,” Quaker Studies 8, no. 1 (2003): 23–­35; Richard C. Allen, “Establishing an Alternative Community in the North-­East,” in Creating and Consuming Culture in North-­East England, 1660–­1832, ed. Helen Berry and Jeremy Gregory (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 98–­119. 86. LSF, MS 193, 5 (volume of poetry), 155–­58: “Concerning Observation of Christmas . . . ,” circa 1717.

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on gambling by the youth of Philadelphia, as it led to “great rudeness and wildnes.”87 A year earlier, the Friends from the Nailsworth Meeting were spoken to about “entertaining leude company . . . [and] drinking to[o] much strong water.”88 Likewise, in an example from the Salem (Mass.) Meeting where the Friends had counseled “love, unity [and] . . . good order” in 1708 and again in 1710, the actions of Rebecca Boyce sorely tested their patience. She managed an unlicensed tavern, while her husband, Joseph, was renowned for his drunken behavior until his premature death in the early 1720s. From February 1722 until the summer of 1724, both female and male Friends attempted to counsel Rebecca (and initially Joseph), but with little success, as she wrote a “scandalous, reviling and abusive paper.” Eventually, Rebecca was disowned, but the meeting hoped she would “through ye Lord’s mercy and assistance . . . repent . . . and reform.”89 For some wealthy Friends, the struggle to resist the trappings of fashionable society was too strong, while for others, the simple enjoyment of community activities forced them to either remain separate from their neighbors or run the risk of censure and disownment. The censuring of such behavior, including sexual misconduct, ensured that those Friends who were allegedly being disruptive did not bring their community into disrepute with the wider society by upsetting cordial relations with neighbors or undermine the foundation of a good family life as well as business probity. The Quakers repeatedly deplored profligacy and sought to keep their clothes plain, reproving those who dressed immoderately. This adherence to plainness had become an essential “badge of membership,” and in an effort to retain membership levels in the 1690s, some leaders overidentified “to an extraordinary degree adherence to these testimonies as tantamount to real commitment.”90 Attitudes toward plainness also applied to household decorations, paintings, and porcelain.91 Yet many of the Friends did subscribe to such puritanical conditioning. Paradoxically, compliance to the 87. Frost, Quaker Family, 134. 88. GLA, D1340/B1/M1. 89. Pestana, Quakers and Baptists, 98. 90. Davies, Quakers in English Society, 46. Also see Alan Hunt, Governing Morals: A Social History of Moral Regulation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); and Lapsansky-­Werner in chapter 10. 91. See Emma Jones Lapsansky and Anne A. Verplanck, eds., Quaker Aesthetics: Reflections on a Quaker Ethic in American Design and Consumption (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003); Frost, Quaker Family, 194–­96; Levy, Quakers and the American Family, 233–­34.

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code of discipline increasingly provoked internal and external reactions. For some of the Friends, these characteristics had become “too rigidly identified as the measure of allegiance and thus ignored what they saw as inward and genuine spiritual growth,”92 while contemporaries took pleasure in ridiculing their behavior.93 This study has demonstrated how the Friends were governed by an increasingly centralized code that regulated their behavior. It casts further light on their experiences as a community, their lives, and their relationships with outsiders throughout the second period. They were a global community, separate but connected. What is remarkable is the cohesion of their communities, irrespective of where in the world the Friends lived or conducted their business. Women Friends had a vital role in the monitoring of behavior, with designated responsibilities that were unusual for the period, even among more radical religious communities. Inevitably, there was a downside to this level of scrutiny. For those who could not conform to the code of behavior, public censure or the possibility of disownment had a psychological impact. Not only were they at a distance from a mutually supportive network of people, but after the introduction of the Toleration Act, those who were expelled by their meetings had to negotiate a place in a wider society that remained wary of the beliefs and moral attitudes of their former co-­religionists.

92. Davies, Quakers in English Society, 46. Also see Morgan, Lancashire Quakers, 244–­78. 93. For example, Thomas D’Urfey, Maiden Fresh as a Rose Sung by Mr Pack Acting a Quaker in The Richmond Heiress . . . ([London]: Richard Cross, 1693); Edward Ward, The Reformer Exposing the Vices of the Age . . . 4. A Precise Quaker . . . (London: J. How, 1700), 18–­23.

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C ha p t e r 5

Beyond Britain The Quakers in the European Continent and the Americas, 1666–­1682 Richard C. Allen

Except in the Americas, the geographical history of Quakerism in the second period is one of consolidation rather than expansion. Missionary activity within the British Isles was largely completed by the end of the 1650s,1 and there were no more attempts to evangelize the East. Mary Fisher, Kathleen Evans, and Sarah Cheevers had no successors, and it is probable that such activities by women were looked at askance, although women ministers continued to be active on the other side of the Atlantic. On the European continent, the emphasis was on extending and then consolidating the Quaker presence in areas already proselytized rather than moving farther afield. Throughout northern Europe, particularly in Holland and Germany, there was considerable progress in terms of creating a network of meetings.2 These were largely inspired by the continental journeys of many Friends, notably Stephen Crisp between 1663 and 16843 and William 1. See Allen in chapter 2. 2. Claus Bernet, “Quaker Missionaries in Holland and North Germany in the Late Seventeenth Century: Ames, Caton, and Furly,” QH 95, no. 2 (Fall 2006): 1–­18 (particularly 12–­14). Also see Sarah Hutton, Benjamin Furly, 1646–­1714: A Quaker Merchant and His Milieu (Firenze: L. S. Olschki, 2007). 3. Stephen Crisp, “Journal of . . . ,” in A Memorable Account . . . (London: Tace Sowle, 1694), 1–­60.

Penn in 1671, as they sought to strengthen the northern European Quaker communities. This activity was reinforced in July 1677, when a strong party consisting of George Fox, William Penn, Robert Barclay, George Keith, John Furly, and others visited Germany and Holland. Their purpose was to stem the misrepresentations of Quakerism that proliferated in Europe and influence civic dignitaries. These Friends organized meetings with Elizabeth of the Palatinate, while Penn sent a letter to John Sobieski, the king of Poland, asking him to intercede on behalf of missionaries in Danzig, and another to the Elector Palatine, requesting that the Friends be granted liberty of conscience. They also convinced Johanna Eleonora von Merlan, a noblewoman from Frankfurt, and her immediate circle of acquaintances. These missionaries sought convincements among the Mennonite and Labadist communities and the creation of a cohesive network of monthly, quarterly, and annual meetings.4 Consequently, in Amsterdam, monthly and quarterly meetings became operational between 1677 and 1678, and an annual gathering was inaugurated in August 1677.5 Similarly, in Rotterdam, a monthly meeting was held at the same time as that of Amsterdam, and meetings in other parts of Holland were also established.6 Farther afield a meeting was operational in Danzig in 1671,7 men’s and women’s monthly meetings were in existence by 1682, and an annual meeting was first held in the following year. Additional monthly meetings were likewise settled in Germany.8 Regular correspondence assisted these meetings,9 while Quaker literature received a favorable response. In 1669, Penn’s No Cross, No Crown was published and translated into Dutch,10 as were Robert Barclay’s Quakerism Confirmed and Theologiae verè Christianae Apologia. The latter was 4. William I. Hull, William Penn and the Dutch Quaker Migration to Pennsylvania (Swarthmore, Pa.: Swarthmore College, 1935), 1–­177; Fox, Journal (ed. Nickalls), 722–­28; William Penn, An Account of W. Penn’s Travails in Holland and Germany . . . (London: Tace Sowle, 1695). 5. Henry J. Cadbury, “First Settlement of Meetings in Europe,” JFHS 41, no. 1 (1952): 11; Oswald Seidensticker, “William Penn’s Travels in Holland and Germany in 1677,” PMHB 2, no. 3 (1878): 251–­52. 6. William I. Hull, Benjamin Furly and Quakerism in Rotterdam (Swarthmore, Pa.: Swarthmore College, 1941), 213, 294; Cadbury, “First Settlement,” 11, 12. 7. William I. Hull, “Quakerism in Danzig,” QH 41, no. 2 (1952): 81–­92. 8. Cadbury, “First Settlement,” 12. 9. For example, see “Six Letters of William Penn to Friends in Holland,” Bulletin of Friends’ Historical Society of Philadelphia 4, no. 1 (1911): 2–­12. 10. Robert Barclay, No Cross, No Crown . . . (London: s.n., 1669).

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initially published in Latin in Amsterdam, with an English version shortly thereafter, and was disseminated in Holland and Germany by Fox, Penn, and Keith.11 Yet the former cordial relationship between the Friends and Collegiants in Amsterdam and their amicable theological debates had given way to hostile exchanges in a series of tracts between the two groups during the 1660s.12 Such sectarianism was also evident in Rotterdam in 1673, when Frans Kuyper strongly criticized Benjamin Furly, a wealthy Quaker merchant, and three years later published a condemnation of Quakerism.13 In continental Europe, although there had been intense activity from the mid-­ 1650s onward, the Friends were generally unable to establish permanent meetings.14 This was largely the result of large-­scale emigration of Dutch and German Quakers to Pennsylvania. Indeed, the later establishment of Germantown, Pennsylvania, by the Frankfort Company directly stemmed from those whom Penn met in 1677.15 Although Dutch Quakerism witnessed a decline in numbers in the eighteenth century,16 there were still communities of the Friends in Germany that remained. These residual groups kept in direct contact with other Quakers until well into the nineteenth century.17 11. Robert Barclay, Quakerism Confirmed . . . (Aberdeen: s.n., 1676), and his An Apology for the . . . Quakers . . . (Aberdeen: John Forbes, 1678). Also see Sünne Juterczenka, “Crossing Borders and Negotiating Boundaries: The Seventeenth-­Century European Missions and Persecution,” QS 21 (2007): 39–­53 (45). 12. See Allen in chapter 2. 13. See Frans Kuyper, Tweede deel of vervolg van de Philosopheerende boer . . .—Continuation of the Philosophizing Peasant . . . , 2 vols. (Rotterdam: Isaak Naeranus, Boekverkooper, 1676); Fox, Journal (ed. Nickalls), 726–­27; William I. Hull, The Rise of Quakerism in Amsterdam, 1655–1665 (Swarthmore, Pa.: Swarthmore College, 1938), 233–­66, and his Benjamin Furly and Quakerism in Rotterdam. For Kuyper, see Andrew Cooper Fix, Prophecy and Reason: The Dutch Collegiants in the Early Enlightenment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014), 154–­60. 14. Cadbury, “First Settlement,” 11–­12; Bernet, “Quaker Missionaries in Holland and North Germany,” 1; Juterczenka, “Crossing Borders,” 40–­41. 15. See Seidensticker, “William Penn’s Travels,” 252–­66, 280–­81; Hull, William Penn and the Dutch Quaker Migration, 178–­392. 16. In 1710, there were approximately five hundred Quaker families in Amsterdam, but by the end of the eighteenth century (c. 1797), only a handful of the Quakers remained in the city. See Kees Van Strien, British Travellers in Holland during the Stuart Period: Edward Browne and John Locke as Tourists in the United Provinces (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1993), 203; J. Z. Kannegieter, Geschiedenis van de vroegere Quakergemeenschap te Amsterdam: 1656 tot begin negentiende eeuw (Amsterdam: Haarlem, Scheltema and Holkema, 1971), 326. 17. Bernet, “Quaker Missionaries in Holland and North Germany,” 15. For a wider study, see his Das Quäkertum in Deutschland: Von den ersten Anfängen bis zum Kaiserreich

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The long-­term growth area of Quakerism was on the other side of the Atlantic, as illustrated by a letter from the Burlington and Rancocas (Province of West New Jersey) Friends on July 15, 1678, and it shows the determination to establish meetings as quickly as possible: “Since by the good Providence of god many friends with their families have transported them selves into this Province . . . the said friends in those upper parts have found it needfull according to our practice in the place wee came from to Settle Monthly meetings for the well ordering the affairs of ye Church.”18 This process could nevertheless be both long and complex, and even life-­threatening, but it was also personally and spiritually rewarding for those who settled in these colonies. Indeed, their missionary endeavors in the Caribbean and their settlement patterns elsewhere, especially in the American colonies, have been described as a “Quaker invasion.”19 These settlers had faced severe opposition, particularly in Massachusetts and Maryland, but from the 1660s onward, the Friends were increasingly tolerated, albeit reluctantly, with Rhode Island becoming a significant Quaker colony.20 The international missionary work of leading Friends, including Fox, led to the establishment of some substantial Quaker communities overseas, while the growth of transatlantic trade allowed for a sizeable increase in Quaker merchant networks in the West Indies and North America.21 Yet despite the growth and prosperity of these Quaker communities, the

(Hamburg: Verlag Dr Kovač, 2016). For a later example of British engagement with continental Friends, see Elizabeth Fry’s correspondence with Jean Etienne Mollet, the founder of the Netherlands Society for the Moral Improvement of Prisoners (c. 1832), discussed in Mike Nellis and Maureen Waugh, “Quakers and Penal Reform,” in The Oxford Handbook of Quaker Studies, ed. Stephen W. Angell and Pink Dandelion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 382. 18. HCLSC, Mf. 12, Burlington Monthly Meeting (1678–­1737), July 15, 1678. Also see Samuel Smith, The History of the Colony of Nova-­Cæsaria, or New-­Jersey . . . (Burlington, N.J.: James Parker, 1765), 92–­111. 19. For example, see Richard P. Hallowell, The Quaker Invasion of Massachusetts (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1883). 20. For details, see Arthur Worrall, Quakers in the Colonial Northeast (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1980), 3–­25; Allen in chapter 2. 21. For examples, see Frederick B. Tolles, The Atlantic Community of the Early Friends (London: Friends Historical Society, 1952); Richard L. Greaves, Dublin’s Merchant-­ Quaker: Anthony Sharp and the Community of Friends, 1643–­1707 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1998); Jordan Landes, London Quakers in the Trans-­Atlantic World: The Creation of an Early Modern Community (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), particularly 84–­106.

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desire for an independent Quaker territory had still not been fully realized by the late 1670s. These Friends had to negotiate the fallout from colonial wars and resistance to their pacifism. Yet the number of Quaker emigrants grew significantly in this period, and as the Friends toned down their “reformation of the world,” their less confrontational attitude toward the state authorities and clergymen allowed them to press for a Quaker colony in North America.22 The emigration of so many Quakers nevertheless denuded their former communities in the British Isles and Europe. By the mid-­1660s, there was a substantial Quaker presence in the Caribbean, particularly on Barbados, as demonstrated by George Rose’s letter to Stephen Crisp describing the island as the “nursery of the truth.”23 Elsewhere in the Caribbean, the Quakers were becoming more noticeable and received support from missionaries. In Jamaica there were enough Quakers on the island to support several meetings by the time of Fox’s visit in 1671, but little else is known about their communities in Port Royal and in the “country plantations.”24 From the earliest settlement of the Quakers on Nevis (c. 1656–­58), newly convinced Friends were imprisoned after refusing to take up arms, report for the muster, or work building trenches and bulwarks “to fortify the island.”25 By assessing the information derived from such correspondence, the records of those who were persecuted, and the occasional list of the Friends from the various meetings, it is possible to construct an approximate, if not a complete, picture of the Quaker communities. During their lives, the Friends showed a willingness to offer their homes as initial meeting places, and particularly in bequests, they provided land for meeting houses or burial grounds. Thus, in the 1669 will of Edward Oistine of Christ Church, Barbados, half an acre of land for a burial ground was given with a stipulation that there should be “a convenient path & free passage . . . unto it at all times when they shall have occasion to goe thither and that it be well fenced or

22. See Southcombe and Frost in chapters 8 and 9. 23. Charlotte Fell Smith, ed., Steven Crisp and His Correspondents, 1657–­1692  .  .  . (London: E. Hicks, 1892), 30. Also see Larry Gragg, The Quaker Community on Barbados: Challenging the Culture of the Planter Class (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2009), 38–­57. 24. Francis Crow to Giles Firmin, March 7, 1686/87, and cited in Henry J. Cadbury, “Conditions in Jamaica in 1687,” Jamaica Historical Review 3, no. 2 (1959): 55; Harriet Frorer Durham, Caribbean Quakers (Hollywood, Fla.: Dukane Press, 1972), 50–­56. 25. Besse, Sufferings, 2:352–­66, 388–­91.

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enclosed.”26 From the evidence available, it is known that by the 1680s, they had established six meeting houses and seven graveyards.27 Along with the establishment of Quaker communities, the Friends imposed common standards that would regulate their lives.28 Apart from a highly structured organization, they were conscious that as a community, they should be self-­reliant, conducting everyday business within their meetings. The acceptance of this code as an integral part of their community life invariably led them to create a separate identity from the prevailing culture of worship on the island. This attitude was borne out by Oistine, who recorded that it was his “earnest desire” to ensure that his children were “educated in the feare of ye Lord and not according to the custome and fashions of the world which are vaine.”29 In contrast, the Barbadian plantation owners argued that the Quakers opposed the customary order of society by undermining their authority and economic prosperity. Although some of the Quakers were slave owners, it was alleged that their refusal to contribute to the upkeep of the militia could help stimulate a slave rebellion. Unsurprisingly, they were heavily fined for this and other actions that were deemed to be deviant.30 Although the Friends often had to cope with hostility that threatened to destroy the fledgling Quaker settlements in the Caribbean, by the 1670s missionary activity was still at a great premium. Consequently, on August 11, 1671, Fox, alongside another twelve male and female missionaries, set sail for the West Indies and American settlements. The purpose was to extend the organizational foundations, including women’s meetings,31 that currently existed for the Friends in Britain and in some parts of Europe and to provide leadership and unity after the Perrot schism of the late 1660s.32 The details of this journey (1671–­73) have been constructed via a range of sources. In his edited version of Fox’s journal, Nigel Smith has noted that his sources included day-­to-­day information that Fox dictated, details later 26. BA, Recopied Will Record Book, 6/8/84, Will of Edward Oistine, planter of Christchurch parish, Barbados, February 22, 1669/70 (proved April 8, 1670). 27. Clifford Pearce, “The Quaker Property in Barbados,” JBMHS 35, no. 4 (1978): 287–­99. 28. Also see Allen in chapter 4. 29. BA, 6/8/84. 30. For the period between 1666 and Fox’s visit, see Besse, Sufferings, 2:281–­87. Also see Gragg, Quaker Community on Barbados, 38–­53. 31. It is worth noting that there was a sizable female Quaker presence on Barbados. See Henry J. Cadbury, “186 Barbados Quakeresses in 1677,” JBMHS 9, no. 4 (1942): 195–­97. 32. See Moore in chapter 1.

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inserted into the Spence manuscript of the American part of the journey, while additional events were left to others to relate.33 John Hull, one of the twelve, kept a log of the outward journey to Barbados,34 William Edmundson recorded Fox’s arrival in Barbados in his journal, and letters from Fox, John Hull, John Rous, and John Stubbs in the winter months of 1671/72 offer some further details.35 Fox and Edmundson arrived in Barbados in October and set about proselytizing.36 Fox, after having recovered from an illness,37 attended various meetings, and he and Lewis Morris, John Rous and his sons, and Hull were invited to meet the governor, Colonel Christopher Codrington, at his home, where they were treated “very civilly and kindly.”38 Rous informed Margaret Fell that they were preaching to white settlers and the enslaved alike, and “many considerable persons from all parts come to our Meetings.”39 This last comment is substantiated by mention of a general meeting held in Bridgetown in which members of the island’s military and judiciary attended, but Fox was taken ill during it and was forced to recover at Morris’s home.40 He was nevertheless dismayed by the improper “hasty” marriages conducted by the Friends as well as the “wickedness, both as to marrying kin and of two wives at once, or two husbands.” He called on them to ensure that they sought the approbation of their meetings. Significantly, he stressed the need in “training up . . . negroes in the fear of God” and advocated a religious ethos that promoted the inclusion of all races. He invited the Friends to take the enslaved to meetings to educate them “so that all may come to the knowledge of the Lord” and requested overseers to “deal mildly and gently with them and not use cruelty.”41 He even asked plantation owners to consider releasing the bondsmen and women after thirty years’ 33. See Fox, Journal (ed. Smith), 456–­91, who reproduces the Spence manuscript. Also see Hilary Hinds, “An Absent Presence: Quaker Narratives of Journeys to America and Barbados, 1671–­81,” QS 10 (2005): 6–­30. 34. Fox, Journal (ed. Nickalls), 580–­92. 35. Several of these are transcribed in Fox, Journal (ed. Nickalls), 594–­602. 36. William Edmundson, A Journal . . . , 2nd ed. (London: Mary Hinde, 1774), 59–­63. 37. Fox, Journal (ed. Nickalls), 589, 591–­92, 594–­97. 38. LSF, MS 364 (Abraham MSS), 15, John Stubbs to Margaret Fell, Barbados, December 2, 1671. 39. LSF, Box L 15/1 (transcript of Miller MSS), John Rous to Margaret Fell, Barbados, December 7, 1671. The original manuscripts were destroyed by fire in 1940. 40. LSF, MS 364, 15. 41. Fox, Journal (ed. Nickalls), 598–­601. For fuller details of life on the island and Quaker discipline, see Geoffrey Plank, “Discipline and Divinity: Colonial Quakerism, and

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servitude along with a small contribution toward their maintenance.42 Such requests had wide-­ranging repercussions, especially as aggrieved clergymen and plantation owners accused Fox and his supporters of rabble-­rousing. Six Barbados clergymen also sent a “Humble Petition” to the assembly in 1671 complaining of the disruption of divine service, denigration of the Anglican creed, and “the poisoning of many of our flock, who being infatuated and inveigled with these pernicious tenets desert the Established Church and withdraw into private and unlawful conventicles.”43 After witnessing the deplorable conditions of the enslaved, Fox, in a withering reply, inquired whether these men offered “the Gospel for Blacks,” thereby demonstrating his commitment to an inclusive religion.44 Additional proselytizing, while Fox was indisposed, was conducted by John Rous, William Edmundson, Thomas Briggs, John Stubbs, and Solomon Eccles, and this paved the way for Fox to offer advice to the Quaker community and the Barbadian population. According to Hull, these itinerants were “up and down the island in service, thrashing, cutting and hewing, and have very considerable numbers at their several meetings . . . so that people begin to be awakened, both backsliders . . . and others not before convinced.”45 During Fox’s visit, Rous considered the attitude of the authorities toward the Friends. He wrote to Margaret Fell that their success in securing converts had made “the Devil rage and fly to his old refuge of lies.” These missionaries also had to withstand the worst of the written attacks of John Pennyman, “an old apostate from Truth,” as well as John Drakes, “a cruel swearer and a bad man,” and Ben Pearson, a Ranter and a “beast of a man . . . much applauded by the priests and their followers, but loathed and abhorred by all sober people.” Moreover, the Friends were increasingly concerned that the authorities were attempting

‘Heathenism’ in the Seventeenth Century,” Church History 85, no. 3 (September 2016): 502–­28. 42. Fox, Journal (ed. Nickalls), 599. 43. P. F. Campbell, The Church in Barbados in the Seventeenth Century (St Michael: Barbados Museum and Historical Society, 1982), 73. 44. George Fox, Gospel Family-­Order . . . (London: s.n., 1676), 14, 16, but previously circulated in manuscript. For a wider discussion, see Kristen Block, “Quaker Evangelization in Early Barbados: Forging a Path toward the Unknowable,” in Quakers and Abolition, ed. Brycchan Carey and Geoffrey Plank (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2014), 89–­105 (particularly 94, 96–­97). 45. Hull in Fox, Journal (ed. Nickalls), 596.

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to impose a measure akin to the Conventicle Act of 1670, which restricted any meeting to five people.46 While recuperating, Fox wrote to Governor Codrington and the assembly, partly in response to criticism that the Quakers were contemptuous of Christian values and partly in an attempt to allay fears that they were promoting social revolution.47 He outlined their beliefs and repudiated the slanders and lies of their adversaries who had claimed that they had taught “the Negroes to rebel.” He insisted that the Friends were repulsed by the idea of a latent slave rebellion and, in conjunction with other itinerant preachers, urged the enslaved to be “sober,” “to fear god,” and to lead wholesome lives. He called on them to avoid physically abusing their spouses or entering into multiple marriages and stressed that they should “not steal, nor be drunk, nor commit adultery, nor fornication, nor curse, nor swear, nor lie, nor give bad words to one another nor unto anyone else . . . If notwithstanding, they should do them, there are but two ways, the one that leads to heaven where the righteous go, and the other that leads to hell, where the wicked and debauched, whoremongers, adulterers, murderers, and liars go.”48 Fox was quick to condemn the reluctance of the Barbadian clergy to preach to the enslaved population and called for an inclusive religion that embraced the teaching of “negroes and tawny Indians.”49 In spite of his great reservations about the living and working conditions of the enslaved, Fox did not specifically denounce the practice of slavery. He recommended that the enslaved ought “to love their masters and mistresses” and be “faithful and diligent in their service & business” and at the same time worked to persuade the Quakers and other slave owners to act responsibly toward the

46. LSF, Box L 15/1; Fox, Journal (ed. Nickalls), 599, 606–­7. 47. There has been a debate concerning Fox’s complete authorship of the document. See Richard Bailey, New Light on George Fox and Early Quakerism (Lampeter: Edwin Mellen, 1992), 185; Larry Ingle, First among Friends: George Fox and the Creation of Quakerism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 344n28. For a close examination of earlier handwritten and published versions of Fox’s letter, see J. William Frost, “George Fox’s Ambiguous Anti-­slavery Legacy,” in New Light on George Fox, 1624–­1691, ed. Michael Mullett (York: Sessions, 1991), 71–­72, 85n12; Stephen W. Angell, “An Early Version of George Fox’s ‘Letter to the Governor of Barbados,’” QS 19, no. 2 (2015): 277–­94. Also see Moore in chapter 7. 48. George Fox, For the Governor of Barbados . . . 1671, and cited in Journal (ed. Nickalls), 605. 49. George Fox, To the Ministers, Teachers, and Priests . . . (London: s.n., 1672), 5.

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enslaved and to treat them with kindness.50 It was a theme he would return to several times. Between September 1673 and February 1674, he called on the Friends to continue their work with the enslaved population, observing that the Barbadian Friends should not only hold their own meetings but encourage regular meetings with the enslaved. Fox’s observations were later read to the quarterly meeting: “All you that have negroes . . . lett them have two or three houres of the day once in the week that day ffreinds meeting is on, another day to meet together to wait upon the Lord for this would be a good savour among all the rest for therein you deny yor selves to the bringing them to the knowledge of the Lord God. And this would be a good pattern to all the island, and an example to all other masters to bring their servants from under oppression to know the Lord.”51 Undaunted by the slow progress, or possibly because of it, Fox wrote regularly to the Friends in the Caribbean, expressing a desire for wider participation and the inclusion of the enslaved at meetings. Using a host of Old and New Testament references, Fox reflected in his Gospel Family- ­Order upon the father’s responsibility for all within the family home—­notably, ensuring worship and discipline. This text was a rendition of the large meeting he had addressed at Thomas Rous’s house five years earlier and is “the best source for understanding Fox’s reaction to slavery . . . [as it] stemmed from his patriarchal views of the family.” He therefore believed that all, irrespective of skin color or ethnicity, could be free from “spiritual bondage,” and all would be accountable on the day of judgment. In this context, although aware of the pernicious nature of slavery, the good master would simply take responsibility for the spiritual growth of his extended family. This would thereby release the “slave” from bondage on a spiritual level, but it is probable that Fox “misunderstood the nature of slavery and conceived of it as a kind of indentured servitude”—­a condition he hoped would be ameliorated after a period of indentured work.52 Yet, as Jerry Frost argues, “under the practices advocated by Fox, a

50. Fox, Journal (ed. Nickalls), 605. 51. LSF, MS 307 (Fox Papers 6), 342–­43 (September 14, 1673, February 18, 1674). 52. Frost, “George Fox’s Ambiguous Anti-­slavery Legacy,” 71–­72. For additional views, see Barbara Ritter Dailey, “The Early Quaker Mission and Settlement of Meetings in Barbados, 1655–­1700,” JBMHS 39 (1991): 24–­46 (33); Gragg, Quaker Community on Barbados, 55; Kristen Block, Ordinary Lives in the Early Caribbean: Religion, Colonial Competition, and the Politics of Profit (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2012), 163–­65.

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Christian patriarchal master could continue to utilise slave labour under the guise of preaching the Gospel and family nurture.”53 At this point, it is worth considering whether Fox’s visit and his declaration had any lasting effect on the Friend’s beliefs and way of life. After staying on the island for a little more than three months, Fox left Jamaica on January 8, 1672, leaving behind him a considerable number of converts. In a letter to Margaret Fell in June 1672, Rous commented that the Quaker community was “in a flourishing state,”54 while Henry Fell called Fox’s visit “a heavenly visitation.”55 Several years later in 1677, Ralph Fretwell wrote to Rebecca Travers in London that the meetings continued to thrive and that they had complied with Fox’s request to “take care of ye poor.” Apart from stipulating the nature of these various meetings, particularly a Six Weeks Meeting of “Substantiall friends,” Fretwell compiled a partial list of the women Friends in each meeting.56 The prodigious growth of the Quaker community had not gone unnoticed by the Barbados authorities. On July 8, 1673, the grand jury noted “the daily increasing number of Quakers, who under pretence of piety, seduce many ignorant persons from due obedience to authority, and the true worship of God.”57 By 1680, the Friends composed more than 5 percent of the white settler population.58 The response to the perceived threat of these dissenters, particularly after Fox’s visit, was predictable. In 1674, Governor Jonathan Atkins, aware of the growing strength of this religious community and their potential to challenge the religious, social, economic, and cultural foundations of the island’s way of life, sanctioned further arrests and fines. From this year until the mid-­1690s, the Friends were subjected to harsh punishments and countless distraints of property. Thus, in 1674, many Friends were fined for their refusal to bear arms, while Joseph Borden was imprisoned twice for his refusal to swear the oath of allegiance and for opening his shop on Christmas Day. In the same year, Benomi Pearcy was whipped as a vagrant after inviting a magistrate to a Quaker meeting, and several of the 53. Frost, “George Fox’s Ambiguous Anti-­slavery Legacy,” 80. 54. LSF, Box L 15/1, Unsigned (allegedly John Rous) to Margaret Fell, Kingston, Jamaica, June 22, 1672. 55. LSF, MS 364, 20, Henry Fell to Margaret Fell, Barbados, December 14, 1672. 56. LSF, Box Meeting, SR1/127, 35. Also see Cadbury, “186 Barbados Quakeresses,” 195–­97. 57. W. Noel Sainsbury, ed., Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, America and West Indies, 1669–­1674 (London: HMSO, 1889), 506 (no. 1116). 58. Richard S. Dunn, “The Barbados Census of 1680: Profile of the Richest Colony in English America,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd. ser. 26, no. 1 (1969): 3–­30.

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Friends were attacked by an unruly mob who punched and whipped them, forced their horses to trample on them, and then “drove one of them into the Sea, and then stoned him to drive him out again.”59 During this year alone, 209,496 pounds of sugar were confiscated, while between 1658 and 1685, the total loss of 1,423,164 pounds of sugar amounted to £8894.15s.6d.60 In April 1676, the Barbados Assembly imposed further sanctions on the Quaker community to erode the influence they had with the slave population. The assembly, despite a petition from the various meetings, forbade the Friends from bringing the enslaved to their gatherings and prevented itinerant Quakers from holding meetings “on pain of six months imprisonment” and other fines.61 Such a measure did not curtail the Friends’ work with the slave population. Indeed, in 1677, Ralph Fretwell was fined £800 for infringing this measure, while the Negro Act was reintroduced the following year.62 The appointment of a new governor, Richard Dutton, did not mark a change of attitude. In July 1680, Dutton accused the Quakers of “creeping” into houses “under the Pretence of holy Worship, their teaching, uttering, declaring false and damnable doctrines.” Conscious of their growing numbers, he believed that their activities were “evil and dangerous . . . to the peace, happiness, tranquillity and good government of this island.” He called on his constables to raid the next meeting at Bridgetown, arrest the attendees, destroy the furniture, and nail up the doors. The meeting house, however, was not ransacked, but the Friends continued to feel the full force of the authorities for their opposition to tithes, refusal to swear oaths, and noncompliance with the Militia Act for many years to come as they were subjected to intimidation, fines, sequestration of property, and imprisonment.63 The commitment of the Friends toward the religious instruction of the enslaved continued unabated. In 1680, Joan Vokins from Berkshire in England held several meetings for both white and black attendees.64 There 59. Besse, Sufferings, 2:288–­91. 60. Besse, 2:290, 343. 61. NA, CO 30/2, 108–­10, An Act to Prevent . . . Quakers from Bringing Negroes to Their Meeting, April 21, 1676; W. Noel Sainsbury, ed., Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, America and West Indies, 1675–­1676 . . . (London: HMSO, 1893), 331, 426; Besse, Sufferings, 2:308–­9. 62. April 17, 1678; Besse, Sufferings, 2:310–­11, 324–­25. 63. Besse, Sufferings, 2:327–­51. 64. Joan Vokins, God’s Mighty Power Magnified . . . (London: Thomas Northcott, 1691), 43. Also see Lapsansky-­Werner in chapter 10.

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is evidence of some Quakers granting freedom to the enslaved and occasionally providing for them in their wills, but manumissions were rare. There are many notable examples of the Quakers in the 1680 census retaining slaves, including Ralph Fretwell, who kept 166; Henry Feake, who had 120; John Rous, who owned 204; and Rous’s father, Thomas, who had a further 70.65 Richard Sutton of St. George’s, who owned 60 slaves, saw nothing wrong in the practice and specifically bequeathed in his will several named slaves to his family. The interesting feature in probates of this nature is the categorization of the enslaved alongside livestock and other possessions. Thus Sutton bequeathed to his grandson “one Negro girle by name Kate,” and this was immediately followed by the bequest of “one small cow named Kinge.” This action was repeated in the will of John Todd of St. John’s and John James of St. Thomas.66 For these men, and presumably many others like them, Quaker and non-­Quaker alike, the slave was just another mere possession to be bought, sold, or bequeathed. In addition, from the middle of the century to the beginning of the eighteenth century, the Barbados Friends released only 6 percent of their slaves, but this does compare favorably with the 2 percent who were released by the non-­Quaker plantation owners.67 Whatever his intentions and the constraints that were imposed, Fox’s reluctance to unequivocally reject the pernicious practice of slavery was subsequently used by later generations of Quaker slave owners in the Americas as the means to justify the continued ownership of slaves. Jerry Frost has observed that in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, when many Pennsylvanian Friends questioned the legitimacy of slavery, “the conservatives in control of the press saw in Fox’s acceptance of slavery, a means of neutralising the nascent anti-­slavery movement.” His analysis drew upon Fox’s writings, other seventeenth-­century antislavery commentaries, and the testimony of George Gray, a former judge and planter from the Plantation/Speightstown Meeting, whose attitudes toward slavery echoed Fox’s earlier pronouncements.68 65. Extracted from the Barbados Museum Library, MS Quaker Landowners: 1680 Census, 40–­72. 66. BA, RB6/2/223, Will of Richard Sutton the Elder, March 29, 1684; BA, RB1/40/435, Will of John Todd the Elder, May 26, 1687. 67. Larry Gragg, “The Pious and the Profane: The Religious Life of Early Barbados Planters,” Historian–­Albuquerque then Allentown 62, no. 2 (2000): 265–­83 (281). 68. Frost, “George Fox’s Ambiguous Anti-­slavery Legacy,” 70, 75–­80.

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What can be said about Fox’s visit to the Caribbean and the attitude revealed by the Barbados declaration is that there was a determination to consolidate and unify Quaker practice. Many of his early biographers, however, overlooked the deeper ambiguities of Fox’s personality and his ambivalent attitude toward slavery. It can be argued that his visit does not demonstrate anything other than a deep-­rooted pragmatism. In this instance, he expressed his own practical philosophy and attempted to provide a workable code of conduct. He did not deliver a charter of an idealistic egalitarianism. Rather than insisting upon policies that were impossible to meet, he suggested a more viable solution that could yield realistic progress. Fox quite deliberately cast himself in the role of missionary, promoting Quaker ideals while at the same time acknowledging, albeit tacitly, the problems that a direct attack on slavery could produce. In doing so, he fully recognized that Barbadian society was different from that of Britain and Ireland. The island had a turbulent history, its social relations were complicated, and harmonizing such a divided community was bound to be a long and protracted process. Fox was sufficiently astute to realize that the economic viability of the sugar plantations rested heavily upon slave labor. To call for outright abolition was bound to be self-­defeating, and despite his real concern about the inhumane treatment to which the enslaved were subjected, he thereby adopted a pragmatic approach. Ultimately, he hoped that significant numbers of wealthy Barbadian Friends would set a better precedent and persuade others to follow their example. One reading of Fox’s declaration is that he was working on the possibility that the Friends had the potential to expand their community given optimum conditions. He would have been wary of alienating new recruits by making the conditions of joining too difficult. Consequently, Fox advocated “a middle way” by encouraging the Friends to improve the working and living conditions of the enslaved rather than condemning slavery outright. He advised them to exercise their authority with generosity and responsibility and establish a model that Quaker and non-­Quaker alike could follow.69 Can this be regarded as an early form of benevolent paternalism, whereby those in authority undoubtedly acted in accordance with the prevailing cultural and social constraints but treated the less fortunate more liberally—­offering the enslaved a limited education and a modicum 69. See Frost, 73, 81.

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of freedom? Clearly, Fox was not disposed to challenge the social hierarchy, but in advancing a persuasive argument, he perhaps offered a less brutal approach to the practice of slave owning than that of his contemporaries. At the same time, he was under pressure to placate those who predicted a would-­be slave rebellion. Either way, his declaration provided a moral lead to the Friends and accommodated those slave owners who might, in time, be attracted to Quakerism. Finally, it is probably worth reemphasizing that post-1671, only a small number of the enslaved were liberated and assisted in their new lives by the Friends on the island. The vast majority of members continued to own slaves. In the context of the period, slave owning was the accepted means of running plantations and ensuring their financial stability. Fox may have challenged the status quo, but as he himself accepted, slave owning in some shape or form would be a resilient and abiding feature of Barbadian, and more generally Caribbean, society for many years to come. After Fox had visited Barbados, he traveled to Jamaica ( January 1672). During a seven-­week stay, he and his companions traveled extensively around the island; met the governor, Sir Thomas Lynch, and other dignitaries; and established seven meetings, including those for men and women. It was noted that many were convinced, and “not a mouth was opened against us, but people were mighty civil and respectful, and when we were to go away they said it was a pity such men should go out of the land.”70 Buoyed by such success, William Edmundson, Thomas Briggs, and Lewis Morris were moved to proselytize in the Leeward Islands. They spent four days in Antigua, again achieving some notable converts, including the governor of the island, Colonel Samuel Winthrop, and held several “large heavenly Meetings” at Winthrop’s home before visiting Nevis,71 yet they were not allowed to land, despite having two colonels onboard. Colonel Edmond Stapleton, the deputy-­governor of Montserrat, explained why Charles Wheeler, the governor of Nevis, would not allow the Quakers to disembark: “We hear that since your Coming to the Carribbee-­Islands, there are Seven Hundred of our Militia turned Quakers; and the Quakers will not fight, and we have 70. Fox, Journal (ed. Nickalls), 611. 71. LSF, MS 364, 15; Richard B. Sheridan, Sugar and Slavery: An Economic History of the British West Indies, 1623–­1775 (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974), 188. The further experiences of the Friends in Antigua, especially the levels of persecution under various English and French governors, are discussed in Jonas Langford, A Brief Account of the Sufferings . . . Antegoa . . . (London: Tace Sowle, 1706), 1–­20; Besse, Sufferings, 2:370–­76.

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Need of Men to fight, being surrounded with Enemies, and that is the very Reason, why Governor Wheeler will not suffer you to come ashore.”72 There were, however, brief periods of toleration throughout the Caribbean, but these rarely lasted any length of time. Throughout the second period, female Quakers were noticeable as missionaries in the Caribbean. Katherine Norton was only sixteen when she left Derry for Barbados but was convinced during Fox’s visit to the island and left her husband there (c. 1678) when she returned to Ireland as a preacher.73 Another prominent female preacher was Lydia Fell, a Welsh Quaker and the wife of Henry Fell, another missionary. She traveled extensively proclaiming the Quaker message and was certainly prepared to voice her opinions.74 In a tract written to the magistrates and inhabitants of Barbados in 1676, she stated that they had often been visited by preachers but warned them that unless they mended their ways, they would reap divine vengeance: “O consider how often the God of Heaven hath visited you, sending his faithful Servants and Messengers amongst you, to call to Repentance and Amendment of Life, and to warn you, that so you might have escaped the many Judgments which his Hand hath brought upon you divers times both by Fires often, and Pestilence, and Storms.” She observed that when the Quakers had attempted to preach, they had been mocked, while others had been distrained of their goods or imprisoned when they refused to serve in the militia or provide horses for them. Indeed, she noted that some faced economic ruin.75 Female Quakers endured internal criticism at this time, including the publication of Thomas Crisp’s Babel’s Builders Unmasking Themselves . . . in 1681, which exposed the deep divisions over women’s meetings and marriage procedures.76 In response, John Rous condemned Crisp’s “abusive aspersions,” which alleged that there was a centralizing “Foxoman sect” determined to impose their will on all the Friends, and observed the following: 72. Edmundson, Journal, 61–­63. 73. J. Rutty, A History of the Rise and Progress of . . . Quakers in Ireland, 1653–­1700 (Dublin: I. Jackson, 1751), 129; John M. Douglas, “Early Quakerism in Ireland: Presidential Address, 1955,” JFHS 48, no. 1 (Spring 1956): 22. 74. Apart from Barbados, she had also visited the Friends in Bermuda c. 1672. See LSF, MS 364, 20. For settlement and persecution on Bermuda post-­1666, see Samson Bond, A Public Trial . . . May 1678 (Boston: Samuel Green, 1682); Besse, Sufferings, 2:367–­70; A. Day Bradley, “Friends in Bermuda in the Seventeenth Century,” JFHS 54, no. 1 (1976): 3–­11. 75. Lydia Fell, A Testimony and Warning . . . (London?: s.n., 1676), 1, 2. 76. Thomas Crisp, Babel’s Builders Unmasking Themselves . . . (London: s.n., 1681).

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As for the womens meetings, both in cities, townes and countries, it doth appear to be most convenient for them to meet in such a manner as may best answer the end of their meeting . . . if men and women meet together and womens affaires present, wch are not fit to be discoursed before men, w[ha]t must they doe? Either let it alone or withdrawe? . . . and wheras none are compelled to come to the womens meetings agst their freedome, what injurie is done to any yt this should make soe great a difference? . . . for it appeares not only unchristian like but irrationall yt soe small differences should produce soe great annimositie.77

Rous was conscious that this provided their opponents with evidence that the Quakers were divided, and thereby he sought to ensure that “enmitie and prejudice” were quickly dealt with.78 During the period of the dispute, Rous provided details of the strength of the meetings on the island. Apart from noting the importance of the yearly meeting at Richard Sutton’s house and the Six Weeks Meeting, he recorded that there were four quarterly meetings held over the course of three days—two of them for worship, the third a business meeting, while the purpose of the fourth is not specified. Yet the problems the Friends encountered meant that they were unable to have a “full service, because divers intrude who are not fit to be at such meetings.” Rous felt that appropriate representatives should attend business meetings but was aware that presently, “weake Friends hear disputes wch are not for thier benefit.” Despite these concerns, he noted that there were six divisions and six monthly meetings where “all yt are convinced and walke honestly doe come,” while five or six public meetings helped promote Quakerism on the island. Two general monthly meetings were held at Bridgetown, where the men and women had separate meetings. Here collections were made for the benefit of meetings more generally, while epistles and marriage proposals were read out and younger Friends and children were invited to attend.79 Missionary endeavors on continental North America continued naturally from the early years of the Quaker movement and throughout the remaining 77. LSF, MS 323 (A. R. Barclay MSS), 47, John Rous in answer to Babel’s Builders . . . , Barbados, January 28, 1682. 78. LSF, MS 323, 47. Also see Allen in chapter 4. 79. For these and other details, see LSF, MS 323, 48–­49, John Rous to George Whitehead and Alexander Parker, Barbados, December 26, 1681; MS 323, 50, Richard Ford’s copy of an epistle to London Friends, [Barbados], January 14, 1682.

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decades of the second period. In 1672, Fox with other missionaries—­such as William Edmundson, who made three transatlantic journeys in 1671, 1675, and 168380—­sought to familiarize American Friends with the organizational apparatus of regular business meetings and develop the process that had led to the establishment of the New England Yearly Meeting in 1661. These missionaries visited meetings in Maryland, in Virginia, and throughout the difficult terrain of the Carolinas, where Edmundson’s preaching helped establish a meeting at Henry Phillip’s plantation.81 Prior to their reaching Rhode Island, the Friends and their allies had increasingly gained control of the government after a series of disputes in the colony. Before 1671, they had not really engaged as a political group but found themselves in direct opposition to the faction led by Roger Williams, the Puritan divine and founder of Providence. The Quakers opposed legislation for increased taxes and became progressively concerned over the claims for land titles in Narragansett and Pawtuxet between 1671 and 1672. These factors had made the Rhode Island Assembly largely ungovernable, and consequently many deputies were voted out of office in May 1672. The crisis continued, and infighting beleaguered the assembly, largely undermining its ability to function or raise taxes, while the Friends were bitterly resentful of new legislation that silenced opposition. Although measures were taken to overturn previous legislation, the intolerant behavior of the Roger Williams faction provided the Quakers with an opportunity to secure electoral success in late 1672. It was in this atmosphere that Fox arrived in Rhode Island and was immediately challenged by Williams, possibly in an attempt to reassert the political authority of his faction and expose the heresy of the Friends. The message did not reach Fox in time, as he had already departed Rhode Island, but Edmundson, John Burnyeat, and John Stubbs held a lengthy disputation with Williams, during which he was allegedly heckled and regularly interrupted.82 The Rhode Island Quaker government nevertheless faced further problems with the likelihood of intercolonial war, and some of the Friends, irrespective of their pacifism, were initially forced to 80. Edmundson, Journal, 79–­115, 125–­28. 81. Fox, Journal (ed. Nickalls), 613–­64. 82. Arthur J. Worrall, “Persecution, Politics, and War: Roger Williams, Quakers, and King Philip’s War,” QH 66, no. 2 (Autumn 1977): 76–­78; Worrall, Quakers in the Colonial Northeast, 31–­37. Also see Roger Williams, George Fox Digg’d Out of His Burrowes . . . (Boston: John Foster, 1676); and George Fox and John Burnyeat, A New England Firebrand Quenched . . . (London: s.n., 1678).

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appoint commanders as well as raise and disperse military funds. The situation somewhat eased when the assembly passed a law that reaffirmed their religious principles and pacifism, but clearly the experience of governance dramatically changed the perception of the Quakers in the American colonies. To their opponents, they were no longer just religious radicals; rather, they were political foes.83 During the years of repression, William Penn conducted delicate negotiations with the Crown and carefully articulated the case for religious liberty and Quaker settlements in the American colonies.84 The Friends already had partial ownership of West Jersey,85 and they purchased East New Jersey in 1682. The two provinces were nevertheless combined in 1702 into New Jersey.86 The establishment of East and West New Jersey by the Friends is particularly useful as a case study, as it gives clear insight into proprietary ownership, colonization, and the creation of townships as well as the problems associated with initial settlement. The former Dutch colony became an English royal colony in 1665 under James, the Duke of York, and thereafter, under the proprietary ownership of Sir George Carteret and Lord Berkeley, it offered religious tolerance for settlers in New Jersey. Several towns were established, but from 1674 the Province of New Jersey was subdivided as East and West New Jersey, each having its own governor and later constitutions (1681 and 1683).87 Problems with quitrents forced Berkeley to sell his share of the lands to two English Quakers, John Fenwick, a gentleman from Stanton in Northumberland, and Edward Billing [Byllynge], a London brewer. In 1674, Fenwick had purchased the rights

83. Worrall, Quakers in the Colonial Northeast, 37. 84. William Penn, The Great Case of Liberty of Conscience . . . (London: s.n., 1670). 85. BLO, Ballads, Wood 416 (129); Anon., The Quakers Farewel to England . . . Their Voyage to New Jersey . . . (London: J. G., 1675); John E. Pomfret, The Province of West New Jersey, 1609–­1702: A History of the Origins of an American Colony (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1956). 86. John E. Pomfret, “The Proprietors of the Province of East New Jersey, 1682–­1702,” PMHB 77 (1953): 251–­93; Ned Landsman, “William Penn’s Scottish Counterparts: The Quakers of ‘North Britain’ and the Colonization of East New Jersey,” in The World of William Penn, ed. Richard S. Dunn and Mary M. Dunn (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986), 241–­57. 87. This remained the situation until it became a united royal colony in 1702. For general details, see William Penn, A Brief Account of the Province of East-­Jersey . . . (London: Benjamin Clark, 1682).

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to a “Fifth Tenth” of West Jersey,88 and the following year he, along with other Friends, emigrated from London. A land deed from October 8, 1675, legitimized the establishment of the first settlement in West Jersey, appropriately named Fenwick’s Colony (Salem County), where Fenwick died in 1683.89 In contrast, Billing’s financial problems meant that on June 1, 1676, his acquisition of land was transferred to other Friends, including Fenwick, Penn, Nicholas Lucas, and Gawen Lawrie, alongside Carteret, although Billing did retain some proprietary rights.90 Despite never visiting his land, Billing would become the first governor of West New Jersey (1680–87), but he was detested by the settlers, probably because of his lack of interest in their affairs. In East New Jersey, there was also a Quaker presence, with a settlement in the Monmouth Tract as early as 1665 from those Friends who had relocated from Rhode Island and Long Island. In 1669, a monthly meeting had been established in Shrewsbury. This was followed in 1672 by the creation of the Shrewsbury Quarterly Meeting and the erection of a meeting house that George Fox saw as part of his journey through the northern colonies.91 The fortunes of the Friends in East New Jersey improved further, particularly after the death of Carteret in 1682, as his heirs sold his propriety rights to twelve new shareholders, eleven of whom were Quakers, and they appointed Scottish Quaker theologian Robert Barclay as governor (1682–­88).92 Yet the proliferation of other religious settlers certainly 88. West Jersey was parceled off into five territorial zones (each recorded as a tenth), and Fenwick’s purchase approximated to modern-­day Salem and Cumberland. These and future developments are discussed in Henry H. Bisbee, ed., The Concessions and Agreements . . . of the Province of West New Jersey . . . (Burlington, N.J.: Burlington Press, 1951); John Fea, “Fenwick, John,” http://​www​.oxforddnb​.com​/​view​/​article​ /​71092 (accessed June 10, 2015). 89. Full details are provided in John Clement, A Sketch of the Life and Character of John Fenwick (Philadelphia: Friends’ Historical Association, 1875); Pomfret, Province of West New Jersey. 90. Quintiparite Deed of Revision, between East and West Jersey, July 1, 1676. 91. John E. Pomfret, The Province of East New Jersey, 1609–­1702: The Rebellious Proprietary (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962), 34–­55. 92. There were other Quaker deputy governors, notably Thomas Rudyard (1682–­83) and Gawen Lawrie (1683–­86). See Pomfret, Province of East New Jersey, 130–­81. For additional Scottish Quaker emigrants in the colony and its later history, see Pomfret, Province of East New Jersey, 182–­98; Ned C. Landsman, Scotland and Its First American Colony, 1683–­1765 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 99–­162; David Dobson, Scottish Quakers and Early America, 1650–­1700 (Baltimore, Md.: Clearfield, 1998).

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diminished the Quaker hold on the territory.93 In the retrospective accounts of the Willis family of Burlington, the process of settlement in 1677 from proprietary ownership and subdivision of the land via lots to the creation of a lasting community is laid bare. On March 22, 1677, the proprietors provided Daniel Willis and Thomas Olive with a deed of land for further redistribution, and later that year the two men and several other Quakers and their families arrived in America.94 The intention of Penn and the other leading Friends was for them to “lay out lands; to inspect the rights of such as claimed property, and to order the lands laid out; and . . . to administer the government.”95 A feature of missionary work was to promote the ideals of toleration and thereby peaceful coexistence. Not all of the Friends were prepared to turn their swords into plowshares, as demonstrated in the participation of some English Friends in the Northern Plot in 1663.96 Across the Atlantic, the potential for military involvement of the Friends caused concern. In 1674, the governor of Nevis received a petition from imprisoned Friends questioning the legitimacy of their incarceration. They were subsequently released, but the following year, these Quakers refused to perform any duties that might compromise their pacifist beliefs,97 including keeping a lookout for national enemies as well as pirates, which they had done previously while unarmed. Fox intervened and, in a strongly worded letter, informed the Nevis Friends that the request to be vigilant and keep watch was “a very civil thing, and to be taken notice of,” while “watching . . . in no way compromised Friends’ testimony against all wars.” Yet they did not adhere to Fox’s advice, and consequently the Nevis Assembly passed a law in July 1677 that refused entry to any Quaker missionary. Anyone found contravening this law was 93. For details, see William A. Whitehead, East Jersey under the Proprietary Governments (Newark: New Jersey Historical Society, 1875); Pomfret, Province of East New Jersey, 199–­335. 94. These included John Kinsey, John Penfold, Benjamin Scott, Richard Guy, and Thomas Foulke, and they set sail on the Kent from London. See Smith, History of the Colony of Nova-­Cæsaria, 92. 95. HCLSC, MS 1112, Willis Family Papers, Box 1, Folder 2, 6, Journal of Samuel Willis (1765–­1852), 1788–­c. 1798. 96. George Fox and others, A Declaration from the Harmless and Innocent People of God . . . (London: Robert Wilson, 1661); A. W. Braithwaite, “Early Friends’ Testimony against Carnal Weapons,” JFHS 52, no. 2 (1969): 101–­5; Meredith Baldwin Weddle, Walking in the Way of Peace: Quaker Pacifism in the Seventeenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 39–­76; Moore, Light, 184–­86, and her comments in chapter 1. 97. Besse, Sufferings, 2:352–­54, 360, 366.

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subject to heavy fines. The Quaker islanders naturally took issue with the measure and proclaimed their allegiance to the Crown but explained that their position was based on the conviction that to provide any assistance would violate their pacifist beliefs.98 Colonial expansion, alongside periods of conflict, could often have serious implications for the Quaker communities. King Philip’s War (1675–­76) was one example where they were highly vocal in their opposition. English expansion in North America not only was at the expense of other European powers but naturally impinged on the rights of First Nation peoples. In June 1675 the Wampanoag, under their leader (sachem), Philip, sought redress of the loss of land and influence and rebelled against the Plymouth Colony. From an initial rebellion, it mushroomed into an intense conflict that lasted fourteen months and had a devastating impact on the inhabitants of New England, both indigenous and settler alike. The attitude of the Quaker government of Rhode Island, which was obliged to provide defense, sharpened the debate. The Rhode Island Quakers were in a difficult position, and “it is essential to imagine the immensity of the danger threatening the people of New England: the fear of violence shredding all certainty and all expectations.”99 The New England Quakers more generally, however, not only opposed the conflict on pacifist grounds but believed that the war was God’s punishment against new colonial settlement as well as the inhumane way Quaker missionaries had been treated by the Puritan authorities between 1659 and 1661. In contrast, the New England Puritans blamed the Quakers for these calamitous events, as they believed God was punishing them for allowing the Quaker heresy to exist. Indeed, the Massachusetts General Court argued that allowing the Quakers to express “damnable heresies” and “abominable idolatries” could no longer be tolerated. With the use of informants, the authorities provided legislation that enabled them to arrest the Quakers attending meetings, fine them £5, send them to houses of correction, or imprison them. Passions reached a fever pitch when the Friends covertly erected a memorial in Boston to two Quaker “martyrs” with a short verse inscribed on it: “Although our Bodyes here / in silent Earth do lie / Yet 98. George Fox, “To Friends in Nevis, and the Carribbee Islands,” in Selections from the Epistles, &c. of George Fox, ed. Samuel Tuke (York: W. Alexander, 1825), 243–­54; Peter Brock, Pacifism in the United States: From the Colonial Era to the First World War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), 72–­74. 99. Weddle, Walking in the Way of Peace, 197.

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our Righteous Souls at rest / our Blood for Vengeance cry.” Although both the Quaker and the Puritan claimed the higher moral ground, the anti-­ Quaker legislation was dropped. The situation remained tense, particularly as a pamphlet war was waged between 1675 and 1677. More significant was the impact it had on the Quaker government of Rhode Island. In June 1676 the assembly rescinded legislation that exempted men from active service in the militia on grounds of conscience. It has been speculated that if there had been no war, the Quakers would have continued to dominate the Rhode Island government, but their opposition to the conflict enabled the Roger Williams faction in May 1677 to wrest control from them.100 The aftermath of King Philip’s War nevertheless did not mean that all of the Quakers were subjected to intolerance in the American colonies. There was cooperation and tolerance, even in parts of Massachusetts and Connecticut, while in New York the Friends were allowed to meet freely and given the opportunity to erect meeting houses. Moreover, legal cases brought against them now largely centered on their unwillingness to pay for the militia and the reluctance of the New York government to accept Quaker marriages as bona fide. Mutual respect increasingly replaced distrust, and “clearly the period of Perrotonian and similar deviant disturbances was at an end.”101 By 1682, the combination of missionary endeavors and the sheer resilience of the Quaker communities on both sides of the Atlantic was improving the durability of meetings. This was further enhanced by the visits of Fox, Barclay, Penn, and others in Europe, the Caribbean, and North America. And yet the Friends were still subjected to brutality and periods of intense persecution, particularly when they would not comply with the authorities’ demands for militias. Naturally, their pacifism precluded such involvement, but equally it made them vulnerable to fines, harassment, and/ or imprisonment. The growing ability of the Quakers to articulate their message in a less confrontational way nevertheless gave them opportunities to expand their communities, establish lasting meetings, and embrace the international network that Foxian centralization had helped create. There 100. Worrall, Quakers in the Colonial Northeast, 38–­41; James D. Drake, King Philip’s War: Civil War in New England, 1675–­1676 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999), particularly for the Quakers, see 8–­9; Weddle, Walking in the Way of Peace, 143–­82, 197–­211. For persecution in New England circa 1656–­1679, see GBS, II, 1–­29; Besse, Sufferings, 2:177–­278. 101. Worrall, Quakers in the Colonial Northeast, 42.

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were, as shown elsewhere in this volume, those who dissented from such prescribed measures. Furthermore, there were particular conditions in the colonies, notably in Barbados, where the peculiar nature of land ownership and the use of slaves caused the Friends to challenge the hegemony of the planters and spell out their beliefs. The “Letter to the Governor of Barbados” nevertheless was not the means by which slavery could be questioned, but in the context of the period, it was never likely to do so. As such, the letter has remained as an ambiguous statement of the Quaker position concerning slavery. In England, Penn’s skillful networking with leading English politicians, particularly the earls of Rochester and Sunderland and Sidney Godolphin (the “Chits”), afforded him direct contact with the Privy Council, where he argued for religious toleration.102 Subsequently, Penn was able to persuade both politicians and King Charles II to grant a colonial charter of land (February–­March 1681) that would ultimately become Pennsylvania. Mary Geiter has exposed the deeper significance of the colonial grant, which, rather than simply being Penn’s “desire for a religious utopia,” had its origins in the political uncertainties the king faced with a considerable question mark hanging over Stuart succession to the throne and the real prospect of another revolution. She has persuasively argued that the king attempted to prevent another civil war by dividing his opponents, offering patronage to the moderates among them, including Penn and his Pennsylvania charter.103 Whatever the motivations on either side, the charter was granted on March 4, 1681.104 Moreover, Penn further persuaded the king to release the three counties below Pennsylvania (Delaware), which were part of the Duke of York’s profitable proprietorship and essential for the commercial viability of Pennsylvania.105 After meeting with leading Friends, several 102. For further details of Penn’s political maneuvering, see Southcombe in chapter 8. 103. Mary K. Geiter, “ The Restoration Crisis and the Launching of Pennsylvania, 1679–­81,” English Historical Review 112, no. 446 (1997): 300–­18. 104. Jean R. Soderlund, William Penn and the Founding of Pennsylvania, 1680–­1684: A Documentary History (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983), 39–­50. For wider studies of the establishment of Pennsylvania, see Edwin Bronner, William Penn’s “Holy Experiment”: The Founding of Pennsylvania, 1681–­1701 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1962); Geiter, “Restoration Crisis,” 300–­318; and further references in Southcombe in chapter 8. 105. Richard S. Dunn, “Penny Wise and Pound Foolish: Penn as Businessman,” in Dunn and Dunn, World of William Penn, 41–­42; Soderlund, William Penn and the

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companies were established and the new colony divided with the desire to attract “laborious handicrafts especially carpenters, masons, smiths, weavers, taylors, tanners, shoemakers, shipwrights etc.” Of the 589 purchasers between 1681 and 1685, many were not simply investors, as they took possession of their land.106 Moreover, trustees enabled their co-­religionists to purchase tracts of land and sought to promote liberty of conscience in a politically and economically viable colony.107 These territories (Bucks, Chester, and Philadelphia Counties—upper counties), along with Delaware (three lower counties), thereby gave the Friends the prospect of maintaining their communities as “a single ‘culture’ area,”108 and with successive waves of emigration from 1682 onward, the Quaker settlers were quickly able to secure and expand their original investment. For much of the early 1680s, Penn sought to populate and regulate his colony with a system of good governance (Frame of Government, 1682 and 1683) and plan for its commercial success.109 As the proprietor, he had “to win the consent of his settlers in order to achieve a peaceful and just society. Building a colony was also a business proposition, one that could not succeed without vigorous promotion” and a large investment from the proprietor himself.110 Disagreements undermined the new colony, and some Founding of Pennsylvania, 41; Mary K. Geiter, William Penn (Harlow: Longman, 2000), 44–­45. 106. For further details of inducements, purchasers, and conditions of the purchase, see William Penn, A Brief Account of the Province of Pennsilvania . . . (London: Benjamin Clark, 1682), 11–­12; Soderlund, William Penn and the Founding of Pennsylvania, 71–­78; Geiter, William Penn, 109–­13; Deborah L. Haines, “William Penn’s Townships, the ‘Cheshire Friends,’ and the Shape of Community in America,” QH 101, no. 2 (Fall 2012): 25–­28; Landes, London Quakers, 93–­94, for a discussion concerning trade with the indigenous inhabitants of Pennsylvania, the Lenni Lenape, and 128–­31, 133–­40, for the purchasing of lands by the 469 “First Purchasers”; land companies; passage to America; certificates of removal; and experiences in the colony. 107. John E. Pomfret, “The First Purchasers of Pennsylvania, 1681–­1700,” PMHB 80, no. 2 (April 1956): 137–­63; J. William Frost, A Perfect Freedom: Religious Liberty in Pennsylvania (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 13–­17. 108. Frederick B. Tolles, Quakers and the Atlantic Culture (New York: Macmillan, 1960), 117. 109. See Soderlund, William Penn and the Founding of Pennsylvania, 93–­140, 265–­73; Geiter, William Penn, 120–­28. 110. Gary B. Nash, First City: Philadelphia and the Forging of Historical Memory (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), 22. Nash has suggested that Penn’s investment of £12,000 would today equate to more than two million dollars.

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leading settlers questioned Penn’s reputation and openly challenged his proprietary government.111 Pennsylvania remained an ideal “New Jerusalem,” but turning the charter into reality for the Quakers would take time and considerable resources, as it faced internal and external threats. And yet, throughout the eighteenth-­century, the Friends continued to advance their global religious community and establish trade networks that spanned the Atlantic. Significantly, however, the emigration of many of the Friends and their entire families, as well as servants in some cases, caused many once-­ vibrant Quaker meetings to contract, undermining the vitality of meetings in the British Isles that had been so carefully developed in the preceding thirty years. Indeed, in some rural areas, there was “great weakening If not totall decayeinge” of meetings, and there were calls for “the unsavoury precedings & runninges” to Pennsylvania to be curtailed.112 Some of the Friends observed that there was a significant drop in numbers attending meetings, and while the loss of the next generation to Pennsylvania might have been a “Holy Experiment,” it was, as John Kelsall Jr. observed, a “hidden leprosie” for those who remained behind.113 Emigration naturally deprived meetings of adherents, and for some, it meant that they faced terminal decline.

111. Richard C. Allen, “In Search of a New Jerusalem: A Preliminary Investigation into Welsh Quaker Emigration to North America c.1660–­1750,” QS 9, no. 1 (September 2004): 39–­40; Geiter, William Penn, 141–­44. 112. Richard C. Allen, Quaker Communities in Early Modern Wales: From Resistance to Respectability (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2007), 184–­86. 113. LSF, MS 194, 1 (A Journal . . . of the chief passages, concerns and exercises of my life . . .), 151–­54.

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C ha p t e r 6

Quakers and Dissenters in Dispute Raymond Brown and Alan P. F. Sell

The dissenters in view in this chapter are the Presbyterians, Congregationalists (or Independents), and Baptists, concerning whom a number of preliminary remarks are in order.1 First, whereas denominations, as they became known, with their national assemblies and structures, are creations of the nineteenth century, two centuries earlier, the situation was much more fluid, and the terms Presbyterian and Congregationalist or Independent signified parties who differed from one another over certain aspects of church order.2 Some Congregational ministers, like the vast majority of the Baptist pastors, did not accept parish ministries (livings) under the Protectorate, from which they could be ejected, if they had not already resigned, by August 24, 1662. By the Act of Uniformity of 1662, all ministers and schoolmasters were required to give their “unfeigned assent and consent” to 1. Both this designation and “Independents” were used from the 1640s onward. 2. These differences did not preclude representatives of both streams from working together during the Westminster Assembly, which, among other things, produced a “Confession of Faith.” See The Humble Advice of the Assembly of Divines . . . (London: Company of Stationers, 1647). These doctrines were largely reproduced by the Congregationalists in their “Savoy Declaration of Faith and Order.” See A Declaration of the Faith and Order Owned and Practised in the Congregational Churches in England . . . (London: John Field, 1658).

the Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England and to use it alone in worship. Those who did not would be ejected from their livings. Some two thousand ministers, of whom upward of 1,700 were Presbyterians and 271 were Congregationalists, stood against the act, and it was at this point that they became dissenters. A number of them had difficulties with parts of the Prayer Book, but the principal objection of many was that the ordering of the church’s worship was the prerogative of the church and not of the monarch or Parliament. The reasoning of those Congregationalists who had never accepted parish livings was that ministers should be supported by their people, not by tithes exacted from parishioners—­a view shared by the Quakers—­which put them at odds with those dissenters who held that tithing was an acceptable, even a scriptural, practice and others who, while thus far in agreement, felt that the existing system needed to be reformed. Again, while both Presbyterians and Congregationalists disputed with the Baptists over baptism, they differed among themselves, for example, in respect to ordination and the reception of members. The Presbyterians tended to agree with the moderate Episcopalian Richard Baxter that in the absence of ordination, a person should not preach in public, whereas the Congregational scholar and theologian John Owen maintained that if Christ had provided the gift of utterance, the recipient could not help but have a vocation to preach, and provided no regular ministry was disrupted, all was well.3 By the end of the century, the doctrinal lines were being more clearly drawn.4

Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Quakers In the wake of the regicide of 1649 and the disturbances caused by Commonwealth sectaries, many in the land were fearful of the threat to civil society posed by the Quakers. The Congregationalists in particular were less than 3. John Owen, A Defense of Sacred Scripture against Modern Fanaticism, trans. Stephen P. Westcott in John Owen, Biblical Theology (Morgan, Pa.: Soli Deo Gloria, 1994), 802–­3. 4. Congregationalists accused Presbyterians of being Arians, and the latter charged the former with antinomianism. The Arians, named after the controversial teacher of doctrine, Arius (c. 250–­c. 336), subordinated the Son to the Father, thereby denying the full divinity of Christ, while the antinomians held that because Christ bore the penalty of sin and thus fulfilled the law, those saved by grace were freed from the obligation to obey the law.

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keen to be lumped together with the “Quakers and phanaticks” (a ploy favored by some of their opponents in the established church), and they were hardly more content to be nicknamed “Brownists” (a reference to the Separatist followers of Robert Browne in the preceding century). There was also the fact, irritating to the dissenters, that they were losing members to the Quakers. In his prompt Answer to Baxter’s The Quaker’s Catechism (1655), James Nayler did not hesitate to needle Baxter on the point: “Some of your Churches are so emptied, that you have few left to hear you, but profane persons, swearers, oppressors, drunkards, and fighters . . . and these are become your prime hearers.”5 Francis Howgill, like a number of others, became a pilgrim from one “denomination” to another until he found his Quaker home. Turning from Puritanism of the stricter sort, “there appeared more beauty in them called Independents, and I loved them, and so joined my self to them . . . But at last I saw it was but in words, that they would do things, and choose officers and members of themselves, and so made themselves an Image, and fell down to it.”6 George Larkham (1630–­1700), minister of the Congregational church at Cockermouth in Cumberland, found himself at the receiving end of George Fox’s evangelical successes in the Northwest.7 On November 19, 1653, Anne Wilson “[broke] off from the church upon the account of Quakisme. Shee was the first that manifested her infection, the first that that evill errour prevailed upon.” Other members became similarly “infected,” though Thomas Jackson, having been briefly “ensnared by Quakisme . . . since hath been fully satisfied as to the evill of that opinion.”8 Against this general background, it is possible to briefly and selectively review Presbyterian and Congregational criticisms of Quaker behavior (while remembering that the Quakers were adept at adducing biblical justifications of even their most provocative antics) and Quaker ideas.9 5. Richard Baxter, The Quakers Catechism, or the Quakers Questioned . . . (London: A. M. for Thomas Underhill and Francis Tyton, 1655); James Nayler, An Answer to a Book Called The Quaker’s Catechism, Put Out by Richard Baxter . . . (London: s.n., 1655), 7. 6. Francis Howgill, The Inheritance of Jacob Discovered, after His Return Out of Egypt . . . (London: Giles Calvert, 1656), 8. 7. For whom, see Arnold G. Mattthews, Calamy Revised (Oxford: Clarendon, 1934), 315. 8. Robert B. Wordsworth, ed., The Cockermouth Congregational Church Book (Kendal: Titus Wilson, 2012), 8–­9. 9. It should not be thought that either was original to the Quakers. See Michael R. Watts, The Dissenters: From the Reformation to the French Revolution (Oxford: Clarendon, 1978), 186–­93.

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Quaker Behavior Among those of a more conservative Puritan disposition who were dismayed by the Quaker ways was Francis Higginson (1618–­73).10 A Presbyterian, he was ejected from Kirkby Stephen in Westmorland; his appointed successor did not appear, so he conformed and remained there until his death. Earlier, at Higginson’s instigation, Nayler and Howgill were arrested at Mallerstang, Westmorland, in November 1652 and held at Appleby jail until the following Easter sessions, where both Higginson and William Cole (d. 1674)—­another minister of Presbyterian sympathies, who was ejected from Preston in Lancashire but afterward conformed—­bore witness against them. These events were recounted in a 1653 Quaker tract, Saul’s Errand to Damascus, and against this, Higginson took up his pen, supplying numerous examples of Quaker disgracefulness, among them the following: “Now for their quakings, one of the most immediate notable fruits and accidents of their speakings . . . Those in their assemblies that are taken with these fits, fall suddenly down, as it were in a swoon . . . and lie grovelling on the earth . . . Their lips quiver, their flesh and joints tremble, their bellies swell as though blown up with wind, they foam at the mouth, and sometimes purge as if they had taken physic.”11 When addressing the Quaker challenge that the Bible witnesses to the fact of such quakings, Baxter drily replied, “I think that the great quaking that was in the army of the Philistines was no virtue or blessing to them, nor any sign of God among them, I Sam. 14: 15,” and was, like the Quaker quaking, caused by “violent motions of the body affectedly.”12 Again, the Quakers did not shrink from interrupting dissenting services with a view to denouncing the proceedings. In lively terms, John Banks of Brigham, Cumberland, records his encounter with the aforementioned 10. He receives brief mention in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography at the end of the article on his father, also Francis, the first minister at Salem, Massachusetts. See Stephen C. Arch, “Higginson, Francis (bap. 1586/7, d. 1630),” http://​www​.oxforddnb​ .com​/v​ iew​/a​ rticle​/1​ 3237 (accessed November 8, 2015); as well as Alan P. F. Sell, Church Planting: A Study of Westmorland Nonconformity (Worthing: H. E. Walter, 1986; repr., Eugene, Ore.: Wipf and Stock, 1998), passim. 11. George Fox, James Nayler, and John Lawson, Saul’s Errand to Damascus . . . (London: Giles Calvert, 1653); Francis Higginson, A Brief Relation of the Irreligion of the Northern Quakers (London: T. R. for H. R., 1653), 15. 12. Baxter, Quakers Catechism, 24. Given the necessity of brevity, I focus especially upon this work, in which are encapsulated anti-­Quaker points articulated elsewhere by a number of others.

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“hireling priest” George Larkham in the “Steeple-­House” at Cockermouth. Having been primed by the spirit as to the words he should utter, Banks entered the meeting. Larkham saw him and called out, “There is one come into the church like a mad-­man, with his hat on his head: church-­wardens, put him out!” And out he went, only to return shortly to hear the “burdensome, confused stuff ” that Larkham was dispensing. When Larkham completed his sermon, Banks delivered his admonition: “If thou be a minister of Christ, stand to prove thy practice; and if it be the same, the Apostles and ministers of Christ was (and is) in doctrine and practice; I’ll own thee; but if not, I am sent of God this day to testify against thee.” This made “the hireling fly with all the haste he could” and caused an uproar, with some members seeking to punish Banks and others to save him. Once outside, Banks declared the truth to those around him: “And having obeyed the requirings of the Lord, I came away in sweet peace, and spiritual comfort in my heart and soul.”13 The Quakers had no difficulty in surpassing such disturbances, notably when they ran naked through the streets, and they did this in numerous places, not least on eight occasions between 1653 and 1654 in Kendal, Hutton, and Kirkby Stephen.14 As might be expected, neither the more staid dissenters nor the magistrates took kindly to such drafty athleticism, and they were even less inclined to accept the Quakers’ justification of it. Howgill published his defense in the not-very-diplomatically-titled pamphlet A Woe against the Magistrates, Priests and People of Kendal . . . (1654). The nakedness, Howgill explained, was an example of prophetic symbolism designed to teach that just as the Quakers had stripped themselves of their clothes, so the magistrates’ “covering is now rent, and your garment is to be torn.” To the “priests” he announced the chilling news that “the Lord has caused some of his servants to go naked along your streets . . . as figures of his wrath to come upon that pride and fullness that Priests and people live in.” Of the people, Howgill rhetorically inquired, “What God is this ye serve that must be defended by clubs, swords, Rulers and carnal weapons?”15 13. John Banks, A Journal of the Life, Labours, Travels, and Sufferings . . . of . . . John Banks (London: J. Sowle, 1712), 10–­11. This is from Banks’s own text of 1668. 14. See Kenneth L. Carroll, “Early Quakers and ‘Going Naked as a Sign,’” QH 67, no. 2 (1978): 69–­87; Thomas Weld, A Further Discovery of That Generation of Men Called Quakers . . . (London: S. B., 1654), 83–­84. 15. Francis Howgill, A Woe against the Magistrates, Priests, and People of Kendal . . . (London: s.n., 1654), 1, 2, 6.

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In a less flamboyant but no less determined fashion, the Quakers caused consternation when, consistent with their abomination of the Christian year and in contravention of the law, they opened their shops on Christmas Day. On December 25, 1660, R. Edwards wrote from Oxford that “some of those called Quakers were molested for opening their shops this day and were carried to prison.”16 Others who similarly paid the price included some servants of three Quaker shop owners in Bristol in 1663.17 For opening his shop, Titas (sic) Meredith of Leominster, Herefordshire, was, on the instruction of the town bailiff, John Tomkins (Tompkins), brought to the Market House by the constables. There he refused the oath of allegiance and spent the night in the town prison.18 Many dissenters disagreed with the Quaker refusal to pay tithes. Fox recalled that whereas earlier Congregationalists, Baptists, and Presbyterians had argued that tithes were antichristian, “when they got farther into the outward power, then they all [a polemical exaggeration this] got into steeplehouses and tithes; and then these things were jure divino [by divine law] with them, and for God and the Church, as though God or the Church of Christ had need of earthly tithes.”19 To this general line of argument, Baxter replied that the Bible nowhere prohibited tithing, that faithful Christians sold their worldly goods and dedicated the proceeds to the service and worship of the church, and hence, “Is it not lawful to take that which is so dedicated?” Furthermore, “if our ancestors many an age ago have given the tenths to the church for the ministry, are not those sacrilegious church-­ robbers who should now take them away?” In a parting shot, Baxter found some undesirable bedfellows for the Quakers: “Would not all the covetous, malignant, ungodly enemies of piety, have tithes down as well as you?”20 John Owen, albeit not in the context of anti-­Quaker polemic, was similarly minded.21 16. Norman Penney, ed., Extracts from State Papers Relating to Friends, 2nd ser., 1658–­64 (London: Headley Bros., 1911), 123. 17. See Russell Mortimer, “Quakerism in Seventeenth-­Century Bristol” (MA thesis, University of Bristol, 1946), 33. 18. Norman Penney, ed., First Publishers of Truth: Being Early Records (Now Printed) of the Introduction of Quakerism into the Counties of England and Wales (London: Headley Bros., 1907), 118. 19. Fox, Journal (ed. Smith), 299. 20. Baxter, Quakers Catechism, 6, 26. 21. See John Owen, Works, ed. William H. Goold, 25 vols. (London: Johnstone and Hunter, 1850–­55; London: Banner of Truth Trust, 1967), 13:515.

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Again, Baxter and others found it necessary to rebuke the Quakers for what was perceived as spiritual pride, hypocrisy, and self-­righteousness. Speaking of their “horrible pride,” Baxter charged, “They affirm themselves to be perfect without sin (yea, some of them say they are Christ and God). And is it possible that any man in this life, that is not mad with spiritual pride, can indeed believe that he has no sin?”22 Owen charged the Quakers with hypocrisy in giving the appearance only of mortification. He allowed that some of them may have intended otherwise, but in that case, they had not understood its nature.23 Both Owen and Baxter suggested that the Quakers had learned some of their tactics from Rome, the latter even going as far as to state that “many Franciscan friars and other Papists have been proved to be disguised speakers in their assemblies, and to be among them.”24 It is conceivable that dissenting suspicion of Roman Catholic influence upon the Quakers was strengthened by the Quaker refusal to swear oaths, from which it could be inferred by those in need of a polemical weapon that the Friends had not formally abjured papal authority.

Quaker Ideas The persuasion that they were in the truth fueled the Quaker hostility toward “hireling priests.” Baxter was particularly riled by the charge that whereas the Quakers were called by God to preach, other ministers were made by the will of man—­an accusation that implied that, apart from a few Quaker-­like heretics, in the entire history of the church there had been no faithful ministers until the Quakers came onto the scene. He proceeded to set down seven considerations to show that he had indeed been called into ministry by Christ: “1. My competent qualifications. 2. My thirst after the good of souls and the buildings of that house of God. 3. The ordination of authorized church officers. 4. The call and consent of the people of Christ, over whom he has set me. 5. And afterwards the success of my labours. 6. And some daily assistance of the Spirit in these labours. 7. And

22. Baxter, Quakers Catechism, C.1. 23. Owen, Works, 3:556. The Quakers were not immune to the temptation to charge Congregationalists and Presbyterians with hypocrisy. For example, see Fox, Journal (ed. Smith), 377–­78. 24. Richard Baxter, The Autobiography of Richard Baxter, ed. J. Lloyd Thomas (London: Everyman, 1931), 74.

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some testimony of the Spirit to my conscience of God’s acceptance. These seven set together are my evidence of mission, show you the like if you can.”25 Underlying both Quaker self-­confidence and their adverse judgment of the ministry of others was the conviction that they, unlike their opponents, had received the light. On the strength of this donation, some of them were not above claiming infallibility for their utterances (another trick they had learned from Rome, muttered their opponents). This was a major bone of contention between the Quakers and the dissenters, though it should be said that discussion of this theme was widespread during the seventeenth century and that some of the Cambridge Platonists, notably Henry More,26 as well as the Oxford theologian John Norris, challenged the Quakers on the light, with Norris taking particular exception to Robert Barclay’s exposition of it.27 The points they made were reiterated by Owen, Baxter, and others. The crux of the problem was that whereas to the latter, the “light which lightens every man that cometh into the world” ( John 1:9) was the natural light of reason and conscience, to Fox, no less than to Barclay, human reason and conscience were vitiated by sin, and the true light was Christ himself, divinely, not naturally, bestowed. At the same time, Barclay acknowledged that “we are far from ever having said that Christ is thus formed in all men.”28 Not a few opponents seized upon the apparent contradiction between a light that both enlightens all and also fails to do so. Nor were they satisfied by Barclay’s explanation that “we do distinguish betwixt the saving-­heart knowledge and the soaring airy-­head knowledge” of God—­a concession deemed to undermine the Quaker case.29 Elsewhere, in a pamphlet on Universal Love, Barclay declared that while “this seed, Word and grace which is sufficient to lead to salvation” is not “given to men without Christ,” this “light, grace and seed [is] no other, but a measure of that life and spirit that was in Christ Jesus.” This would seem to imply that all are at least partially enlightened, a measure of the light being “extended to all men, in order to redeem them from sin, and convert them to God.”30 Certainly Fox understood himself as being under a divine command “to 25. Baxter, Quakers Catechism, 21. 26. See Moore in chapter 7. 27. Further details are provided in Alan P. F. Sell, Enlightenment, Ecumenism, Evangel: Theological Themes and Thinkers, 1500–­2000 (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2005), 17–­19. 28. Barclay, Apology, 124. 29. Barclay, 12. 30. Robert Barclay, Universal Love Considered . . . ([Holland]: s.n., 1677), 36.

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turn people to that inward light [presumably there, but dormant], spirit, and grace, by which all might know their salvation, and their way to God.” Indeed, in October 1656, he made his point to John Owen, who retorted that the light that lightens every man was a natural light. Undeterred, Fox was “moved to bid him lay down his crown at the feet of Jesus” and perhaps overoptimistically concluded that Owen felt under judgment, “for the Lord’s power came over him.”31 In 1659, Fox published The Great Mistery of the Great Whore Unfolded, a sizeable tome in which he took to task a number of intellectual opponents, among them Richard Baxter. He was particularly concerned with rebutting Baxter’s view that “all who come into the world are lighted with the light of nature.” Never one to shun a personal attack, Fox noted that Baxter was “ignorant of John’s doctrine, and the Scriptures, a man not fit to teach, but is gotten up by an usurped authority, and is not able to divide the word aright, but with the Scriptures thou art corrected, and the light that lights every man that comes into the world, the natural lights were made by it . . . And men that are born blind are enlightened with that light which was before the sun was, before all things was made.”32 Underlying the objections of orthodox dissenters to the Quaker identification of the light that enlightens all with Christ was their perception that this threatened the gospel of God’s electing grace—­that is, the doctrine that believers are graciously called and drawn to Christ by God’s word and spirit. Indeed, it made it redundant. In addition to the question of the nature of the light as such, the dissenters were concerned (1) with rebutting the Quaker charge that they themselves did not give due place to the light of the spirit and (2) with reproving the Quakers for their move in the direction of giving precedence to their claimed spiritual revelations over the biblical witness. Baxter answered both points crisply and concisely. He rebutted the Quaker charge that “we deny the necessity of an inward light, whereas we maintain that the external light of the Word alone is not sufficient without the inward light of the spirit.” As to the claim alleging the sufficiency of the individual’s inward light, Baxter asked, “Is every man’s light sufficient to his salvation? If so, is not the gospel a vain and needless thing? If the world has sufficient light, what need they your teaching, or discourse, or conviction?” He summed up his case thus: “God in Christ is the sun, man’s reason is the eye, the gospel or word of 31. Fox, Journal (ed. Smith), 208. 32. George Fox, The Great Mistery of the Great Whore Unfolded . . . (London: Thomas Simmons, 1659), 28.

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God is the external light flowing to us from the sun. The Spirit closes these two together, even the gospel and our reason, and by its powerful work . . . breeds a special illumination in the soul, which the word alone could not produce.”33 John Owen concurred and was even more blunt: “He that would utterly separate the Spirit from the Word had as good burn the Bible.”34 Brushing under the carpet the manifestly divergent interpretations of the Bible among the dissenters themselves, he posed the alternatives more fully: If we shall renounce the Scripture, and the instruction given out of it unto the church by the Spirit of God, betaking ourselves unto our own light, we are sure it will teach us nothing but either what they profess, or other things altogether as corrupt. And if they, on the other hand, will forego their attendance to their pretended light, to hearken unto the voice of God in the Scripture only, and to beg sincerely the guidance of the Holy Spirit therein, they will learn from thence no other thing but what we profess.35

Repetitions, as distinct from variations, on these themes were played upon by a number of the dissenters. In April 1659, the Presbyterian Thomas Danson (bap. 1604, d. 1665) was found on three occasions disputing with the Quakers Samuel Fisher, George Whitehead, and Richard Hubberthorne in Sandwich, Kent.36 Hot on the heels of the disputations, in 1659 Danson published The Quakers Folly . . . , in which he drew attention to the “popish tenents” the Quakers had maintained.37 Fisher, notwithstanding that he himself was a graduate of Oxford, in 1660 set out to defend the Quakers in a tract titled Rusticus ad Academicos . . . His objective was to provide a “general answer to all opposers of the most truly catholic, and most truly Christ-­like Christians, called Quakers, and of the true divinity of their doctrine.”38 It must be said that his manner was not altogether Christlike: he 33. Baxter, Quakers Catechism, 8, 12. 34. John Owen, Πνευματολογία . . . (Pneumatologia) (Glasgow: W. and E. Miller, 1791), II, v.4. 35. Owen, Works, 4:159. 36. See Matthews, Calamy Revised, 156; William Lamont, “Danson, Thomas (bap. 1629, d. 1694),” http://​www​.oxforddnb​.com​/​view​/​article​/​7131 (accessed November 9, 2015). 37. Thomas Danson, The Quakers Folly Made Manifest to All Men . . . (London: J. H. for John Allen, 1659). 38. Samuel Fisher, Rusticus ad Academicos . . . Or, The Country Correcting the University and Clergy (London: Robert Wilson, 1660), title page.

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ridiculed Danson’s scholarship and was sufficiently ecumenical to draw into his net John Owen, Richard Baxter, and the Baptist John Tombes. Danson girded his loins again in 1668 when, in A Synopsis of Quakerism, he denied that there was a light in every man sufficient to guide him to salvation and claimed that scripture was neither the word of God nor a standing rule of faith and life.39 The Congregationalist John Faldo (1633–­90) argued in 1698 that because they denied that the scriptures were the word of God, the Quakers were not Christians.40 The Presbyterian Stephen Scandrett (1631?–­1706)41 was another who entered the fray. Between 1668 and 1669, he publicly tackled George Whitehead on two occasions in Essex. He was especially concerned with safeguarding the place of the Bible and challenging the Quaker view that the light of Christ illumines all. For his pains he was denounced in print by Robert Ludgater, whose tract included a contribution from Whitehead himself, which observed that Scandrett was a “shallow bragging and vapouring man who showed himself in his ribbonds like a fiddler.”42 In 1671, Scandrett let fly with his Antidote against Quakerism, in which he denied that the light in every person is a saving light. Ludgater’s opinion of this was clear from his follow-­up title, The Presbyter’s Antidote Choaking Himself.43 Before leaving the Presbyterians and Congregationalists, their objections to the handling of specific doctrines by the Quakers must briefly be noted. First, the Quakers were charged with denying the Trinity. In this connection, John Owen came out against the “poor deluded souls” whose denial of the doctrine led them to general infidelity: “Convince any of them of the doctrine of the Trinity, and all the rest of their imaginations vanish into smoke.”44 In A Synopsis of Quakerism, Danson represented the 39. Thomas Danson, A Synopsis of Quakerism . . . (London: s.n., 1668). 40. John Faldo, The Snake in the Grass Further Discovered . . . (London: A. Baldwin, 1698). For Faldo, also see Matthews, Calamy Revised, 190; Hugh Barbour, “Faldo, John (1633/4–­1691),” http://​www​.oxforddnb​.com​/v​ iew​/a​ rticle/​ 9​ 121 (accessed November 9, 2015); Walter Wilson, The History and Antiquities of Dissenting Churches . . . , 4 vols. (London: Walter Wilson, 1808–­14), 2:527–­29. 41. For whom, see Matthews, Calamy Revised, 428; W. A. Shaw, “Scandrett, Stephen (1631?–­1706),” rev. ed. Caroline L. Leachman, http://​www​.oxforddnb​.com​/v​ iew​/a​ rticle​ /​24778 (accessed November 9, 2015). 42. Robert Ludgater et al., The Glory of Christ’s Light within Expelling Darkness  .  .  . (London: s.n., 1669), 7. 43. Stephen Scandrett, An Antidote against Quakerism . . . (London: Parkhurst, 1671); Robert Ludgater, The Presbyter’s Antidote Choaking Himself . . . (London: s.n., 1669). 44. Owen, Works, 3:66.

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Quakers as denying that there were three persons in the Godhead, and Thomas Vincent (1634–­78), an ejected Presbyterian, stoutly defended the doctrine in The Foundation of God Standeth Sure . . .45 It must be said that Fox could use language replete with Trinitarian claims46 and that Barclay understood the light as “a spiritual, heavenly, and invisible principle, in which God, as Father, Son, and Spirit dwells.”47 Quaker Christology concerned dissenters at two points in particular. First, the Quakers were deemed to attach too little importance to the incarnation and the historical Christ.48 On more than one occasion, the ejected Congregational minister at Hertford, William Haworth (entered University 1653, d. 1702/3), urged this point, his argument being encapsulated in one of his titles thus: Jesus of Nazareth Not the Quakers Messiah, but Their Jesus Is Another False and Feigned Jesus . . .49 Faldo emphasized the true manhood of Christ in The Snake in the Grass Further Discovered, and others followed suit. Second, the Quakers were charged with denying that the sinless Christ offered himself up at the cross on behalf of sinners in order to remove their affront to God’s holiness and reconcile them to God and that by God’s free grace, the ungodly are accepted as righteous, as Christ’s righteousness is accounted to them and received by faith. Danson and Vincent covered both points, while Scandrett defended the latter, as did the ejected Congregationalist Thomas Powell (matriculated 1645, d. 1692?) in his Answer to a Late Fictitious Pamphlet Put Forth by Two Leading Quakers, viz., John Vaughton and John Field . . .50 Finally, as might be expected, the Congregationalists and Presbyterians were at loggerheads with the Quakers over a number of points of church order—­from the propriety of psalm singing to the length of sermons, with the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper being particularly 45. Thomas Vincent, The Foundation of God Standeth Sure . . . (London: s.n., 1668); Matthews, Calamy Revised, 502–­3. 46. See Moore in chapter 7. 47. Barclay, Apology, 120. 48. This point is made against Fox in our own time by Geoffrey F. Nuttall. See his The Holy Spirit in Puritan Faith and Experience (Oxford: Blackwell, 1946), 159. 49. William Haworth, Jesus of Nazareth Not the Quakers Messiah, but Their Jesus Is Another False and Feigned Jesus . . . According to Their Faith Jesus Christ Is Not Now a True and Real Man in Heaven, but an Ubiquitary Principle or Quality in Every Man . . . (London: Jonathan Robinson, 1677). 50. Thomas Powell, Answer to a Late Fictitious Pamphlet Put Forth by Two Leading Quakers, viz., John Vaughton and John Field (London: s.n., 1676). For Powell, see Matthews, Calamy Revised, 396.

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neuralgic issues. Once again, Danson, Faldo, and Scandrett were among others who sallied forth in vigorous defense of the sacraments as binding ordinances appointed by Christ himself.

136 Baptists and Quakers The mid-­1650s relationships between the Baptists and the Quakers were often less than harmonious. It was not always so. Fox wistfully reflected that the Baptists were “tender then,” and “some of them were loving to us” when the “first publishers of truth” related their experience at Baptist meetings, but in different localities, the Baptists soon encountered a more vigorous Quakerism.51 In this period, English Baptists were divided into two distinct groups. Committed to the theology of John Calvin (1509–­64), the Particular Baptists emphasized the personal, or particular, election of believers predestined to salvation. The General Baptists followed the teaching of the Dutch theologian Jacobus Arminius (1560–­1609), who, reacting against Calvinism, asserted that Christ died for all, not the elect only. General Baptists shared some identical convictions with the Friends, such as endogamy (marriage permitted only within the group), the rejection of rigid Calvinism, an aversion to oaths, appreciation of lay preaching, and an itinerant ministry similar to their own. But they and the larger body of the Particular Baptists were soon threatened by the “new upstart sect,” especially when, in considerable numbers, “shattered Baptists” from both the Arminian and (less often) Calvinistic congregations transferred their allegiance to the local Quaker meeting.52 In many places, the Baptists became disturbed by this new message, intimidated by the escalating numbers of the Quakers, and increasingly anxious about not only defections from their churches but the loss of gifted leaders to the burgeoning new movement.53 It soon became clear that there were major theological differences between them, and in 51. Fox, Journal (ed. Smith), 7, 44. When John Whitehead visited Winslow Baptists, “some of them was tender,” and the public “dispute” with Baptists at Wingrave “was carried on with moderation.” See Henry J. Cadbury, ed., Letters to William Dewsbury (London: Bannisdale Press, 1948), 45–­46; Penney, First Publishers of Truth, 77, 130, 131, 133–­36. 52. John Bunyan, A Vindication of the Book Called Some Gospel-­Truths Opened . . . (London: Cowley, 1657), 32; Fox, Journal (ed. Nickalls), 26. 53. Richard T. Vann, The Social Development of English Quakerism, 1655–­1755 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969), 24–­26.

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the Interregnum’s relative religious freedom, the doctrinal divide featured strongly in polemical preaching and writing—­the authority of scripture, the person and work of Christ, the experience of salvation, and the nature of the church, its worship, and destiny.54 It was not long before the Baptists’ initial curiosity gave way to widespread hostility, particularly when, following the king’s return, a Royal Proclamation combined “Anabaptists and Quakers” as equally dangerous dissidents.55 Neither could be happy about such a perceived unpatriotic partnership, and it was important to define and declare clear identity markers, distinctions starkly expressed in hostile pamphleteering. Baptist-­Quaker relationships in this period are a story of local tensions, provocative narratives, organized disputations, and changing priorities.

Local Tensions Theological controversy frequently took place in the provinces, but the exchange of views was speedily transferred to print, giving local events wider publicity, often in acrimonious, but highly readable, terms. For example, in Bedfordshire in 1654–­55, William Dewsbury was concerned with the “convincement” of a respected justice of the peace, John Crook. John Bunyan was involved in the controversial debates that followed, giving rise to acerbic writing on both sides. Bunyan dismissed the young Edward Burrough as one of the “false prophets,” and his opponent decried Bunyan as a dealer in “damnable doctrines,” nothing other than a “hipocrite [sic] and dissembler.”56 Incensed by Bunyan’s two virulent anti-­Quaker books, Fox joined in the attack against his “Lies and Slanders.”57 When Dennis Hollister, a Bristol (Broadmead) elder, 54. For the fullest treatment of the theological issues, see Ted L. Underwood, Primitivism, Radicalism and the Lamb’s War: The Baptist-­Quaker Conflict in Seventeenth-­Century England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997). 55. The proclamation is quoted in George Whitehead, Christian Progress . . . (London: J. Sowle, 1725), 241–­42. Also see Richard L. Greaves, Deliver Us from Evil: The Radical Underground in Britain, 1660–­1663 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 49–53; and Robert Steel, ed., Bibliography of Royal Proclamations . . . , 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1910), 1:393–­94. For an earlier reference [April 23, 1657] to the Baptists and the Quakers as dangerous conspirators, see Penney, Extracts from State Papers, 29. 56. John Bunyan, A Vindication of the Book Called Some Gospel-­Truths Opened  .  .  . (London: John Wright, 1657), 32; E[dward] B[urrough], Truth . . . Witnessed Forth in the Spirit of Truth against All Deceit . . . (London: Giles Calvert, 1657), 61. 57. Fox, Great Mistery, 8–­13, 205–­11 (quotation at 8). For Bunyan’s argument in these two books, his first publications, see Some Gospel Truths Opened . . . (London: John Wright,

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became a Quaker in 1654, a quarter of the church members left with him, and the account of yet another local separation found its way into print, with harsh titles giving sad expression to their disagreement.58

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Provocative Narratives In a period when relatively new groups were eager to present a positive image, leaders were sensitive to criticism not only of their distinctive views but also of their leaders’ and people’s conduct.59 The publication of hostile stories frequently led to the multiplication of defensive literature.60 Unconventional Quaker practices and beliefs could be widely publicized and misinterpreted in print.61 The Baptists were equally concerned about misrepresentation. They suffered greatly in 1673 from a licensed publication that accused four New England “Anabaptists” of murdering Josiah Baxter, a godly minister said to have gotten the better of them in a public disputation. The account of the vicious killing, including gruesome details of disemboweling, was supposed to have been written by the victim’s London brother, Benjamin Baxter, but the event was proved to be totally fictitious.62 In the same period, the Friends were also exposed to considerable criticism, and William Penn and George Whitehead, both major participants in London debates, were at pains to remove the obloquy surrounding the Quaker enterprise. 1656), and A Vindication of the Book . . . Also see Richard L. Greaves, Glimpses of Glory: John Bunyan and English Dissent (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2002), 75–­87. 58. Dennis Hollister, The Skirts of the Whore Discovered . . . (London: Giles Calvert, 1656), The Harlot’s Vail Removed . . . (London: s.n., 1658), and the reply of the church’s minister, Thomas Ewens, The Church of Christ in Bristol . . . (London: Thomas Brewster, 1657). For the church’s account, see Roger Hayden, ed., The Records of a Church of Christ in Bristol, 1640–­1687 (Bristol: Bristol Record Society, 1974), 28–­32, 75–­78, 105–­14. 59. Kate Peters, Print Culture and the Early Quakers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 113–­15, 146–­47. 60. For the earlier publication of anti-­Quaker stories, see Moore, Light, 91–­92. 61. The Baptist William Burnet, for example, refers to Solomon Eagles (Eccles, an ex-­Baptist) walking “befouled with mans dung into a publick Assembly and also through the Burrough naked.” See his The Capital Principles of the People Called Quakers Discovered . . . (London: s.n., 1668), 23; and Allen in chapter 4. 62. Thomas Crosby, History of the English Baptists, 4 vols. (London: Thomas Crosby, 1738–­40), vol. 2 (1739), 278–­80; Benjamin Baxter, Mr. Baxter Baptiz’d in Bloud, or, A Sad History of the Unparallel’d Cruelty of the Anabaptists in New-­England . . . (London: Benjamin Baxter, 1673); and Anon., Forgery Detected & Innocency Vindicated . . . (London: J. D. for Fr. Smith, 1673).

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News of supposed happenings in a Lincolnshire village transformed a minor local religious disruption into a widespread scandal. It was said that on becoming a Quaker, a Northwillingham Baptist, Robert Anderson, shared his recent experience at his local church but threatened his unsympathetic pastor, Ralph James, that God’s judgment would strike him with leprosy for rejecting his message. Soon after, members of Anderson’s own family became seriously unwell, and he returned to his former minister, seeking forgiveness and reconciliation and abandoning his Quaker views. Later, the Baptist minister published an account of the event and a minor pamphlet war ensued, both sides accusing the other of glaring inaccuracies.63 The Friends insisted that Anderson had never been a Quaker and had only once been in one of their meetings, and then only for a quarter of an hour in the company of his pastor. Such was the wider impact of this local skirmish that interested parties traveled to Lincolnshire to discover the truth or otherwise of the narrative.64 Provincial incidents of this kind attracted attention in distant localities. In an attack on the Dover Baptists, an ex–­Particular Baptist turned Quaker, Luke Howard, referred to the Lincolnshire “forged narrative” and went on to accuse Richard Hobbs, his local Baptist minister, of circulating another “envious story” of a Friend, this time concerning Charles Bayly, an event “ten Years past,” even though Hobbs knew that his Quaker neighbors had publicly disowned the offender. Another stream of accusatory pamphlets followed.65 Given the organized dissemination of Quaker literature, the story of local controversies could soon escalate into strident encounters in other regions.66 Such was the case when a former Baptist turned Quaker, Robert West, became embroiled in a local dispute with the Devizes Baptist minister Thomas Hicks, publishing his reasons for leaving the Baptists and defending his Quaker convictions 63. Ralph James, A True and Impartial Narrative of the Eminent Hand of God  .  .  . (London: Francis Smith, 1672), and The Quakers’ Subterfuge . . . (London: Francis Smith, 1672); Robert Ruckhill, The Quakers Refuge Fixed upon the Rock of Ages . . . (London: s.n., 1673); Thomas Rudyard, The Anabaptists Lying Wonder . . . (London: s.n., 1672); William Smith (another ex-­Baptist), Baptist Sophistry Discovered  .  .  . (London: s.n., 1673). 64. James, Quakers’ Subterfuge, 11; James, True and Impartial Narrative, 1. 65. Luke Howard, Looking-­Glass for Baptists . . . (London: s.n., 1672); Richard Hobbs, The Quakers Looking Glass . . . (London: Francis Smith, 1673); Luke Howard, The Seat of the Scorner (London: s.n., 1673). This can be compared with Kenneth L. Carroll, “From Bond Slave to Governor: The Strange Career of Charles Bayly, 1632–­1680,” JFHS 52 (1968–­71): 19–­38. 66. Peters, Print Culture and the Early Quakers, 50–­54, 60–­63, 68–­70, 175–­77.

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in yet another local controversy that became familiar to a wider reading public.67 The sustained animus between the two men in a Wiltshire market town issued in the writing of controversial publications fueled major London debates between 1672 and 1674.68

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Organized Disputations Public debates were characteristic of Quaker beginnings, but these London debates caused more than one Quaker writer to observe that following the 1672 Declaration of Indulgence, it seemed a pity that “as soon as they have a little Liberty given them,” the Baptists should “abuse it so” by indulging in controversy.69 But during a period of official toleration, public debates helped define, develop, and promote corporate identities, an issue of increasing importance to the Baptists and the Quakers at a time when both were concerned with protecting their image from fierce attacks. Thomas Hicks devoted a great deal of time to researching Quaker books, tracts, and broadsheets and compiled a lengthy collection of quotations, meticulously documented in a book with a title certain to offend the Friends: A Dialogue between a Christian and a Quaker.70 The first of the four 1672–­74 debates, held in September 1672 at the Quakers’ Devonshire House in Moorfields, achieved little, as Hicks and Whitehead both complained of the poor behavior of the participants. Whitehead later published an account of the meeting that offended Hicks and led to an acrimonious street encounter.71 The second debate took place 67. Robert West, The Voyce of Him That Is Escaped from Babylon . . . (London: s.n., 1658), Damnable Heresie Discovered . . . (London: s.n., 1672), and A Demonstration in Brief . . . (London: s.n., 1673). 68. Thomas Hicks, The Quakers Appeal Answer’d . . . (London: s.n., 1674), and A Rebuke to Tho. Rudyard’s Folly and Impertinencies . . . (London: s.n., 1674). 69. Howard, Looking-­Glass for Baptists, 4, letter dated July 9, 1672; William Penn and George Whitehead, The Christian-­Quaker and His Divine Testimony Vindicated . . . in II Parts, the First . . . by William Penn, the Second . . . by George Whitehead (London?: s.n., 1674), Preface, F1v [Baptists “resolv’d to interrupt the King’s Indulgence with their persecutions”]; and Rudyard, Anabaptists Lying Wonder, 10: “Shall there not be the least Relax of penal Laws against Dissenters, but you must still be Incendiaries against us?” 70. Thomas Hicks, A Dialogue between a Christian and a Quaker . . . (London: Henry Hills for Peter Parker, 1673). 71. Whitehead, Christian-­Quaker, 2:83–­84; Hicks, Dialogue between a Christian and a Quaker, 52–­53, 91.

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in August 1674 at a large General Baptist meeting house in Paul’s Alley. It had been convened by the venerated Baptist leaders Hanserd Knollys and William Kiffin in response to Quaker accusations that Hicks’s Dialogue had deliberately misquoted or misrepresented the theology of the Friends. On relatively short notice, Penn and Whitehead had been invited to the meeting but were out of London, and predictably, those present declared Hicks not guilty of misquotation or forgery. The absence of the Quaker leaders was explained, defended, and assailed in print, giving rise to further pamphleteering regarding the technicalities involved in the calling of an unsatisfactory meeting.72 A third debate was held at the same Barbican meeting place on October 9, 1674, which Penn and Whitehead were able to attend, joined by the somewhat excitable George Keith, and Hicks was supported by two General Baptist ministers: the vociferous Jeremiah Ives, who for many years had written against the Quakers, and Thomas Plant.73 The packed but rowdy meeting appears to have totally ignored all accepted principles of debating (which naturally offended university-­educated participants like Penn) and, instead of dealing with the doctrinal issues in question, concerned itself totally with either the accuracy or unreliability of Hicks’s quotations. Frustrated by such treatment, Penn claimed that “the Inventer of Mr. Baxter Baptised in Blood by Anabaptists is nothing to this horrible kind of Perversion.”74 When the noisy proceedings were at their most boisterous, a crack appeared in the gallery of the crowded building, and the meeting was postponed to a week later.75 The fourth debate took place on October 16 at the Friends’ meeting house in Wheeler Street, Spitalfields, when Thomas Ellwood joined his Quaker colleagues. Hicks was not present, considering himself exonerated by earlier meetings, but his opponents insisted he was “lodged . . . safely in an Ale-­House.”76 This final debate was as inconclusive as its predecessors 72. Thomas Rudyard, The Barbican-­Cheat Detected . . . (London: s.n., 1674), 8–9; and Hicks, “To the Reader,” in Quakers Appeal Answer’d. 73. Ives, of the Old Jewry congregation, was a prolific pamphleteer. Plant served as a “teacher” with John Gosnold at the Gun Alley church, Little Moorfields. 74. William Penn, Reason against Railing . . . ([London?]: s.n., 1673), 61. 75. William Mead, A Brief Account of the Most Material Passages between Those Called Quakers and Baptists . . . (London: s.n., 1674), 12 (defective pagination). 76. W. Mead et al., A Brief Narrative of the Second Meeting between . . . Quakers and Baptists (London: s.n., 1674), 9.

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were but gave rise to many adversarial publications on both sides. A number of personal, political, ecclesiastical, and theological factors combined to give these London debates special prominence. The personal factor was that for some years, Hicks had nursed a grievance against the Friends and, in particular, his Devizes assailant, Robert West, an ex-­Baptist, who had attacked him and his Baptist views in print. To announce on the cover of his Dialogue that the Friends were not authentic Christians was naturally offensive to his opponents. Hicks had arranged his Quaker quotations in such a way as to suggest that a specific public dialogue had taken place at which the Friends had starkly announced their unacceptable answers to his theological questions. The Quakers argued that there had never been such an event, but Hicks claimed that the presentation of his material in this form was an acceptable literary device, even used occasionally by the Quakers.77 The 1672–­74 debates also took place in a highly sensitive context politically. At the time of the first (1672) debate, the dissenters took early advantage of Charles II’s Declaration of Indulgence, which allowed them the freedom to meet together in licensed premises, but before 1674, that right had been withdrawn. Determined not so easily to lose their freedom, local dissenters were ready to defy the authorities by holding public debates of this nature with large congregations (difficult to dismiss) in order to establish and promote their religious liberty, whatever the consequences—­fines, distraint of goods, or imprisonment.78 Additionally, freedom of conscience was a highly relevant issue in London’s unusual ecclesiastical scene. Church life in the city parishes was only gradually recovering from the Great Fire (1666), which had destroyed eighty-­seven of its churches. In the year of the first debate (1672), the king ordered that in a parish where the church had been destroyed, any local dissenting meeting place should be commandeered for reading the Book 77. For the popularity and effectiveness of dialogues as part of the literature of persuasion, see Dagmar Freist, Governed by Opinion: Politics, Religion and the Dynamics of Communication in Stuart London, 1637–­1645 (London: I. B. Tauris, 1997), 248–50; and Susan Wiseman, Drama and Politics in the English Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 26–­36. The full title of George Whitehead’s The Dipper Plung’d . . . (London: s.n., 1672) referred to Hicks’s “feigned dialogue.” This can be compared with Mead, Brief Narrative, 13, 20, 32. 78. An observer says people were prepared to “hazard their Limbs and Lives” in order to attend the 1674 debates. See Henry Hedworth (By an Indifferent Penn), The Quakers Quibbles . . . (London: Francis Smith, 1674), 10.

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of Common Prayer, and named clergy were appointed to do so at specific locations.79 The timing of this provision was unfortunate. From the start, the London authorities had been zealous in implementing the increased severities of the second Conventicle Act (1670); arrests were made the day after it came on the statute book. All Hallows Church was lost in the fire, so the Quaker meeting house in the parish was requisitioned. Over a number of weeks, the Quakers were arrested at these Prayer Book services on their own Gracechurch Street premises—­Fox was fined £20 for preaching outside the building, and William Penn and William Mead (both involved in the London debates) were arrested for conspiring to “raise a tumult.” The legal proceedings were given wide publicity,80 so the Quaker participants at the 1672–­74 debates were familiar names in the London dissenters’ well-­ publicized campaign for religious liberty, and their public appearance could draw a large and generally supportive crowd.81 Such personalities were not merely zealous controversialists; they were defenders of human rights. Furthermore, the expression of variant doctrinal convictions at the debates was also a particularly sensitive issue at that time. The Baptists and the Quakers were both eager to be recognized as proponents of orthodox theological belief. The Baptists had long been suspect because of their repudiation of infant baptism, and the Quakers were deemed to be outside the mainstream of the “acceptable” Protestant tradition. A few years prior to the London debates, Penn had been imprisoned for publishing views considered dangerous at a time when the slightest suggestion of anti-­Trinitarianism was alarming.82 The debates provided additional opportunities for both Penn and Whitehead publicly to affirm their adherence to central theological teachings.83 79. Simon N. Dixon, “The Priest, the Quakers and the Second Conventicle Act: The Battle for the Gracechurch Street Meeting House, 1670,” in Defining the Holy: Sacred Space in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. Andrew Spicer and Sarah Hamilton (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 301–­3. 80. See Bell in chapter 12. 81. Gary S. De Krey, London and the Restoration, 1659–­1683 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 110–­14. 82. This is discussed by Southcombe in chapter 8. See also Hugh Barbour, “The Young Controversialist,” in The World of William Penn, ed. Richard S. Dunn and Mary M. Dunn (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986), 15–­36; William Penn, The Sandy Foundation Shaken . . . (London: s.n., 1668); Thomas Vincent, The Foundation of God Standeth Sure . . . (London: s.n., 1668). 83. George Whitehead, The Divinity of Christ . . . (London: s.n., 1669).

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Changing Priorities

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The inconclusive nature of this 1672–­74 conflict tempts one to identify with the anonymous author of the broadsheet The Quakers Ballad. His scurrilous account of the debates claims that the “people went home, some sick, and some lame, / But all of them just as wise as they came.”84 In fact, the disputes may have achieved more than the satirist believed. At a time when both Baptist and Quaker views were under fire, these public meetings provided an advantageous platform for the declaration of distinctive convictions. They encouraged some hearers to identify with the forthright message of either the Quaker or Baptist speakers.85 The debates were certainly used to unite the Baptists with their partners in other London Baptist churches. They brought the General and Particular Baptists together, and it was no mean achievement to span the Calvinist/Arminian divide.86 The Friends from London’s eight permanent Quaker meeting places were drawn into closer unity during those months when they attended the meetings not only to support their speakers but also to distribute their literature at the Baptist meeting houses.87 But the conflict did not continue either in that form or with such intensity, and it is natural to ask why. First, the Quakers came to the conclusion that these particular debates were not simply profitless but damaging to the Quaker cause. Many members of the general public crowded into the meeting places, and it soon became apparent that for some, they offered a few hours’ free entertainment. Listening to George Keith’s Scottish accent, “people seeing him . . . expressing his mind so hotly, fell a-laughing.”88 Penn was grieved to tell Fox that “the whole Citty are up against us,” the proceedings being “managed with much levity, & enmity & all Coffe[e] houses and such like publique 84. Anon., The Quakers Ballad, or An Hymn of Triumph and Exultation for Their Victories at the Two Great Disputes . . . with the Baptists (London: printed for James Naylor, 1674). 85. Thomas Ellwood claimed that as a direct result of the debates, “not a few Baptists became Quakers.” See Thomas Ellwood, The History of the Life of Thomas Ellwood, ed. Rosemary Moore (Walnut Creek: Altamira, 2004), 184–­90, for his account of the debates. 86. Although Particular Baptists were the most prominent participants, Ives, Gosnold, and Plant were leading authors among General Baptists. 87. LSF, MGR 11b3, Horsleydown, Southwark, Men’s Minutes (1666–­77), October 28, 1674. It was agreed that “papers answering to Jeremiah Ives” be “dispersed at ye Meetings of ye Baptists” at named London churches. Baptists also distributed their literature at the London debates. See Mead, Brief Account . . . , 42–­43. 88. Thomas Plant, A Contest for Christianity . . . (London: Francis Smith, 1674), 79.

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places are fill[e]d w[i]th the manor of it.”89 The controversy was exposing its participants to ridicule. The London Friends were surely right to conclude that given the rapid, uncoordinated proliferation of books and pamphlets associated with the debates, they ought to initiate some form of internal censorship. During that period alone, an increased number of Quaker books teemed off the press, and the Baptist publications did not come far behind.90 The Quakers made London’s Second Day’s Morning Meeting responsible for approving all manuscripts.91 In 1674, it decided, for example, not to print Stephen Smith’s “The Baptist Leaders’ Thresht” because they “would not willingly have other Controversyes brought in to make more worke.” When another Quaker later composed some verses about the 1670s conflicts with the Baptists, the meeting rejected his manuscript, convinced that recalling such “old controverseys” would “raise new disputes and create new many others.”92 Moreover, following the London debates, the Quaker and Baptist controversialists had their attention diverted to serious disputes within their own ranks. The Wilkinson-­Story troubles created serious fissures in the national, regional, and local structures of Quakerism, and the Baptists also had their own divisive conflicts. The Particular Baptists produced several books either defending or opposing the freedom of unbaptized (but committed) believers to receive the Lord’s Supper and many more commending or condemning the novel practice of hymn singing, while the General Baptists engaged in vigorous, and occasionally rancorous, internal debate concerning the “laying-­on of hands” after baptism. In the late 1670s, the dissenters of all shades became embroiled in a national concern regarding the so-­called Exclusion Crisis of 1678–­81.93 The perceived threat of “absolutism” and “popery” with the projected loss of a unifying Protestantism seemed of more immediate importance than some of the doctrinal differences that divided them; on this issue, it was necessary 89. PWP, 1:292. 90. In 1672–­74, Penn alone wrote twenty-­two tracts in direct response to Quaker critics. See PWP, 1:249. In volume 1 of W. T. Whitley, Baptist Bibliography, 2 vols. (London: Kingsgate, 1916–­22), more than fifty titles are listed in the Baptist-­Quaker controversies of 1672–­74. 91. This is discussed by Moore in chapter 3. Also see Thomas O’Malley, “‘Defying the Powers and Tempering the Spirit.’ A Review of Quaker Control over Their Publications 1672–­1689,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 33, no. 1 (1982): 77–­78. 92. LSF, SDMM, I, 69–­70 (September 16, 1683). 93. See Southcombe in chapter 8.

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to take their stand even with previously hostile churchmen in campaigning for more unifying things such as freedom of conscience. Although within a few years the number of their polemical publications dwindled, the theological divide remained.94 The fractious Thomas Hicks maintained a virulent opposition; even after his death, his The Quakers Appeal Answer’d . . . was republished under a new title.95 But like Benjamin Keach’s “dialogue” in verse, The Grand Imposter Discovered . . . (1675), and Thomas Grantham’s attack on the Friends in his lengthy Christianismus Primitivus (1678),96 the republished Hicks volume did not elicit any appreciable Quaker response.97 Writers among the Friends were discouraged from producing potentially damaging polemics, but opportunist publishers were not so easily deterred. Toward the close of the century and beyond, they supplied further books, pamphlets, and broadsheets exposing the differences between the Baptists and the Quakers.98 Several decades were to pass before each felt able to accept the other as fellow travelers on an identical pilgrimage.

Conclusion While religious and doctrinal differences between the dissenters and the Quakers remained unresolved, both sides gradually seemed to run out of polemical steam. Perhaps they became bored by the constant repetition of the same points; perhaps they ran out of wounding epithets; perhaps it gradually dawned on them that toleration would benefit them all, and they would just have to settle down to it; perhaps the passing of early leaders on all sides and the retreat in the following century of the Quakers into quietism had a calming 94. For example, in 1692, George Whitehead’s titles (answering Edward Paye, the Dartford Baptist minister’s polemic) were freely distributed to local Baptists and welcomed by some. See LSF, MS, VIII, 65 (March–­April 1692). 95. Thomas Hicks, Mr. Tho. Hicks, His Last Legacy to the Quakers . . . (London: William Whitwood and Mrs Feltham, 1690). 96. Benjamin Keach, The Grand Imposter Discovered  .  .  . (London: B. Harris, 1675); Thomas Grantham, Christianismus Primitivus . . . (London: Francis Smith, 1678). 97. George Whitehead’s broadsheet Forgery Detected, and Prophane Romancing Reprehended . . . (London: Andrew Sowle, [1690?]) simply made clear that this was a mere reissue of Hick’s earlier book. 98. In the 1690s, Quaker publisher Andrew Sowle continued to sell publications written twenty years earlier in response to Baptist attacks. This can be compared with Whitehead, Forgery Detected, 1.

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influence.99 So much is speculation, and there may be a grain of truth in all of these possibilities. The available evidence allows us to be more confident in saying that the Quakers began to realize that irresponsible polemics could be counterproductive, while the dissenters began to nurture doctrinal and other disputes among themselves. What cannot be gainsaid is that in dangerous and disputatious times, the dissenters and the Quakers gave themselves to public argument and pamphleteering with a degree of zeal and mutual trouncing that, far from being surpassed, has not subsequently been equaled.

99. See Healey in chapter 13.

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C ha p t e r 7

Quaker Expressions of Belief in the Lifetime of George Fox Rosemary Moore

Giving a precise account of the Quakers’ beliefs is not easy, for in most periods of their history, they have resisted subscribing to anything in the form of a definite creed. The question has to be approached through their writings, both public statements and internal communications, which were not always consistent and changed over time. The particular predilections of the main Quaker authors, their need to respond to attacks on their Christian orthodoxy, and their reactions to the current political situation were all factors in their expressions of faith.1 The post-­Restoration developments in Quaker thinking can be traced from Quaker beginnings.2 The Quaker concentration on the Christ within led them away from the human Jesus, and their early pamphlets rarely referred to his life on earth. The Quaker emphasis on direct contact with God through the light apparently bypassed the Christian doctrine of salvation through the sacrifice of Christ on the cross, and although Quaker 1. For a fuller exploration of the themes of this chapter, see Stephen W. Angell and Pink Dandelion, eds., Early Quakers and Their Theological Thought, 1647–­1723 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), and relevant chapters in their The Oxford Handbook of Quaker Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). 2. See Moore in chapter 1.

writers often used the imagery of the cross, this was an internalized, spiritualized cross of personal suffering, not an external agent. The Quakers declared that they believed in the Christ who “died at Jerusalem,” but as their critic Ralph Farmer observed, “they mean nothing more than the fact, it has no effect.”3 Moreover, George Fox and James Nayler often wrote of their unity with the Christ who had always existed, the Word or Logos ( John 1:1, “In the beginning was the Word”), which again seemed to bypass the human Jesus. They declared that Christ had now returned, so the second coming had in a sense already happened. The Quakers were challenged on a number of points, such as their attitude toward the parish ministry, sacraments (or ordinances, which was the contemporary Protestant term for baptism and the Last Supper, or communion service), and the Bible, as well as their claim that moral perfection was possible, but most particularly they were challenged on what they meant by the “light.” The more they were asked to explain the meaning of “light,” the more they concentrated on it, to the point that the impression given by many early Quaker pamphlets was that the Quaker faith had everything to do with this rather mysterious “light” and little to do with conventional Christianity. The light was treated as an independent entity, which was in their consciences but not the same as the “natural” light of conscience. And how did it relate to the human Jesus and the doctrine of the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? Books such as Fox’s 1657 Catechism for Children, which consists wholly of questions and answers on the Quaker conception of the light, can only have served to reinforce the common opinion that the Quakers were heretics.4 The previous chapter describes the attacks on the Quakers made by more conventional churchmen. After the Restoration, these were mostly the dissenters. Members of the established church were not often involved in such public disputations, possibly because they felt less of a need to emphasize their difference from the Quakers. The Quakers nevertheless considered themselves Christians and, indeed, the only true church.5 Over time, their worship quieted down, 3. Ralph Farmer, The Great Mysteries of Godlinesse and Ungodlinesse . . . (London: S. G., 1656), 63. 4. George Fox, A Catechism for Children . . . (London: Giles Calvert, 1657). 5. Whether early Quakerism was actually in conflict with standard Christian theology is a moot point. Carole Dale Spencer, Holiness: The Soul of Quakerism (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2007), 39–­56, makes a case that it was not. In the opinion of the present author, there was a contradiction, but it was not intentional, and George Fox, not being logically minded, never noticed it.

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and quaking largely ceased. They continued to give warnings of the coming wrath of God, but they came to realize that the full coming of the Kingdom of God was not imminent. They started the process of considering their position in society and their relation to other Christian bodies.6 They began to understand that their long-­term survival meant that they must show themselves to be respectable citizens and that this included demonstrating a degree of Christian orthodoxy—­specifically, that they accepted the Trinity, the divinity and humanity of Christ, and the efficacy of the cross. Quaker declarations of faith from the later 1650s show the beginning of this tendency.7 Other Quaker peculiarities could, with suitable rephrasing and circumlocutions, be accommodated. One Quaker who is on record as realizing that they needed to state unambiguously that they accepted the traditional Christian faith was a second George Fox, known as “the Younger in the Truth.” At the end of a short pamphlet published in 1659, mainly devoted to an exposition of the working of God’s light, he added that readers should not suppose that the Quakers believed in nothing else. It was necessary for him to write, he explained, what God gave him to write, but nevertheless he believed that Christ was “made manifest in that body of flesh who was called Jesus, and that in him the fullness of the Godhead dwelt bodily . . . and I have remission of sins through his blood, who is the Lord of Life.”8 During the persecution of the early 1660s, doctrinal disputes practically ceased, as all dissenters from the church settlement of 1662 were under severe attack. Many of the leading Quakers died in prison from maltreatment or disease, and when persecution eased toward the end of the 1660s, only three of the original leading Quakers—­George Fox, Margaret Fell, and George Whitehead—­were still active. At this time, the Quakers often referred to themselves as the faithful remnant of the true people of God, prophesied in the Old Testament, but they also began to make occasional suggestions that other churches and forms of worship might have some 6. For the modification of Quaker thinking as the century progressed, see Pink Dandelion, Introduction to Quakerism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 37–43; and Nikki Coffey Tousley, “The Experience of Regeneration and the Erosion of Certainty in the Theology of Second-­Generation Quakers,” QS 13, no. 1 (2008): 6–­88. These writers nevertheless give the impression that there was a disjunction, whereas in fact there was a continuum. 7. For example, Edward Burrough, A Standard Lifted Up . . . (London: Giles Calvert, 1657), and Satan’s Design Defeated . . . (London: Thomas Simmons, 1659). 8. George Fox the Younger, The Words of the Everlasting and True Light . . . (London: Thomas Simmons, 1659), 8.

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validity.9 The most prolific Quaker authors during these years were William Smith and Isaac Penington.10 Smith set out to present Quakerism to non-­Quakers, but by means of pastoral and devotional writing rather than systematic theology.11 He was not an innovator as regarded the expression of the Quaker faith, which now needed to apply to the British Isles of the Restoration, very different from fifteen years before. Penington, on the other hand, cast Quakerism in a new and idiosyncratic light, and his work is like nothing else in early Quaker writing.12 Not as combative as many Quakers, and not regularly taking part in theological disputes, he came to Quakerism by way of an intense personal experience, and his writing is a profound celebration of mystical faith. He moved from Independency to a Seeker position, at one time going through a period of black despair. In 1657–­58, he and his wife, Mary, began to attend Quaker meetings, and he “felt the presence and power of the Most High among them . . . the dead quickened, the seed raised,” and he came to know that “this is he, there is no other: this is he whom I have waited for and sought after from my childhood . . . And then in this sense (in the melting and breakings of my spirit) was I given up to the Lord.”13 Penington never referred in his works to the early Christian fathers, and he used the Bible mainly when dealing with Christian doctrine. His own 9. For the Faithful Remnant, see, for example, Isaiah 10:20–­21. Examples in Dorothy White, A Visitation of Heavenly Love unto the Seed of Jacob . . . (London: Robert Wilson, 1660), 8; Thomas Taylor, A Faithful Warning to Outside Professors (London?: s.n., [1661]), 1; S. Hubbersty, Englands Lamentation . . . (London?: s.n., 1665), 6. Also see Moore, Light, 217–­19, for the changing attitude to other churches. 10. See Moore in chapter 1. 11. For William Smith, see Rosemary Moore,“The Rediscovery of William Smith,” Friends Quarterly 32 (2000): 117–23, and her Light, 210–­13. 12. Isaac Penington, The Works of the Long Mournful and Sorely-­Distressed Isaac Penington, 2 vols. (London: Benjamin Clark, 1681); Licia Kuenning, ed., The Works of Isaac Penington: A Minister of the Gospel in the Society of Friends, Including His Collected Letters, 4 vols. and supplement (Glenside, Pa.: Quaker Heritage Press, 1995–­97). See R. Melvin Keiser and Rosemary Moore, eds., Knowing the Mystery of Life Within: Selected Writings of Isaac Penington in Their Historical and Theological Context (London: Quaker Books, 2005); R. Melvin Keiser, “Felt Reality in Practical Living and Innovative Thinking: Mary and Isaac Penington’s Journey from Puritan Anguish to Quaker Truth,” in Angell and Dandelion, Early Quakers, 190–­206. 13. “A True and Faithful Relation, in Brief, concerning Myself, in Reference to my Spiritual Travels, and the Lord’s Dealing with Me,” May 15, 1667, in Penington, Works, 1:7–­11. This was written when Penington was imprisoned in Aylesbury jail and published posthumously.

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inner life provided all the inspiration he needed, and his thought can be seen as a development of early Quakerism, a deep and overwhelming religious experience expressed as the light of Christ within or sometimes in other terms: seed, mystery, breath, spirit, spring, truth, and life.14 But Penington was not so effective in the close and careful argument needed to demonstrate that the Quakers were adequately orthodox Christians, a major problem in the latter half of the seventeenth century. From the late 1660s, much Quaker writing was devoted to meeting the needs of their current situation, to show that Quakerism was compatible with standard Christian formulations, yet without sacrificing the essential Quaker belief in the possibility of a direct experience of God. The dominant influence within Quakerism was still George Fox. After his imprisonment in Worcester, he was physically no longer the man he had been, but his publications and epistles continued in full flow until shortly before his death.15 Between 1667 and his death in 1691, Fox wrote or contributed to more than 130 pamphlets, not including reprints of popular works such as To All Who Would Know the Way to the Kingdom and his many contributions to printed testimonies to dead Friends.16 In addition, he distributed numerous epistles to Quaker meetings, which are often referred to in their minutes. Fox’s nearest rival was William Penn, who probably produced more words but only some ninety items. Very likely, non-­Quakers were better acquainted with Penn than with Fox, just as in the 1650s those engaged in controversy with the Quakers were better acquainted with Nayler, but for the Quakers themselves, Fox was the leader.17 When Fox returned to activity in 1666, he found it difficult to find the language that was now required. His Some Principles of the Elect People of God Called Quakers of 1661 was reprinted in 1671 with additional material 14. See Keiser and Moore, Knowing the Mystery, 121–­22. Keiser thinks that “life” is Penington’s key word. 15. Suggestions have been made that the Quaker movement was passing out of Fox’s control. See Larry Ingle, First among Friends: George Fox and the Creation of Quakerism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 250, 262–­66, 279, for Fox’s health in later years; Richard G. Bailey, New Light on George Fox and Early Quakerism: The Making and Unmaking of a God (San Francisco: Mellen Research University Press, 1992), 177–­218, for the retreat of Fox. 16. George Fox, To All Who Would Know the Way to the Kingdom . . . (London: s.n., 1675). Also see Allen in chapter 4 for testimonies to the dead. 17. Melvin B. Endy, “William Penn’s Contributions to Early Quaker Thought,” in Angell and Dandelion, Early Quakers, 239–­55, considers that Penn had more influence even among the Quakers but does not allow for the effect of Fox’s epistles.

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but no change in ideas.18 In this book, the light was Christ with little mention of the human Jesus, while the cross was seen as a personal experience. True, Fox agreed that references to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are to be found in scripture, but this was not likely to meet the perceived Quaker deficiencies with regard to the Trinity. The first sign of a serious movement in Fox’s expression of the Quaker faith came in connection with his visit to the Americas. There were many Quaker planters in Barbados, but their situation in relation to the colonial government and the island’s Anglican clergy was delicate.19 Fox and his associates drew up a paper, known as the Epistle to the Governor of Barbados, with the purpose of assuring the governor, first, that the Quakers held Christian beliefs and, second, that they had no intention of disrupting the institution of slavery.20 It begins with a straightforward, conventionally Christian statement with echoes of the traditional creeds and avoids the more controversial aspects of Quakerism, such as its social conscience and the idea of the light. Some of it is not in Fox’s usual style, but it is not of great importance if his companions helped write it. Fox endorsed the letter and claimed it for his own. It is an indication that around this time, Fox began to take seriously the fact that he himself must be seen to be behind the attempts to present Quakerism as compatible with orthodox Christianity.21 Fox published a great deal in the later 1670s, much of it written during his time in prison or afterward when recuperating in the north, and he had not changed his beliefs, but he came to make more use of Christocentric terminology. This was not so much by doctrinal statements as by shifts in language that mark Fox’s writing of the 1670s as distinct from that of the 1650s. He mentioned the Holy Ghost, rare in early Quaker writing.22 He made more of the Christ who lived on earth,“for it was Christ that dyed, and is risen, and the heavenly and spiritual man,” a phrase he repeated several times. References to Christ’s life were spiritualized, as always with Fox, but 18. George Fox, Some Principles of the Elect People of God . . . Called Quakers . . . (London: Robert Wilson, 1661; London: s.n., 1671). 19. See Allen in chapter 5. 20. Printed at the end of Fox’s address To the Ministers, Teachers, and Priests . . . in Barbadoes (London?: s.n., 1672). A version is included in LSF, MS 376–­78 (Spence MSS). Also see Fox, Journal (ed. Penney), 2:197–­202, and an edited version was published in Ellwood’s edition of Fox’s Journal. See Stephen W. Angell, “An Early Version of George Fox’s ‘Letter to the Governor of Barbados,’” QS 19, no. 2 (2015): 277–­94. 21. Bailey, New Light on George Fox, 179–­185, for the pressures on Fox at this time. 22. George Fox, Primitive Ordination (London?: s.n., 1675), 10–­11.

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they were now expressed in more conventional Christian phrasing.23 He declared that justification, being in a right relationship with God, comes in the first instance through faith in the blood of Christ, something the Quakers were often thought to deny.24 The same tendency is often found when he was writing to Friends, with such phrases as Jesus Christ being “the chief Bishop of your Souls” who “feeds his sheep . . . whom he hath bought with a price his blood . . . who is the mediator between God and you and in whose name we have all Salvation.”25 He would not have written in this way in the 1650s. Yet he retained much of his early terminology. The manuscript of his journal, written in 1676, has many turns of phrase reminiscent of the Quaker faith of the 1650s.26 Even his printed works of this date used such language quite frequently, as in the example, “They that believe in the Light, become Children of the Light, and are all grafted into Christ, and so are one in him.”27 The most important statement of Fox’s rephrased faith is a pamphlet published in 1682 but actually written during his Worcester imprisonment: Something in Answer to Such as Falsely Say the Quakers are No Christians. Here Fox attempted to unite the original Quaker faith with the necessary new forms of expression. He began by expounding the Quaker understanding of the light of Christ and then gave a full description of the Quaker attitude toward sacraments, the ministry, and the keeping of the church’s year. On the last page came a form of Trinitarian declaration: We believe concerning God the Father, Son and Spirit according to the testimony of the holy Scripture, which we receive and embrace as the most authentick and perfect Declaration of Christian faith, being indited by the holy Spirit of God that never errs. 1st that there is one God and Father . . . one Lord Jesus Christ . . . one holy Spirit . . . And . . . that these three are one . . . And . . . Christ was manifested in the Flesh, and by the grace of God tasted death for every man . . . is

23. George Fox, Possession above Profession (London?: s.n., 1676), 5, and similar throughout. 24. George Fox, A Testimony Concerning Justification (London?: s.n., 1677), 6. 25. George Fox, Trying of Spirits in Our Age . . . (London: Benjamin Clark, 1683), 1. 26. Hilary Hinds’s “Unity and Universality in the Theology of George Fox,” in Angell and Dandelion, Early Quakers, 48–63, is based on the journal manuscript and finds little change from expressions common in the 1650s. 27. George Fox, Concerning Christ . . . (London?: s.n., 1677), 6.

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risen and ascended, and sits at the right Hand of God in heaven, and is the only Mediator between God and Man.28

But then he concluded by stating that the Quakers were believers in the light and were “by faith ingrafted into Christ, the Word . . . and so are Heirs of eternal Life, being elected in him before the World began.”29 Fox was trying to have it both ways. Fox’s close associate George Whitehead was the only major author of Quaker theological works who came to Quakerism at its beginnings and survived until the very end of the second period. Now settled in London with a grocery business, he was effectively the leading Quaker after Fox. It was probably fortunate for the Quakers, if only one of the early leaders besides Fox was to survive, that it was Whitehead, for he adapted easily to the circumstances of the later seventeenth century. Whitehead was the most theologically conservative of the first Quaker leaders, making more reference to the human Jesus in his early pamphlets than was usual among the Quakers.30 His The Son of Perdition Revealed of 1661, a debate with the Baptists, was the first serious attempt by a Quaker to engage with other Christians and present arguments relevant to their concerns.31 He was hence the best suited to handle the problem of persuading the rest of the country that the Quakers could be accepted as adequately Christian. In the 1670s, Whitehead was much occupied in debating and fighting pamphlet wars, mostly with the Presbyterians and the Baptists. His major doctrinal work was his contribution to The Christian-­Quaker, a large volume in two parts of which William Penn provided the first and Whitehead the

28. George Fox, Something in Answer to Such as Falsely Say the Quakers Are No Christians (London: A. Sowle, 1682), 28. 29. Fox, 28. 30. Examples can be found in George Whitehead, Path of the Just Cleared . . . (London: Giles Calvert, 1655), 4; Jacob Found in a Desert Land . . . (London: Giles Calvert, 1656), 14; Seed of Israel’s Redemption . . . (London: Thomas Simmons, 1659), 33–­34. Also see Hugh Barbour, “The Young Controversialist,” in The World of William Penn, ed. Richard S. Dunn and Mary M. Dunn (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986), 19–­20; Robynne Rogers Healey, “From Apocalyptic Prophecy to Tolerable Faithfulness,” in Angell and Dandelion, Early Quakers, 273–­92. 31. George Whitehead and Edward Burrough, The Son of Perdition Revealed . . . (London: Thomas Simmons, 1661). Burrough wrote the Epistle to the Reader, and probably the later portions, after Whitehead failed to finish the book.

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second, produced in connection with the Barbican debates of 1673.32 His books are tedious to read, being point-­by-­point discussions of the matters at issue. He showed none of the ecstasy of union with Christ that is found in Fox and Penington but was persistent in trying to define the distinction between Christ and the light. Christ was not the light in everyone, and certainly the human Christ was not in anyone. Nevertheless, Christ as God could be revealed and united to those who truly obeyed and followed him in the “measure” of light given to all humanity.33 He accepted the efficacy of the actual crucifixion but insisted that for salvation, its effect must be taken up by believers: “Christ dyed for the ungodly . . . and though there be a Reconciliation by his Death, yet, the being saved is by his Life, whose Life is the Light of men . . . and if we walk in the Light (of God) the Blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all Sin.”34 Whitehead used scripture as evidence for every point he made. Scripture needed to be understood by the spirit and was not the sole rule of faith, but he wrote, “We have a better and more serious Esteem of the Holy Scriptures than here thou represents, as knoweing them to be profitable . . . As also our denying that they are the Rule of Faith is no Proof that we deny them to be any Rule at all.”35 In Christian-­Quaker, dealing with the Baptists who also objected to the idea of persons in the Godhead, he had no need to discuss the Trinity, but he had already expounded on that in a 1669 paper, where he stated that the Quakers accepted that God was triune, for the three in heaven are one, but nowhere in scripture is the word person used to describe them.36 In the late 1670s, when the unity of Protestants was becoming politically important, he moved unambiguously away from the Quakers’ original position that they were the only true church. The Quakers were “a people gathered by the spirit and power of Christ,” but there were also others in the church, and as for the old Quaker claim to be a “partaker of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4), this was to be understood only in the fourth Gospel sense of Jesus being the vine and his followers the branches or, in St. Paul’s 32. William Penn and George Whitehead, The Christian-­Quaker and His Divine Testimony Vindicated . . . in II Parts, the First . . . by William Penn, the Second . . . by George Whitehead (London?: s.n., 1674). See Brown and Sell in chapter 6. 33. Penn and Whitehead, Christian-­Quaker, 2:30. 34. Penn and Whitehead, 2:16. 35. Penn and Whitehead, 2:49. 36. George Whitehead, The Divinity of Christ and the Unity of the Three . . . (London: s.n., 1669), 94.

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phrase, being members of the body of Christ.37 The Quakers did not suppose themselves to be in any sense divine. In George Whitehead, therefore, the Quakers had an immensely solid and reliable advocate. But no one could call him inspiring. Providing inspiration was the work of William Penn.38 It is not certain when he first met Fox, but what is obvious is that Fox quickly realized he had a most valuable convert. They had a long and fruitful relationship during which Penn developed the teaching of Fox in a way suited to the later seventeenth century, for Penn was at home in the intellectual atmosphere of the beginning of the Enlightenment.39 John Locke was his contemporary, and science was being promoted by the Royal Society. There is only one record of Fox reproving Penn, on an occasion when Penn was being too slow in producing an urgently required pamphlet.40 With the easing of the political situation in 1667, theological disputes were again in full swing.41 Penn’s first assignment was to reply to Jonathan Clapham’s Guide to the True Religion. Clapham was a long-­standing opponent of the Quakers and now an Anglican minister who still hoped for a national church comprehending everyone—­apart from such people as atheists, heathens, Muslims, Jews, papists, Socinians, and the Quakers. Penn’s answer, The Guide Mistaken, declared that the light was available to all and denied that the doctrine of the Trinity was to be found in the Bible. This laid him open to the charge of Socinianism, which followed him all his life. The Socinians, who in Britain later became known as the Unitarians, were non-­Trinitarians who believed that Christ did not exist before his human 37. George Whitehead, The Real Quaker a Real Protestant . . . (London?: s.n., 1679), 30. For example, see John 15:1–­8; 1 Corinthians 6:15, 12:12, 27. 38. See Moore in chapter 3 for an introduction to William Penn. 39. It has been suggested that this was a distortion rather than a development. See Bailey, New Light on George Fox, 219–­41. For a full discussion of the relationship between Fox and Penn, see Melvin B. Endy, “George Fox and William Penn: Their Relationship and Their Roles within the Quaker Movement,” QH 93, no. 1 (2004): 1–­39. For a critique of Endy, see T. Vail Palmer Jr., “Did William Penn Diverge Significantly from George Fox in His Understanding of the Quaker Message?,” QS 11, no. 1 (2006): 59–­70. For Penn’s theology, see Hugh S. Barbour, ed., William Penn on Religion and Ethics: The Emergence of Liberal Quakerism, 2 vols. (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 1991), but beware the discussion of “Liberal Quakerism,” which has been queried, for example, by Endy above. See Melvin B. Endy’s William Penn and Early Quakerism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973), and his “William Penn’s Contributions,” 239–55. 40. PWP, 1:208 (May 27, 1671). 41. See Brown and Sell in chapter 6.

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birth. The term was often used in England as a general term of abuse for dissenters.42 Next Penn was sent to try his skills in an actual debate, joining Whitehead in a dispute with Thomas Vincent, a well-­known dissenting minister, where, it has to be said, the two Quakers were outmaneuvered. Penn, feeling that he and Whitehead had not been given a fair chance to make their case, published as a riposte a short book called The Sandy Foundation Shaken, which began uncompromisingly: THE Sandy Foundation SHAKEN: OR, Those so generally believed and applauded DOCTRINES, • Of One God, subsisting in three distinct and separate Persons, Refuted. • Of The impossibility of God’s pardoning sinners, without a plenary satisfaction, Refuted. • Of The justification of impure persons by an imputative Righteousness, Refuted. From the Authority of Scripture Testimonies, and right Reason.43

There followed alternating scriptural and rational arguments for each of the points in question. It was the work of a very young man and intended to shock. Penn was immediately in trouble, for in his attack on formal Trinitarian doctrine, he had apparently denied the divinity of Christ. This was serious, and Penn was sent to the Tower of London. A learned Anglican of broad-­minded views, Dr. Edward Stillingfleet, was asked to reason with him, and after much discussion, Penn produced another pamphlet, Innocency with Her Open Face Presented, in which he declared he was no Socinian and did accept that salvation came through Christ. To make all clear, somebody (possibly Whitehead) added a carefully Trinitarian postscript, and Penn was released.44 Whitehead and Fox were no doubt alarmed 42. Jonathan Clapham, Guide to the True Religion . . . (London: D. Newman, 1668); and for the response, see William Penn, The Guide Mistaken, and Temporizing Rebuked . . . (London: John Darby, 1668). 43. William Penn, The Sandy Foundation Shaken . . . (London: s.n., 1668), frontispiece. 44. William Penn, Innocency with Her Open Face Presented . . . (s.l.: s.n., 1669). The postscript is on 35–­39.

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that their young activist was spoiling the good impression they were try­ ing to cultivate! Penn proved to be an excellent debater. One of his opponents wrote that he had “a Voluble Tongue, a strong Voice and clear, a grateful Utterance, and I believe good Lungs . . . to be commended for an excellent Rhetorician.”45 He took a leading part in the disputes, backing up his assertions with copious references to the Bible, the church fathers, and more recent authorities. For non-­Quakers, he probably appeared as the authentic voice of Quakerism. His aim was to make Quakerism acceptable, and if that meant changing its traditional language, so be it. Writing to his former friends to explain his actions, he knew it was no use speaking of the light within. He phrased it instead, “Be you intreated to eye that Divine Principle engrafted on your minds, in all its holy, meek, and self-­denying instructions; that being mostly exercised thereby, you may be wean’d from all the glittering Follies of the World.”46 Penn wrote so much, and at such length, that it is difficult to find a succinct statement of his beliefs, which moreover developed during his lifetime. For the 1670s, probably the best for this purpose is his section of The Christian-­Quaker, much of which consists of a consideration of the nature of the light. He backed up his arguments with references to scripture and ancient authorities pagan and Christian. According to Penn, the light is Christ, for whom he coined the phrase “Word-­God,” who was universal, available to all, and a saving light before as well as after the bodily coming of Christ.47 In the earlier Sandy Foundation, he had declared his abhorrence of the idea that God needed satisfaction for the sins of the world and that for that end, Jesus had died on the cross. His preferred explanation was that “in that Holy Body the Divine Principle of Life did discover the Depth of Satan’s darkness, encounter Hell, Death and the Grave, every Temptation it was possible for the Serpent to beset him with . . . and in the end utterly defeated and forever overcame the power of the Tempter.”48 Penn could have met this idea in the work of contemporary Protestant scholars or found it for himself in the early Christian fathers, where the idea originated that 45. Thomas Thompson, The Quakers Quibbles . . . (London: F. Smith, 1675), 2. 46. William Penn, No Cross, No Crown . . . ([London]: s.n., 1669), Epistle to the Reader. 47. Penn and Whitehead, Christian-­Quaker, 1:103. Barbour, William Penn, 252, considers it unfortunate that Penn did not have the time, and possibly the precision, to develop the idea of the “Word-­God” further. 48. Penn, Sandy Foundation Shaken, 18–­19.

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the work of Christ consisted in the conquest of evil.49 Penn eventually had to accept the idea of propitiation, for it stood in his Bible, but he was not happy with it, finding it difficult to see how propitiation could be necessary in God’s scheme of things.50 (Modern biblical translations usually employ the subtly different “expiation.”) He was on surer ground in returning to the Quaker main theme that mere belief in the blood of Christ was insufficient, for it was necessary also to “find him in our hearts as Holy light showing sin, reproving for and converting it into the Holy Nature of the Light, to be Flesh of his Flesh and Bone of his Bone.”51 This was a favorite phrase of Fox derived from Ephesians 5:30, and he possibly took it literally. Had Penn picked up this phrase from Fox, and how literally did he accept it? Penn was involved with expounding Quaker doctrine for only a few years before politics began to claim most of his time, and he turned his attention to creating a New Jerusalem on the other side of the Atlantic. Meanwhile, the two greatest Quaker intellectuals of the later seventeenth century, George Keith and Robert Barclay, had become active in the Quaker meeting in Aberdeen.52 Keith was a trained Protestant theologian before he became a Quaker, and for him Quakerism joined seamlessly to what he already believed. Soon after coming to Friends, he was writing in defense of Quakerism.53 The possibility of direct contact with God was at the center of his thought and was the subject of an early book, Immediate Revelation, published in 1668 but actually written in 1665 during one of his imprisonments in the Aberdeen Tolbooth.54 The word immediate in such contexts implies direct contact without the mediation of any other agency. In 1670, he was released and came to London, where he met with Penn, Whitehead, and Fox and took part in the disputes of the early seventies. His expositions were clear and to the point: “There be two maine and principall things held forth by us . . . The first is, that ther is no saving knowledge of God, 49. The classic work on this theory of the atonement is Gustav Aulen, Christus Victor: An Historical Study of the Three Main Types of Theories of the Atonement (1st publ. in English, London: SPCK, 1931; reissued 2010). 50. Penn, Christian-­Quaker, 1:106, 108–­9, referring to Romans 3:25 and 1 John 2:2, 4:10. 51. Penn, I, 113. 52. See Allen in chapters 2 and 5 for Keith and Barclay. 53. Ethan W. Kirby, George Keith, 1638–­1716 (New York: Appleton-­Century, 1942); Michael Birkel,“Immediate Revelation, Kabbalah and Magic: The Primacy of Experience in the Theology of George Keith,” in Angell and Dandelion, Early Quakers, 256–­72; Judith Dodds, “George Keith: Biblical Apologist for the Religious Society of Friends,” Quaker Religious Thought 30 (2001): 27–­35. 54. George Keith, Immediate Revelation . . . ([Aberdeen?]: s.n., 1668).

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or the things of his Kingdome attainable, but by the Immediate revelation of Iesus Christ . . . The second is, that this Image, Word and Light, which is Jesus Christ, the Son of the Fathers love, doth shine forth in some measure universally, and enlighten every man that comes into the World, and therby giveth unto him, a day of visitation wherin it is possible for him to be saved.”55 Keith had no problem in relating the Quaker experience to the life and death of Jesus Christ. He did not agonize, as Penn did, about how it was that the death of Jesus led to human salvation. For him, that was the way things were, the way God had ordered it, and the Quaker experience was the completion of the process. He was a formidable addition to Quaker intellectuals and could handle most of the accusations about their heretical nature. But he disliked fudge and lack of clarity, and his theology was conservative. His insistence on the bodily ascension and final return of Christ contributed to his later departure from Quakerism.56 The other Quaker intellectual from Aberdeen was Robert Barclay. Keith was his early mentor and continued to advise him.57 For Barclay, as for Keith, the possibility of the direct revelation of God to humankind was the most important element in his faith, and this was summarized in a short letter to a Dutch scholar, The Possibility and Necessity of the Immediate Revelation of the Spirit of God.58 Barclay wrote most of his books in connection with the local persecution of the Quakers, and after this ceased in 1679, following the intervention of the Duke of York, he wrote little.59 Like Penn, 55. George Keith, The Universal Free Grace of the Gospel Asserted . . . (London: s.n., 1671), 3. 56. See Frost in chapter 9. 57. J. Philip Wragge, “The Debt of Robert Barclay to George Keith: The Life and Writings of Keith to 1677, and Their Influence on Barclay” (PhD diss., University of Birmingham, 1946). Copies in LSF; FHLSC; Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre, Birmingham. 58. Robert Barclay, The Possibility and Necessity of the Inward and Immediate Revelation of the Spirit of God, written in Latin in 1678, translated by Barclay, and published in 1686. 59. There is no recent full-­length study of Barclay, but see the following: D. Elton Trueblood, Robert Barclay (New York: Harper and Row, 1968); Hugh Pyper, “Robert Barclay: The Art of Apologetics,” in Angell and Dandelion, Early Quakers, 207–­23, and “Resisting the Inevitable: Universal and Particular Salvation in the Thought of Robert Barclay,” Quaker Religious Thought 29, no. 1 (1998): 5–­18; R. Melvin Keiser, “Touched and Knit in the Life: Barclay’s Relational Theology and Cartesian Dualism,” QS 5, no. 2 (2001): 141–­64; Alan P. F. Sell, “Robert Barclay (1648–­1690), the Fathers and the Inward, Universal Saving Light: A Tercentenary Reappraisal,” JFHS 56, no. 3 (1992): 210–­26; Yasaharu Nakano, “Self and Other in the Theology of Robert Barclay” (PhD diss., University of Birmingham, 2011).

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he then began to spend more time on politics. Like Keith, he was involved in theological debates with local divines, but in contrast to Keith, he did not take part in English debates.60 Local arguments culminated in 1674 with a set piece debate against students of the university that ended in a riot. The subjects of this and other debates were similar to those in England: the nature and universality of the light, its relation to the work of the human Jesus, the position of scripture, and the ministry. Barclay wrote a summary of the points at issue in Theses Theologicae, published in Latin in 1675 and then translated into English. Barclay’s writing shows other influences beyond those of his upbringing. In Theses Theologicae proposition 2, he writes that divine revelations are not to be subjected to the testimony of scripture or the natural reason, for this “divine revelation and inward illumination is that which is evident and clear of it self, forcing by its own evidence and clearness the well-­disposed understanding to assent.” This is very reminiscent of René Descartes’s conclusion that the things that we conceive very clearly and distinctly (meaning mathematical ideas and others that appear to be self-­ evident) are true.61 He could make use of current philosophy, whether he accepted it or not. A more obscure influence on Keith and Barclay is best approached by looking at a curious side alley in Quaker history concerning the circle centered on the Viscountess Conway of Ragley Hall, Warwickshire.62 Anne Conway, one of the few women philosophers of the seventeenth century, had been tutored in philosophy by Henry More, a respected scholar and prolific author who was a leader of the group known as the Cambridge Platonists. These were clergymen who held that the human soul is trapped in the body but is looking for union with the divine mind, and one way this may be achieved is through reason, which they called the “candle of the Lord.” Some of them used the phrase “the Light Within.” They believed 60. See Moore in chapter 3 for Barclay’s input to the controversy over Quaker organization. 61. Robert Barclay, Theses Theologicae . . . (Amsterdam: s.n., 1675), 3; René Descartes, Discours de la méthode . . . (Discourse on the Method . . .) (Leiden: Jan Maire, 1637), Part IV, 15; http://​www​.earlymoderntexts​.com​/​a ssets​/​pdfs​/​descartes1637​.pdf (accessed September 22, 2015). How far Cartesianism was an integral part of Barclay’s thought is debatable; see especially Keiser, “Touched and Knit in the Life.” 62. The best source of information for the Conway circle is Marjorie Hope Nicholson, ed., The Conway Letters: The Correspondence of Anne, Viscountess Conway, Henry More and Their Friends, 1642–­1684 (London: Oxford University Press, 1930), new ed., ed. Sarah Hutton (Oxford: Clarendon, 1992).

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in free will and in natural human goodness. Keith was influenced by the works of More when becoming a Quaker, which horrified More when he heard about it.63 In 1670, More came to know Francis Mercury van Helmont, a diplomat who worked for several small German courts and had recently arrived in England on business.64 Van Helmont was an enthusiast for and expert on the Kabbala, medieval Jewish writings then being translated into Latin. These were thought to be a fragmentary source of the wisdom God gave to Moses on Mount Sinai, according to which multiple emanations mediated between the unknowable God and the earthly world and in which a primordial spiritual Messiah, or heavenly man, extended across the universe.65 This could be Christianized as a similar idea to Christ, the eternal word of God. One strand of kabbalistic thinking held that humans passed through a cycle of rebirths until they became pure enough to return to their origins in heaven. As Christianized, this led to the possibility that everyone could ultimately be saved, for in the course of several lifetimes, everyone would have the chance of hearing about Christ. This was not a speculation of the lunatic fringe but a proposition given serious consideration at this time. Van Helmont was recognized as a distinguished if controversial scholar, and among his friends and correspondents were Robert Boyle, John Locke, and Gottfried Leibniz.66 Van Helmont had a reputation as a physician as well as a philosopher, so More asked him to visit Lady Conway, who was suffering from increasingly severe headaches.67 Van Helmont was unable to cure the headaches, but he and Lady Conway became close friends, and van Helmont settled down as a member of her household and remained there until her death in 1679. In 1674, Barclay and Keith were in England and met More. More, who had a poor opinion of the Quakers, considered that Keith was a capable scholar despite his beliefs.68 Keith probably thought that even the grudging approval of a scholar of More’s standing was worth having, and he added an 63. Hutton, Conway Letters, 341. 64. For Helmont and his relations to Quaker and other seventeenth-­century thought, see Allison P. Coudert, The Impact of the Kabbalah in the Seventeenth Century: The Life and Thought of Francis Mercury van Helmont (1614–­1698) (Leiden: Brill, 1999). 65. See Birkel, “Immediate Revelation,” 260, and his “Robert Barclay and Kabbalah,” QS 21, no. 1 (2016): 3–­13. 66. Coudert, Impact of the Kabbalah, 169–­73, 271–­329. 67. Hutton, Conway Letters, 323. 68. Hutton, 391–­92.

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appendix to the second edition of his Immediate Revelation answering More’s criticisms.69 William Penn was acquainted with Anne Conway, and in 1675, when he had intended to visit her but was unable, he sent Keith in his place.70 Keith, Conway, and van Helmont found they had much in common. Other leading Quakers were drawn in, and the names of Barclay, Whitehead, Penington, and even Fox occur in the records of Ragley. Van Helmont began to attend local Quaker meetings and presently declared himself a Quaker. Conway also became a Quaker, to the distress of More.71 Barclay, however, had doubts about van Helmont’s Quakerism and in the autumn of 1676 wrote him a long and circuitous letter to the effect that van Helmont was too given to “wandring thoughts and multiplicity of images” and would be well advised to be cautious.72 Keith was strongly attracted by van Helmont’s ideas, and he wrote twice to Christian Knorr von Rosenroth, friend of van Helmont and translator of the Kabbala.73 Conway remarked on Keith’s interest when writing to More, who replied that he had thought Keith would find the Kabbala “as sweet and pleasing to him as new milk to any kitten.”74 Van Helmont later implied that Keith had assisted in producing van Helmont’s book Two Hundred Queries Moderately Propounded, concerning the Revolution of Humane Souls and Its Conformity to the Truths of Christianity.75 But Keith never publicly promoted a belief in reincarnation. He evidently kept it in mind as a possibility, even probability, but his only published acknowledgment of it came much later, when he was involved in major controversy and when his denials of helping van Helmont were somewhat equivocal.76 Some of Keith’s writings of the later 1670s and the 1680s have turns of language suggesting that the Kabbala had an influence on his ideas about the light and union with Christ.77 69. George Keith, Immediate Revelation . . . , 2nd ed. (London: s.n., 1675), with new appendix. For Keith’s letter to Barclay on the subject, see David Barclay, Reliquiae Barclaianae (London: Winter and Bailey [lithograph], 1870), ix (May 12, 1676). 70. PWP, 1, 156; Hutton, Conway Letters, 408. 71. Hutton, Conway Letters, 434. 72. Barclay, Reliquiae Barclaianae, 9–­10. 73. Coudert, Impact of the Kabbalah, 186–­88. 74. Hutton, Conway Letters, 415. 75. Francis Mercury van Helmont, The Paradoxal Discourses of F. M. van Helmont (London: J. C[ottrell] and Freeman Collins, 1685), 159. 76. George Keith, Truth and Innocency . . . (Philadelphia: s.n., 1692), 9. Also see Frost in chapter 9. 77. For instance, see George Keith, The True Christ Owned . . . (London: s.n., 1679), especially 48–­52, 68–­69, 99–­100; Immediate Revelation (1675 ed.), appendix; and Divine

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Van Helmont gradually drifted away from the Quakers after Conway’s death in 1679. In 1684, Fox suggested that the Morning Meeting should take a look at his books, as he thought they led to “Ranterisme and Atheisme.”78 How prevalent van Helmont’s ideas were among the Quakers is not known. Apart from Fox’s memorandum, the only known contemporary Quaker references to the matter originated in Holland.79 Given that the English versions of van Helmont’s books were translations, it is possible that the main support for van Helmont lay among Dutch and maybe German Quakers. The Kabbala had no lasting influence on British and American Quakerism, with one possible exception, which concerns Robert Barclay. Barclay’s Apology for the True Christian Divinity is an elaboration of the Theses Theologicae and of the matters particularly troublesome in Aberdeen. The word apology, in this sense, meant a defense of a reasoned position, specifically a defense of the Quaker interpretation of Christianity, while avoiding beliefs that Scottish Calvinists deemed heretical. It was first published in Latin in 1676 and in English in 1678. It came to be considered the normative statement of Quaker doctrine and remained so until recent times. Barclay’s attempt to define the light within and its relation to Christ in proposition 13 should now be looked at: By this Seed, Grace, and Word of God, and Light, wherewith we say every man is enlightened . . . we understand not the proper essence and nature of God, precisely taken . . . but we understand a spiritual, heavenly, and invisible principle, in which God, as Father, Son and Spirit dwells: a measure of which divine and glorious life is in all men, as a seed, which of its own nature, draws, invites, and inclines to God: and this we call vehiculum Dei [vehicle of God], or the spiritual body of Christ, the flesh and blood of Christ, which came down from heaven, of which all the saints do feed . . . . . . we do not at all intend either to equal ourselves to that holy man the Lord Jesus Christ, who was born of the virgin Mary, in whom Immediate Revelation Continued . . . (London: s.n., 1684), preface. Also see Birkel, “George Keith,” 260–­64. 78. LSF, MS Portfolio 10, 3, Fox, “Memorandum for the Friends of the Second Days Meeting,” January 19, 1684. 79. Colchester Friends’ Meeting House, Colchester MS fol. 102, Peter Henricks to Francis M. van Helmont, 1681; Benjamin Furly to William Penn, 1684, in PWP, 2:566–­67, 1684, and cited in Coudert, Impact of the Kabbalah, 257, 265.

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all the fullness of the Godhead dwelt bodily, nor to destroy the reality of his present existence . . . For, though we affirm that Christ dwells in us, yet not immediately but mediately, as in that seed, which is in us.80

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Barclay wished to distance himself from any idea of actual unity with God, and this term vehiculum dei provided a means. In an answer to a criticism of the Apology, Barclay wrote that he had in mind the chariot of Solomon (Song of Songs 3:9), Solomon being widely regarded as a figure (symbol) of Christ. He then referred his opponent to the Latin translation of the Kabbala, where vehiculum is used to translate the word for chariot, meaning the mysterious chariot or “wheels” of Ezekiel 1, container of divine secrets and a major kabbalistic theme. This kabbalist terminology proved useful in providing a new perspective on the Quaker terms light and seed.81 Barclay may have acquired it from conversations with Keith. Years later, Keith said he had provided Barclay with this term as well as many of the quotations from the church fathers that Barclay used in the Apology.82 One other work of the 1670s needs to be mentioned here. This is Elizabeth Bathurst’s Truth’s Vindication, the most outstanding theological work of any early woman Quaker, which shows knowledge of all major Quaker ideas and also familiarity with the current emphasis on the Bible and the life of Christ.83 It was addressed to Bathurst’s former colleagues in a 80. Robert Barclay, An Apology for the True Christian Divinity . . . (1st English ed., Aberdeen: s.n., 1678), new ed., ed. Peter D. Sippel (Glenside, Pa.: Quaker Heritage Press, 2002), 120–­21; Birkel, “Robert Barclay and Kabbalah.” 81. Robert Barclay, Robert Barclay’s Apology for the True Christian Divinity, Vindicated from John Brown’s Examination . . . (London: Benjamin Clark, 1679), 162; Birkel, “Robert Barclay and Kabbalah.” The interest of Keith and Barclay in the Kabbala has been known to Quaker scholars at least since 1924, when Theodor Sippel commented on it in a letter to H. G. Wood and confirmed it in 1950 in a letter to Maurice Creasy. See Maurice Creasy, “Early Quaker Christology with Special Reference to the Teaching and Significance of Isaac Penington 1616–­1679” (PhD diss., University of Leeds, 1956), 232–­36. 82. George Keith, The Standard of the Quakers Examined . . . (London: B. Aylmer, 1702), 240. 83. Elizabeth Bathurst, Truth’s Vindication; or, A Gentle Stroke to Wipe off the Foul Aspersions . . . Cast upon . . . Quakers (London: s.n., 1679). Also see Mary van Vleck Garman, “Elizabeth Bathurst: ‘Tis Not Inky Character Can Make a Saint,’” in Angell and Dandelion, Early Quakers, 224–­38, and her “Elizabeth Bathurst and Truth’s Vindication,” Quaker Religious Thought 30, no. 3 (2001): 47–­53; Lapsansky-­Werner in chapter 10.

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Presbyterian church. It was reprinted in 1695 with a preface by George Whitehead and remained in use well into the eighteenth century. Apart from the works by major authors, the Quakers produced a continuous stream of other publications—generally twenty or thirty a year, mostly fairly short. These were vetted by the Second Day’s Morning Meeting, in which Penn was very active at first and Whitehead consistently, while Fox was consulted regarding particular manuscripts.84 The minutes of the Morning Meeting show that a number of manuscripts submitted were turned down as not suitable for publication or sent back for revision.85 Occasionally the meeting looked at theological debate, and in January 1683, they declared of one book, “We do not judge it safe to print those parts of it that concern the controversy that concerns the body and blood of Christ . . . We apprehend that reviving these old controversies, will raise new disputes and create new troubles for Friends.”86 But by and large, the lesser authors were not affected by the more cerebral developments. The majority of their works were accounts of local sufferings, contributions to local debates, testimonies to the dead, pastoral advice, and still, a steady sprinkling of apocalyptic warnings, though expressed in milder terms than in similar publications of the 1650s. It took some time for the ideas of Penn, Barclay, and Keith to filter down to the Quaker grassroots. An example of one of the more substantial works is Samuel Watson’s A Mirrour to Distinguish the True Ministry from the False, published in 1683. His first words have the sound of older Quaker writing: “The Glory of the Lamb of God hath shined upon the Tabernacles of a Remnant, and is come near through the in-shining of the Light of the glorious Gospel in them.” But his detailed references to the life of Jesus and his declaration regarding Christ show the new influences: “This is he . . . who is my Saviour, in and through whose precious Blood is my Salvation and Redemption.” He also emphasized scripture: “We are so far from laying waste or slighting the Scriptures of Truth, that we esteem them above all other Writings of men.”87 A slow shift was going on. 84. For the Second Day’s Morning Meeting, see Moore in chapter 3. 85. Christine Trevett, “‘Not Fit to Be Printed’: The Welsh, the Women and the Second Day’s Morning Meeting,” JFHS 59, no. 2 (2001): 115–­44, for the Morning Meeting’s treatment of more problematic papers. 86. LSF, SDMM, I, 69 ( January 8, 1683). 87. Samuel Watson, A Mirrour to Distinguish the True Ministry . . . (London: A. Sowle, 1683), 1, 32, 34.

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It remains to be considered if there was any significant disjunction between Fox’s older-­style Quakerism and the theological developments of the 1670s and 1680s as expressed by Whitehead, Penn, Keith, and Barclay. Fox had been prepared to see Quaker language adapted ever since the Quakers, under threat from the blasphemy laws, began to modify the way they spoke about union with Christ around 1653 or 1654. The limit of his theological tolerance was marked by his reaction to van Helmont. Whitehead’s theological language had been noticeably different from Fox’s since the 1650s, and Fox had not objected. Penn was Fox’s protégé and recognized his debt to Fox. However Penn expressed himself, he thought that he was expounding the original Quaker teaching. Keith and Barclay came to Quakerism by a different route, but the indications are that relations between Fox, on the one hand, and Keith and Barclay, on the other, were good. They met together at Ragley, and Keith and his wife, together with Penn and Barclay, were among those who accompanied Fox on his visit to Holland and Germany.88 Some indication of Fox’s personal attitude toward the new ideas can be gauged from his activities at Swarthmoor around 1675–­76. He attempted to erase the messianic references to himself from the pile of letters that became the Swarthmore Manuscripts. He evidently felt that these at least had gone too far. However, the original manuscript of his journal, written at this time, still contained passages that were later heavily edited by Thomas Ellwood as unsuited to the late seventeenth century.89 And at some time, Fox put together a Book of Miracles (that he had performed), and he left instructions regarding its possible future publication. It may be that Fox knew and accepted that changes were needed in the expression of Quakerism but that a part of him was not entirely happy. Perhaps he wanted to leave a record of what he thought of as his own personal contribution to Quakerism, but knowing that publishing in the current political climate would be inadvisable, he left the decision to his heirs. In the event, Fox’s Book of Miracles and likewise his Book of Examples (of the dire fates suffered by persecutors of Quakers) were never published and eventually were lost.90 88. See Allen in chapter 5 for the visit to Holland and Germany. 89. See Frost in chapter 9. 90. For Fox’s “Book of Miracles,” see Henry J. Cadbury, George Fox’s “Book of Miracles” (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1948), 34–35, which includes Fox’s publication instructions. For further details, see Rosemary Moore, “Late Seventeenth Century Quakerism and the Miraculous: A New Look at George Fox’s ‘Book of Miracles,’” in

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It is fact that Quakerism changed over the years. Penington, Barclay, and Keith all described their experience of Quaker meetings, and it was not the experience of 1652. The experiences of the following generation were different again.91 Charismatic Quakerism, where the early Friends experienced the “terror and power of the Light” did not and could not last.92 Inevitably, if the Quaker movement was to survive, it would have to encompass contemporary experience and understanding. Whether this was a change of degree or of substance is ultimately a matter of opinion.

Kate Cooper and Jeremy Gregory, eds., Signs, Wonders, Miracles: Representations of Divine Power in the Life of the Church (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2005), 335–­44. For the “Book of Examples,” see Henry J. Cadbury, Annual Catalogue of George Fox’s Papers (Philadelphia: Friends Book Store; London: Friends Book Centre, 1939), 13, and his Narrative Papers of George Fox: Unpublished or Uncollected (Richmond, Ind.: Friends United Press, 1972), 209–­32. 91. Tousley, “Experience of Regeneration.” 92. The phrase “terror and power of the Light” comes from a chapter heading in Hugh Barbour, The Quakers in Puritan England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964).

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C ha p t e r 8

The Quakers and Politics, 1660–­1689 George Southcombe*

In 1682, the Lincolnshire Friend John Whitehead considered the evolution of Quakerism in England: And now, being sensible how that Generation which did see the Wonders of the Lord, and were upheld by his mighty Power, is passing away, and many of them gone before us to their Everlasting Inheritance with Christ Jesus in his Kingdom, and another Generation that have heard more, but seen and experienced less, both of the Wiles of Satan, and operation of God’s Power, that discovers and breaks his Snares, are entring, who are the Off-­spring of the Elders, who through Faith and Patience have obtained a good Report, besides many others who have come into the Vineyard at other hours of the day, who must all be tryed and proved, as virtuous men have been in all Ages, that have obtained like-­precious Faith.1

The tone he struck—­wistful for the past, cautious about the present and future—­is matched to the story he told. The deaths of the first generation left the movement increasingly in the hands of those who had not been * I would like to thank Dr. Grant Tapsell for his comments on an earlier draft of this chapter. 1. John Whitehead, A General Epistle to be Read . . . (London?: s.n., 1682), 3–­4.

“tryed and proved,” those who had not had the same experience fighting the “Wiles of Satan.” The fear is palpable. Modern historians too have primarily concentrated on the late seventeenth century as a period of change. Quakerism, following its early days of heady experimentalism, solidified into a movement, with clearer structures. Its adherents went from being perceived as fomenters of anarchy to being seen as sober-­minded businessmen. Some such transformation undoubtedly did occur.2 However, Whitehead’s words themselves offer a caveat to the way this story has often been told. Dating, as they do, from the 1680s, they raise serious questions about attempts to identify seismic change occurring within Quakerism at the point of the Restoration in 1660.3 For Whitehead, change was a product of a generational shift that was not complete until much later in the seventeenth century. More generally, the emphasis on change in this period can be in some respects misleading. The argument that the late seventeenth century saw the Quakers turn inward, becoming quiescent sufferers, in particular overlooks the range of political activities in which they participated. Some of the more dramatic acts of witnessing that the Quakers had engaged in during the 1650s did become markedly less common, although they did not disappear altogether. On July 29, 1667, Samuel Pepys wrote of Solomon Eccles’s actions in Westminster Hall: “A man, a Quaker, came naked through the Hall, only very civilly tied about the privities to avoid scandal, and with a chafing-­dish of fire and brimstone burning upon his head did pass through the Hall, crying ‘Repent! Repent!’”4 Eccles reappeared in Galway in 1669—­this time half-­naked—­preaching to Catholics and Protestants.5 Most significantly, the development of the peace principle meant that Quaker involvement in acts of political violence considerably lessened in the Restoration.6 This 2. The most subtle discussion of this transformation, which also does much to complicate the argument summarized here, is Richard L. Greaves, “‘Seditious Sectaries’ or ‘Sober and Useful Inhabitants’? Changing Conceptions of the Quakers in Early Modern Britain,” Albion 33, no. 1 (2001): 24–­50. 3. Rosemary Moore has offered an important challenge to seeing 1660 as a clear turning point in Moore, Light. See also Moore in chapter 1. 4. Robert Latham and William Matthews, eds., The Diary of Samuel Pepys, 11 vols. (London: G. Bell, 1970–­83), 8:360. 5. Greaves, “Seditious Sectaries,” 28. In 1661, Quakers in northern market towns were said to go naked proclaiming “Woe to Yorkshire.” See NA, State Papers, 29/28 f. 86. 6. Richard L. Greaves nonetheless painstakingly recorded instances of Quaker involvement in the various ill-­fated revolts of the late seventeenth century in his Deliver Us from Evil: The Radical Underground in Britain, 1660–­1663 (Oxford: Oxford University

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said, it remains the case, as this chapter will demonstrate, that it was in the late seventeenth century that the Quakers played a definitive role in shaping England’s political culture.

172 Quaker Modes of Political Action and the First Restoration Crisis, 1667–­737 The passing of the Five Mile Act in 1665—­while its strictures in themselves did not apply to the Quakers—­completed a program of legislation intended to stifle all forms of religious dissent.8 England’s identity as a persecuting society had been given statutory authority, and churchmen also found theological justifications for their intolerance.9 The comprehensive legal attempt to destroy dissent, however, was far from universally approved among the political nation, and measures were quickly suggested to ameliorate its impact. Following humiliation in the Second Anglo-­Dutch War in 1667, Charles dispensed with his principal adviser, the Earl of Clarendon, and relied upon a group of ministers, the Cabal. The members of this group had various religious identities, but none were committed to the narrow church settlement, and debates about toleration were reinvigorated. Gary S. De Krey has suggested that the period between 1667 and 1673 was the first Restoration crisis—­a crisis centered on conscience.10 The Quakers were to have a key part within it. The Quakers, from the beginning of the movement, harnessed print with peculiar effectiveness.11 In the Restoration, they built on early developments and used print as one of their main modes of political action. They Press, 1986); Enemies under His Feet: Radicals and Nonconformists in Britain, 1664–­1677 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1990); and Secrets of the Kingdom: British Radicals from the Popish Plot to the Revolution of 1688–­89 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1992). 7. The nomenclature adopted here is taken from Gary S. De Krey, “The First Restoration Crisis: Conscience and Coercion in London, 1667–­1673,” Albion 25, no. 4 (1993): 565–­80. 8. See Bell in chapter 12 for further details. 9. Mark Goldie, “The Theory of Religious Intolerance in Restoration England,” in From Persecution to Toleration: The Glorious Revolution and Religion in England, ed. Ole Peter Grell, Jonathan Israel, and Nicholas Tyacke (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991), 331–­68. 10. De Krey, “The First Restoration Crisis,” 565–­80. 11. Kate Peters, Print Culture and the Early Quakers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

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produced 8 percent of all printed titles between 1652 and 1684.12 This needs to be understood within a context in which the public forum for political debate had expanded considerably following the civil wars and in which it would become increasingly important for political actors to seek to shape the discourses available outside the court and Parliament.13 The Quakers had an important place as ideologues of the tolerationist cause. Preeminent among them was William Penn. For Penn, writing in 1670 in his The Great Case of Liberty of Conscience, persecution was against nature, “for those who have so little tenderness, as to persecute men that cannot for Conscience sake yield them compliance, manifestly act injuriously to their Fellow-­Creatures, and consequently are Enemies to Nature.”14 What is more, persecution was necessarily ineffectual, being based on the false premise that a person might be forced into a belief against his or her God-­given understanding: “In short . . . Man cannot be said to have any Religion, that takes it by another mans choice, not his own.”15 To apply “Corporal or External Punishment, for a meer mental Error” was in any case “Unreasonable and Inadequate.”16 Finally, he thought that, on a practical level, persecution was detrimental to the kingdom’s fortunes: “Such Laws are so far from benefiting the Country, that the Execution of them will be the assured ruin of it, in the Revenues, and consequently in the Power of it; For where there is a decay of Families, there will be of Trade.”17 Throughout this work, Penn was also careful to delimit the terms of his political intervention. It was not the Quakers who represented a threat to the monarchy and the state of England. If anything, it was the persecuting Anglican clergy whose self-­interest eroded the power of the king, as he made clear when considering James VI and I’s famous dictum: “For, first, if the saying were as true as ’tis false; No Bishop, no King, (which admits of various readings; As no decimating Clergy, or no Persecution, no King), we should be as silent, as some would have us: but the confidence of their Assertion, and the impollicy of such as believe it, makes us to say, that a greater injury 12. Thomas P. O’Malley, “‘Defying the Powers and Tempering the Spirit’: A Review of Quaker Control over Their Publications, 1672–­1689,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 33, no. 1 (1982): 72–­88 (74). 13. George Southcombe and Grant Tapsell, Restoration Politics, Religion and Culture: Britain and Ireland, 1660–­1714 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), ch. 7. 14. William Penn, The Great Case of Liberty of Conscience . . . (London: s.n., 1670), 20. 15. Penn, 20. 16. Penn, 24. 17. Penn, 27.

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cannot be done to the present Government.”18 He also—­and this move, perhaps above all else, would have enraged his opponents—­called upon the highest royal authorities to support his argument: “Let me add (as what is, or should be now of more force) the sense of King James, and Charles the first, Men fam’d for their great natural abilities, and acquir’d Learning; that no man ought to be punished for his Religion nor disturb’d for his Conscience; In that it is the duty of every man to give what he would Receive.”19 The debate about toleration was carried out in print, and a number of different intellectual positions were established.20 It occurred, though, against a backdrop of persecution, and it is important to recognize that while political action could take the form of participation in national debates, it could also involve localized attempts to limit persecution. The passing of the second Conventicle Act in 1670 encouraged further, through financial reward, the practice of informing against dissenter meetings. George Fox recorded in his Journal that “it was a cruel bloody persecuting time.”21 Some informers were dealt with swiftly. According to Fox, in 1670 an informer, after listening at a friend’s window in Droitwich, went to Lichfield to obtain a warrant to distrain goods on the grounds that an illicit meeting had taken place. He did not make it back to Droitwich: “Coming up a bottom near the town and another man with him an owl flew before him and screeched and the other man cried, ‘God bless him!’; ‘Oh,’ said the informer, ‘why say you so?,’ what? was he afraid of an owl?: but he presently after fell off his horse and broke his neck: and there was the end of this wicked informer who hoped to have spoiled friends: but the Lord prevented him and cut him off in his wickedness: and spoiled him.”22 The Quakers did not simply wait for this kind of immediate divine intervention. Other strategies were deployed. Railing against persecution, in both print and manuscript correspondence, continued, but the Quakers also sought to work through personal interaction with key political actors. This could occur at a very high level. Fox, for example, wrote of how he had encouraged Martha Fisher and Hannah Stringer “to go and speak to the King for Margaret [Fell]’s liberty” in

18. Penn, 25. 19. Penn, 43. 20. Gary S. De Krey, “Rethinking the Restoration: Dissenting Cases for Conscience, 1667–­1672,” Historical Journal 38, no. 1 (1995): 53–­83. 21. Fox, Journal (ed. Smith), 413. 22. Fox, 413.

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the early 1670s.23 During Fox’s own imprisonment of 1673–­75, Fell had an audience with the king and then the Lord Keeper Heneage Finch, who by her own account was a “tender Man.”24 It is also clear that the Quakers sought where possible to develop beneficial relationships with those who should have implemented laws against them. Fox, on a number of occasions, wrote of his relationship with the justice of the peace and courtier Richard Marche, who was “very serviceable to friends . . . for he stopped several friends and others from being praemunired in those parts where he was a justice” and who “set at liberty” many friends and imprisoned others “for an hour or two at night.”25 The modes of action honed by the Quakers in the context of the first crisis—­print and personal interaction—­would be redeployed throughout the rest of the period. This first crisis reached its height between 1672 and 1673. In March 1672, Charles issued a Declaration of Indulgence, using the royal prerogative to suspend the penal laws against dissent. It made provision for dissenting meetings to be licensed.26 The Quakers refused to countenance licensing, seeing in it an acceptance of the principle that the state could circumscribe freedom of religious assembly, but they did gain from the indulgence both in terms of the latitude it allowed their mission and in securing the release of Quaker prisoners.27 When Parliament met in February 1673, it wasted little time in reminding Charles that he did not in fact have the suspending power in ecclesiastical affairs that he claimed, and it insisted on the revocation of the declaration. This Parliament did start to plan for legislation that would ease Protestant dissent, but by the time it was adjourned in March, the major legislation that had been passed was a Test Act. This required officeholders to be communicating members of the Church of England. Under its terms, James, Duke of York, the king’s brother, resigned the office of lord high admiral. He had announced publicly his conversion to Catholicism 23. Fox, 414. 24. “The Testimony of Margaret Fox,” in George Fox, A Journal (London: Thomas Northcott, 1694), viii; Bonnelyn Young Kunze, “Fell, Margaret (1614–­1702),” http://​www​ .oxforddnb​.com​/​view​/​article​/​9260 (accessed November 2, 2015). 25. Fox, Journal (ed. Smith), 392. Other interactions between Fox and Marche may be found on 289–­90, 295–­96, 361, 388–­92, and 425. 26. Andrew Browning, ed., English Historical Documents Volume VIII: 1660–­1714 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1953), 387–­88. 27. Frank Bate, The Declaration of Indulgence 1672: A Study in the Rise of Organised Dissent (London: for the University Press of Liverpool by Archibald Constable and Co., 1908), 99–­100.

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the day after the parliamentary session ended by not taking communion on Easter Sunday.28 It was to be around fears concerning James’s religious identity that the forces driving the next crisis would coalesce.

176 Quakers, the Popish Plot, and the Exclusion Crisis In 1678, Titus Oates, a nefarious liar who had joined the Catholic Church in March 1677, revealed the details of the Popish Plot that ultimately aimed at the life of the king. His fantasies were given credence in part because they fed into a long-­standing tradition of English antipopery and in part because the magistrate in front of whom he had sworn his depositions, Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey, was found dead—­murdered—­in mysterious circumstances in October 1678. It was widely assumed that radical Catholics had been responsible. In Parliament, concerns that Charles II ruled in an arbitrary “popish” way combined with fears about the next king (Charles’s lack of legitimate heirs meant that the Catholic James would take the throne). Throughout the 1670s, Charles had pursued closer relations with Louis XIV of France—­a king whom he greatly admired. In December 1678, some of the depth of Charles’s dealings with this widely feared Catholic power was made clear when Ralph Montagu, former ambassador to France, gave the House of Commons details of the maneuvers that had produced French subsidies for the English Crown and the role played by the Earl of Danby, Charles’s chief minister, in securing them. By 1679, the political situation was such that Charles was convinced that his old Parliament would have to be dissolved and a new one called. One duly assembled in March. Over the next two years, three Parliaments would meet. The multiple concerns of contemporaries were focused by attempts to exclude James from the succession. However, while “exclusion” could be seen to provide a single remedy to a number of problems, it was insufficient to quell all fears. In particular, the European dimensions of the crisis meant that the period saw increased calls for Protestant unity in the face of a Catholic threat. The position of the dissenters was thus reconsidered, and bills for comprehension (of those who wished to be part of the national church) and toleration (for those outside of it) were introduced. In these Parliaments, it

28. John Spurr, England in the 1670s: “This Masquerading Age” (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), 36–­43.

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is possible to discern nascent political parties: those who sought to exclude James (the Whigs) and those who defended hereditary right (the Tories).29 The Exclusion Parliaments therefore opened up a number of possibilities that the Quakers sought to realize. If the Quakers were to benefit from moves in Parliament, it was necessary to seek to affect the composition of the House of Commons. In fact, already under the Cavalier Parliament, Quakers had sought to influence by-­elections. As early as 1675, the Morning Meeting suggested that the Quakers in the counties should “be Unanimous about giveing their voice in Election of Parliament Men to appeare or not appeare therein, as in the wisdome of God they see convenient & safe.”30 The more frequent elections of 1679–­81 encouraged more extensive electioneering. William Penn, in his England’s Great Interest, provided the rationale: “This is our Inheritance; all depends upon it: Men don’t use to lend their Wives, or give their Children to satisfie Personal Kindnesses; nor must we make a Swop of our Birth-­right (and that of our Posterities too) for a Mess of Pottage, a Feast or a Drinking-­bout; there can be no Proportion here: and therefore none must take it Ill, that we use our Freedom about that, which in its Constitution is the Great Bulwark of all our Ancient English Liberties.”31 He advised his readers to “Review the Members of the last Parliaments, and their Inclinations and Votes”; to consider the “Conversation of the Gentle­ men of your own Country, that were not Members”; and to “take your measures of both, by that which is your True and Just Interest at this Critical time of the day.”32 He added that they should keep their “Eye upon Men of Industry and Improvement. For those that are Ingenuous and Laborious to propagate the Growth of the Country, will be very tender of weakening or impoverishing it.”33 As in 1670, Penn was keen to stress the ways in which the economic roles played by the Quakers functioned within the political realm. Toleration of Quakerism was presented as something that those concerned with England’s economic interest would recognize as logical.

29. For this paragraph, see Southcombe and Tapsell, Restoration Politics, Religion and Culture, ch. 3; Alan Marshall, “Oates, Titus (1649–­1705),” http://​www​.oxforddnb​.com ​/​view​/​article​/​20437 (accessed November 2, 2015); H. Horwitz, “Protestant Reconciliation in the Exclusion Crisis,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 15, no. 2 (1964): 201–­17. 30. Greaves, “Shattered Expectations,” 245. 31. William Penn, England’s Great Interest in the Choice of This New Parliament  .  .  . (London: s.n., 1679), 1–­2. 32. Penn, England’s Great Interest, 3. 33. Penn, 4.

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Penn’s own electoral efforts had been placed behind the redoubtable radical republican politician Algernon Sidney. In elections for the first Exclusion Parliament of 1679, Sidney stood for Guildford, and Penn’s support for him provides the specific context for England’s Great Interest. Sidney’s candidature was disallowed on technical grounds, but Penn encouraged him to dispute the result: “Thou (as thy Friends) had a conscientious Regard to England; and to be putt aside, by such base Ways, is really a Suffering for Righteousness.” Sidney did petition Parliament about the election but was not answered before Parliament was prorogued in May.34 The dissolution of Parliament in July led to new elections, and this time Sidney stood for two seats, Bramber and Amersham. Penn had personal connections with the significant local families, the Peningtons and Childs in Amersham, and was active in Bramber (which was near his house at Warminghurst). On one reading of the result, Sidney was returned in Amersham, but this was disputed by another candidate. Again Sidney would have to wait for Parliament to determine an outcome, and he would have to wait a long time. The second Exclusion Parliament did not finally meet until October 1680, and by the time of its dissolution in January 1681, Sidney’s position was still unresolved.35 Penn may ultimately not have been successful in securing Sidney’s election, but his work on Sidney’s behalf remains telling. Not least, it reveals the radical political viewpoint he was prepared to buttress if it meant fulfilling Quaker aims. It was also the Exclusion Crisis that provided the essential context for the grant of the Pennsylvania charter. As Mary K. Geiter has demonstrated, analyses that place emphasis on Penn’s desire to provide a safe haven for his co-­religionists underplay the political motivations of the Crown in making the grant. Penn’s backing of Sidney was undoubtedly an annoyance, and it does seem that his explicit support for Sidney was not forthcoming after it had become clear that a grant would be made. However, the Crown’s strategy was much wider than an attempt to silence a radical opponent. There was a strong mercantile interest concerned about the dangers a Catholic, arbitrary monarch posed to trade. This interest was aligned with the Whigs, although it did not necessarily support them in all matters. In granting a proprietorship to Penn, it was possible to develop new trading

34. Jonathan Scott, Algernon Sidney and the Restoration Crisis, 1677–­1683 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 135–­38 (quotation at 138). 35. Scott, 155–­62, 175–­78.

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opportunities and quell some merchants’ fears.36 The founding of Pennsylvania was thus born in the machinations of and tactical decisions made by those seeking to stabilize Charles’s rule and ensure his brother’s succession. Sidney lamented in 1681 that “the fruits expected from the last parliament [have] been lost by little under-­hand bargains.”37 What Penn did with his proprietorship is, of course, another story.38 The Exclusion Crisis was therefore a pivotal moment in both English and American Quaker history. In terms of English politics, it saw the Quakers refine their electoral tactics. The continued use of these tactics following the crisis was obviously dependent on frequent Parliaments, and for the time being, these were not a feature of the English political scene.

The Tory Reaction Charles’s dissolution of the Parliament held in Oxford in March 1681 marked an end of the parliamentary proceedings of the Exclusion Crisis. His financial solvency—­aided by the way in which Crown finances benefited from the expansion in trade that occurred after the Peace of Nijmegen (1678)—­meant that he had some room for political maneuvering.39 He did not call another Parliament during his reign, breaking, with insouciant ease, the Triennial Parliaments Act of 1664. The continuation of government at other levels became increasingly dependent on the king’s Tory supporters. These Tories who espoused an expressly antipopulist ideology nonetheless sought to appeal at a popular level. Fears that the Whigs and their dissenting allies threatened to return England to civil war were encouraged by Tory propagandists, and much Tory populism was expressed through the increased persecution of dissent. The period 1681–­85 undoubtedly saw an increase in the sufferings of the dissenters. The discovery in 1683 of the Rye House Plot (in fact differing conspiracies, one of which intended the assassination of the king and his brother) hardened some in their intolerant attitudes and alienated others who had before looked more kindly upon dissent. The seriousness 36. Mary K. Geiter, “The Restoration Crisis and the Launching of Pennsylvania, 1679–­81,” English Historical Review 112, no. 446 (1997): 300–­318. 37. Quoted in Geiter, “The Restoration Crisis,” 306. 38. See Frost in chapter 9. 39. Southcombe and Tapsell, Restoration Politics, Religion and Culture, 58.

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of persecution in this period should not therefore be underplayed, but the intensity of it depended on local circumstances.40 Seeking to create environments in which persecution would be lessened, the Quakers, as before, adopted a dual strategy for survival based on printed interventions and personal relationships. The ways in which the Quakers sought to engage with those at the apex of the political system either directly or through intermediaries have thus far been stressed, but it is important to understand that the government of England did not function according to a top-­down model. Government and the coercive powers of the state were dependent on an “unacknowledged republic” of unpaid officeholders.41 Despite the presence of informers happy to profit from the suffering of others, the enforcement of the law still largely rested on the willingness of officials to fulfill their duties. On the streets of London, where a notorious group of informers—­the Hilton gang—­roamed from 1682 to 1686, the Quakers sought to drive a wedge between informers and the officers of the law.42 For Thomas Ellwood, informers were the “shame of Christianity, and Pest of Mankind,” and he wrote to advise constables and other “inferiour Officers” who were “willing to act warily with respect to themselves, and yet favourably with respect to their peaceable Neighbours.” These officials, he claimed, were not required to “run like a Lacquey after” informers.43 Personal contact in local contexts, too, may have been essential in softening attitudes toward the Quakers. Traditions of good neighbor­liness, drawing on and running alongside the Christian injunction to charitableness, might help explain why it was that by the 1680s, some unlikely figures were prepared to offer limited support to those Quakers in difficulty. In 1682, as the Tory reaction gathered speed and persecution intensified, 40. The responses to the Rye House Plot and geographical variations in the intensity of persecution have been expertly examined in Grant Tapsell, The Personal Rule of Charles II (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2007), ch. 4. 41. Mark Goldie, “The Unacknowledged Republic: Officeholding in Early Modern England,” in The Politics of the Excluded, c. 1500–­1850, ed. Tim Harris (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), 153–­94. 42. On the Hilton gang, see Mark Goldie, “The Hilton Gang and the Purge of London in the 1680s,” in Politics and Political Imagination in Later Stuart Britain: Essays Presented to Lois Green Schwoerer, ed. Howard Nenner (Rochester, N.Y.: University of Rochester Press, 1997), 43–­73. 43. Thomas Ellwood, A Caution to Constables . . . (London: William Skeate, 1683), 1. See further the discussion of this text in Tim Harris, “Was the Tory Reaction Popular? Attitudes of Londoners towards the Persecution of Dissent, 1681–­6,” London Journal 13, no. 2 (1987–­88), 106–­20 (111).

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John Whitehead, for example, was able to call on local support. During imprisonment under suspicion of being a Jesuit, he produced a certificate from Swine in Yorkshire attesting to his good character, signed by, among others, churchwardens and the vicar.44 In Norfolk, even some Tory justices produced certificates for the Quakers that asserted the lack of danger they posed to the state. A bishop, Thomas Lamplugh of Exeter, was also willing to help.45 In a letter from Lamplugh, recorded in the life of Gilbert Latey, he gave a clear sense of trying to oversee legal proceedings in his diocese in case of action taken against the Quakers and wrote, “Sure I am, that such as live quiet and peaceable in the Land, by any Order from me, are no way disturbed; and I believe the Justices are gentle enough to such as do not affront them. I never was, nor will be for Persecution, but shall endeavour that by any amicable way, such as have erred may be brought into the Way of Truth.”46

The Reign of James II and the Revolution of 1688/89 Charles II died on February 6, 1685. Even following the period of renewed persecution at the end of his reign, the accession of a Catholic king backed by Tory-­Anglican support was a disturbing prospect for many. For some, the only answer lay in armed insurrection, and Charles’s illegitimate (though rumors persisted that he was legitimate) son, James Scott, Duke of Monmouth, led a rebellion in England. He landed in Lyme Regis on June 11, 1685, and moved through the west country recruiting. His forces were decisively beaten on July 6 in the Battle of Sedgemoor, and Monmouth was executed on July 15. Many of the rebels were executed or transported as a result of the infamous “bloody assizes” later in the year.47 Quaker sympathy for the cause cannot be 44. John Whitehead, The Written Gospel-­Labours . . . (London: T. Sowle, 1704), 249–­50. 45. John Miller, “‘A Suffering People’: English Quakers and Their Neighbours c.1650– ­c.1700,” Past and Present 188, no. 1 (2005): 90–­91. 46. Richard Hawkins, A Brief Narrative of the Life and Death of . . . Gilbert Latey . . . (London: J. Sowle, 1707), 109–­10. Lamplugh’s relationship with dissent was complex. In his visitation of 1679, he had been stringent in ensuring that laws against nonconformists were implemented. His will of 1691, however, struck a different note. He desired a healing of splits within the church, “that they may no longer rend and tear out the bowels of their tender indulgent but now sadly afflicted mother.” See Stuart Handley, “Lamplugh, Thomas (bap. 1615, d. 1691),” http://​www​.oxforddnb​.com​/​view​ /​article​/​15956 (accessed November 4, 2015). 47. Tim Harris, “Scott [formerly Crofts], James (1649–1685),” http://​www​.oxforddnb​.com​ /​view​/​article​/​24879 (accessed January 6, 2016).

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gauged through their involvement. The peace principle probably precluded many from acting. In Taunton, a Quaker addressed Monmouth “to desire him not to take it amiss if her Husband went Home, for it was contrary to our Perswasion to appear in Arms, because we could not Fight.” Monmouth “seem’d to take it well enough” and said that “he did not desire that any should appear with him against their Consciences.”48 What is perhaps remarkable, and maybe points to the depth of feeling within the movement, is that some Quakers did participate.49 Participation was not limited to personal involvement. In late June, Thomas Plaice, a Somerset Quaker, played a key role in organizing around 160 recruits to Monmouth’s ranks in the final stages of the revolt.50 The Quakers in Somerset did seek to distance themselves from such actions. The Somersetshire Quarterly Meeting testified that those who “have taken up Armes, or assisted with horse, Money or Ammunition in the late Warre” had “turned from the said way, & principle, & are disowned by us.” Plaice was “greatly revolted, & backslidden from, & turned out of the way which the . . . [Quakers] still owne, & walke in.”51 These protestations, however, while they record the concerns of many Quakers, ironically corroborate other reports of Quaker involvement in Monmouth’s actions. James’s reign may have begun with rebellion, but it ended in revolution. The reasons for this, though, are complex, and the position of the Quakers in relation to events is not what might be predicted. Some Quakers had supported Monmouth, but as James’s reign progressed, a number, for a variety of reasons and with a range of depth of commitment, became his vociferous supporters. James initially relied on the Tory-­Anglican support that had secured him the throne. However, at the heart of Toryism lay the defense of the church as by law established. James, who believed himself to be (mistakenly, as it turned out) a man who may not have long to live, quickly sought to secure freedoms for his co-­religionists, and this was something that could not be countenanced by those on whom he had 48. John Whiting, Persecution Expos’d, in Some Memoirs Relating to the Sufferings of John Whiting . . . (London: J. Sowle, 1715), 141–­42. This episode is referenced in Robin Clifton, The Last Popular Rebellion: The Western Rising of 1685 (London: Maurice Temple Smith, 1984), 167–­68. 49. Peter Jackson, “‘The Last Godly Army in English History?’ The Monmouth Rebellion and Nonconformity,” Southern History 25 (2003): 39–­61 (53). 50. Clifton, Last Popular Rebellion, 178–­79. 51. Stephen C. Morland, ed., The Somersetshire Quarterly Meeting of the Society of Friends, 1668–­1699 (Yeovil: Somerset Record Society, 1978), 171. Also see the comments relating to Plaice and others involved in the rebellion in a letter responding to London Friends, 62–­63.

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sought to base his regime. James saw toleration as a step on the way to re-­Catholicization—­as he thought that once the truth of the Catholic Church could be proclaimed clearly, there would be mass conversions—­but it would of necessity encompass Protestant dissenters. The cause of liberty of conscience meant that James would seek to strike hands with dissenters.52 James’s Declaration of Indulgence of April 1687 is often seen as the key turning point in his reign, and indeed it is difficult to overstate its importance. It is nonetheless possible to trace shifts in his position and the opening up of fruitful dialogues with dissenters before his reign.53 The Hilton gang were early, deserving victims of Quaker activism. George Whitehead was the chief mover in petitioning the king to act against the informers. Evidence of the informers’ illegitimate actions was presented in front of the Treasury solicitors, Richard Graham and Philip Burton, in June 1686, and informers were called to appear.54 A later Quaker account that these events were “a fatal stroke to those mercenary Men” glosses over the fact that it took a further intervention by Whitehead to achieve a result, but in the remainder of 1686, a number of informers, including John Hilton, faced criminal charges and were found guilty.55 The tides were shifting. One index of the alteration in political culture is the position enjoyed by William Penn, who was to play a prominent role in the politics of James’s reign. Penn’s social position and court links had given him access to the center of power. His friendship with Robert Spencer, Earl of Sunderland and secretary of state, was clearly essential to the position at which he arrived, and in 1686 Penn undertook a foreign mission to the Hague to discover the attitude of William of Orange and his wife, Mary ( James’s daughter and at that point heir presumptive), to toleration. His importance to the king was cemented and indeed heightened when James sought to break down the barriers of Tory-­Anglican attitudes, and arguably the English constitution, with one swift blow.56 On April 4, 1687, James issued his Declaration of Indulgence in England. It echoed arguments made by Penn (the constraining of conscience “has ever 52. My account of the events of James’s reign and his motivations draws on Southcombe and Tapsell, Restoration Politics, Religion and Culture, ch. 5, unless otherwise stated. 53. See Bell in chapter 12 for additional details. 54. Goldie, “The Hilton Gang,” 63–­64. 55. Hawkins, A Brief Narrative, 120; Goldie, “The Hilton Gang,” 64–­65. 56. An avowedly political analysis of Penn’s career under James, on which I have drawn here, is Mary K. Geiter, William Penn (Harlow: Pearson Education, 2000), ch. 4.

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been directly contrary to our inclination, as we think it is to the interest of government, which it destroys by spoiling trade, depopulating countries and discouraging strangers”), and he may have played a role in its composition.57 It suspended the penal laws against Roman Catholics and Protestant dissenters. Penn’s voice as an ideologue of toleration was now amplified in the service of a courtly cause. He wrote in coolly comic mode about those who questioned the motivations behind toleration: “Wherefore Liberty of Conscience is so far from being the Snake in the Grass, that there is in it neither Snake, Teeth, Sting, or Grass to hide them. On the contrary, it spies out the Snake, cuts the Grass, ketches it, and pulls out the Sting, that it may do no more mischief.”58 But Penn’s purposes went beyond defending the declaration. James’s granting of indulgence using the prerogative unsettled many who might otherwise have been protolerationist. The king’s right to exercise a suspending power in ecclesiastical affairs had already been denied by Parliament on two occasions under Charles II, and for many, the declaration was a symptom of James’s arbitrary tendencies. James himself had reason to move beyond what he could achieve through the prerogative. If toleration were to stand following his death, it would be necessary to have it enshrined through statute. Penn was therefore quick to present the establishing of toleration through legislation as a safeguard of the English constitution: Let us then bend our thoughts towards such an expedient as may secure Property to all, the first reason of civil Government, and that which every Party for its own Interest must close with. Three things strictly speaking make an English man Ownership, Consent in Parliament, and Right of Juries. We all know what Laws have been made, and by whom to destroy these several Capacities, that frame an English man; amongst which, pray let not that against Conventicles go for the least! Let us see then what it is that divests us of these Native Priviledges, and like true English men, & Christians, let us remove it, that in the Raign, of a King so ready to disappoint the Enemies of his Glory, by repairing the Breaches of his People, and of the old true civil Government of his Kingdom, we may not be wanting to our selves and our Posterity, in another Great Charter, to bury all 57. Browning, English Historical Documents, 395–­97 (quotation at 396); Geiter, William Penn, 55. 58. William Penn, A Second Letter from a Gentleman in the Country (London: printed for J. H. and T. S., 1687), 4.

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our Prejudices, and Establish a lasting Civil union among the Inhabitants of this Ancient and Famous Kingdom.59

In appropriating a constitutionalist language for the tolerationist cause, Penn provided the king with an important polemical weapon. Penn, like James, had his own motives for seeking liberty of conscience, and their alliance was to a greater or lesser degree tactical. Penn’s commitment to the repeal of the Test for Catholics was perhaps questionable. In an unpublished work that has been dated to 1687, Penn wrote that he would “rather let the penal laws stand as they are than do anything that may tend towards repeal of the test.”60 Nevertheless, as Scott Sowerby has shown, Penn took the leading role in a larger movement that sought the parliamentary repeal of the penal laws.61 He did much to shape the terms of the public debate on this issue, and it was in response to Penn’s works that many of the most important interventions were published. Penn’s actions were not confined to the realm of print. He took an address of thanks for the declaration, said to be subscribed by around eight hundred Quakers, to the king at the end of April. This spoke of the intimate understanding between James and the Quakers (surely a reflection of Penn’s position): “[The Declaration] doth the less surprize us, since ’tis what some of us have known to have been the declared Principle of the King as well long before, as since He came to the Throne of His Ancestors.” The king for his part received the thanks “gratiously,” saying that “he accounted them his friends, and had a peculiar respect for them.”62 Penn’s own stature grew, and he was used by James in 1687 to try to suppress the furor that had resulted from the king’s attempts to impose a Catholic president on Magdalen College, Oxford. Penn’s negotiations with the fellows were a distinct failure, but his involvement in this case demonstrates the depth of his complicity with James’s regime and thus of his hopes of what it could provide the Quakers.63 59. Penn, Second Letter, 18. 60. Douglas R. Lacey, Dissent and Parliamentary Politics in England, 1661–­1689: A Study in the Perpetuation and Tempering of Parliamentarianism (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1969), 191–­92 (quotation at 192). 61. Scott Sowerby, Making Toleration: The Repealers and the Glorious Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2013). 62. London Gazette, no. 2238 (April 28–­­May 2, 1687); Mark Goldie, gen. ed., The Entring Book of Roger Morrice, 1677–­1691, 7 vols. (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2007–­9), 4:42. 63. Geiter, William Penn, 59–­60.

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Other Quakers maintained relations with James. As shown, George Whitehead sought to cultivate the king, as did Gilbert Latey. But Penn’s position was singular, and it is worth noting that his actions did not meet with universal approval from other Quakers. In June 1688, for example, he clashed with Fox over whether the yearly meeting should take a particular stance on the political involvement of the Quakers in elections and as justices of the peace (with Fox arguing that it was “not safe to conclude such things in a Yearly Meeting”).64 He had supported and sought to further the policies of a Catholic king; he had provided a coherent, and eloquent, intellectual basis for the parliamentary repeal of the penal laws; and when it became apparent that Parliament would be unlikely to repeal these laws of its own volition, he had taken part in James’s plans to pack it.65 These moves, although some of them at least might have pricked his conscience, were understandable within the context of a reign in which lasting religious freedom seemed a real possibility. But James’s reign did not have long left, and the Quakers would soon have new questions to answer about where their allegiances lay. The political temperature rose considerably in June 1688. James’s wife, Mary of Modena, gave birth to a son on June 10. Hitherto the assumption had been that James, upon his death (which many of his subjects hoped would come quickly), would be succeeded by his Protestant daughter Mary. Suddenly it seemed that a Catholic dynasty would be established. In addition, James’s conflict with the Church of England had reached a crisis point. In May 1688, James had reissued his Declaration of Indulgence. It was to be read from pulpits across the land. In response to this demand, six bishops and the archbishop of Canterbury, William Sancroft, petitioned the king to be exempted from carrying it out. When the petition was printed, James had them prosecuted for seditious libel, and the trial of the seven bishops became a cause célèbre uniting Anglican and much dissenting opposition against the king. On the day of their acquittal, June 30, 1688, seven significant politicians—­including Tories and Whigs and one bishop—­issued an invitation to William of Orange to engage directly in English affairs to secure the English Protestant state in the face of arbitrary and popish rule. William, who, within the context of his struggle with Louis XIV, had 64. Steve Pincus, 1688: The First Modern Revolution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 204; Lacey, Dissent and Parliamentary Politics, 203; Geiter, William Penn, 57; Braithwaite, SPQ, 144–­45 (quotation at 145). 65. Lacey, Dissent and Parliamentary Politics, 203; Geiter, William Penn, 58.

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his own strategic reasons for intervention, had required such an invitation before moving, and—­in propitious international circumstances—­a Dutch invasionary force was prepared. In the autumn, James, in the face of impending catastrophe, sought to reverse his policies and turned once again to the Church of England. This was too little too late to save him. In November, William landed with a huge force in Torbay, Devon. By February 1689, William and Mary had been declared monarchs.66 It is not easy to gauge the Quakers’ reactions to these events. Penn, in the face of James’s reversal, returned to traducing Catholics in print (as he had before James’s reign), but his complicity with James’s regime clearly marked him.67 More generally, the Presbyterian Roger Morrice wrote late in December 1688 that “great imputations are laid upon the Dissenters in that they did not more openly and publicly rise for, and serve the Prince of Orange in his great attempt for the redeeming of this Kingdom.” The Quaker and Baptist response was particularly muted.68 The coming of the new regime provided a new opportunity to consider the religious situation. Bills for both toleration and comprehension were debated. Plans for comprehension (a state church acceptable to certain moderate dissenters but that, of course, would never have included the Quakers) failed, but a Toleration Act was passed in 1689. This was distinctly limited in its provisions—­dissenting worship was allowed to take place in registered meeting places, but the Test and Corporation Acts remained in place and precluded nonconformists from holding civil office—­but it did ultimately recognize the fact of religious plurality, and it was largely welcomed by the Quakers. In fact, the Quakers might be considered lucky to have been encompassed within the act at all. The failure of comprehension revealed the ingrained attitudes of many among the Anglican clergy toward dissenting religion.69 Quakerism was still viewed with particular skepticism, and not just by clergymen, on the grounds of both its theology and its position under James. That the Quakers were not excluded from the Toleration Act was in large part the product of it being based on a failed bill of 66. Southcombe and Tapsell, Restoration Politics, Religion and Culture, 91–­99; Mark Goldie, “The Political Thought of the Anglican Revolution,” in The Revolutions of 1688, ed. Robert Beddard (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 102–­36. 67. Geiter, William Penn, 61. 68. Lacey, Dissent and Parliamentary Politics, 222. 69. John Spurr, “The Church of England, Comprehension and the Toleration Act of 1689,” English Historical Review 104, no. 413 (1989): 927–­46.

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1680. The Meeting for Sufferings had played a part, in its role as a political lobby, in having the Quakers included within that attempted legislation, but in 1689 it concerned itself most with broader questions about oaths and tithes rather than the specifics of toleration, and the effect of its engagement with Parliament at this stage seems to have been limited. The Quakers were thus, for all the political activism traced in this chapter, the beneficiaries of, rather than the force behind, a decision made about legislation and the desire of many members of Parliament to provide some amelioration of the religious conflict that had defined the late seventeenth century.70 That the Quakers were only granted toleration in this context helps explain why tensions between the Friends and other groups, tensions that sometimes erupted into violence, continued in the aftermath of the act.71 As for James, some Quakers did remain loyal, and most controversially it has been argued that William Penn was linked to a Jacobite conspiracy.72 But for many Quakers, there must have been a period in which their memories of the old king were reconfigured in the light of the new reign. This is neatly illustrated by an anecdote reported concerning Latey. James, in Ireland following the revolution, was said to have recalled a speech of Latey’s: “The Mercy, Favour, and Kindness which the King hath extended to us, as a People, in the Time of our Exercise and sore Distress, we humbly acknowledge; and I truly desire that God may shew the King Mercy and Favour in the Time of his Trouble and sore Distress.” The king asked to be remembered to him and said, “The words he spake to me, I shall never forget; adding, that one part of them were come, and that he pray’d to God the other might also come to pass.” Latey asked in response for it to be conveyed to James “that he would let him know that the second part of what he had said, in relation to the King, was also in great measure come to pass, and that the Lord had given him his Life.”73 James had his life but not his throne. For Latey, in the context of the 1690s, that was enough.

70. This paragraph follows the argument of David L. Wykes, “Friends, Parliament and the Toleration Act,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 45, no. 1 (1994): 42–­63. 71. Frost in chapter 9 and Bell in chapter 12 include a wider consideration of the impact of the Toleration Act. Also see Richard C. Allen, “Quakers,” in Oxford History of Protestant Dissenting Traditions Vol. II: 1689 to the Repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, ed. Andrew C. Thompson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). 72. Mary K. Geiter, “William Penn and Jacobitism: A Smoking Gun?,” Historical Research 73, no. 181 (2000): 213–­18; Geiter, William Penn, ch. 5; Pincus, 1688, 289. 73. Hawkins, A Brief Narrative, 122–­23.

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The Quakers profoundly shaped the political culture of the Restoration. Their presence in print, and particularly the elegant and forceful contributions they made to the debates over toleration, meant that their influence far exceeded their numerical strength. As Tim Harris has argued, the different positions taken on the issue of Church and dissent were central to the process of party formation, and in that sense, the Quakers played an important role in creating the Whigs and Tories.74 This role was not simply positive. The visibility and power of the Quaker attacks on a persecuting society meant that they were defined as a potent “other” by those who wanted to defend the narrow church settlement: a key constituent of the negative pole against which Tory-­Anglicanism could be defined.75 The practical expedients in which the Quakers engaged in order to challenge persecution and limit its effects also had long-­term consequences. The conduct of the Quakers in their local communities and their building of interpersonal relationships undoubtedly helped them secure a standing that would allow the next phase of Quaker engagement in society and business to occur. Quaker electioneering would also take on a new importance, as Parliament sat in every year from the 1690s, and the Triennial Act of 1694 made frequent elections a necessity. The Friends in Lancashire were advised to vote for “such as are prudent and for Liberty of Concience towards God” and to vet candidates beforehand to see if they would redress the Quaker grievances when they sat: “Now is the time to engage them In our Interest when wee are most Capable of advancing theirs.”76 Accounts that stress the growth of the Quaker interiority in this period risk underplaying the significance of their political actions. The Quaker engagement with the world was necessary in a context of persecution. Attempting to lessen the effects of persecution, or to end it entirely, could mean negotiating with political actors who seemed far removed from Quaker ideals. James II’s reign saw the Quakers, and in particular William Penn, involved in a regime that was increasingly perceived across the political spectrum as the epitome of popery and arbitrary government. It 74. Tim Harris, Politics under the Later Stuarts: Party Conflict in a Divided Society 1660–­1715 (London: Longman, 1993), ch. 3. 75. See, for example, the depiction of both an unnamed Quaker and James Nayler in the masterpiece of Tory graphic satire The Committee; or Popery in Masquerade (London: Mary Clark for Henry Brome, 1680). Image reproduced in Southcombe and Tapsell, Restoration Politics, Religion and Culture, 30. 76. LA, FRL 1/1/22/3, “Letter from B[enjamin] B[ealing] (current Recording Clerk, that is, the Quaker chief executive) London, October 19, 1695?.”

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was, however, the Quaker engagement with the world that also gave the movement its broader significance in English history. The story of the Quakers and politics is a story not simply of how political context shaped Quaker action but of how Quaker action shaped the political context.

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C ha p t e r 9

Adjusting to New Conditions in Britain and America, 1690–­1700 J. William Frost

The Friends in the 1690s sought to expand their religious liberty by seeking relief from oaths and tithes in spite of popular distrust by Tories and Anglicans. In Pennsylvania, the Quakers faced a major theological challenge from George Keith that threatened their political power in the colony as well as the unity of the Friends in England. By stressing their commitments to historical Christian beliefs and loyalty to the Crown, the Quakers defeated the attacks by Keith and others and learned to accept their status as a tolerated denomination.

Toleration Is Not Religious Liberty Following the passage of the Act of Toleration, the Friends continued to worship openly as they did during King James’s reign, only now with the imprimatur of Parliament. They also complied with the law requiring the registration of meeting houses, with the London Yearly Meeting with the London Yearly Meeting recording 151 monthly meetings and an estimated 600 local meetings for worship. In 1672, the Friends had refused to list their meeting houses, arguing that there should be no external authority over religion. Now with

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little debate, the Friends hastened to register their places of worship, and many ministers officially declared their belief in the Trinity and the divine inspiration of the Bible. Even while maintaining their testimonies on oaths and tithes, the Quakers sought to accommodate and prove their loyalty to the government.1 Scholars suggest that there may have been forty thousand Friends, but opponents believed that there were one hundred thousand.2 Legal legitimacy did not lessen the popular distrust of the Friends. Many Anglicans and Tories did not consider that the Friends met the definition of orthodox Protestants as required by the law and, while accepting toleration as a practical necessity when fighting France and Catholicism, continued to believe that the Bible mandated a religiously unified realm. So they supported legislation that would strengthen the Church of England while weakening all dissenters, particularly the Friends.3 Popular suspicion of the Friends because of their earlier support of King James and alleged sympathy for Roman Catholicism resulted in periodic acts of vandalism against meeting houses and the Friends’ dwellings, particularly when the Quakers refused to light candles in windows to celebrate a military victory.4 In 1695, the priests of Glasgow termed the Friends “Hereticks, Blasphemers, deluders, Possessed with the Devil” and as “dangerous to Converse with as those that have the Plague.” A few people responded by throwing stones at the Friends, pushing women down stairs, and breaking windows. The Meeting for Sufferings appealed first to the chief secretary and chancellor of Scotland; when that brought no improvement, they persuaded the king’s secretary handling Scotland to disallow any acts of the Presbyterian National Assembly that would impact the Friends negatively. Isolated violence should be balanced by accounts in many communities of a dislike of persecution and of good relations among the Friends and their neighbors.5 1. David Wykes, “Friends, Parliament and the Toleration Act,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 45, no. 1 (1994): 51–­56. 2. LSF, LYM, I, 268 ( June 1, 1694), and Epistle; Charles Leslie, The Snake in the Grass . . . (London: Charles Brome, 1696; 2nd ed. with additions, London: Charles Brome, 1697), 245. 3. Alexandra Walsham, Charitable Hatred: Tolerance and Intolerance in England, 1500–­1700 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), 237, 268. 4. LSF, MS, VII, 50 (March 4, 1691), 260 ( July 17, 1691), 1 (November 16, 1691). 5. LSF, MS, VIII, 90, 92 (September 27, 1695); X, 239 ( June 3, 1696); Adrian Davies, The Quakers in English Society, 1655–­1725 (Oxford: Clarendon, 2000), 192, 198.

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War with France brought new challenges. The Irish Friends suffered depredations from the armies of both sides, and the Meeting for Sufferings sought to provide relief—­at first just £200 and eventually several thousand pounds. It was an impressive amount until compared with the Irish computation of their sufferings at £50,200.6 When Elizabeth Redford issued a declaration that no taxes designed to further a war should be paid, the Meeting for Sufferings silenced her and issued a declaration that the Friends had always believed in “giving to Caesar what belonged to Caesar.” They sought the help of the Earl of Rochester and later intervened with the Board of Trade to stop the authorities in Barbados from fining or imprisoning the Quakers for refusing militia service. Ship owners received a warning that no guns should be carried on the Quaker-­owned vessels, but the antiwar testimony did not forbid selling supplies to armies.7 The minutes of the Meeting for Sufferings show no basic change in its tasks before or after 1688. In 1690, there were 41 prisoners, while in 1692 there were 111 Friends in jail, with 9 deceased. The Meeting for Sufferings provided legal counsel, interceded with the authorities, publicized sufferings, and sought the influence of aristocrats or the king.8 On several occasions, delegations gained the support of William III or Queen Mary for pardons in order to release the Friends from captivity. In cooperation with the Second Day’s Morning Meeting of Ministers that read all manuscripts, the Meeting for Sufferings corrected some writings, stopped others from being published, made sure to answer all attacks on the Friends, and guaranteed the wide distribution of Quaker theological and devotional literature to meetings in the British Isles as well as to the colonies and to the small meetings on the continent. George Fox’s Journal was published in 1694 after careful editing by Thomas Ellwood, who, for the first sections, used histories dictated by Fox that covered the time up to 1676 and, for later parts, created a narrative with epistles and from other sources. Ellwood did omit or tone down some passages, but the resulting portrait was as Fox wanted it.9 Fox’s will provided for 6. LSF, MS, VIII (September 2, 1692); VII, 131 (April 18, 1690); and X, 50, 54, 56 (April 21, 1695); LSF, SDMM, II, 118 (March 23, 1695/6). 7. LSF, MS, VII, 150 (April 10, 1690), and IX, 63 (December 8, 1693), 76 (December 22, 1693). Also see Healey in chapter 13. 8. LSF, LYM, II, 97 (May 17, 1694); LSF, MS, VII, 160 ( June 9, 1690); VIII, 91–­92 ( June 10, 1692); and IX, 242 (April 9, 1694). Also see Bell in chapter 12. 9. H. Cadbury, ed., “The Editio Princeps of Fox’s Journal,” JFHS 53 (1974): 199, 208.

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a free copy to his wife, to every yearly and quarterly meeting, and to as many members as his “stock would allow.”10 The Meeting for Sufferings wanted to attach William Penn’s “Rise and Progress of the People Called Quakers” as a preface, but William Mead and Thomas Lower, sons-­in-­law of Fox, denied permission. However, the preface appeared in later editions. The Meeting for Sufferings began the laborious task of collecting and printing Fox’s epistles.11 The family of Robert Barclay was allowed to make copies of his miscellaneous writings, but they would not be published. However, the Apology, after being carefully read with any untoward statements omitted, was republished in 1697 with copies given to members of Parliament (MPs) and other influential people. The 6,606 subscriptions, with 100 to Pennsylvania, 100 to Maryland, and the rest to the British Friends, show that all monthly meetings and most members would own or have access to what was now becoming the definitive account of their beliefs. A comparison of the tracts and books issued by the Friends in the 1690s with earlier decades show that women had more difficulty in being published, there were fewer prophetic tracts, and the Meeting for Sufferings wanted the public and government to know that the Friends were safe, sound, and orthodox Christians.12 The Meeting for Sufferings continued to play a major role in monitoring Parliament to protect the Friends from new laws that might have a negative impact and old laws under which they had long suffered. It is difficult to determine whether the Friends’ lobbying brought results, as there were many influences on MPs, and the Friends’ successes in the 1690s came only after the king’s intervention. Still, they did make their wishes known with the result that the bill forbidding clandestine marriages did not affect them, Quaker ministers and meeting houses received exemption from special taxes, and bills against blasphemy and superstitious use of estates did not impact them.13 For many years the Friends had sought to replace the requirements for oaths with an affirmation. The Friends inherited their testimony against 10. LSF, LYM, II, 30–­31 (1694), 256 ( June 1, 1699). 11. LSF, MS, X, 114 (November 29, 1695). 12. LSF, LYM, II, 309 (May 24, 1700); Christine Trevett, “‘Not Fit to Be Printed’: The Welsh, the Women and the Second Day’s Morning Meeting,” JFHS 59, no. 2 (2001): 115–­44 (121–­24). 13. LSF, MS, VII, 50 ( June 13, 1689), 50 ( June 19, 1690); IX, 147 (March 31, 1694), 276 ( January 4, 1694); LSF, SDMM, II, 219 (March 22, 1697).

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oaths from the Anabaptists and other radical sects, who based their beliefs on Jesus’s command “Do not swear at all” (Matt. 5:34) and James’s “Let your yea be yea and your nay nay” ( James 5:12). Suffering imprisonment and even death for this testimony, particularly after the Restoration, made their anti-oath witness a badge of Quaker commitment. The Act of Toleration allowed the Friends to make a declaration rather than to swear oaths of allegiance and supremacy to the new regime but provided no relief elsewhere. Oath taking was an important feature of seventeenth-­century life required at customs, in common law and chancery and ecclesiastical courts, to vote, for probating wills or collecting debts, as a qualification to become a freeman of a town after an apprenticeship, and as a qualification for holding office. How onerous these disabilities were for the Friends is debatable. After all, the Friends prospered in business, passed on property to their children, and managed to trade. Nicholas Morgan found no listing of sufferings for refusal to take oaths at the customs in a forty-year period in Lancaster, although he could not determine whether officials ignored the law or took bribes or if the Friends had a surrogate take an oath for them.14 At the very least, requiring an oath made the Friends liable to major inconveniences, and the Meeting for Sufferings frequently encountered examples of people attempting to take advantage of the Friends’ unwillingness to swear. The Meeting for Sufferings, by lobbying and asking local Friends to write to their MPs, sought to persuade Parliament to grant relief. This task was complicated because neither the Bible nor English law had a clear definition of an oath. Did an oath require saying “I swear” or “so help me God” and invoking God’s activity in “the witness of what I say”? The oath of an English king was “I will”; the vows in the Anglican marriage ceremony were “I do” or “I will,” and Quaker marriages took place “in the presence of God.” In 1673, Penn, speaking for the Friends, offered to Parliament an affirmation that stated “in the presence of God.” After all, God was present everywhere and did witness what was said.15 The London Yearly Meeting concluded in 1692 that giving “Evidence In the Presence of God, or in the Sight of 14. Norman C. Hunt, Two Early Political Associations: The Quakers and the Dissenting Deputies in the Age of Sir Robert Walpole (Oxford: Clarendon, 1961), 32–­42; Nicholas Morgan, Lancashire Quakers and the Establishment, 1660–­1730 (Halifax: Ryburn, 1993), 122, 123, 127. 15. J. William Frost, “The Affirmation Controversy and Religious Liberty,” in The World of William Penn, ed. Richard S. Dunn and Mary M. Dunn (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986), 310–­11.

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God who is the searcher of Hearts,” or “to Solemnly declare before God” made no difference “in matter or Substance,” and quibbling over a few words was not productive.16 In 1692, when the Meeting for Sufferings began to campaign, it faced opposition from MPs, who insisted no affirmation was efficacious without naming God’s presence and witness, and also had to please those Friends who thought that mentioning God or invoking his activity went against the biblical command concerning the swearing of oaths. There were also opponents of the Friends who thought the Quaker belief was nonsense and that a compromise that combined an affirmation and oath would, in time, erode the testimony. The Meeting for Sufferings offered to Parliament an affirmation “in the presence of God,” and Parliament added the “witness of what I say.” The London Friends, eager to get relief, acquiesced, but any bill was defeated until the Friends appealed to William III, who promised to intercede, and an election in 1695 brought a Whig majority. The Friends also gained credit with the new regime, especially after an assassination attempt on the king, when they issued the printing of 1,500 copies of what they termed an “Antient Testimony” declaring that “the Setting up, and putting down Kings and Governments is Gods peculiar Prerogative . . . and that it is not our Work or Business to have any hand or Contuance therein, Nor to be Busy bodies in matters above our Station . . . But to pray for the King, and for the Safety, of our Nation . . . that we may live a peaceable and Quiet Life, in all Godliness and Honesty under the Government.”17 Now the Affirmation Act easily passed both houses, but it offered only partial relief. The Friends could not testify in criminal cases, serve in Parliament, or attend universities. Knowing that many members did not like the form of the affirmation, the Meeting for Sufferings collected and published testimonies of the early Quakers that supported its position. Opposition came from the Friends in various parts of the British Isles, notably Lancaster, Ireland, and Scotland. William Edmundson and William Penn opposed, but in a canvas of the quarterly meetings during the yearly meeting, the majority agreed to accept the form as the best that could be obtained and to work for changes when the law would be renewed. The London merchants acquiesced, believing that to object would be to alienate the king 16. LSF, LYM, I, 305–­11, 321 (1692); LSF, MS, VII, 191 (November 19, 1690). 17. LSF, LYM, II, 193 (March 27, 1696); LSF, MS, X, 177 (February 28, 1695); Mary K. Geiter, “Affirmation, Assassination, and Association: The Quakers, Parliament and the Court in 1696,” Parliamentary History 16, no. 3 (1997): 277–­88 (283).

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and that the prospects for achieving a plain affirmation were unlikely given the hostility of the bishops. An additional section in the Affirmation Act changed the law on collecting tithes.18 Formerly, when a Friend refused to pay a tithe, the only recourse for a clergyman, or impropriator of tithes,19 was to take the man or woman into court and, if found guilty, imprison him or her. Oftentimes the expense and bother were not worth the trouble, particularly if the jury was unsympathetic to the parish priest. Even so, some Friends spent years in jail over small amounts of money. In the 1690s, the local priest cited Margaret Fell, and an impropriator had thirty Lancaster Friends imprisoned for refusing to pay tithes.20 Under the new law, if the Friend refused to pay, the priest could go to two justices of the peace and get an order to distrain the amount required. If the goods taken by seizure were too great, the Friend could appeal to the magistrates for redress. Initially, the bill applied only to so-­called small tithes, but in 1699 the amount was changed to £10, a substantial sum. Although the law was designed to keep the Friends out of prison, it could increase the amount they ended up paying. Morgan discovered that in Lancaster, the ability to recover back tithes and the ease of the procedure made priests increasingly willing to use it.21 The new law’s procedure was optional, and the Friends were still being incarcerated for tithes in the early eighteenth century. Coupled with the affirmation law they did not like and would not take, the Lancaster Friends became increasingly disenchanted with the leadership in London.

Early Pennsylvania When Penn returned to England in 1684, he hoped that he and the colonists had created a framework for a harmonious society in which the best men made the laws and the people consented through the assemblymen. Events proved him wrong. Seven years later, Pennsylvania was more frontier than 18. The affirmation and tithe bill are printed in William Sewel, The History of the Rise, Increase, and Progress of the Christian People Called Quakers (Philadelphia: Kite and Pike, 1811), 497–­99. 19. Layperson or body that had purchased the right to collect tithes. 20. LSF, MS, VIII, 196 (December 30, 1692); IX, 33 (October 6, 1693). 21. LSF, MS, XIII, 160 (March 7, 1699); Morgan, Lancashire Quakers, 49, 142–­43, 196, 199, 218–­19.

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peaceable kingdom, with Native Americans, fur traders, sailors, and plain-­style Quaker merchants and farmers mingling together in Philadelphia. Thomas Holmes’s 1687 map showed compact farms surrounding Philadelphia, but the land along the Delaware River was often hilly, swampy, and wooded. Who owned what was often not clear, and while Penn had wanted no empty, large tracts, he had violated this principle. For many settlers, speculation in land seemed an easy way to make money. Penn was lord proprietor, but he was also a subject of the king, and after 1689 he was suspected of treason, in hiding at times, and blamed by many Quakers for identifying too closely with James II. Governing officials in the colony whose authority derived from Penn, aware of how insecure their authority was, insisted on more respect and deference from the people, who sometimes gave it. As early as 1685, Penn had complained that the colonists should not be so “Governmentist, so Noisy and open in [their] dissatisfactions,” and in 1691 George Whitehead had written warning the colonists that their quarrels had created a bad impression in England.22 Conditions facing the Friends living in West New Jersey were even worse, with the legitimacy of government questionable and the settlers resisting Quaker Edward Billing’s and then Anglican Daniel Coxes’s attempts to dominate. When Penn appointed former Puritan soldier John Blackwell as lieutenant-­governor in 1688, the previous lieutenant-­governor, the Quaker minister Thomas Lloyd, refused to give him the seals of office. Blackwell could issue no official documents or make laws. Several Quaker council members boycotted council meetings and would not work with him, and the Quaker-­dominated assembly defied Penn’s wishes in attempting to initiate legislation. The colony was essentially ungovernable. Penn recalled Blackwell and tried to create harmony by appointing political opponents to the council, but Lloyd maneuvered to become governor against the wishes of the delegates from Delaware, some Quakers, and Penn. Lloyd then purged from office those who had cooperated with Blackwell. As Quaker ministers, including Lloyd and his supporters, served as leading figures in the council, assembly, courts, and the Friends’ meetings, anyone who observed how weighty Friends acted in London would have been scandalized by how ministers behaved when given political power in Philadelphia. 22. Penn to Council, August 19, 1685. See PWP, 3:50; Gary Nash, Quakers and Politics: Pennsylvania, 1681–­1726 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1968; Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1993), 349; Ethyn W. Kirby, George Keith, 1638–­1716 (New York: Appleton-­Century, 1942), 59.

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Penn had persuaded the Duke of York, later James II, in 1682 to add to his grant the three lower counties, now Delaware, in order to gain a direct outlet to the ocean. These were populated by Finns, Swedes, Irish, and some English, and more Presbyterians than the Quakers. Penn offered the most generous naturalization terms in the empire, and the previous settlers welcomed the opportunity to become British subjects. The difficulty was that the Quaker majority in Pennsylvania wanted a colony in which the Friends’ principles determined marriage laws, oaths, recreation, legal practices, and defense. Delaware subjects, who feared being a perpetual minority, wanted a militia and forts; they were, after all, at the mouth of the Delaware River and vulnerable to pirates and the French. The Pennsylvania Friends living a hundred miles up the river saw peace as dependent on good relations with the Lenni Lenape, the local Native Americans, and ignored defense. Penn wanted one colony, but the Quakers in Pennsylvania and settlers in Delaware preferred two colonies and two assemblies, with one governor over both, but neither wanted to take the onus of having caused the division.23 Compared with the bickering and growing pains in government, what stands out as easy is the transfer of Quaker practices and institutions: monthly, quarterly, and yearly meetings; women’s meetings; and meetings of ministers. Developing the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, composed of the Friends in West New Jersey, Delaware, and the Eastern Shore of Maryland, into a successful religious community was going to take time.24 Some brought slaves and others indentured servants. In addition, recent research has suggested that many settlers converted in America.25 These new Quakers, unlike the British Friends, had not experienced the threat of persecution or the social costs of adopting the plain style of dress and speech. They would need to be persuaded of the requirement for a sacrificial lifestyle. Their motivation for conversion is not discoverable now, but for many colonists, worship occurred in a Quaker meeting or not at all. There was Old 23. Edwin Bronner, William Penn’s “Holy Experiment”: The Founding of Pennsylvania, 1681–­1701 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1962; repr., Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1978), 139–­42. 24. By 1685, there were six quarterly meetings, fourteen monthly meetings, and as many as fifty meetings for worship in meeting houses or homes. See E. B. Bronner, “Quaker Discipline and Order,” in Dunn and Dunn, World of William Penn, 326. 25. Richard Vann, “Quakerism: Made in America,” in Dunn and Dunn, World of William Penn, 165; John Smolenski, Friends and Strangers: The Making of a Creole Culture in Colonial Pennsylvania (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), 175n13, 347.

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Swedes Church outside of Philadelphia and occasionally a Lutheran minister, but Chester and Bucks Counties contained only Quaker meetings. In an age where people feared coming to the wilderness would result in reversion to savagery, attendance at Quaker meetings was a way to stay civilized and socialize with their neighbors. And with the Quakers dominating the political, religious, and economic aspects of the colony, becoming a Friend offered many social advantages.

The Keithian Controversy George Keith migrated in 1686 into West New Jersey as a surveyor of the dividing line between West and East Jersey and later as a teacher of the Quaker school in Philadelphia, so he witnessed Pennsylvania’s confusing political turmoil and sought to improve its religious practices. The resulting schism five years later remains one of the most perplexing events in Quaker history, and scholars have reached no agreement on causes or consequences. Almost certainly, it would not have happened if Keith had stayed in England. Keith brought impressive credentials: he was university trained; imprisoned for his faith; a close associate of Fox, Barclay, Penn, and Whitehead; and the author of many books, some written with other prominent Friends and more by himself defending the Quakers. He had thought deeply about reconciling the Friends’ beliefs with basic Christian doctrines. Keith, far more than many Friends, stressed the importance of belief in the historical Jesus. Knowledge of Jesus’s death, bodily resurrection, and bodily ascension to heaven to be with God, plus an experience of the inward light, brought freedom from sin, salvation, and eternal life. At death, the souls of saints went to be with a bodily Christ in heaven, but at the final judgment Christ would return, and the saints’ bodies and souls would be physically united in a changed but bodily form. Keith backed up his beliefs with impressive biblical citations and quotes from other weighty Friends. So Keith opposed any attempt to spiritualize Christ by denying the unity of the human and the divine before, during, or after the resurrection or to insist there was no bodily resurrection at the time of the last judgment. Although changed in heaven, the substance of Christ’s body remained now the same as when he walked on earth. Along with all of the Friends, Keith had proclaimed the necessity of an experience of the inward Christ as the essence of faith. He differed in that he insisted that good pagans who had no knowledge of the historical Christ The Quakers, 1656–­1723

by an experience of the light could become servants of God but would be saved eternally only through knowledge of Christ’s death, atonement, and resurrection.26 So the Native American who had some sense of God would need outward knowledge of the revelations contained in the New Testament for Christian salvation. For Keith, this belief should have made the New World Friends more devoted to preaching the gospel to Indians and to each other. Keith should be seen as attempting to define the Quakers as unlike the Ranters, deists, and Presbyterians or Anglicans while remaining faithful to traditional beliefs on the nature of Christ and such biblical admonitions as Romans 10:9: “If thou shalt confess with thy Mouth and believe with thine Heart, that God hath raised Christ from the dead, thou shalt be saved.”27 Even more confusing to Pennsylvania’s Quakers were rumors about Keith’s belief in the transmigration of souls.28 The Philadelphia Friends later insisted that Keith’s supposed advocacy of transmigration of souls helped cause the schism. While living in Philadelphia, Keith, accompanied by Samuel Jennings, traveled in the ministry to Rhode Island and Massachusetts; engaged in controversies with Cotton Mather, the most prominent New England minister; and published attacks upon the Congregationalists that the Friends approved. He also published with the consent of the Rhode Island Friends, but some opposition among the Pennsylvania Quakers, a dispute with ex-­ Quaker Christian Lodowick that contained a summary of beliefs and a catechism for children. As a minister in the Philadelphia Monthly Meeting, he made family visits to all members, along with Thomas Budd and Samuel Jennings, both of whom were important Friends. Budd was the author of a pamphlet advocating settlement in New Jersey, and Jennings was a magistrate. Budd became a strong advocate and Jennings a major critic of Keith after the split. A visit by all three men to each household provided an opportunity for intimate worship and made sure all the Quakers kept the testimonies, so it offered Keith an opportunity to assess the spiritual vitality of Philadelphia’s Quakers. 26. Keith insisted that Abraham, Moses, and Job had been saved and that good Indians and heathens did not perish but entered into a kind of limbo at death until they could gain knowledge of Christ. He called this a “general salvation,” as distinct from a Christian’s “special salvation.” See George Keith, Truth Advanced in the Correction of Many Gross and Hurtful Errors . . . (London: William Bradford, 1694), 40–­46. 27. George Keith, Gross Error and Hyprocrisie Detected in George Whitehead, and Some of His Brethren (London: Walter Kettilby, 1695), 15. 28. Further details are provided by Moore in chapter 7.

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In 1690, Keith proposed to the Philadelphia Monthly Meeting, and eventually to the Meeting of Ministers, a document titled “Gospel Order and Discipline Improved.” It was discussed and some members made copies before it was forwarded to the London Yearly Meeting. There is no extant copy of the 1690 proposal, but there is a 1693 document written for the adherents of the new separatist meeting that contained articles of faith to which adults and all children, when they came of age, would need to sign and the appointment of elders and deacons. Several historians have argued that this was what Keith wanted in 1690.29 Jennings charged in 1694 that Keith’s alienation from the Philadelphia Friends dated from the cool reception of his proposal, but the minutes at the time indicate Keith’s satisfaction with sending them to London. He could have been disappointed at the response, but he surely knew that for a yearly meeting fewer than ten years old to have fundamentally changed Quaker practices would have disrupted the unity of the Friends. Keith, in fact, was present in the meetings that had done the same thing when the Germantown Quakers had issued in 1688 their remonstrance against slavery. The Philadelphia Yearly Meeting concluded that a condemnation of slavery would have repercussions in the South, the West Indies, and London. Better to let the British Friends make difficult decisions.30 In addition, even if Keith’s proposals were ignored, there is ample evidence that many ministers supported his emphases on strict maintenance of Quaker discipline and increasing knowledge of the Bible and the historical Jesus. The Keithian controversy began when, in September 1691, William Stockdale, an elderly minister who had emigrated from Ireland, officially accused Keith of preaching two Christs in the Philadelphia Monthly Meeting. The first issue is, Why was he allowed to do it? One cannot imagine in London an elderly Irish minister being allowed to accuse Penn, Whitehead, 29. Jon Butler and Clare Martin see this document as central to the schism but disagree on its significance. Butler sees it as reducing the power of the ministry. Martin does not. See Jon Butler, “‘Gospel Order Improved’: The Keithian Schism and the Exercise of Quaker Ministerial Authority in Pennsylvania,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 31 ( July 1974): 431–­52; Clare Martin, “Controversy and Division in Post Restoration Quakerism: The Hat, Wilkinson-­Story and Keithian Controversies and Comparisons with the Internal Divisions of Other Seventeenth-­Century Nonconformist Groups” (PhD diss., Open University, 2003), 199–­203. 30. The original Germantown protest is at Haverford College, and reprints of it and the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting minutes of 1688 and 1712 are in J. William Frost, ed., The Quaker Origins of Antislavery (Norwood, Pa.: Norwood, 1980), 69, 74. Antislavery activities are discussed in Lapsansky-­Werner in chapter 10.

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or Ellwood of heresy. The Friends did not accuse ministers of heresy and did not conduct heresy trials. More surprising is that the charge was not immediately proved false and dismissed by anyone who could read Keith’s works. For example,

203 A Plain Short Catechism, 1690, p. 13: “Is it not a great Error in some, that say there are two Christs, one Christ that is God, another Christ that is Man? Ans. Yes.” The Christian Faith of the Quakers Vindicated, 1690, p. 5: “others . . . accuse us, as Denying the True Christ, because we believe and confess to Christ’s inward and Outward Coming and Appearance, were to deny his Outward, or to hold forth two Christ’s . . . and no just Consequence of our Principle for the true Christ of God, and the truth Christian Faith, receiveth and imbraceth him whole and undivided, and owneth his inward and outward Coming . . .”

The monthly meeting referred the matter to the Yearly Meeting of Ministers, who met in six long sessions. Keith thought Stockdale should be judged a heretic for ignorance of so basic a Quaker belief, but the ministers refused to declare either heretical. They rebuked Stockdale, however, for raising the issue and told Keith that he should have dealt privately with an elderly minister. The ministers may have assumed that their decisions would end the controversy; however, the result satisfied neither side, and Keith and his opponents started coming to meeting for worship prepared to find fault. Since no one brought an inkpot, quill, and paper to meeting, there was a lot of hearsay based on comments in meeting and some intemperate remarks from discussions outside. Keith and his opponents seem to have lost their tempers easily. If the Philadelphia Friends had allowed the matter to rest, Keith would have gone back to England, and there would have been no controversy. Instead, in January 1691, Thomas Fitzwater, another minister, accused Keith of “Denying the Sufficiency of the Light Within,” and when the meeting told him to bring witnesses, he produced Stockdale. Only this time, other ministers supported Fitzwater, with Keith charging that the ministers who disagreed with his preaching denied the fundamental truths of Christianity and should be silenced. Now there would be no containing the dispute within the limits of “gospel order.” The official defense of the main body of Adjusting to New Conditions in Britain and America, 1690–­1 700

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the Quakers has long been that Keith caused the split, but it is important to remember that the charges were first made against him. In early Pennsylvania, the boundary between religious and political power remained ill defined. Penn had assumed that religious liberty meant no tithe, no compulsory militia service, and freedom to worship, and he trusted that moral Christian men would serve in the assembly and council. A Quaker who became a minister would not, therefore, be barred from political office, because there was no educational or ordination requirement. A person became a minister when the meeting recognized as acceptable his or her testimonies during worship. As there was prestige in being a minister, ministers often became political leaders in their communities, so a controversy in the meeting could easily become politically divisive and vice versa. As such, the Keithian schism illustrates the symbiotic relationship between ministerial and political authority. The Keithian controversy began as a disagreement among ministers, and virtually all the ministers eventually condemned him. An analysis of the three who first charged Keith (Fitzwater with Stockdale and William Southeby as witnesses) plus the twenty-­eight who first judged him negatively shows that the Quaker ministerial/political power was against him from the start. Stockdale, Fitzwater, Southeby, and fourteen others had been members of the council or assembly or both, and Jennings was allied with the political ministers and Lloyd.31 Lloyd, who had attended Oxford until he became a Quaker, was the sole university-­educated minister and, while initially neutral, became a leading opponent. However, the ministers made it clear that they did not consider themselves Keith’s theological peers. What is uncertain is whether any, or how many, understood what Keith was advocating or, even if they did, thought it important. Except for Joseph Kirkbridge, who may have become a minister in Pennsylvania, the thirty-­one ministers had been officially recognized before migrating, and they had a long history of working on behalf of the Friends, with a few traveling in the ministry and enduring persecution, including months in prison. By accepting roles as ministers, they proclaimed that 31. Craig Horle et al., eds., Lawmaking and Legislators in Pennsylvania: A Biographical Dictionary, 3 vols. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania; Harrisburg: Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, House of Representatives, 1991–­2007), vol. 1, 1682–­1709 (1991). Two of the twenty-­eight were not Pennsylvania residents, and others came from West New Jersey. These statistics probably underestimate the political involvement, since some could have been magistrates.

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they had experienced the light of Christ, served as God’s spokesmen in meeting for worship, and lived seeking to be exemplars of Quaker ethics. Having spent years in what they saw as the service of God, their understanding of Quakerism and Christianity was now threatened by Keith’s proclaiming abstruse doctrines as necessary for a Christian life. When the ministers resisted endorsing Keith’s biblical/theological interpretations, he accused them of being blasphemous heretics. Keith, in short, threatened both the political and nonpolitical ministers’ understanding of, and status in, Quakerism, and that would undermine their position in this new and very fragile colony. As men (women ministers played little role in the split) of deep faith, their very being seemed threatened by this arrogant Scotsman. The ministers/politicians, including Lloyd and his supporters, who were now in control of the colony, had resisted Penn, Blackwell, and Delaware assembly­men. Now, after compromise proved impossible, they had no difficulty in persuading the nonpolitical ministers to join against Keith as another external threat, even more dangerous because he threatened their religious self-­understanding. Keith, as a devout minister, was in very much the same position, only he was an outsider. How could a group of pious tradesmen, farmers, and artisan ministers believe that he preached two Christs and denied the sufficiency of the light? As a reformer, he had expected resistance from the lukewarm to tighten the discipline (perhaps to be more like Ireland’s) and balance the emphasis on the experience of the inward light with knowledge of the historical Christ. He had not anticipated being charged as a heretic by three ministers and then not being exonerated. Either he was a heretic or too many ministers were. After hearing Stockdale say that he was not certain whether it was only the man Jesus or the God part that died on the cross, while others denied the need for knowledge of the historical Jesus or insisted that the resurrection of Christ and humans was purely spiritual, Keith went on the offensive against heresy that he now found widespread among ministering Friends. The twenty-­eight Friends pronounced against Keith, hoping to silence him, but they misjudged him and his appeal to other members. It is worth noting that they now based their judgment on Keith’s charges and his intemperate zeal. The original complaints of Fitzwater and Stockdale would never be addressed by the Philadelphia ministers or the yearly meeting. Only Caleb Pusey in A Modest Account . . . (1696) would discuss theology. Initially, there were two doctrinal issues. Keith and the “Orthodox” agreed that Adjusting to New Conditions in Britain and America, 1690–­1 700

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the good heathen would not perish. The main body thought that the inward light alone was sufficient for salvation, but Keith insisted that the good pagan must also obtain, in some fashion, knowledge of the historical Jesus. The other issue was Christ’s postresurrection body. During the controversy, belief in the bodily resurrection of the saints emerged as an important issue. Events now made a controversy a schism. At the monthly meeting to decide the charges against him, the clerk adjourned the meeting after a long discussion and left, but Keith’s adherents, a substantial group, chose a new clerk, condemned Stockdale and Fitzwater, and constituted themselves as a monthly meeting. In the spring, when the main body of the Friends moved their place of worship to the Center meeting house, the Keithians continued to use the Bank meeting house until they found it locked. Thereafter they began meeting in homes. The Orthodox (so termed because they were a majority) now charged the Keithians with being separatists, and even worse, Keith and his supporters published several tracts justifying their behavior and criticizing the attitude and beliefs of the main body of ministers.32 Andrew Bradford, the only printer in the colony, offered to publish both sides, but the Friends had for years forbidden making internal disagreements public, and they refused to allow this. An attempt to mediate by two visiting English ministers failed utterly. Condemnations by the Yearly Meeting of Ministers and the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting were countered by an alternative judgment by Keith’s supporters in their yearly meeting. Keith now broadened his attack from theology to politics, thereby undermining the role of the Quakers in governing Pennsylvania. Ministers, he argued, should not be administering oaths, using force to keep the peace, selling powder and guns to Indians, and even potentially implementing the death penalty. He insisted that Quakerism and being a magistrate were incompatible and that Penn’s charter was a mistake. In essence, Keith threatened the very existence of proprietary Pennsylvania and Quaker government at a time when the colony already had enemies in England. Their perceived vulnerability helps explain why the magistrates acted against Keith and Bradford.

32. The best summary of events remains Kirby, George Keith, supplemented by accounts in Martin, “Controversy and Division”; and Smolenski, Friends and Strangers. The relevant published and manuscript sources are printed in J. William Frost, ed., The Keithian Controversy in Early Pennsylvania (Norwood, Pa.: Norwood, 1980), but this does not include Britain.

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The Quaker ministers/magistrates determined to silence Keith by seizing Bradford’s press and confining him and Peter Boss, a distributor of the tracts, to jail before a trial. Keith, Thomas Budd, and others were charged with defaming magistrates (i.e., Lloyd and Jennings). Two non-­Quaker magistrates refused to participate in the two trials, claiming that the issues were religious; so all remaining judges were Orthodox magistrates and ministers. The two trials, as described by the Keithians, were almost a replay of the trial of Penn and Mead in the famous Bushel (Bushell) case,33 only this time the Quakers were the persecutors, refusing to cite law or give a copy of the indictments, bending the law, and ignoring the jury’s verdict. Charging Bradford and Boss for unlicensed publishing of material had a certain irony considering that the Friends in Britain had been doing this for years. Keith and the other defendants remarked that their negative comments about Lloyd and Jennings had been about religion, not their function as magistrates. Keith, like Penn earlier, made the judges and prosecuting attorney look foolish, being opposed to religious liberty and denying anyone’s right to criticize a minister. The judges found all the defendants guilty and levied fines. No one paid. The court ordered Bradford’s press confiscated. Eventually, Bradford and Boss were released from prison and the press was restored when the new royal governor, Benjamin Fletcher, arrived.34 Keith, like Bradford, went to New York in preparation for an appeal to the London Yearly Meeting, but before he left America, he and/or his followers published the first Quaker antislavery tract, drawing upon the concepts of the Germantown protest, one of whose signers was a supporter.35 Historians have puzzled over the reasons a theological argument caused such turmoil. One historian concluded that “participation in the movement was for the most part emblematic of deep-­rooted political and economic grievances felt by many within the Quaker community”36 and the religious issues were incidental. More recently, editors of a biographical dictionary of Pennsylvania legislators concluded that “clear evidence that the bulk of the Keithians were motivated primarily by economic motives or opposition to

33. Also see Bell in chapter 12. 34. Martin, “Controversy and Division,” 216. 35. Katharine Gerbner, “Antislavery in Print: The Germantown Protest, the ‘Exhortation,’ and the Seventeenth-­Century Quaker Debate on Slavery,” Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 9, no. 3 (Fall 2011): 552–­75 (565–­68). 36. Nash, Quakers and Politics, 160.

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the political power of Thomas Lloyd is elusive.”37 An alternative explanation emphasized the theology of the inward light: the main body resisted Keith’s efforts to restrict inward revelation by requiring a confession of faith. Although true, Keith’s one confession of faith that has survived does not mention the inward light, so it is not possible to know whether other Friends would have disagreed. A fourth explanation finds that Keith firmly rejected the idea of Quaker family nurture. By comparing Native Americans with children, as the Quakers and others often did, Keith supposedly implied that even Friends’ children who died would go to hell, and this terrified parents. This explanation ignores the fact that the Quakers denied original sin and believed that infants were born innocent and thereby could not sin until much older, at which point parents would presumably have told their children about the inward light and Jesus. Keith, like other Quakers, certainly did not believe older children were innocent, but he did insist that God in his mercy would take care of infants.38 However, the charge was made, and it may have been believed by many Pennsylvania parents. A recent calculation holds that there were a total of 290 Keithians, or about 12 percent of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. Research based on certificates brought from a few counties in Britain seems to demonstrate that only “one in three Pennsylvania Quakers” had been in good standing in England—­the rest were converts or children born in America—­and that Keith was particularly concerned about these new or, as he termed them, “bastard Quakers” who seemed to be weakening the testimonies. At least in the Philadelphia Monthly Meeting, Keithians were more likely to have presented certificates—­that is, they were more likely to follow correct procedures.39 However, as dress and speech made it easy to see who was a Friend, the main use of removal certificates was to say whether the man 37. Horle et al., Lawmaking and Legislators in Pennsylvania, 1:45 and n5. 38. Martin, “Controversy and Division,” 201–­2; Smolenski, Friends and Strangers, 172–­73; Keith, Truth Advanced, 32–­34, 131. For Indians compared to infants, see Samuel Jennings, The State of the Case Briefly but Impartially Given betwixt the People Called Quakers in Pensilvania . . . (London: Tace Sowle, 1694), 11. George Whitehead in the Confession of Faith made it clear in 1693 that infants were innocent. George Whitehead, Memoirs of George Whitehead . . . Published in 1725, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Nathan Kite, 1932), 2:190–­296. Caleb Pusey argued that Keith damned infants. See Jennings, State of the Case, 65. 39. Vann, “Quakerism: Made in America,” 175; Smolenski, Friends and Strangers, 174–77n101, 353n110, and 112, 354, 355.

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or woman was single. When the migrants were a family, accompanied by several members of the same meeting, or known to other settlers, they may not have seen certificates as necessary. Considering the scattered documents of many early and even later colonists, it is perilous to draw firm conclusions about membership in the first ten years of Quaker settlements. In Wales at least, whole meetings were depopulated by migrants to Pennsylvania. It may be safest to conclude that those who became Keithians wished to assert a firm connection between the light of Christ and the historical Jesus and accepted Keith’s arguments that this was what the Friends had always believed. That social, political, and economic factors influenced later events should be recognized, but the primary cause was a theological disagreement. The most revealing single document of Keithian beliefs is an undated document submitted to the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting titled “Some of Our Principles to Which If You Agree We Are the More Like to Agree with You in Other Things” (i.e., these were the essentials). This is likely one of the earliest documents of the split. With virtually no changes, the doctrines were presented in 1694 to the London Yearly Meeting and then published in 1696. There are ten articles, with the last requiring the assent of adult members and ministers, but unlike the so-­called 1690 proposal, there is nothing else about meeting organization. Instead, the emphasis is on the “body” of Jesus before and after the resurrection and in heaven, the physical atonement, and the assertion that belief in the “Man Christ without us . . . is universally necessary to make Men true Christians.” The Orthodox Quakers called these doctrines “carnal.”40 The strength of the trust among the colonial Quaker yearly meetings was demonstrated by the condemnations of Keith by the Rhode Island, New York, Maryland, and Barbados Yearly Meetings following Philadelphia’s actions. London did not do so. Initially, the London Friends advised a reconciliation, and Penn, who knew what dealing with Lloyd was like, seemed favorable toward Keith, but he was soon warned about the separation.41 The London Friends sought to suppress news of the controversy by attempting to buy the shipment of Bradford’s publications, but the bishop of London obtained a few copies and had the tracts republished, and they circulated widely. Those Anglicans who did not wish the Quakers to qualify 40. Frost, Keithian Controversy, 153; George Keith, An Exact Narrative of the Proceedings at Turners Hall . . . (London: B. Aylmer and J. Dunton, 1696), 14. 41. PWP, 2:354, 359.

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under the Act of Toleration welcomed Keith’s charges of heresy and persecution. The official body of the Friends in Philadelphia and London published nothing, but Samuel Jennings and Caleb Pusey brought written accounts as they accompanied a delegation from the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting ready to counter Keith’s appeal to the London Yearly Meeting. The main counterargument came in a confession of faith—­opponents called it a creed—­drawn up in 1693 by George Whitehead and endorsed by leading London ministers. The Christian Doctrine and Society of the People Called Quakers Cleared from the Reproach of the Late Division of a Few in Some Part of America . . . was a closely argued sixteen-­page defense of Christian beliefs with two sections on the resurrection of the dead and a denial that the Friends believed in the transmigration of souls.42 Keith endorsed its doctrines in his appearance before the London Yearly Meeting even though it seemingly endorsed the ability of those who had never heard of the outward Jesus to be saved through the inward Christ bringing the universal mercy of God.43 In September 1694, after the normal sessions of the London Yearly Meeting, a special meeting with delegates from quarterly meetings and leading ministers convened to examine the conduct and doctrines of Keith and the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. After allowing both Keith and the Philadelphia Friends to defend their actions, the ministers spent six days reading over the publications. Keith had several liabilities: he had started separate meetings, alienated the two visiting English ministers present in Pennsylvania, published tracts opposing the Friends, and not appeared humble when speaking in meetings for worship. The London Friends concluded that Keith’s writings and preaching departed from the simplicity recommended by Jesus but did not pronounce them heretical and agreed that the beliefs of a few Pennsylvania Quakers needed correcting. Moreover, they 42. The document is printed in Sewel, History of the Rise, and at the end of Whitehead, Memoirs of George Whitehead, 2:190–­206. See also Robynne Rogers Healey, “From Apocalyptic Prophecy to Tolerable Faithfulness: George Whitehead and a Theology for the Eschaton Deferred,” in Early Quakers and Their Theological Thought, 1647–­1723, ed. Stephen W. Angell and Pink Dandelion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 273–­92. 43. LSF, LYM, I, 31 ( June 7, 1694). Keith observed, “I Know no Man upon the face of the Earth, that professeth a Belief of the Sufficiency of the Light within to Salvation more than I profess . . . God, the Word, and the Spirit in every man is Sufficient to Reveal to every man, all that is needful to his Eternal Salvation.”

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stressed that Keith should confess that his charges of widespread heresy were exaggerated. The London Yearly Meeting condemned his publications and recommended that he repudiate and/or recall them and attempt to end the separation of the so-­called Christian Quakers. While both sides were guilty of extreme passions and provocations, the magistrates should not have tried Bradford and Keith.44 Hoping for reconciliation, as Keith insisted he desired, there was no disownment. Keith, still claiming to be a Friend in good standing, allowed Robert Hannay to publish a critique of the London Yearly Meeting’s proceedings, began meeting for worship with older groups of separatists from the Wilkinson-­Story controversy,45 criticized London ministers, and visited meetings seeking support. Accounts from Jennings and Pusey describing events in Pennsylvania and tracts from Ellwood, Penn, Whitehead, and others blamed the separation on Keith’s unruly spirit, quest for power, and violation of Quaker procedures.46 All the Orthodox tracts denied that issues of belief in the historical Jesus were the cause of this dispute and asserted that the Quakers believed in the virgin birth, the death and bodily resurrection of Christ and the saints, and the return of Christ at a day of final judgment. The Friends concluded that Keith had not taken actions necessary for reconciliation and had instead continued the controversy. In 1695, the London Yearly Meeting disowned him. Still wearing the Quaker dress and claiming to be a Christian Friend, Keith rented a hall in London in 1695, where he read allegedly heretical statements from Friends’ books and challenged the Quakers to debates. Over time, he became more conservative theologically. Keith joined the Church of England in 1702, became a parish priest, and published many tracts showing the blasphemies of the Friends, accusing Penn of deism, and attacking even Robert Barclay’s Apology. Keith traveled in England and back to America in order to persuade the Friends to join the Church of England, intruding himself into local meetings and even the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. The Morning Meeting in London made sure that there was an answer to every Keith tract. In Pennsylvania, Daniel Leeds and Caleb Pusey, in tracts that were sometimes scurrilous, debated for the next twenty 44. LSF, LYM, I, 58 ( June 1694). 45. See Moore in chapter 3. 46. LSF, SDMM, II, 85 (May 13, 1694); Thomas Ellwood, An Epistle to Friends . . . Warning Them to Beware of . . . George Keith (London: Tace Sowle, 1694).

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years whether the Quakers were Christians and why Keith promoted the doctrine of the transmigration of souls.47 Although the Keithian controversy had little lasting effect in Britain, this may be because his wish for a closer alignment of Quaker and orthodox Christian thought was realized in the Christian Defense composed by Whitehead and other weighty ministers. Before Parliament, and in response to a request from the bishop of London, the Friends hastened to defend their belief in the historical Jesus, the atonement, and the Bible.48 In America, Keith’s Christian Quakers dwindled, with some supporters becoming Baptists, Presbyterians, and nonaffiliated or rejoining the Friends (after issuing apologies). The German Pietists and Mennonites, who had seen in Penn’s vision for Pennsylvania hope for the inauguration of an ecumenical Christianity based on toleration and respect, now saw the Friends as just another denomination.49 The Keithians who helped create the Anglican Christ Church in Philadelphia had no desire for Quaker political hegemony to continue and joined with royal officials to undermine Penn’s government. As for the Quakers, religiously they closed ranks and continued to ignore theology, but a few continued to oppose slavery and question whether the Friends should govern, pay war taxes, or administer oaths. The political Friends, both ministers and others, continued to squabble among themselves and to oppose outside authority, whether it was Governor Fletcher (appointed by the king) or William Penn (after his colony was restored in 1694). The meetings buried the theological issues raised by Keith on the relation of the inward light of Christ to traditional beliefs in the physical atonement by Jesus, but they would all emerge again in Britain and America in the nineteenth century.50 By 1776, the Philadelphia Friends had come to endorse the Keithian position of antislavery and withdrawal from politics, but Keith himself had been virtually forgotten.

47. For example, Daniel Leeds, News of a Strumpet Co-­habiting the Wilderness . . . (New York: William Bradford, 1701); Caleb Pusey, Satan’s Harbinger Encountered  .  .  . (Philadelphia: Reynier Jansen, 1701). 48. LSF, LYM, II, 96 (1695); LSF, MS, XIII, 233 ( June 23, 1699). On George Whitehead’s catechism, see n42. 49. Patrick Erben, A Harmony of the Spirits: Translation and the Language of Community in Early Pennsylvania (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina for Early American Institute of History and Culture, 2012), 138–­43. 50. H. Larry Ingle, Quakers in Conflict: The Hicksite Reformation (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1986), 1–­12, 20, 28, 41–­43, 113–­14.

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The Friends in the 1690s In retrospect, the 1690s appear to be a decade in transition. Robert Barclay died in 1690 and George Fox in 1691, both essentially canonized by their published works. Penn, in disgrace as a suspected traitor until 1693 and in hiding, enduring the lingering illness and deaths of his wife and eldest son, wrote Key Opening the Way, Fruits of Solitude, and An Essay on the Peace of Europe; recovered his right to govern Pennsylvania; regained influence with the king and many nobles; engaged in a successful traveling ministry in England and Ireland; and remained active in the London Yearly Meeting. George Whitehead, meanwhile, emerged as the unofficial leader of the Friends.51 Even after achieving legal toleration, the Quakers faced an onslaught of written attacks, most importantly from Keith on theology; Francis Bugg, another apostate Quaker, on religious liberty and church government; and Charles Leslie on both. Bugg, who had been a conscientious Friend for nearly twenty years, became estranged around 1680 either because an arbitration over money went against him or because of the increasing centralization of the Friends. In 1680, in De Christiana Libertate, he published an eloquent defense of religious liberty (written by Charles Wolseley) and then using its arguments blamed Fox, Penn, and other leaders for undermining liberty within the meeting.52 Until his death in 1724, Bugg sought to discredit Quakerism by collecting and publishing damaging statements from their books, telling stories of their scandals, seeking to engage them in debates, and lobbying Parliament. In what now seems his obsession, he spent his estate self-­publishing his tracts for twenty-­two years and became dependent on Anglican bishops for support. How much credibility he gained over time is questionable, but the Friends authorized an answer to each tract he wrote. Their difficulty was that there were many actions and questionable statements in the Friends’ history, and although the Quakers could show that many quotes were taken out of context, it was difficult to explain some of the exalted language and actions of James Nayler, Fox, and other early Friends. 51. Healey, “From Apocalyptic Prophecy,” 288. 52. Francis Bugg, The Pilgrim’s Progress from Quakerism to Christianity . . . (London: W. Kettleby, 1698), 50–­51, 145–­47, and his De Christiana libertate, or, Liberty of Conscience upon It’s [sic] True and Proper Grounds Asserted and Vindicated . . . (London: Enoch Prosser, 1682); Caroline L. Leachman, “Bugg, Francis,” http://www.oxforddnb​ .com​/​view​/​article​/​3890 (accessed April 29, 2015).

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The most damaging attack on the Friends came from Charles Leslie, a nonjuring Anglican who in 1696 issued The Snake in the Grass and distributed copies to every MP. Drawing on the rich tradition of anti-­Quakeriana, Leslie depicted the Friends as “Enthusiasts” who had “no Principles” and “no Rule but their own Fancies,” with the result that they confused themselves with God, wrote to Fox as the “Son of God,” claimed infallibility, belittled scripture, supported Oliver Cromwell, persecuted when they had power within the meeting or in Pennsylvania, opposed tithes and sacraments, and denied the Trinity. Not only were they Socinians, but also under the confusing and unintelligible doctrine of the inward light, the Quakers confused their own thoughts (and sometimes carnal desires) with the guidance of the Holy Spirit. The Quakers had created their own language that even Leslie admitted he did not always grasp. So when they ostensibly endorsed major creeds and claimed to value the historical Jesus and the atonement, they actually had a secret meaning that spiritualized the bodily resurrection of Christ and the saints. Leslie backed up his charges with extensive quotations from Fox, Edward Burrough, Francis Howgill, Whitehead, and Penn.53 Rather surprisingly, there were only scattered references to Barclay. Since few of the Friends and opponents would have had access to the original tracts being discussed, it remains questionable whether either attack or defense had any effect except in confirming already held positions. One effect of the vigorous pamphlet war was that the Meeting for Sufferings had weighty Friends read the writings of earlier and more recent writers and compile statements of their beliefs.54 Finally, it is necessary to assess the vitality of the Friends in the decade before 1700, although conclusions need to be tentative. Nicholas Morgan’s detailed investigation of Lancaster has shown that an emphasis on maintaining the discipline helped keep the meetings there vital and growing long into the eighteenth century. He believes this trend was general in the northern counties. In the 1690s, the Norwich Friends attracted many new members and built several new meeting houses with the result that the Anglican ministers and Bugg became so fearful that they challenged the Friends to a debate and drew up for Parliament a petition against the Quakers that they

53. Leslie, Snake in the Grass (1697), 13, 18–­19, 35, 43–­46, 77, 95, 109, 118, 122, 140, 150, 229, 241; Joseph Wyeth, Primitive Christianity Continued . . . (London: Tace Sowle, 1698), was a 548-­page refutation of Leslie. 54. LSF, SDMM, III, 160 (October 12, 1696), 160 (November 30, 1696).

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attempted to get other nonconformists to support.55 Reports to the London Yearly Meeting show many convincements, the building of new meeting houses, and a general prosperity of what the Friends called “truth.” In contrast, in the London and Middlesex Quarterly Meetings, the number of marriages in this decade compared with the previous period declined from 546 to 455—­a decrease of more than 20 percent—­and stayed at that level in the next decade. A study of Colchester found that the 1690s brought a precipitous decline in membership.56 Internal and external migration makes a numerical evaluation of the Friends difficult, but the reports in minutes do not give the impression that weighty members thought the Society was in decline. Compared with the dramatic events of the preceding decades, the period from 1690 to 1700 seems pedestrian, but by gaining some relief from oaths and methods of collecting tithes, embracing orthodox doctrines, defeating schismatics, and professing loyalty to the government, the Friends in Britain successfully negotiated the transition from being a persecuted minority to being a tolerated dissenting community and helped protect the Quakers in Pennsylvania who retained political power and religious unity.

55. David Wykes, “The Norfolk Controversy: Quakers, Parliament and the Church of England in the 1690s,” Parliamentary History 24 (2005): 27–­39; LSF, SDMM, II, 266, 270–­71 (March 27, 1699). 56. William Beck and T. Frederick Ball, The London Friends Meetings (London: F. Bowyer Kitto, 1869), 90; Davies, Quakers in English Society, 163, 261. Marriage statistics for all of England show only a slight decline. See Braithwaite, SPQ, 459.

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Quaker Life and Communities at the Turn of the Century Emma Lapsansky-­Werner

In 1685, thirty-­year-­old Elizabeth Bathurst died. Notwithstanding the brevity of her life, she had been a significant contributor to the theological discourse of England’s Quaker community, authoring a defense of women’s religious leadership while she was still in her twenties.1 In 1691, to memorialize her, Bathurst’s Quaker community republished Truth’s Vindication . . . , her 1679 tract outlining a Quaker’s position on biblical scriptures.2 The reprinting, augmented by commentaries from two influential Quakers, celebrated the beauty of her death. The message was clear: a rightly ordered life leads to a peaceful death. Over the next century, Bathurst’s pamphlet would be reprinted more than a half dozen times as an invitation and admonition to young Quakers.3 Moreover, in the early 1690s, Thomas Northcott, 1. Carol Dale Spencer, “Quakers in Theological Context,” in The Oxford Handbook of Quaker Studies, ed. Stephen W. Angell and Pink Dandelion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 141–­57 (143). 2. Rosemary Moore further discusses Bathurst’s theological position in chapter 7. 3. The original text was Elizabeth Bathurst, Truth’s Vindication; or, A Gentle Stroke to Wipe Off the Foul Aspersions . . . Cast upon . . . Quakers (London: s.n., 1679). See also Elizabeth Bathurst, The Sayings of Women . . . (Shoreditch: Andrew Sowle, 1683); Elizabeth Bathurst, Truth Vindicated by the Faithful Testimony and Writings of . . . Elizabeth Bathurst . . . (London: Tace Sowle, 1691. Later imprints include London: Tace Sowle,

a Quaker printer, reissued a compilation of some of the writings of Joan Vokins, Bathurst’s comrade in the mission to reenergize Christianity. Celebrating the fact that Vokins’s “father, husband, and children all came to receive the truth, and her husband is now a sufferer for the truth . . . and her eldest son the same (at Reading Gaol),” the tract reflected the adversity she and her family had long suffered as part of her dedication to Quaker missionary work.4 The admirers of Bathurst and Vokins were not alone in their conviction that it was important to revere these intrepid leaders who had developed the recipe for a revivified Christianity. The founding generation was passing away. Some of their progeny had departed the Quaker communities, and many, indeed, had departed the country. What was to become of their parents’ works of faith and great travels in the work of the ministry? Bill Ndi, who studies “memory” as a tool for creating literature, describes the writings of George Fox and his followers as “psychological introspection” born of an “inward journey into memory” that became a template for early Quakers’ spiritual autobiographies. Hallmarks of these templates, writes Ndi, are the “humiliations and beatings” suffered by the Friends. These beatings, along with imprisonment (and for some, banishment to forced labor in the West Indies), constituted “ties between converts . . . [that] pulled their forces together.”5 Indeed, the writings of the early Friends often conform to the common Christian-­convert template: the memory of profligate experience before conversion followed by dramatic awakening and a celebration of the glorious transformation of being brought unto the grace of God. Embellishing this Christian pattern by descriptions of “sufferings,” Quaker narratives were woven from the memories of such transformative experiences. However, beginning in the 1690s, rather than being created out of memory, the narratives of the first generation of the Friends increasingly were rewoven into memory as a new generation of the Quakers constructed

1705; London: The Assigns of Jane Sowle, 1731; London: Mary Hinde, 1773; London: Mary Hinde, 1774; London: J. Phillips, 1788). Also see Howard R. Macy, “Quakers and Scripture,” in Angell and Dandelion, Oxford Handbook of Quaker Studies, 187–­201 (189). 4. Joan Vokins [et al.], God’s Mighty Power Magnified . . . (London: Thomas Northcott, 1691). 5. Bill F. Ndi, “Quakers, Memory, and the Past in Literature,” in Outward Evil, Inward Battle: Human Memory in Literature, ed. Benjamin Hart Fishkin, Adaku T. Ankkumah, Festus Fru Ndeh, and Bill F. Ndi (Bamenda: Langaa Research and Publishing, 2013), 4–­11.

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its inner lives and communities on a foundation of chronicles of, and by, their forebears. Beginning in the 1650s, the Quakers in the British Isles described their experience of what they called “convincement”—­the process of awakening to their own sin and being shown, by what they labeled an “inward light,” how to cleanse themselves and their communities of that sin. That state of transformation, which Fox described as “that state in which Adam was before he fell,” was achievable, they believed, through self-discipline and self-­ abnegation.6 By insulating themselves from the corrupt ideas and people of the “world” and embracing a regimen of devout worship, austerity, and community loyalty, they aimed to achieve what Robert Barclay described succinctly as the goal of Quaker worship: “When assembled, the great work of one and all ought to be to wait upon God, and returning out of their own thoughts and imaginations, to feel the Lord’s presence and know a gathering into his Name.”7 Barclay also made clear that the essential spiritual authority lay not with the individual alone but with the individual’s submission to the shared authority of the Quakers’ group discernment process. For that first generation of the Friends, convincement was a commitment to a faith balanced on a sensitive precipice lit by the individual’s “candle” but tethered by “many candles lighted and put in one place.” In that circumstance, argued Barclay, “there is more of the glory of God, and his power appears to the refreshment of each individual for that he partakes not only of the Light and Life raised in himself but in all the rest” of the gathered worshipers.8 For these first publishers of truth, religious transformation was personal, immediate, palpable, embedded in the group process, and describable in words. Having experienced this equivalent of the burning bush that brought enlightenment to the biblical Moses, seventeenth-­century Quakers aimed to invite others to share their experience. With the passing of many of the first generation of the publishers of truth, however, there were new challenges to the form and meaning of “waiting” and “gathering.” How would the truth discovered by the seventeenth-­ century visionaries be transmitted to a new generation? Would the transition into the next century portend a spiritual decline, wherein the forebears’ light dimmed and the Friends’ communities stagnated, both numerically and spiritually? Or was this a period that “in many cases produced a very 6. Fox, Journal (ed. Smith), 27–­28. 7. Barclay, Apology, 296. 8. Barclay, 322.

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high type of saint”?9 In terms of spiritual and numerical growth or loss for the Quakers, was this a period of “either/or” or “both/and”? How might the memories and the exemplary lives of Quakers such as Vokins, Barclay, and Bathurst help sustain the work of reaching “the great people to be gathered”?10 Rufus Jones and others who have examined the latter part of the “second period” of Quakerism have posited analyses that, while tantalizing and provocative, also invite new ways to listen to the concerns and motivations that lay behind the Quakers’ second period choices. Some inchoate questions that shaped the Quakers’ inquiry as they entered the eighteenth century might be framed thus: Is it really true that mere mortals can achieve, individually and communally, that state of innocence and purity enjoyed by Adam before he ate that apple? Can humans dwell so solidly in that prelapsarian state that we not only resist temptation but in fact lose our taste for, and curiosity about, the sin represented by Eve, the serpent, and the apple? Could the right environment, leadership, and culture bring humans to “that state in which Adam was before he fell”? If socially constructed innocence is possible, what environment, parameters, behaviors, and tools are required for the task? How will success be measured? Conversely, what will be the indications of failure? Anxiety about these questions framed the experience of the biological and spiritual children of the first publishers of truth. William Penn had left a tangible blueprint for how to use an environment to construct innocence. Shaping his ideas out of his close friendship with Fox, his travels among the Friends in Ireland and Germany with comrades such as George Keith,11 his knowledge of Barclay’s experience in the East New Jersey colony of North America, and his familiarity with Enlightenment philosopher John Locke’s vision for North Carolina (1664) and the devastation in London during the Great Fire of 1666, Penn envisioned Philadelphia in both mystical and practical terms. He intended an experimental environment that would provide physical safety and prosperity while 9. HCLSC, Rufus M. Jones Papers, Box 58, Rufus Jones to Emma Cadbury, January 30, 1945, and cited in Alice Southern, “The Rowntree History Series and the Growth of Liberal Quakerism, 1895–­1925” (MPhil thesis, University of Birmingham, 2010), 79. 10. Fox, Journal (ed. Smith), 83; and compare with Fox, Journal (ed. Nickalls), 104. “To be gathered” is an Ellwood addition but would have been the form known at the end of the century. For further details of memorialization, see Allen in chapter 4. 11. See Allen in chapter 5.

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promoting spiritual purity.12 But if a human’s return to innocence was to be socially constructable, there would have to be a way to ensure the succession of leadership in the godly communities. In his Journal, Fox recounted his experience of 1652: perched on Pendle Hill in Lancashire, he perceived Christ revealing “a great people” to be gathered into the community of truth publishers.13 By the time of Fox’s death in 1691, it was nevertheless clear that the “gathering” was not complete and that the road to the gathering still had many obstructions. Indeed, in the final decades of the seventeenth century, the communities of the Religious Society of Friends of the Truth encountered a number of critical junctions, the interplay between which would carry dramatic implications for their future. The first of these new realities was the passing away of the first generation of the Quakers who had shaped Quakerism’s early theology and organization. By 1700, they were aging and dying off. Who would serve in their stead, and how would they sustain the Quaker community’s delicate balance between nonconformity and discipline and between individuality and community discipline? A legacy that valued spontaneity and unconventionality alongside unity and harmony would chart a treacherous road to follow. The second change involved transitions in the broader political climate following the revolution of 1688. Such changes, relieving some of the decades-­old tensions in British society, melted away many of the anvils against which the Quakers had forged their theology. Devoid of the “sufferings and beatings” that fueled, and resulted from, the Friends’ “psychological introspection,” what would provide the ties to pull the Quaker forces together? A third important post-­1690 variation was what might be called the “changing geography of community.” As the century drew to a close, the Quakers were among the growing number who, by choice or by coercion, boarded ships that transported them far away from their known world and tossed them into the volatile economy and myriad mysteries of the emerging Atlantic world.14 In a way that is difficult to grasp in the modern world of 12. Anthony N. B. Garvan, “Proprietary Philadelphia as Artifact,” in The Historian and the City, ed. Oscar Handlin and John Burchard (Boston: Harvard and MIT Universities, 1963), 177–­201. 13. See note 10. 14. See James P. Horn, “‘To Parts beyond the Seas’: Free Immigration to the Chesapeake in the Seventeenth Century,” in To Make America: European Emigration in the Early Modern Period, ed. Ida Altman and James P. Horn (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 90. Also see representative ship’s registers. For example, http://​genealogy​-quest​ .com​/​immigration​-records​/​1664​-1666​-transported​- quakers/ (accessed January 31,

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instant communication, early eighteenth-­century Quakers, as they spread out in families or small groups, were cast into a world of intense isolation. The emigration from British homelands had multiple motivations. Some Quakers headed abroad to deliver their message to the “great people to be gathered.” Others were part of the 1680s migration that relocated many from Wales and elsewhere in the British Isles to Pennsylvania on the promise of political and cultural independence and relief from religious persecution.15 Some found that their faith resulted in their being bound out to provide labor for sugar planters in the British Caribbean Islands, resulting in scores of Quakers in Jamaica and enough in Barbados to support several meeting houses. Still other Friends chose to join their compatriots in the race for commercial profits on the other side of the Atlantic. Despite their apparent assemblage, however, the New World Quakers—­surrounded by Anglicans (and/or by Catholics or other varieties of Protestants), far outnumbered by Africans in the Caribbean, and separated by an ocean from their theological moorings—­welcomed visits from overseas. The Quaker travelers carried community news and printed tracts and official “epistles” between these outposts and the established communities on the other side of the Atlantic, and this helped both contingents in their efforts to stay emotionally and theologically unified. Sometimes weather extremes and illnesses sidetracked good intentions to visit or send letters. And there were other distractions too. The fact that some of the Barbadian Quakers had become extremely wealthy by 1680 suggests that some attention was turned more toward economic gain than toward spiritual matters.16 In Barbados, Jamaica, North Carolina, Virginia, 2016). For further details, see Frederick B. Tolles, Atlantic Community of the Early Friends (London: Friends’ Historical Society, 1952), and Allen in chapter 5. 15. Richard C. Allen, “In Search of a New Jerusalem: A Preliminary Investigation into Welsh Quaker Emigration to North America c.1660–­1750,” QS 9, no. 1 (September 2004): 31–­53. 16. Jordans Meeting, Buckinghamshire, England, “Quakers in the World,” http://​www​ .quakersintheworld​.org​/q​ uakers​-in​-action​/2​ 68 (accessed January 15, 2015). For details of some Quakers banished to the Caribbean islands in the 1660s, see “Genealogy Quest,” http://​genealogy​- quest​.com​/​immigration​-records​/​1664​-1666transported​ -quakers/ (accessed January 14, 2015). For wealthy Quakers in Barbados, see Richard S. Dunn, “The Barbados Census of 1680: Profile of the Richest Colony in English America,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 26, no. 1 (1969): 3–­30. In their visits, Fox (1671), William Edmundson, and Benjamin Lay (1731) felt called upon to caution the Barbados Quakers about the buying, selling, and enslaving of Negroes. See Kristen Block, “Quaker Evangelization in Early Barbados: Forging a Path toward

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Maryland, and Pennsylvania, abundant land, and the slaves to exploit that land, competed for late seventeenth-­century Quakers’ attention.17 Meanwhile, the Quakers in England took note of the risks the Friends faced as they dispersed across the globe. In 1691, James Parke, reminding fellow Friends to “walk in the truth of god,” addressed himself to “all Friends Everywhere, scattered up and down in the world.”18 From the 1650s to the early eighteenth century, when Quaker visitors from England—­including Elizabeth Hooten (1661), George Fox (1671), and William Edmundson (1671, 1675, 1682)—­made visits to the Quakers in Barbados, they often registered their concern that their co-­religionists were contaminated by the secular world. Especially worrisome was the seductive attraction of owning bound African labor. And the “scattering” was not just to the Caribbean. From the middle of the seventeenth century, the Quakers were among the host of “Old World” dwellers who set out, in unprecedented numbers, to explore and put their stamp on the wider world. Beyond Europe to North America, with a few venturing as far afield as the Middle East,19 Quaker missionaries and entrepreneurs traveled in ones and twos, or in small families, carrying the “good news” to new ears. The result was that the Quaker “communities,” often small to begin with, increasingly found themselves widely dispersed, huddled in tiny clusters among populations who neither understood nor sympathized with their mission. One way to comprehend this dispersal of the Friends is to visit the array of still-­extant seventeenth-­century meeting houses in Britain, America, and the Caribbean. To make such visits is to be reminded of how few of these Quaker gathering places could have accommodated more than a handful

the Unknowable,” in Quakers and Abolition, ed. Brycchan Carey and Geoffrey Plank (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2014), 89–­105. Also see Allen in chapter 5. 17. See Dunn, “The Barbados Census of 1680.” Also see the discussion of abundant land near Philadelphia in James T. Lemon, The Best Poor Man’s Country: A Geographical Study of Early Southeastern Pennsylvania (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972), 42–­70. Another enlightening discussion of the distractions of abundant land and of economic temptations can be found in Barry Levy, “Tender Plants: Quaker Farmers and Children in the Delaware Valley, 1681–­1735,” Journal of Family History 3 (1978): 116–­35. 18. James Parke, A General Epistle to All Friends Everywhere, Scattered up and down in the World . . . ([London:] T. S. [Tace Sowle], 1691), 12. 19. Rosemary Moore, “Seventeenth-­Century Context and Quaker Beginnings,” in Angell and Dandelion, Oxford Handbook of Quaker Studies, 20. Also see Allen in chapters 2 and 5.

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of worshipers.20 To state the case another way, the abundance of so many tiny early eighteenth-­century meeting houses is evidence of just how “scattered” and isolated Friends were. Ironically, the evangelical zeal that led the Quakers on missions to faraway places increasingly resulted in attenuated “communities” struggling to maintain the critical mass needed to sustain theological and cultural cohesion across diverse economic, technological, political, and cultural environments. Eighteenth-­century Quakers thus found themselves with thinly stretched ranks to carry on the “Lamb’s War” and challenged to maintain unity and morale when they were a minority presence in all the places they inhabited, including the Quaker showpiece colony of Pennsylvania. Indeed, for all its visionary potential, Pennsylvania, accessible to European Quakers only by a long and arduous ocean crossing, was arguably an early prototype of the travails that would be encountered by the increasingly scattered and attenuated Quaker communities. By 1699, when Penn made his last visit to his “Woods” on the banks of America’s Delaware River, accompanied by his daughter Letitia, the only one of his children who remained in the Quaker fold, he was disappointed and frustrated to see the inhabitants disgruntled and seemingly rudderless in a distant and hostile world.21 Penn had been convinced that the components needed for such a society included a well-­planned physical environment, a government built on the Quaker principles of fairness and nonviolence, and a properly educated and committed citizenry.22 But economic priorities and political competition often overshadowed spiritual goals. In terms of economics, the second-­period Friends encountered some unintended consequences of historical simultaneity: rapid modernization, with improved navigation equipment, which enhanced the reliability of travel to distant destinations, and a new efficiency in printing techniques, which heralded a wider dissemination of ideas. Europeans’ imaginations 20. Catherine C. Lavoie,“Quaker Beliefs and Practices and the Eighteenth-­Century Development of the Friends Meeting House in the Delaware Valley”; and Bernard L. Herman, “Eighteenth-­Century Quaker Houses in the Delaware Valley and the Aesthetics of Practice,” in Quaker Aesthetics: Reflections on a Quaker Ethic in American Design and Consumption, ed. Emma Lapsansky and Anne A. Verplanck (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), 156–­87, 188–­211. 21. Hugh Barbour and J. William Frost, The Quakers (Richmond, Ind.: Friends United Press, 1988), 75–­90. 22. Penn’s vision, and the Frame of Government by which he hoped to achieve that vision, is well chronicled in J. William Frost, A Perfect Freedom: Religious Liberty in Pennsylvania (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993).

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expanded as abundant land, banking and credit, and inexpensive bound labor fueled the lure of riches from transatlantic commerce even as Enlightenment ideas signaled a rising faith in human possibilities. New horizons in general, and Philadelphia in particular, promised an economic bonanza. Could a religion that had its origins in the beleaguered and war-­torn seventeenth-­century rural English countryside survive in a bustling international economy? Perhaps these clustered realities of the post-­1690 years were not simply the context for the Quakers’ religious experience in the second period; perhaps these realities were the experience of the second period. Still, many late-­second-­period Friends continued to believe it possible to bring about a godly community on earth even as they struggled with the anxiety that their numbers might be so decimated by death, emigration, and attrition that they would lack the critical mass to affect and erect that environment. Thus as the old leaders were dying, their introspection made a subtle shift from a focus on the memory of how they experienced their own convincement to an emphasis on how to persuade their offspring to reembody their experience and take their places on the front lines in the “Lamb’s War.” Gradually, as the Quakers understood that the road to the gathered community was longer and bumpier than their forebears had imagined, the focus of their publications changed. After 1691, the theme of “This is what we Quakers believe and therefore what we do” merged into a voice that stressed, “This is what we Quakers do, and it reflects what we believe.” It is perhaps not a coincidence that the cosmopolitan and distant Philadelphia was the scene of a major tempest among the Friends, ignited around the Scottish Friend George Keith, who arrived in Philadelphia in 1689 to head the Quaker school that Penn envisioned would initiate the next generation of Quaker children into the wisdom of their forebears. Keith seemed the ideal choice to represent Quaker ideals to the colony’s youth. Having traveled for several years with Penn and Fox and having helped establish a Quaker meeting in New Jersey, Keith was well grounded in Quaker culture. Nevertheless, on the heels of several years of controversy over theological interpretations, during which he tried out his ideas on the Quaker communities among the Atlantic colonies, a frustrated Keith eventually returned to England and became an Anglican priest and later came back to Philadelphia to attempt to convert the Quakers to Anglicanism.23

23. Barbour and Frost, Quakers, 343–­44. Also see Frost in chapter 9.

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To what degree the controversy resulted from Keith’s isolation in the “Quaker” colony cannot be documented. However, the fact that the colony had grown from a few hundred residents in 1682, most of them Quakers, to more than two thousand in 1700, most of whom were not Quakers, raises questions about the degree to which the controversy stemmed from the fact that Friends such as Keith, scattered across the globe, found scant numbers of like-­minded comrades among whom to buttress their confidence about the truth. Henry Cadbury, documenting the “Church in the Wilderness,” described the mental anguish and perceptual distortion experienced by the Quakers in isolated areas of eighteenth-­century North Carolina.24 The printed epistles, sent out from London and circulated slowly and laboriously among the Friends across the world, were a poor substitute for the “many candles lighted and put in one place” that nourished peers on the other side of the Atlantic. Keith was far away in Philadelphia in the winter of 1691 while Penn was in London at Fox’s deathbed, where he is said to have witnessed Fox reassuring his followers that “the seed of God reigns over all.”25 Separated from London and surrounded by a profit-­minded cohort among whom only a few were as highly educated as he, Keith must have looked with despair at the hundreds of vacant lots purchased by distant Friends who had never made the treacherous, two-­month ocean crossing to claim them. Might some of the challenges faced by the Quakers at the turn of the eighteenth century stem from the distinct but interdynamic phenomena outlined here? With the passing of the young leaders whose energy, passion, and organizational skills had fueled the growth of Quakerism and the geographical distances that attenuated their little communities, how would the Quakers stoke the embers of a fire that many feared was dying with their founders’ deaths? The Keithian schism was but one of the trials that beset the Quakers, individually and collectively, as they aimed to maintain unity in a physically dispersed community that lacked consistent central governance. The lack of a centralized creed would bedevil the Friends for generations to come, even as little bands of Quakers repeatedly designed schools, prisons, mental hospitals, study centers, and other isolated “alternative communities.” 24. Henry J. Cadbury, The Church in the Wilderness: North Carolina Quakerism as Seen by Visitors (Greensboro: North Carolina Friends Historical Society, 1948). This was a lecture delivered at the 251st Session of North Carolina Yearly Meeting. 25. H. Larry Ingle, First among Friends: George Fox and the Creation of Quakerism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 284. See Ingle’s note on his sources.

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Was the energy for building the godly community indeed dying with its leaders? With the Toleration Act, there seemed to follow an ebbing of some of the torque, tension, and dramatic sacrifice that had attracted new converts from among England’s discontented. In addition, many of the Friends seemed chastened by the 1692 London Yearly Meeting Epistle, which advised the Friends to live “a quiet life,” “mind their own business in God’s holy fear,” and maintain a “peaceable subjection” to civil authorities.26 Certainly, after 1690, many Quaker leaders reduced (though they refused to abandon) their nonconformist rhetoric. Increasingly, the Friends would define their uniqueness along a fine line between proudly sectarian “peculiarity” and vigorous participation in the emerging capitalism of their world.27 A traditional Irish fisherman’s prayer beseeches God’s protection, because “the sea is so wide, and my boat is so small.” As the Friends watched their leaders die, Penn and George Whitehead were among the several thousand Friends who contributed their share of “tears and groans” at Fox’s funeral, and they surely wondered who would carry on the work of publishing truth.28 At Fox’s deathbed instruction that they continue the work of carrying the truth of the Religious Society of Friends across the world, did the Quakers beseech God for protection in the face of a sea so wide and a boat so small? Radiating out from the North of England, through London, and spreading across the modern world, seventeenth-­century Quaker voyagers had made Quakerism. Even before nineteenth-­century philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson popularized the notion of the oversoul, insisting that “nothing is at last sacred but the integrity [of ] your own mind,”29 Quaker founders had glimpsed that same dim horizon of personal integrity and social justice. And these seventeenth-­century Friends, having made Quakerism, were bent on finding ways to make Quakers: a new generation who would understand, viscerally, their parents’ truth that individuals could usher in the kingdom of heaven simply by upholding passionate obedience to the still, small voice within. The voice of Christ, teaching his people 26. LYM, A Collection of the Epistles from the Yearly Meeting of Friends in London . . . 1675 to 1820 (New York: Samuel Wood, 1821), 54; and cited in Robynnne Rogers Healey, “Quietist Quakerism, 1692–­c.1805,” in Angell and Dandelion, Oxford Handbook of Quaker Studies, 49. 27. Healey, “Quietist Quakerism,” 57–­59. 28. Ingle, First among Friends, 284. 29. Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Edna H.  L. Turpin (repr., New York: Charles E. Merril, 1907), 84.

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himself (even when or maybe even especially when that voice dictated unconventionality or opposition to the prevailing societal authorities), should be the most important guide. Yet having made Quakerism, how would they go about making Quakers? Perhaps one of the best places to begin to make a Quaker boat big enough to navigate a wide sea was by making Quakers from the next generation of their own families. Their own families, of course, had the obvious advantage of proximity. The importance of transmitting their truth to their offspring, however, carried a layer of meaning beyond mere proximity: to have offspring who failed to take up the mission called into question not only the future of the mission but also the worth and validity of the mission’s past. If the truth discovered by the First Publishers was real, ought not its reality be obvious to those who lived in the households of its discoverers? There was cause for anxiety. Vokins’s family may have embraced the Quaker spirit after her death, and so did Margaret Fell’s daughters and their husbands, but there is ample evidence that not every Quaker family was so successful in passing on its legacy. Fell’s son did not share his mother’s version of Christianity, nor did Penn’s surviving sons, despite their father’s many writings about how to raise children.30 Perhaps one way to reach the Quakers’ children was to show them the elegance of their parents’ deaths and encourage them to understand that such deaths resulted from a particular kind of virtuous life. In 1691, aware that he was in his twilight years, Ambrose Rigge offered this advice: “Seek those things which belong to eternal peace, happiness, tranquility and rest with god, when time in this world shall be no more.” Rigge continued, “The means which god hath appointed to bring his salvation to all mankind is his inward and spiritual grace and truth . . . as all mankind comes to hear and obey, they through [Christ] will be saved . . . lay aside all your imaginary crosses of gold silver wood and stone . . . and now this testimony I must leave to the world, that god has sent his good spirit into the hearts of the children of men to be their guide, leader and director in all things relating to his kingdom.”31 Rigge was part of a rising tide aiming to lift the small boat of Quakerism. Beginning in the 1690s, many families and communities of influential first publishers of truth republished their parents’ writings, usually with the added value of calling attention to three particular aspects of the founding Friends’ 30. William Penn, More Fruits of Solitude . . . (London: Thomas Northcott, 1693), 2–­6. 31. Ambrose Rigge, The Spiritual Guide of Life, Offered . . . to All Mankind . . . (London: s.n., 1691), 3.

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experiences: first, the peaceful death to which their devout lives entitled them; next, the degree to which their families, especially their offspring, admired and emulated their parents’ lives; and lastly, the special mantle bestowed on the Quakers as a result of their parents’ exemplary lives.32 In the absence of a religious official to ordain new leaders, recognition of the Quaker heritage among families was often equivalent to being anointed by a church official. In 1679, Elizabeth Bathurst, then only twenty-­four years old, had drawn on familiar Quaker language such as divine light, truth, original sin, and “inward baptism” to give shape to her conviction that people should not be baptized as babies. This was because there is nothing in the scriptures that makes reference to the baptizing of babies and because true baptism comes only by way of personal experience.33 Thus, after her death, Bathurst’s family could draw on their collective memory to remind young and old that a rightly ordered life leads to a peaceful death.34 It was often the function of the women’s meetings to advise on the way of life, as in the following passage: Wee are heartily sorry to see so much superfluity & such great pride, that the Lords anger is greatly kindled against it, & a loathing in the soules of all the senceable ones whereupon wee are concern’d to bear a testimony against all pride & vanity in apparrell, rufles, phantastichall high dresses, gaudy attire flower’d and striped silks of divers colours leaden sleeves & all immodest aparrell unbecoming the modesty & gravity of our Christian profession; likewise vain & superfluous furniture and things that are for ostentation & pride, more than for service in their houses.35

Parke also reflected the tone of the new Quaker voice. In addition to admonishing young people to be “just, true and faithful in bearing their testimony against Wars and fightings with carnal weapons, and against tythes 32. In 1738, the London Yearly Meeting gave this status an official name: “birthright Friend.” This designation accrued to the children of Quaker parents regardless of whether the children themselves had personally experienced convincement. See John Faulder, Remarks on the Birthright Membership of the Society of Friends (London: Charles Gilpin, 1843). 33. Bathurst, Truth’s Vindication, 27–­33. 34. Bathurst, unpaginated introduction. 35. SHC, 6189/1/1/20 and 21, “From Our Quarterly Meeting in London the 5th of 5th mo [ July] 1697,” signed by a number of London women Friends.

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and offerings,” he advised them to be wary of “all manner of deceit, guile, and hypocrisie [sic] . . . double-­dealing, dissimulation, whispering, tale-­bearing, covetousness, love of money, lying, slandering, judging, hatred, prejudice, enmity, envy, strife, contention, pride.” Alongside Parke’s recipe for what young people should be doing ran his advice to aging Friends to do their part in inspiring the next generation: Elderly men and women . . . be a good example in plainness, purity and holiness unto the younger men, women and children in your lives and conversations . . . [stick to] that which is grave and savoury . . . so that the younger look at you who are elder . . . will be apt to follow your example . . . apparel plain and modest . . . sobriety and moderation . . . you that are rich and have plenty of created comforts in this world, let not your table become your snare, nor that which was given to you for your welfare become your trap, and withhold any of you from God, or from your duty . . . [be careful about] eating and drinking at marriage feasts or other feasts . . . [refrain from] gluttony, rioting and wantonness . . . [be] fervent in prayer.36

There is an equally unmistakable level of anxiety in Abigail Fisher’s admonition, published in 1690 (republished in more strident form in 1694), apparently aimed at young people who attended Friends’ gatherings but appeared not to be fully engaged in the Quaker modes of behavior: “A few lines in true love to such that frequent the Meetings of the People called Quakers, and love to hear the sound of truth, but are not yet come to obey the testimony of it, that they may also hear and learn to read at home.” Fisher wanted these young people not only to hear the sound of truth in the Quaker gatherings and at home but also to remember that only their commitment to the larger Friends’ identity and endeavors would bring them peace: There are some that frequently come amongst the People of the Lord, that have not yet given diligent heed to the witness of God in them, nor to the many Testimonies of the Servants of the Lord that comes amongst them . . . Do you not desire to be of that number that quakes and trembles at the Word of the Lord? . . . The pure Religion is the 36. Parke, A General Epistle, 14–­15. Also see comments on Quaker conduct in Allen in chapter 4.

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same as ever it was; and as you come acquainted with it, it will keep you from the Spots of this ungodly World, Vanities and Follies that are committed therein . . . calling for Purity and Holiness, that ye may be as Gods peculiar People . . . [It] calls us to be a people of one Heart and Mind . . . and will make them desire to appear as children of our one Heavenly Father . . . Therefore dear Friends, be not satisfied with Hearing, but come now, and behold him who is near you, and will tell you all that ever you have done . . . Believe in him, fall down and worship him, who will be worshiped in Spirit and in Truth . . . Retire to your Closets and wait upon him . . . gather to him who is always near you, even in you, and always present with you . . . Acquaint thy self with the Lord, and be at Peace; into which Peace I pray the Lord to gather, and preserve all his Faithful Children together . . . that . . . we may all be ready to be bundled up, and gathered into the Lords Gardner.37

In 1709, John Banks also contributed to the ongoing remonstrations to young people, observing, “While you have a little time . . . the youngest, strongest and wisest of you . . . [should] consider your ways, and be more wise than to live and die in Sin.”38 Elizabeth Jacob’s apprehension, in a work published in 1712, was equally palpable. She began with advice to parents that they should be “good examples to [their] children . . . modeling honesty sobriety humility, daily waiting upon the Lord.” Jacob then reminded parents that “heads of families are, or ought to be, the lord’s ministers under him, ruling their families in the power of love . . . [so as to order] our families rightly.” Having reminded the parents, Jacob proceeded to address young people themselves: The next evil I have to warn the youth of is to beware of an high proud mind . . . Oh you children of believers! . . . I entreat young people . . . [to] be humbled before the lord . . . [and avoid the] dangerous snare . . . [of ] the fellowship and friendship of those who do not profess with us, by which some of our youth, in giving way to frequent walking and conversation with them, have been captivated into unequal marriages by priests . . . Take the apostles’ advice: be not unequally yoked, a 37. Abigail Fisher, A Few Lines in True Love . . . (London: Tace Sowle, 1694), 1–­3, 8. 38. John Banks, To Live Well, Is the Way to Die Well: And to Live Well, Is to Do Well . . . (London: s.n., 1709), 6.

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believer with an unbeliever . . . Therefore ye faithful sons and daughters, keep in humility out of all self-­conceit, and the lord will be with you, as he was with your faithful elders.

She was relentless in her admonition: “Oh, children of believing parents, in whom there is innocency, and upon whom the spots of this world have not yet prevailed . . . the call of the lord is unto you, that you may be of his heritage . . . for you hath he chosen, above all the families of the earth, to shew forth his prase and declare his wonderful works . . . that his glorious work may be carried on.”39 In a religious structure without an organized religious education system, parents were under enormous pressure to get child-­rearing right.40 While it is difficult to measure the degree to which Quaker children were turning their backs on their parents’ faith, it is clear that there was a heavy responsibility upon Quaker parents. Several modern scholars have presented evidence that Quaker parents whose children strayed from the discipline were often marginalized in their meetings.41 Thus, in the 1690s, another way that the Friends rose to the challenge of encouraging their offspring to embrace their vision was to organize Quaker schools to help families pass on the legacy. Perhaps this was especially crucial: the literacy rate in the Western world gradually climbed after 1640, but only a minority of men or women, across all social classes, were encouraged to be skilled readers or writers.42 Were the tracts authored by the Quakers unrepresentative of the total population or of the total Quaker population? Were tracts published by Quaker women dictated rather than penned by the author? In either case, the school chartered by Penn in Philadelphia in 1689, the one from which Keith orchestrated his own downfall, helped cement a concern for “useful” knowledge that would gain velocity over succeeding centuries. 39. Elizabeth Jacob, An Epistle in True Love, Containing a Farewel Exhortation to Friends Families . . . (London: Jane Sowle, 1712), 9. 40. These issues are further discussed by Allen in chapter 4. 41. See J. William Frost, The Quaker Family in Colonial America (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1973); B. Levy, Quakers and the American Family: British Settlement in the Delaware Valley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988); Neva Specht, “Removing to a Remote Place: Quaker Certificates of Removal and Their Significance in Trans Appalachian Migration,” QH 91, no. 1 (Spring 2002): 45–­70 (48–­51). 42. David Cressy, “Levels of Illiteracy in England, 1530–­1730,” Historical Journal 20, no. 1 (March 1977): 1–­23; R. A. Houston, “The Development of Literacy: Northern England, 1640–­1750,” Economic History Review 35, no. 2 (May 1982): 199–­216.

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In 1695, the matter of education came before the yearly meeting in London, following which advice was sent to quarterly and monthly meetings, recommending “an early instruction in the way of Truth, also in the acquirements of useful languages & sciences, and in necessary imployments of labour & industry, suitable to their age, ability and strength.” Concern about the suitability of teachers and adult examples was also part of the advice, and so was the assignment of careful oversight: “It’s recommended to your respective meetings, to take care some weighty suitable Friends goe and inspect schools.” The adults to whom children were exposed outside of school were also carefully screened, “that special care be had that such Children as are fit for Apprentices be put unto honest Friends, that they may be preserved in the way of truth, in habit & language, and encouraged to goe to meetings, the contrary practice having often been seen to be of very ill consequence.” To staff the classrooms, a tactic was suggested that would serve the double purpose of developing Quaker teachers and providing for impecunious Friends: “In order to breed up Schoolmasters it be considered by monthly or quarterly meetings, what poor children of Friends are of a proper genius for learning, that they may be qualified for that imployment at such Meet: or Meetings cost.”43 So began the development of what would become known among the Friends as a “guarded” education. The curriculum for these early schools combined theology with practicality. A widely used text was composed by George Fox and reissued, with additions by various other Friends, at least five times over the succeeding century. Titled Instructions for Right Spelling and Plain Directions for Reading and Writing True English, with Several Delightful Things Very Useful and Necessary, the chapters included “the marks of a true Christian,” “the names which the devil is called by,” and “the names that the children of God are called by,” interspersed with “the table of multiplication,” the alphabet, a glossary, and a table of weights and measures. It included a “child’s lesson,” which began with “Christ is the Truth . . . Christ is the Light . . . Christ is my hope of Glory . . . Christ is my Redeemer” and reminded the little ones,

43. Yearly Meeting Epistle, 1695, in LYM, Epistles from the Yearly Meetings of Friends . . . 1681 to 1857, 2 vols. (London: E. Marsh, 1858), I, 83; LSF, MS Portfolio 32, 120, To the Friends and Brethren of the Monthly and Quarterly Meetings in England and Wales . . . signed on behalf of ye second days morning meeting and meeting for Sufferings in London ye 2d of ye 5th Mo. 1695. For details of Quaker apprenticeships, see Allen in chapter 4.

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“A Child being fallen from the image of God, he hath no Peace . . . A child being in the image of God, he hath Peace.”44 In 1699, Christopher Story was succinct and direct in his instructions to Quaker youth: “Follow the Lamb . . . Do good work. Feed the hungry. Cloathe the naked, entertain strangers, visit the sick and them that are in prison.”45 The multitude of personal and community tasks they had set themselves was, and is, daunting: constant individual prayer; frequent gathered worship; meticulous record keeping; meeting clerking; caring for the physically, economically, and emotionally needy inside and outside of their ranks; maintaining the integrity of the meeting community; and supporting “guarded” schools. By the early eighteenth century, fledgling meetings scattered across North America, parts of northern Europe, and the Caribbean indeed foretold new growth. However, this welcomed expansion also placed heavy demands on older meetings (and the older people therein) to nourish and service that growth. Thus, in this transitional late second period, Quaker writings and strategies acquired a rising urgency that underpinned the Friends’ relationships with their families, their Quaker peers, and their approaches to proselytizing or consolidating, as the Quaker utopias and outposts scattered around the Atlantic basin ran hard up against the realities of their new century: the passing of their leaders, the diminishment of the energy that had fueled new recruits, and an attenuated community. In light of this growth and the work to be done, in 1691 Parke had admonished youth to “do service in your Men and Womens Meetings . . . and frequent our meetings, whom this may concern, leave off such company, and put away all your iniquities  .  .  . and patiently wait for your final change.”46 And sometimes desperate times resulted in desperate measures. Neva Specht notes the alacrity with which new members with questionable credentials were welcomed into eighteenth-­century Pennsylvania frontier meetings and quickly assigned to help manage the meetings’ daily tasks.47 44. George Fox and Ellis Hookes, Instructions for Right Spelling and Plain Directions for Reading and Writing True English . . . (1st ed. London: s.n., 1673; London: Tace Sowle, 1705). Originally published in 1670 with the title A Primmer and Catechism for Children (London: s.n., 1670). Apparently, these small books were passed down to future generations, and there were numerous other reprintings of this work, reaching well into the eighteenth century. See Stephen W. Angell, “The Catechisms of George Fox,” Quaker Theology 9 (Fall–­Winter 2003): 90–­107. 45. Christopher Story, An Epistle of Love and Good Advice . . . (London: s.n., 1699), 10–­12. 46. Parke, A General Epistle. 47. Specht, “Removing to a Remote Place,” 45–­49.

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Not surprisingly, many Quaker writings aiming to recruit young people to undertake some of the load of keeping meetings vibrant echoed Parke’s promise that young people who worked to “keep up and preserve” their monthly and quarterly meetings would be rewarded with a godly “final change.”48 It is unclear whether Parke was describing “convincement” or death as the “final change,” but in either case, he was predicting a positive outcome for proper behavior. Some recent scholarship has focused on the attributes of the “good” Quaker death. H. Larry Ingle describes Penn’s report of Fox’s death: writing to Margaret Fell, who was at home at Swarthmoor Hall, Penn explained that Fox had “died as he lived, a lamb.”49 Fell herself passed away in 1702 at almost eighty-­eight years old after advising her daughters and sons-­in-­law, who attended her in her last illness, “Be quiet, for I am as comfortable, and well in my spirit, as ever I was.”50 In memoriam, her family (daughters Sarah Mead and Mary Lower and their spouses William Mead and Thomas Lower) published “A Testimony from Margaret Fox’s Children, Concerning Their Dear and Honored Mother.” There was a commentary from the daughters thanking their mother for her “Holy Life, and Pious Conversation” and for being a “dear, tender, and loving Mother in all respects” who did “educate and instruct her Children in the Nurture and Fear of the Lord; and constantly exhorted us to keep Humble, that the Blessings of the Lord might be our Portion for ever.”51 The daughters reported that Fell’s religious experience was a critical ingredient both in her death and in her family life: “[She was] a serious, Godly, and devout woman, and she, with most of her family, were convinced of the holy truth . . . And the Lord made her a preacher of righteousness, both in a public testimony for the Truth, and in her Life and conversation. And she continued her zeal and constancy to and for the truth in her diligent attending of weekly meetings, quarter, monthly and other Meetings for Worship.” The daughters, avowing that they had learned their lessons well, declared that “in the time of her sickness, she was in a sweet frame of spirit, and uttered many heavenly expressions near her conclusion in this world, which some of us were eye and ear witness of . . . and we believe she 48. Parke, A General Epistle, 15. 49. Ingle, First among Friends, 284. 50. Margaret Fell et al., A Brief Collection of Remarkable Passages . . . of . . . Margaret Fell . . . (London: Jane Sowle, 1710), 13 (2). The volume also includes remembrances of Fell from the Quaker leaders Thomas Camm, George Whitehead, and Thomas Dockrey. 51. Fell et al., 2–­4.

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is inheriting a heavenly mansion, prepared by the Lord Jesus Christ, for all his faithful followers . . . [so we will] follow her holy example . . . to the end of our day . . . so we may arrive at the same haven of rest and peace.” Their mother had promised them that if they followed her example, they would “not go wrong.”52 Clearly a theme had been established. Banks’s 1709 treatise To Live Well Is the Way to Die Well: And to Live Well Is to Do Well argued that “to live well is to live the Life of Holiness.” He observed that everyone had the option to “live well, and therefore to die well”; that “all might escape the wrath and indignation of God”; and that with “true Repentance, and amendment of your ways . . . it may be well with you at your dying day.”53 Between 1690 and 1715, Quaker publishers, rather than producing fresh material, issued a significant number of reprints of earlier Friends’ works.54 These would become the standards against which the Friends, over succeeding centuries, would take the temperature of their own faith and that of their peers. The most important of the regular Quaker publishers were the various members of the Sowle family. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, the business was managed by Tace Sowle, who was among a small number of women publishers in England who inherited a printing business upon the incapacitation or death of a father or spouse. Early printing was often an extended-­family trade, and Sowle, whose sister was married to William Bradford, who printed Keith’s pamphlet on slavery, continued her printing business until she died at age eighty-­four in 1749.55 Her 1703 catalog is instructive. It included many titles by luminaries of the generation now gone, including George Fox, Margaret Fell, Robert Barclay, John Tompkins, Samuel Fisher, John Whitehead, and John Crook. The language and topics of these publications reinforce the Quaker lexicon and themes developed and cemented in the minds of the First Publishers when they were in the prime of their leadership: terms such as oaths, sacraments, sin, baptism, inward light, gathered, perfection, plain, sober, and leadings abound. Also on Sowle’s list are several of Fox’s writings, including a number of his advices on maintaining the integrity of Quaker communities. Fox called on the faithful to monitor the Friends’ communities closely: “Give notice one 52. Fell et al., 3–­5. 53. Banks, To Live Well, 8. 54. This slowdown in publications was not unique to Quakers. However, the fact that the Quaker publications increasingly focused on what might be called “behaviors” rather than on “visions” is an important aspect of the change in Quaker publishing. 55. See http://​quip​.quaker​.org​/​tsowle​.htm (accessed February 1, 2015).

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to another if there be any that walkes not in the truth . . . and have gone from truth and so dishonoureth God . . . [They should] be ordered from the meeting to go and exhort such.” Such monitoring, advised Fox, should weed out “any that professe the truth that follows pleasures drunkenness, gamings or is not faithfull in their callings and dealings nor honest nor just but runs into debt and so brings a scandal upon the truth; Friends may give notice to the general meeting and some may be ordered to go and exhort them and bring in their answer to the next general meeting.”56 Bound up in Keith’s Philadelphia theological cyclone was the publication of a treatise in which he outlined what would become prophetic advice for the next generations of Quakers: “In true Christian love, we earnestly recommend it to our Friends and Brethren, Not to buy any Negroes, unless it be on purpose to set them free.”57 Keith was neither the first nor the last Quaker to fret over the dangers and sinfulness of slavery. But since many Quakers’ livelihoods were entwined in occupations that either directly or indirectly involved slavery and the slave trade, antislavery voices were often muted, if not silenced. Nevertheless, Keith’s admonitions added fuel to the kindling previously laid by Fox, Edmundson, and the Quaker communities at Darby and Germantown in Pennsylvania. In a sluggish and wobbling motion, over the decades following the second period, both Britain and its colonies would agree that a stand against slavery would be a measure of Quaker convincement. By the end of the eighteenth century, several Quaker yearly meetings had declared slaveholding a disownable offense, and abolitionism was on the rise among the standards of belief that many Friends embraced as an adhesive that pulled their forces together.58 Nevertheless, until well into the nineteenth century, a minority of the Friends continued to hold both slaves and meeting membership until, through disownment,

56. [George Whitehead], George Fox, A Collection of Many Select and Christian Epistles, Letters and Testimonies . . . (London: Tace Sowle, 1698), 264. 57. George Keith, An Exhortation and Caution to Friends concerning Buying or Keeping of Negroes (New York: William Bradford, 1693), 2. Issued by the Philadelphia Monthly Meeting in October 1693 and generally attributed to Keith or an associate. 58. Keith, An Exhortation and Caution to Friends. For the context of Keith’s publication, with antislavery treatises by eighteenth-­century Friends Benjamin Lay, John Woolman, and Anthony Benezet, see James G. Basker, ed., American Antislavery Writings: Colonial Beginnings to Emancipation (New York: Library of America; Penguin, 2012). For a full analysis of Quaker antislavery writings, see Richard S. Newman, The Transformation of American Abolitionism: Fighting Slavery in the Early Republic (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002).

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ostracizing, and self-­selected attrition, Quaker slave holding slowly withered away.59 Beginning in the 1650s, it had taken only about four decades for a young visionary from Fenny Drayton, in north-­central England, to convince a dedicated cadre of men and women to join him in his mission to plant the seeds of a new iteration of religious truth—­Quakerism—­across a broad swath of the Western world. By the time of Fox’s death in 1691, thousands of his followers had committed themselves to perpetuating the faith, practices, and life choices necessary to sustain the Friends’ communities in a modernizing world. Aiming to purify their own souls and habits and to model, for coming generations, the value of this purity, the second-­period Quakers reconfirmed their insights, sermons, and convictions. Huddling together, even as this huddling often required strenuous travel over long distances, they nurtured each other’s family, educational, economic, and cultural lives, monitoring themselves and the world around them for signs of corruption in the environment. Inspired by the memories of their forebears, the second-­period Friends tried to let their religion guide them to “live better” in the world and “excite their endeavors to mend it.”60 In so doing, they carried forward what became enduring dynasties of religious focus, energies, and commitment that translated into educational, philanthropic, and social-­ reform organizations of wide-­reaching international influence.

59. Jean R. Soderlund, Quakers and Slavery: A Divided Spirit (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985); Elizabeth Cazden, “Quakers, Slavery, Anti-­slavery, and Race,” in Angell and Dandelion, Oxford Handbook of Quaker Studies, 347–­64. 60. William Penn, No Cross, No Crown . . . , 2nd ed. (London: Andrew Sowle, 1682), 82.

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C ha p t e r 1 1

The Friends and Business in the Second Period Richard C. Allen and Rosemary Moore

In the index to William Braithwaite’s Second Period of Quakerism, there is no mention of John Freame, Abraham Darby, or the London Lead Company, while the Lloyd family is referenced only in connection with Quaker history in general, with no discussion of their business interests. It was the groundbreaking work of Arthur Raistrick in the mid-­twentieth century that opened up the field of Quaker involvement in industry.1 Since then, James Walvin, Margaret Ackrill, and Leslie Hannah have looked at their financial practices, while others, notably Frederick Tolles and more recently Richard Greaves, Larry Gragg, and Jordan Landes, have explored the commercial instincts of the Friends involved in British and Irish business networks

1. Works on early Quaker industrialists include Arthur Raistrick, Two Centuries of Industrial Welfare: The London (Quaker) Lead Company, 1692–­1905 (Newcastle-­on-­ Tyne: Kelsall and Davis, 1938, rev. 1977, repr. 1988), 1–­10, 147–­53; Quakers in Science and Industry (London: Bannisdale, 1950, repr. Newton Abbott: David and Charles, 1968), 42–­50, 53–­56, 107–­13, 122–­24, 166–­71; Dynasty of Ironfounders: The Darbys and Coalbrookdale (Newton Abbot: David and Charles, 1970), 1–­49; Humphrey Lloyd, The Quaker Lloyds in the Industrial Revolution (London: Hutchinson, 1975), 3, 9–­12, 16–­36; Emyr Thomas, Coalbrookdale and the Darbys: The Story of the World’s First Industrial Dynasty (York: Sessions, 1999).

and transatlantic trade.2 With the creation of such trade networks, Quaker merchants and plantation owners, alongside missionaries sent from the British Isles, helped establish new Quaker communities in the American and Caribbean colonies.3 These wider business interests and entrepreneurial activities thereafter became a distinguishing feature of early modern Quakerism. The implementation of punitive sanctions against many of the Friends certainly could impinge on commerce, especially as some merchants faced imprisonment, while others could not “sue for debts, nor carry through their transactions with the customs and excise, nor defend their titles, nor give evidence,”4 but caution ought to be exercised, as not all Quaker merchants and businessmen suffered the consequences of the imposition of the penal laws. Indeed, as time passed, many were acknowledged for their industriousness and commercial accomplishments, as well as their hard but honest bargaining, and many became remarkably wealthy. This chapter will thereby take notice of the histories of individual businesses and industrial entrepreneurs, referring to the very early developments at the end of the seventeenth century. In his study of several English Quaker meetings (Lancashire, Gloucestershire/Wiltshire, Buckinghamshire, and two urban centers: Bristol and London/Middlesex), Alan Cole reached several conclusions on the social composition of the Friends.5 Although a significant number of the Quakers were engaged in agriculture, they were not as numerous as those Friends employed in trade, especially in the textile industry. Cole similarly observed that there was a strong following among tailors, shoemakers, 2. Frederick B. Tolles, Meeting House and Counting House: The Quaker Merchants of Colonial Philadelphia, 1682–­1763 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1948); James Walvin, The Quakers: Money and Morals (London: John Murray, 1997), 2, 29–­36, 48–­49, 61, 71, 105–­8; Margaret Ackrill and Leslie Hannah, Barclays: The Business of Banking, 1690–­1996 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 1–­17; Richard L. Greaves, Dublin’s Merchant-­Quaker: Anthony Sharp and the Community of Friends, 1643–­1707 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1998); Larry Gragg, Englishmen Transplanted: The English Colonization of Barbados, 1627–­1660 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), and his The Quaker Community on Barbados: Challenging the Culture of the Planter Class (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2009), especially 22–­27; Jordan Landes, London Quakers in the Transatlantic World: The Creation of an Early Modern Community (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). 3. See Allen in chapters 2 and 5. 4. Braithwaite, BQ, 181. 5. W. Alan Cole, “The Social Origins of the Early Friends,” JFHS 48, no. 3 (Spring 1957): 99–­118.

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and leather workers, and from this premise, he suggested that “the early Friends were mainly drawn from the urban and rural petite bourgeoisie.”6 He noted that there were few “gentlemen” among the Friends, and it was rather those sections of the community who “found their economic position threatened and their political demands frustrated” who turned to Quakerism.7 Cole’s research was taken up by Hugh Barbour several years later, and Barbour suggested that “early Quakerism was a movement of ordinary men.”8 He further argued that by utilizing the probate evidence available, it was possible to suggest that a large proportion of the Friends in the North of England came from a rural background, with an equal amount coming from farming and the wool and cloth trades.9 At the close of the 1960s, Richard Vann reexamined the evidence presented by Cole and Barbour and suggested that his research of the early Friends in Buckinghamshire and Norfolk pointed toward a new conclusion. Vann took issue with Cole’s methodology and findings and argued that the Quakers in the regions he had examined were drawn from the yeomen and trading classes and not from the urban and rural petite bourgeoisie.10 He further felt that Cole had seriously underestimated the number of wealthy members in the earliest years of the movement. Thus Vann suggested that the Friends did not originate from the lower tiers of society that evolved into a more prosperous movement during the remainder of the seventeenth century.11 6. Cole, 117. 7. Cole, 118. 8. Hugh Barbour, The Quakers in Puritan England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964), 1. 9. Barbour, 91. He suggested that of seventy-­nine known wills, forty-­nine testators came from farming backgrounds. 10. Richard T. Vann, “Quakerism and the Social Structure of the Interregnum,” Past and Present 43 (1969): 71–­91 (72, 78), and his The Social Development of English Quakerism, 1655–­1755 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969), 50, 71. 11. Vann, “Quakerism and the Social Structure,” 72. In cooperation with David Eversley, Richard Vann provided a comprehensive survey of Quaker demography and their occupations in England and Ireland. They examined the stated occupations of a large sample of English Quaker bridegrooms and noted that between circa 1650 and 1749, those Friends who were involved in agriculture fell below the national average. Conversely, those involved in commerce were certainly well above the figure for the general population. The most obvious difference with their contemporaries, however, was the absence of people termed “laborers” and “paupers,” which they estimated amounted to less than 5 percent of the total English membership. See Richard T. Vann and David Eversley, Friends in Life and Death: The British and Irish Quakers in the Demographic Transition, 1650–­1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 68–­74.

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Judith Hurwich was similarly drawn to the study of social composition and examined the evidence of the Warwickshire Friends.12 She discovered that between 1663 and 1689, artisans, impoverished husbandmen, and laborers accounted for 57 percent of the Quaker population of Warwickshire.13 Moreover, like Cole’s earlier study, she found little evidence of gentry members among the Quaker meetings.14 The view that the Friends drew support from the lower orders of mid-­seventeenth-­century society was also substantiated by Hurwich from the evidence of the Hearth Tax returns circa 1662–­89. She observed that more than half of the Quaker population were among those occupying a dwelling with one hearth or were otherwise exempt from paying on grounds of their impoverishment.15 Yet, as she indicates, the differences in the social composition of the Friends between counties can be influenced by a variety of factors: from the particular evidence examined, the differing regional economies, and the appeal of the Quaker missionaries to the local population.16 In her summary, she suggested that further studies of the social composition of the Friends would produce a far more helpful picture of the nature of Quakerism and provide a clearer impression of the society’s origins. Soon after the publication of Hurwich’s article, Alan Anderson contributed to the debate on the social composition of the Friends. In his research on Lancaster Quaker wills,17 Anderson supported the conclusions presented by Vann. By examining both the given occupation and their assessed or professed wealth, Anderson found sufficient evidence to suggest that a significant number of the early Friends were drawn from the wealthier section of the community. He similarly acknowledged that the Friends were derived from the middling sorts, especially by

12. Judith J. Hurwich, “The Social Origins of Early Quakers,” Past and Present 48 (1970): 156–­62. Also see her later study, which examined the social composition of dissent and Catholicism in Warwickshire, in “Dissent and Catholicism in English Society: A Study of Warwickshire, 1660–­1720,” Journal of British History 16, no. 1 (1976): 24–­55. 13. Hurwich, “Social Origins,” 159–­60. In the period before 1662, there were a significant number of yeomen (25 percent), but between circa 1663 and 1689, this figure dropped to 11 percent. A corresponding rise in the number of husbandmen (17 percent to 32 percent) during the same period can also be observed. 14. Hurwich, 159–60 (2 percent before 1662 and 1 percent c. 1663–­89). 15. Hurwich, 160–61 (54 percent c. 1662; 57 percent c. 1663–­89). 16. Hurwich, 161. 17. Alan Anderson, “Lancashire Quakers and Persecution 1652–­1670” (MA thesis, University of Lancaster, 1971), 75, 78 (table 3), and his “The Social Origins of the Early Friends,” QH 68, no. 1 (Spring 1979): 33–­40.

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independent landholders and tradesmen,18 at the expense of both the higher and the lower tiers of Lancashire society. Margaret Spufford and Helen Forde also contributed to the analysis of the Friends’ origins. In a brief examination, Spufford looked at the evidence of rural Dissenters in Cambridgeshire, but the sample was acknowledged to be too small to give an accurate picture of the social composition of the Quakers in this county.19 The study produced by Forde on the Derbyshire Friends was, however, a more comprehensive undertaking. Forde observed that there were a substantial number of the Friends involved in agriculture but that it was not possible to determine how many other members derived a secondary living from the land.20 She similarly noted the large numbers involved in the cloth trade as wholesalers, weavers, and tailors, as well as the limited numbers who came from the gentry, professional orders, and “mechanic trades and labouring sorts.”21 The study of social origins was further discussed by Barry Reay, who examined the occupational status of 121 Essex Friends and an additional 30 Colchester members between 1654 and 1664. These figures he compared with earlier studies for Buckinghamshire, Cheshire, Norfolk, Norwich, and Somerset.22 Reay largely accepted the findings that Vann had earlier outlined, which indicated that the Friends were drawn from the “middling

18. Yeomen, 26 percent; husbandmen, 30 percent; traders, 21.2 percent (clothing trades). Unlike Cole’s earlier suggestion that the Friends were drawn from the economically “hard-­pressed,” Anderson suggested that there were more Friends who were worth in their wills between £100 and £500 than those who were worth £10 or less. He nevertheless did accept that the poorer sections of the community would be more likely to die intestate, and this would prejudice the overall picture. See Anderson, “Lancashire Quakers,” 76–­79. 19. Margaret Spufford, “The Social Status of Some Seventeenth-Century Rural Dissenters,” in Studies in Church History, 8: Popular Belief and Practice, ed. Derek Baker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), 203–­11 (203). 20. Helen Forde, “Derbyshire Quakers, 1650–­1761” (PhD diss., University of Leicester, 1977), 83–­84. 21. Forde, 85–95. 22. See Barry Reay, “The Social Origins of Early Quakerism,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 11, no. 1 (Summer 1980): 55–­72 (59–­62), and his The Quakers and the English Revolution (London: Temple Smith, 1985), 20–­26. This comparison took into account the work of Vann on Buckinghamshire, Norfolk, and Norwich and the research for Cheshire and Somerset conducted by William W. Spurrier in his “The Persecution of the Quakers in England, 1650–­1714” (PhD diss., University of North Carolina, 1976), ch. 4.

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sorts,” especially wholesale traders and yeomen.23 He similarly found that few members belonged to the gentry elite24 or the laboring poor. Yet there were differences between his conclusions and those of Vann, and they clearly showed that there were regional differences in the Friends’ social composition and in methods of analysis.25 Indeed, Reay took issue with Vann’s theory that the early Friends were predominantly drawn from the “upper bourgeoisie.” He pointed out that although Vann claimed that a Friend was “more likely to be a wholesaler or a large producer than an artisan or retailer,” reflected in areas such as Colchester, Norwich, Buckingham, and Norfolk, it was not the case with Cheshire, Essex, or Somerset. Consequently, the first generation of the Friends was “more plebeian” and not as “comfortably bourgeois” as Vann had earlier suggested,26 but they certainly were not “the Refuse of the World, Persons of the meanest Quality and the lowest Parts and Education.”27 Adrian Davies extended the research undertaken by Reay and examined the changes that occurred in the composition of the Essex Friends from the 1650s to the early decades of the eighteenth century.28 In his analysis of the social origins of the Essex Quakers, Davies asserted that there 23. The Friends involved in agriculture were far more numerous than found in the research carried out by the earlier study of Cole: 86.9 percent in Lancashire, 63 percent in Cheshire, 62.1 percent in Somerset, 57.9 percent in Essex, 46 percent in Warwickshire, 45.5 percent in Buckinghamshire, and 35.2 percent in Norfolk. See Reay, Quakers and the English Revolution, 25. 24. Apart from Colchester, Reay observed that there was a lower percentage of gentlemen than Vann had recorded. See Reay, “Social Origins,” 61–­62, and his Quakers and the English Revolution, 24–25. 25. Brief comments on the different approaches used by historians are given coverage in Reay, “Social Origins,” 56–­57. 26. Reay, 62, 67; and his Quakers and the English Revolution, 24–­25. 27. Henry Hallywell, An Account of Familism as It Is Revived and Propagated by the Quakers . . . (London: Walter Kettilby, 1673), 124; and cited in Reay, “Social Origins,” 55; Quakers and the English Revolution, 25. This attitude toward the earliest Quakers was still noticeable in the studies of the Friends up to the 1950s. Margaret James argued that “Quakerism appealed to the lowest classes more than any other variety of Puritanism,” while James Maclear wrote that the earliest Friends were recruited from “the lower classes, the agrarian and the ‘mechanick’ poor.” See Margaret James, Social Problems and Policy during the Puritan Revolution, 1640–­1660 (London: Routledge, 1930), 19; James F. Maclear, “Quakerism and the End of the Interregnum,” Church History 19 (1950): 240–­70 (243). 28. T. Adrian Davies, “The Quakers in Essex, 1655–­1725” (DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1987), ch. 2, and his The Quakers in English Society, 1655–­1725 (Oxford: Clarendon, 2000), 156–­62, 227–­28.

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were characteristics among the Friends in this county that both Vann and Hurwich had identified in their studies. Yet he felt that there were other elements that did not confirm the patterns associated with earlier research. In a larger sample than Reay had used,29 Davies found that the urban Quakers from Colchester were more representative of Cole’s petit bourgeois in their social origins.30 In a comparison between the samples for the remainder of Essex, there was a far greater degree of correlation between Davies’s calculations and those of Reay.31 Although there were slight statistical differences between the two samples,32 the conclusions were similar in that the Essex Friends were drawn from the upper and petite bourgeoisie and, as such, were different from the earlier assessments of Cole and Vann.33 The conclusion to be made from all these studies is that the first generation of the Quakers was an assorted lot. However, studies of their social origins do not in themselves explain the remarkable economic successes of eighteenth-­and nineteenth-­century Friends. For that, it is necessary to look, first, at what they said about themselves; second, at what other people said about them; and third, at examples of actual practice to consider how the situation at 29. Davies, “Quakers in Essex,” 58–­59, 64 (table 1); Davies, Quakers in English Society, 157–­58. 30. Davies found that his calculations differed considerably from Reay’s earlier assessments. In comparison to Reay’s findings of a Quaker artisan/retail population of 40 percent, Davies registered 52.3 percent of the Essex Friends as artisans. Similarly, Davies recorded a far smaller percentage of Quaker wholesalers than Reay (26.2 percent compared with 43.3 percent). This was also the case with the number of Quaker gentlemen, which Davies assessed at 4.8 percent and Reay at a substantial 13.3 percent. See Davies, “Quakers in Essex,” 58–­59. 31. Davies examined a further 183 Quakers from the rest of the county. See Davies, 59–60, 65 (table 2). 32. For example, Reay made no reference to any sea traders, and the percentage of gentlemen in the county was slightly higher (3.3 percent) in Davies’s analysis than Reay’s (2.5 percent). Both agreed that involvement in agriculture was a dominant factor: Reay claimed 44 percent and Davies more than 50 percent. See Davies, “Quakers in Essex,” 59. Davies’s analysis corresponds with Southeast Wales, where, in Monmouthshire, Quakers were of a similar composition. See Richard C. Allen, Quaker Communities in Early Modern Wales: From Resistance to Respectability (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2007), 52–­59. 33. In Davies’s sample, the upper bourgeoisie (wholesalers and yeomen) comprised 39 percent of the total, and the petit bourgeois (artisans and retailers) were estimated at 38 percent. This was further backed up by an analysis of the Hearth Tax returns of 1671, which again indicated that the majority of the Friends were drawn from the ranks of the middling sorts. Davies did, however, note that there was also a significant proportion of the Friends (23.3 percent) who were exempt from the tax and were therefore the society’s poorer members. See Davies, “Quakers in Essex,” 60, 62–­63, 71.

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the end of the seventeenth century led to the great successes of the century that followed. In 1656, Thomas Symonds, master weaver of Norwich, commented on Quaker business probity: “We doing unto all men what we would that all men should do unto us, not defrauding cozening, or cheating any, nor using deceitful words, to make any believe a lie . . . Where the truth of God is made manifest in the light of Jesus, and lived in the life and power, none can or dare take liberty to idleness, and slothfulness in business, but every man in their power must be faithful and honest therein.”34 In the same year, the “Epistle from the Elders of Balby” advised that “all Friends that have callings and trades, do labour in the thing that is good, in faithfulness and uprightness; and keep to their yea and their nay in all their communications: and that all who are indebted to the world, endeavour to discharge the same.”35 Many years later (c. 1675), George Fox looked back to the early days of the Quaker movement and outside attitudes toward the Friends: In the first convincement when friends could not put off their hats to people . . . and could not use the world’s salutations nor fashions nor customs: and many friends being tradesmen of several sorts: they lost their custom at the first: for the people would not trade with them nor trust them and for a time people that were tradesmen could hardly get money enough to buy bread but afterwards when people came to see friends’ honesty and truthfulness . . . they knew and saw that they would not cozen and cheat them for conscience’s sake towards God. And then at last they might send any child and be as well used as themselves at any of their shops. So then the thing altered so: that all the enquiry was where was a draper or shopkeeper or tailor or shoemaker or any other tradesman that was a Quaker then that was all the cry insomuch that friends had double the trade beyond any of their neighbours . . . then the cry was of all the professors [people who professed faith without practicing it] and others, If we let these people alone they will take the trading of the nation out of our hands.36 34. Thomas Symonds, The Voyce of the Just Uttered . . . (London: Thomas Symonds, 1656), 6. 35. Rosemary Moore, “The Epistle from the Elders of Balby,” Friends Quarterly 32, no. 5 (2001): 215–­18, from the copy in LA in the records of Marsden Monthly Meeting. 36. Fox, Journal (ed. Smith), 129–­30.

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Fox may have had a rose-­tinted view of the early days, and in any case, his observations would only apply to small retail businesses. But there are some relatively early indications that the Quakers did gain a reputation for strict honesty. There are reports from the 1670s of people who were deceived by dishonest servants who had pretended to be Quakers or had been recommended by the Quakers and therefore were trusted.37 In business, the Quakers’ reputation was working to their advantage. “R. H.,” in a 1671 pamphlet describing the ill doings of the Quakers in a popular manner, observed that the alleged fair dealing of the Quaker was a falsity, for “he cheats worse than a Long-­Lane broker, by pretending to deal at a word, and the Hooke whereby he draws his Customers, is a far-­fetched sigh, and a ‘Plainly I tell thee, Friend.’” The Quakers, this author suggested, have a “peaceable sheepish countenance” and “are a People generally subtle, frugal, industrious and wary in their dealing; by which and their large pretensions to a punctual Honesty, they have engrossed a large part of the Nations trade.”38 A 1674 work admitted the effectiveness of the Quaker strategy, for “whereas many of them have been known to have been persons of mean fortune at first, they are now rich and wealthy, and none of them (though very poor before they turned Quaker) in a necessitous condition.”39 The same themes were taken up twenty years later in a publication subtitled “Discovering the Deep and Unsuspected Subtilty, Which Is Couched under the Pretended Simplicity, of Many of the Principal Leaders of those People Call’d Quakers.”40 At a slightly later date, information from diaries and correspondence shows that many of the Quakers in a small way of business found that their regular attendance at meetings was also a good method of increasing trade and could lead to advantageous marriages so that small trading units might grow and coalesce into larger ones. Boys were sent to do their apprenticeships in other Quaker businesses, thus making further contacts.41 What is clear, even in the earliest records, is that although the Friends in general were not wealthy, the meetings normally had the resources to assist 37. Simon Dixon, “Quaker Communities in London, 1667–­c.1714” (PhD diss., Royal Holloway College, University of London, 2005), 275. 38. R. H., The Character of a Quaker . . . (London: s.n., 1671), Epistle to the Reader, 4, 6, 14. 39. Thomas Good, Firmianus and Dubitantius . . . (Oxford: L. Lichfield, 1674), 95. 40. Charles Leslie, The Snake in the Grass . . . (London: Charles Brome, 1696), title page. 41. Raistrick, Quakers in Science and Industry, 45–­50; Landes, London Quakers, 86–­90. Also see Allen in chapter 4 and Lapsansky-­Werner in chapter 10.

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poor Friends, particularly orphans, who would be provided with clothing and found situations. Evidently, a sufficient number of men and women of substance were generous with their subscriptions to the meeting.42 Before the passing of the Toleration and Affirmation Acts (1689 and 1695/96), the Friends were certainly hampered in their business activities, although there were ways of mitigating the effects of the refusal to take oaths, which could be required in many legal and commercial circumstances. Non-­Quakers wishing to do business with the Quakers were willing to find ways of accommodating them.43 But records suggest that the worst sufferings, even ruin, were experienced by less wealthy Friends. People of substance might be, and were, handled roughly and imprisoned along with their poorer co-­religionists, but the financial penalty was proportionately less. The more affluent could survive fines and distraints. Moreover, it may be that the solid citizens who managed the administration of justice were reluctant to pursue people of similar social status to themselves, however misguided they might think them.44 The most extreme penalties were not often inflicted. The Meeting for Sufferings and the Second Day’s Morning Meeting were aware of this and gave advice that the Quakers should cultivate friends who could be of use to them.45 Since wealthy Quakers were discouraged from spending money ostentatiously or on entertainments, when the political situation eased, consequently a considerable amount of free capital was available for investment. In London, by far the largest city in the British Isles, the Quakers tended to cluster around the main meeting houses, to the extent that 40 percent of them found a spouse within the same parish. They engaged in various trades, similar to the general population, but it is noticeable that toward the end of the period, there was a concentration of wealthy merchants, particularly around Gracechurch Street meeting house, and another concentration in more lucrative trades such as drapery and skilled crafts 42. Examples in Martin Wyatt, Quakers in Plymouth: A Friends Meeting in Context, 1654 to the 1960s (York: Quacks Books, 2017), 11–­13; SA, 4430/PM/1/1, Broseley minutes and accounts. 43. Nicholas Morgan, Lancashire Quakers and the Establishment, 1660–­1730 (Halifax: Ryburn, 1993), 127–­32; Dixon, “Quaker Communities,” 211–­20; Jonathan Harlow, “The Life and Times of Thomas Speed” (PhD diss., University of the West of England, 2008), 164–­66. 44. Harlow, “Thomas Speed,” 160–­62. 45. Craig Horle, The Quakers and the English Legal System, 1660–­1688 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988), 163, 256.

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such as clock and watch making. One Quaker wholesaler left a diary, from which it appears that he dealt with the Quakers but also probably with non-­ Quakers. He was an active Quaker, and his day might include a meeting for worship, business at the Royal Exchange or in a coffeehouse (regularly used by traders to meet and do business), and then a Quaker business meeting. Member­ship in city livery companies (trading associations) was important for London businessmen and normally required an oath on joining. London Quakers were strong supporters of the Affirmation Acts, but in practice, they do not seem to have been seriously inconvenienced in preaffirmation days. London businessmen were often sympathetic to the Quakers, and ways were found to avoid the oath requirement. The clockmakers would accept a promise to observe the rules from the 1670s, and the feltmakers replaced “solemnly swear” with “sincerely promise.” A third of the lobbyists for affirmation were already members of a livery company when the act was passed. But the Affirmation Act did make a difference. After its passing, it is noticeable that the Quakers began to hold high office in companies, and more were described in marriage certificates as “citizen” or freeman of the city of London.46 Foreign trading increased during the latter part of the seventeenth century.47 Quaker merchants could not easily break into established routes controlled by chartered companies because of the requirement to swear oaths to obtain membership, but the burgeoning Atlantic trade was free to all. London Quaker merchants benefited from Quaker contacts, with a proportionately large number involved in the Atlantic trade.48 One such was James Claypoole, who traded in anything he thought would turn a profit. His letter book of 1681–­84 has survived and gives some insights into the life of a Quaker merchant. This was a time when the Quakers were deeply divided about their governance, and one of Claypoole’s business contacts was William Rogers, a leader of the opposition faction, who 46. This paragraph is based on Dixon, “Quaker Communities,” 32–­39, 90–­93, 99, 109, 215–­28, 247–­51, and his “The Life and Times of Peter Briggins,” QS 10, no. 2 (2006): 185–­202; Landes, London Quakers, 89–­92. 47. D. M. Loades, England’s Maritime Empire: Seapower, Commerce and Policy, 1490–­1690 (Harlow: Longman, 2000); John J. McCusker and Kenneth Morgan, eds., The Early Modern Atlantic Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). 48. Landes, London Quakers, 84–­106, for Quaker merchants and Atlantic trading activity. Also see Esther Sahle, “An Investigation of Early Modern Quakers’ Business Ethics,” London School of Economics: Economic History Working Papers, 216 (2015), unpaginated introduction.

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Claypoole upbraided for his conduct at considerable length on more than one occasion. Nevertheless, Claypoole took care to see that their business relationship was not affected. Other letters indicate the family nature of Quaker businesses, for Claypoole’s wife could act as deputy manager and gave advice on trading.49 Merchants required banking facilities, and as trade developed during the seventeenth century, so did banking. Some of the larger goldsmiths, having secure vaults in which cash could be deposited, began to morph into bankers, and Barclays Bank originated in this way.50 Among the leading London Quakers of the first generation was the goldsmith John Bolton, whose son Job followed him in that profession.51 Job Bolton, who became a member of the prestigious Grocers’ Company, specialized in the banking side of the business, and in 1683, he took as his apprentice John Freame (b. 1665), the son of a Gloucester clothier who was one of the “first purchasers” of Pennsylvania, evidently wealthy and able to pay for his son’s training in the new profession of banking. On completion of his apprenticeship in 1690, Freame set up his own business as a goldsmith-­banker, which would have cost at least £500 and possibly considerably more. Soon afterward, he went into partnership with another young man from a prosperous Quaker family, Thomas Gould, possibly related to the Boltons. The partnership was reinforced by the partners marrying each other’s sister. The two families lived the life of wealthy Quakers, with country houses convenient for a local meeting and within reach of their London office. Freame was an active Quaker in his local meetings as well as in London, and he was clerk of the yearly meeting in 1711.52 It has been estimated that a quarter of the population living adjacent to the bank’s offices on Lombard Street were Quakers, and in 1695 the London Yearly Meeting deposited £1,100 with Freame and Gould. Freame, like his master Job Bolton, was a member of the Grocers’ Company. The bank did 49. Marion Balderston, ed., James Claypoole’s Letter Book: London and Philadelphia 1681–­1684 (San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library, 1967), 36–­37, 71, 114, 116, 223, 225. 50. For goldsmith bankers, the Quaker origins of Barclays Bank, and its relationship to the London Lead Company, see Ackrill and Hannah, Barclays, 1–­17; Leslie Hannah, “Freame, John (1665–­1745),” http://w ​ ww.​ oxforddnb.​ com/​ v​ iew/​ a​ rticle/​ 4 ​ 7419 (accessed September 19, 2016). 51. For John and Job Bolton, see LSF or HCLSC, “Dictionary of Quaker Biography,” multivolume typescript; also Ackrill and Hannah, Barclays, 4, for Bolton as a member of the Grocers’ Company. 52. Ackrill and Hannah, Barclays, 10, citing Quaker records.

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well and, unlike most other banks of the 1690s, survived competition with the Bank of England, founded in 1694. This may have been because of its popularity with wealthy Quakers. The name Barclay came into business during the eighteenth century because of marriages between Freame family members and descendants of Robert Barclay, the apologist, the first being in 1723, when Freame’s daughter married David Barclay, who had settled in London as a linen draper and died as one of the richest merchants in London. Freame and Gould’s main business was with London merchants, but they had interests in other parts of the country and abroad and notably with what became the London Lead Company. At this time, the mining of copper, zinc, and lead was undertaken on a small scale where the ores were available, much of it in North Wales, and these ores were smelted locally in small charcoal-­fired blast furnaces. Coal was not suitable, as impurities in coal, particularly sulfur, affected the quality of the metal. In the later part of the seventeenth century, the reverberatory furnace was invented, effectively a double-­chambered furnace, allowing the fuel to be kept separate from the metallic ore while heat was reflected from the domed roof. This allowed the use of coal, which was cheaper and simpler to handle than charcoal and, in the long run, essential for large-­scale developments, as the supply of charcoal was not unlimited. It took time and skilled experimentation to develop the reverberatory furnace, also known as an air furnace or a cupola.53 A person particularly involved with this, probably the inventor of a satisfactory process, was Edward Wright, a London Quaker physician and chemist.54 Sometime between 1692 and 1696, Wright, together with two other Quakers—­John Haddon, a wealthy man from Horsleydown in South London, and Thomas Cooper—­and other partners, invested in a company working copper and lead, mainly in Wales but also in Northern England. It is thought that the Quaker element was significant, as a Quaker committeeman could affirm instead of swearing an oath.55 Information is scanty, but it is known that Freame and Gould financed Wright’s experiments on furnaces and made a loan of £500 at 6 percent to enable the building of a new 53. Raistrick, Quakers in Science and Industry, 161–­74, 176–­78, and Two Centuries of Industrial Welfare, 1–­10, 147–­53; Ackrill and Hannah, Barclays, 10–­11; John N. Rhodes, “The London Lead Company in North Wales” (PhD diss., University of Leicester, 1970), 30–­59. 54. He may be the person mentioned in Gragg, Quaker Community on Barbados, 109. 55. Rhodes, “London Lead Company,” 34, and citing NA, C8/574/116.

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smelting house at Bagillt in Flintshire. Wright, Haddon, and Cooper then set up another company in Northumberland, this time concerned mainly with lead working. These companies were brought together by means of exceedingly complex legal maneuvers, as it was necessary to take over older mining concessions in the same areas. There was a need to take oaths when setting up a chartered company. Even after the Affirmation Act of 1695, the situation was uncertain. Finally, an opinion was obtained from the solicitor general that an affirmation by the Friends was acceptable, enabling the foundation of a new chartered company, the London Lead Company, established in 1704–­5.56 It was often known as the Quaker Lead Company. The company developed rapidly under the guidance of Wright, Haddon, and other Quaker members working in Wales, the North Pennines, and later in Derbyshire. During the eighteenth century, it became the largest metalworking company in the country, with a good reputation for looking after its workers. Freame and Gould were shareholders and handled the by-­product of lead—­silver—­for the Royal Mint.57 At the very end of the second period came the financial cataclysm known as the South Sea Bubble, in which some of the Quakers lost money and Freame himself received advice from the London and Middlesex Quarterly Meeting.58 It was not known until some years later how the London Lead Company had been involved, as “concerted lying by Quakers running the London Lead Company concealed their skulduggery for nearly a decade.”59 On the death of Edward Wright, treasurer and chairman, it became known that he and some colleagues had misappropriated company funds to cover their own losses. Freame, in his old age, took over the company, prosecuted the remaining fraudsters, and set about retrieving the company’s fortunes. The second city in England was Norwich, and here also a great Quaker business developed from seventeenth-­century roots. The Gurneys became immensely wealthy during the eighteenth century, and when the present Barclays Bank was formed at the end of the nineteenth century, the most important of several mergers was that with the Gurney bank. Gurney is a 56. Raistrick, Quakers in Science and Industry, 168–­72; Rhodes, “London Lead Company,” 48–­50. 57. Raistrick, Quakers in Science and Industry, 172–­79. 58. Walvin, Quakers, 34–­56; Ackrill and Hannah, Barclays, 13. 59. Ackrill and Hannah, Barclays, 13–­14. Also see Rhodes, “London Lead Company,” 59–­63, 73–­75.

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Norfolk name connected with the cloth trade and also early banking activities, but very little is known for certain about the early years of the first Quaker Gurney, John, who lived 1655–­1721.60 The family history states that he arrived in Norwich in 1667 at age twelve and was given work by the local Friends.61 The first definite mention of him in the Quaker records comes in 1683, when he was imprisoned along with other Norwich Friends, and in later years he is mentioned from time to time in the Norwich minutes as one appointed to carry out tasks for the meeting. He was evidently a well-­ established and prosperous wool merchant when he applied for the freedom of the city in 1692 and was turned down, although he was allowed a freeman’s privileges.62 He died a rich man in 1721, and his sons continued the woolen business. John Gurney II was active in lobbying for affirmation, and the sons of the following generation made the move into banking.63 It was the accident of the Quaker contacts that led Londoners to finance and develop the metal industry in the North of England. The west was effectively a separate Quaker ecosystem based on the River Severn, then navigable from the port of Bristol to mid-­Wales. Farther north in Montgomeryshire and from their estate at Dolobran, the Lloyd family established various iron furnaces and forges at Mathrafal, Dolobran, and Bersham, all largely under the patronage of Charles Lloyd III (1662–­1747) and influenced by his wife’s family, the Crowleys, ironfounders of Worcestershire.64 The Mathrafal forge had been in operation from the mid-­seventeenth century, and the Lloyd’s leased it from the Powis Estate at £40 per annum.65 The forge at Mathrafal was in operation until 1719, and financial support was given by Abraham Darby I of Coalbrookdale, Shropshire, between 1709 and 1717. Thereafter, the Lloyd family established a new forge on the Dolobran estate while also having a significant interest in the Bersham furnace, near Wrexham, in partnership with other early industrialists.66 The Lloyds (and 60. J. K. Edwards, “The Gurneys and the Norwich Clothing Trade in the Eighteenth Century,” JFHS 50, no. 3 (1964): 134–­52 (134). 61. Verily Anderson, Friends and Relations: Three Centuries of Quaker Families (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1980), 56–­61. 62. LSF, Arthur J. Eddington, “The First Fifty Years of Quakerism in Norwich,” typescript, c. 1932, 261. This is available in other Quaker libraries. 63. Raistrick, Quakers in Science and Industry, 75–­76. 64. Lloyd, Quaker Lloyds, 33. 65. Gwyddfarch, “Iron Works at Mathrafal,” Bye-gones, Relating to Wales and the Border Counties, ser. 1, 9 (11 April 1888): 78; Lloyd, Quaker Lloyds, 39–­40. 66. Details are available in LSF, S186–­88, Kelsall diaries (1716–­22, 1722–­25, 1725–­27); Lloyd, Quaker Lloyds, 47–­49, 52–­53.

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their partners) had sought markets for the finished product both locally and in Birmingham, Chester, and Staffordshire, but the outlay for these forges proved to be very expensive for such a small operation, and ultimately they were unsuccessful. Indeed, they began operating when the demand for iron was high but suffered great losses when the industry contracted and production costs increased.67 From the establishment of such industrial enterprises, the Lloyds increasingly fell into debt, and this was apparent when Charles Lloyd IV (1697–­1767) assumed responsibility for the ailing estate. By 1720, the Dolobran forge had temporarily ceased production,68 but clearly, great efforts were made to keep the Bersham furnace working despite the financial difficulties and vast debts that were amassed. By 1727, these proved to be insurmountable, and Charles Lloyd III and IV were declared bankrupt.69 Charles Lloyd IV’s aunt nevertheless gave further financial support, but that only delayed the inevitable final closure of the Dolobran works in 1729.70 During this period, Charles Lloyd IV absconded to France before returning to Chester, where he met his creditors. Unapologetic of his role in the collapse of the business, he was “very still & obstinate” until the creditors produced “several letters . . . of his hand writing owning himself a partner.”71 Similarly, his father had left Dolobran and was later to live in Birmingham, where his brother Sampson Lloyd (1664–­1724) had previously established himself in the iron industry. This junior branch of the family settled at Farm, Bordesley, near Birmingham, where they were successful iron founders and significantly helped found Lloyds Bank.72 Other Quaker industrialists—including the Darbys of Coalbrookdale; Samuel Milner of Bewdley, Worcestershire; and Henry Payton of Dudley in the West Midlands—also took an interest in North Wales with a furnace at Dolgûn, near Dolgellau, where the first Welsh Yearly Meeting was held in 1683, and a forge at “Llanfraed,” near Llanfihangel Genau’r Glyn.73 There is very limited information about the origins of the Dolgûn furnace and Llanfraed forge, but the two were interconnected, and the latter was certainly 67. See T. S. Ashton, Iron and Steel in the Industrial Revolution (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1924), 13–­16. 68. LSF, MS 194/1, A Journal . . . [of John Kelsall], 204. 69. LSF, MS S189, Kelsall diary (1727–­30), August 3, 1727, September 4, 1727, November 17, 1727, January 6, 1728; Lloyd, Quaker Lloyds, 55–­56. 70. LSF, MS S189, October 23, 1728; LSF, 194/1, 234; Lloyd, Quaker Lloyds, 57–­59. 71. LSF, MS S189, February 11, 1728. 72. Lloyd, Quaker Lloyds, 159–­215. 73. Ashton, Iron and Steel, 17–­18.

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in existence from 1719 to 1734. The fortunes of this business are recorded by John Kelsall, the Quaker clerk at Dolgûn, who observed in 1715 that he was “hurried in Business” but noted the works was in “great straits” by the end of the following year. Significantly, Abraham Darby I died in 1717, and his wife quickly sold the interest in the works to Milner.74 Milner was a successful businessman, and the Dolgûn furnace initially began well under his leadership, but progress was hampered by the poor quality of the charcoal at his disposal. With his dismissal in 1719, Kelsall was the major casualty of this slump, and Milner sold the business in 1722, with Payton acquiring it.75 In 1729, Kelsall returned to Dolgûn but noted the self-­indulgent attitudes of some of the workforce, which undermined the operation, observing that some of the workers had been locked in the stocks for “being drunk and abusive.”76 The forge also suffered technical difficulties and eventually ceased working in 1733, whereby Kelsall was once again out of work.77 At the lower end of the Severn is the port of Bristol, the third city of England and rapidly becoming the second, increasing in importance with the growing Atlantic trade and also a major center of early Quakerism. The first Quakers included a number of prosperous citizens connected by family links, which doubtless helped the establishment of Quakerism in the city. One of these was Thomas Speed, who came from Dorset, was university educated, and came to Bristol as a preacher and may then have been apprenticed to the Bristol lawyer William Yeamans, into whose family he married.78 He was made a freeman of the city, allowing him to set up business there, was appointed a member of the Society of Merchant Venturers, and became very successful and wealthy. He was one of those substantial Bristol citizens with family links (Yeamans, Hollister, Bishop, and others) who joined the Quakers in 1655, but in later life he retreated to the Quaker fringes. His stepdaughter Ann married Thomas Curtis of Reading, and

74. LSF, MS 194/1, 168, 177, 179. 75. For further details, see LSF, MS S186; LSF, MS 194/1, 188; Allen in chapter 4. 76. LSF, MS S189, July 22, 1729. 77. LSF, MS S189, 13, and November 14, 1729, December 11, 1729, August 1, 1730; LSF, MS S190, Kelsall diary (1730–­34), November 2, 1731, December 9, 1730. Eventually, in the early months of 1734, he recorded that he was teaching accountancy skills. See LSF, MS S190, January 30, 1734, February 4, 1734. 78. Harlow, “Thomas Speed,” and his edited volume, The Ledger of Thomas Speed (Bristol: Bristol Record Society, 2011).

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a stepson married a daughter of Margaret Fell.79 He died very wealthy, and a good portion of his fortune was inherited by his son-­in-­law, Thomas Goldney II. The first Thomas Goldney (or Gouldney), born 1620, came from a Chippenham family of clothiers and was apprenticed to a Bristol grocer in 1637. He set up in business in 1646, married, and became prosperous. He and his wife, who was related to William Rogers, joined the Quakers when they appeared in Bristol in 1654, and he is regularly in the records of the Bristol Meeting. Like other Bristol Quakers, the Goldneys suffered fines and imprisonment, but this did not seriously dent the family prosperity, and Goldney bought an estate as early as 1674. His son, Thomas II, who married a daughter of Thomas Speed, was admitted as a freeman of the city without the customary oath, as he was the son of a freeman, thus permitting him to conduct his own business in the city.80 He did well, having shares in ships as well as a grocery business, and he bought a fine property on the outskirts of Bristol. He was not an active member of the Bristol Meeting as his father had been but no doubt continued to benefit from Quaker connections. Some of his ship ventures did very well indeed.81 He was evidently willing to take risks, and from this came his involvement with Abraham Darby. The life of the first Abraham Darby was entirely contained within the extended second period, and it provides a good example of the advantages that being a Quaker gave to an ambitious young man starting up in business and also of the limitations. Due to the long involvement of the Darby family with the Coalbrookdale ironworks and the survival of many business and family papers, much more is known about the origins and early history of this great Quaker metalworking business than about the London Lead Company.82 Abraham Darby I was born in 1678 to Quaker parents in 79. For Thomas Curtis, see Moore in chapters 1 and 3. For the link to the Fells, see Moore in chapter 3. 80. P. K. Stembridge, The Goldney Family: A Bristol Merchant Dynasty (Bristol: Bristol Record Society, 1998), 3–­9. 81. Stembridge, 10–­16. 82. Raistrick, Dynasty, 1–­46; Barrie Trinder, The Industrial Revolution in Shropshire (London: Phillimore, 1973), 20–­26; Emyr Thomas, Coalbrookdale and the Darbys: The Story of the World’s First Industrial Dynasty (York: Sessions, 1999), 1–­26; and especially Nancy Cox, “Imagination and Innovation of an Industrial Pioneer: The First Abraham Darby,” Industrial Archaeology Review 12, no. 2 (1990): 127–­44. Original sources are now housed in the library and archive department of the Ironbridge Gorge Museum.

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Dudley in the West Midlands, which was then developing as a major iron-­ working area, though at this time the works were on a small domestic scale, often combined with farming.83 Abraham’s father, John Darby, followed this pattern, being a farmer who also practiced a metalworking trade.84 Farmers were liable to distraint for nonpayment of tithes, so there was an incentive for suitably skilled Quakers to move out of farming. Abraham was therefore apprenticed to a Quaker malt-­mill maker in Birmingham, which was not a corporate town and so was not affected by the Corporation Act and thus was a magnet for the Quakers and other dissenters. Abraham’s master, Jonathan Freeth, was known as a “public Friend”—­that is, one who was active in the ministry, and it seems that young Abraham Darby also took his Quakerism seriously.85 Malt mills are small mills used for preparing grain for brewing and were then made of brass, so Abraham gained a good knowledge of metalworking and incidentally of the use of coke, which was used to dry the malt before milling. After his apprenticeship was over, he moved to Bristol, where he set up as a maker of malt mills. The minutes of the men’s meeting for July 31, 1699, note that he intended to marry Mary Sarjant of Fulford Heath in Worcestershire and asked for a certificate of clearness.86 The name of Sergeant is found in the minutes of the men’s meeting, so probably Mary already had family in Bristol. Darby is occasionally mentioned in the minutes of this meeting as one entrusted with minor tasks, and in April 1701, it was recorded that he borrowed the meeting’s copy of Fox’s Journal, which was duly returned.87 Around 1702, he went into partnership with three other Quakers to establish a brass works, the Brass Wire Company, where Darby provided the expertise and managed the business while the other partners provided the funds. This business was later expanded to a partnership of eight. He also became interested in the making of iron pots, setting up a foundry where his experiments led to an improved method of casting, patented in 1707. He was assisted in this by John Thomas, who had come to him from the Lloyds. Communication with the Lloyds was easy, and this was 83. Raistrick, Dynasty, 18. For Quakers in the iron industry, also see his Quakers in Science and Industry, 89–­93. 84. The sources vary in opinion as to whether he was a locksmith or nail-­maker or both. 85. Raistrick, Dynasty, 19. 86. Russell Mortimer, ed., Minute Book of the Men’s Meeting of the Society of Friends in Bristol, 1686–­1707 (Bristol: Bristol Record Society, 1977), 152. 87. Mortimer, 2:181, 208, 205.

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the first of a number of instances of collaboration. Good-­quality cooking pots had up to then been made of brass, but Darby’s method enabled the use of the cheaper material, iron. Other Quakers were also involved in brass manufacture, and some of them, including Darby, set up businesses farther up the river at Coalbrookdale in Shropshire, where a narrow valley with a stream emptying into the Severn provided both power and transport facilities and where the local coal was known to be suitable for metalworking. More businesses were established in the neighborhood, and a picture can be drawn of interlocking Quaker partnerships and increasing prosperity among the participants. Darby was still interested in iron and, in 1708, took the lease of a derelict blast furnace in Coalbrookdale. At this time, although the reverberatory furnace permitted the use of coal for smelting other metals, cast iron, which required the greater heat of a blast furnace, still had to be produced with charcoal. There had been many attempts to use the cheaper and more readily abundant coal, but they had not been successful, as the sulfur content of coal produced brittle iron. One of the coals local to Coalbrookdale has a low sulfur content. Darby, accustomed to the use of coke from his early employment, coked this coal and found that with this, the blast furnace produced a usable iron, and he patented the process.88 He needed more financial backing, and several Quaker merchants from Bristol put in funds. Thomas Goldney II was interested, and so was Graffin Prankard.89 Prankard’s father had been a Somerset tradesman who had done well, possessing a considerable estate at his death in 1708. Graffin married the daughter of a prosperous Quaker merchant, moved to Bristol, and set himself up as a merchant dealing mainly with European countries, especially those in the Baltic but also those across the Atlantic. His association with Darby resulted from his belief that exporting cast ironware to the American colonies would be profitable. In the long run, he was correct, but the new process took several years to perfect. There were too many imperfections in the first pots, especially a tendency to broken legs. Darby’s partners became worried

88. See Rhodes, “London Lead Company,” 28, for the possibility that Darby’s knowledge of coke was also derived from John Coster, one-­time head smelter at a Bristol copper smelting works, who later joined Darby’s Bristol Wire Company. 89. J. H. Bettey, “From Quaker Traders to Anglican Gentry: The Rise of a Somerset Dynasty,” Proceedings of Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society 135 (1991): 1–­5.

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about their investments, and Darby managed to buy some of them out, while Prankard sold his shares, interestingly, to a non-­Quaker. At the same time, Darby was involved with other metalworking businesses in Shropshire and, as mentioned earlier, in North Wales, and he was investigating other possibilities, including a business connection with William Rawlinson, a Quaker ironmaster and copper miner from Furness in the modern county of Cumbria.90 This eventually came to nothing. Darby then took a new partner, his brother-­in-­law, Thomas Baylies. By 1716, the casting of iron pots and other goods had been mastered, but Darby was already a sick man. Darby and his wife and family moved to Coalbrookdale in 1708–­9. They were the first Quakers in the Dale but were soon joined by others in the workforce. The Quakers were not numerous in the area. Their local meeting was on the south side of the river opposite Coalbrookdale, in the town of Broseley, then the center of the Shropshire coal-­mining industry. The Shropshire Quakers’ first monthly meeting was in Shrewsbury, established following Fox’s visit in 1668, and in 1669 the quarterly meeting in Dolobran arranged for a collection to help the Shrewsbury Friends build a meeting house.91 The Broseley Meeting had been started in 1672, and by 1692 there were sufficient Quakers to build a meeting house with a burial ground attached. They needed financial help from the Quakers elsewhere, but the quarterly meeting was doubtful as to whether they deserved it. Charles Lloyd III, as clerk, was instructed to write to them. Apparently, some of the Broseley Friends were “loose livers, company keepers to excess, and a great many not given to plain language,” and they should not be “deceived & undone with daubers and pillow sewers.” The reference, from Ezekiel 13:10–­20, is to deceptively alluring false teachers.92 But the meeting house was built, and in 1706 they were able to buy an additional plot of land for burials. The purchase indenture survives, signed first by Charles Lloyd III for the quarterly meeting and witnessed by Abraham Darby, who was evidently already involved with local Quakers.93 90. One of the family known to Quaker history because of a long-­running dispute with Margaret Fell about the management of a forge. See Bonnelyn Kunze, Margaret Fell and the Rise of Quakerism (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1993), 101–­26. 91. GA, D/DSF/320, North Wales (including Shropshire) Men’s Quarterly Meeting, 1668–­1752, June 27, 1669. 92. IGM, Lab/MISC/21/5, letter to the Friends at Broseley from the Quarterly Meeting at Dolobran, April 26, 1692. I am grateful to Raymond Brown for assistance in identifying and elucidating the Ezekiel reference, which looks different in modern translations. 93. IGM, Lab/MISC/25/5, copy of indenture, July 24, 1706.

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The Darby family were active Quakers, and from May 1710 Abraham and his parents, John and Joan, are regularly mentioned in the Broseley minutes as contributing generously to collections. It can be conjectured whether, to them, the Broseley Meeting contrasted unfavorably with Bristol and whether the arrival of the Darby family was in any way connected to the amalgamation of the Broseley Monthly Meeting with Shrewsbury’s in January 1712. John and Abraham Darby were two of the four Friends deputed to go to Shrewsbury and make the arrangements.94 Family records state that Abraham Darby was clerk to both the monthly meeting and quarterly meetings.95 The quarterly meeting would have provided another link between the Darbys and the Lloyds, and when there was a large general meeting in Shrewsbury in 1709, John Kelsall noted that, among others, Abraham Darby had “most place with the people, of which there was a great company and some of note, as the Mayor of the town.”96 Abraham Darby did not come from a wealthy family, and his success would have been impossible without substantial financial backing, which undoubtedly was easier to come by because of his standing as a Quaker. However, this support was not unconditional, as can be seen by his partners’ haste to disassociate themselves when the Coalbrookdale venture was slow to succeed. Nor was Quaker backing a guarantee that there would be no sharp practice. The events that followed Darby’s death in 1717, intestate, were very confused, but the Darby family considered that Thomas Baylies, partner, brother-­in-­law, and fellow Quaker, acted dishonorably, while Thomas Goldney II, the main creditor, was primarily concerned with securing his investment. A year later, Mary Darby died, leaving seven children who were in danger of being excluded from the settlement. The eldest son, Abraham Darby II, was only six years old. Fortunately, Joseph Sergeant, another relative, stepped in, and with some difficulty secured shares to be held in trust for the children. In the course of these negotiations, Darby’s interests in other ventures disappeared. Baylies departed for Pennsylvania, and Goldney was left as the majority owner of the company, which in the years to come did very well indeed, and not only as a maker of cast-iron pots and other domestic ware. The first Newcomen pumping engine was set 94. SA, 4430/PM/1/1, Broseley minutes, 1710–­12. 95. Rachel Labouchere, Abiah Darby of Coalbrookdale, 1716–­1793, Wife of Abraham Darby II (York: Sessions, 1988); and family papers cited in Thomas, Coalbrookdale and the Darbys, 19. 96. LSF, MS 193/4, Account of Friends who attended Dolobran Meeting, July 7, 1709.

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up in Dudley in 1712, and producing cast-iron parts for steam engines and other machinery became an increasing part of the business. In 1736, Richard Ford, son-­in-­law to Abraham Darby I and manager of the works, wrote to Thomas Goldney III concerning a new lease: “I hope you will not think it hard for us to come into a Larger Share of the Works than heretofore, for you art not unsensible how easy your Father come into ’em and what large profitts you have received to say nothing of ye 2 shares with the profits which in Equity did belong to the Children.”97 This study of the rise of Quaker businesses shows certain features in common. There was access to capital, either family money or support obtainable from other Quakers. During periods of persecution, Quaker businesses were hampered, but the larger ones suffered little, if any, serious long-­term damage. But the great surge in Quaker enterprise happened in the 1690s and the beginning of the eighteenth century. This may have been partly due to the general rise in economic prosperity at the time but probably was also related to the removal of restrictions on the Quakers. The maneuvers to set up the Quaker Lead Company are an example. It has been suggested that for the Quakers, and the dissenters in general, business success was related to their not being able to attend university and enter the professions, so able people used their energies in other ways.98 This may well have been true. Then there was the Quaker objection to conspicuous expenditure, perhaps forcing the Quakers, for lack of any other outlet, to reinvest their profits.99 But wealthy Quakers lived well, purchasing large houses and estates, so their commitment to simplicity was unlikely to have been a major factor in their success. More important, probably, was the Quaker ethos regarding strict honesty in business.100 Both the Quakers and their opponents thought that this did help them in business, although Quaker advice on business ethics was in fact similar to other manuals of good business practices at that time.101 The matter of trustworthiness would operate within as well as without the community, particularly in the Atlantic trade, where ventures were long 97. IGM, 1992–­11941 (LAB/ASSOC/10), Ford/Goldney Letterbook, 1732–37; and cited in Thomas, Coalbrookdale and the Darbys, 31. 98. Raistrick, Quakers in Science and Industry, 10. 99. For details, see Allen in chapter 4 and Lapsansky-­Werner in chapter 10. 100. Walvin, Quakers, 32–­35. 101. Sahle, “Early Modern Quakers’ Business Ethics,” 6–­11.

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term, were conducted at a distance, and took a long time to come to fruition.102 The Quakers cared about their reputation, and the fact that only a few were disciplined at this time for poor business practices may reflect that with persecution still a living memory, they took particular care not to risk being shamed by their meeting.103 Probably the most important factor in Quaker business success was the pressure of the Quaker organization on social customs.104 The Quakers did business with non-­Quakers but were discouraged from socializing with them. Indeed, one of the charges made by the quarterly meeting against the Broseley Friends was that they were “company keepers to excess.” In that same letter, the Broseley Friends were encouraged to visit each other frequently and to “confer oftener with one another.” For lack of choice, they had to marry each other, and as has been seen, many business relationships were cemented in this way. In such a situation, the Quakers would get to know each other very well and would know who would be the right person for a business partnership.105 This accounts for the clustering of the Quakers in certain occupations and certain districts. It is noticeable that Quaker businesses tended to cluster, with merchants in London and Bristol, metallurgy in the west and north, and clock making in London and Oxfordshire,106 and a good many wealthy Quakers seem to have been involved with textiles. Importantly, men with ideas but without capital, such as Edward Wright and Abraham Darby, could be supported, although their backers, including John Freame and Thomas Goldney, were hardheaded businessmen not 102. Walvin, Quakers, 209. 103. Esther Sahle, “Quakers, Coercion, and Pre-modern Growth: Why Friends’ Formal Institutions for Contract Enforcement Did Not Matter for Early Modern Trade Expansion,” Economic History Review (2018), http://​onlinelibrary​.wiley​.com​/​wol1​/​ doi​/​10​.1111​/​ehr​.12485​/f​ ull. She found little evidence of the Quakers being disciplined for bad business practices before the mid-­eighteenth century. For a full discussion of Quaker economics, see her “A Faith of Merchants: Quakers and Institutional Change in the Early Modern Atlantic, c.1660–­1800” (PhD diss., London School of Economics, 2016). Also see Andrew Fincham,“Factors Supporting the Rise of Quaker Commerce”; and Tim Marshall, “Quaker Clockmakers,” in Quakers, Business, and Industry, Vol. 4: Quakers and the Disciplines, ed. Stephen W. Angell and Pink Dandelion (Longmeadow, Mass.: Friends’ Association for Higher Education, 2017), 9–­36, 37–­100. 104. For examples of other minority groups doing well in business, see Sahle, “Early Modern Quakers’ Business Ethics,” 1–­2. 105. Sahle, 22. 106. Tim Marshall, The Quaker Clockmakers of North Oxfordshire (Ashbourne: Mayfield, 2013).

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minded to throw money away and looking for a good return. Young people were looked after, especially as poor children were found apprenticeships. It is thus most likely in their network of social relationships, reinforced by the organization of meetings, that the main reason for the remarkable success of the Quakers can be found.

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C ha p t e r 1 2

The Quakers and the Law Erin Bell

At local, regional, and national levels, the first generations of the Quakers faced a range of persecution, known collectively to the Friends as “sufferings.” This chapter considers the development of persecution over time from the Interregnum, when it varied from relatively unusual trials for blasphemy, notably that of James Nayler in 1656, to common prosecutions for preaching, holding meetings for worship, and nonpayment of tithes. It will examine the acts that were passed targeting the Friends after the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, when it became necessary, according to the authorities, to resist the radical potential of the Quakers. The Toleration Act of 1689 will also be considered regarding its implications for Friends’ worship alongside legislation that continued to be used against them into the eighteenth century. The role of Meeting for Sufferings from 1675 will be reviewed, particularly appeals to the government, with papers proclaiming the virtues of the Friends, notably their peacefulness, and their economic importance, which served to repeat and emphasize earlier publications.1 While scholars such as Raymond Ayoub have undertaken research into Quaker practices and English legislation (c. 1650–­1700), this chapter additionally focuses on 1. John Coffey, Persecution and Toleration in Protestant England, 1558–­1689 (London: Harlow, 2000), 169.

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preconceptions about the Friends held by those in authority that informed which existing laws were applied and what additional legislation was passed in England and farther afield.2 It discusses the range of laws originating from the early fifteenth to early eighteenth centuries applied to the second-­ generation Friends, then outlines their responses to persecution via the Meeting for Sufferings and the implications of the accession of different monarchs in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, and concludes with an analysis of popular cultural representations of the Friends offered in published court records.

Laws Applied to the Friends: Pre-­Seventeenth-­Century Legislation When laws applied to the Quakers, including some originating centuries before the Friends’ appearance in the mid-­seventeenth century, are considered, it is evident that a legal history of oppression of religious minorities more broadly can be traced from the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries. As William C. Braithwaite noted, the application of de Heretico Comburendo (On burning heretics), originally passed in 1401 as a means to punish the Lollards,3 was considered by some members of Parliament at the time of Nayler’s trial for blasphemy.4 Nayler narrowly escaped the death penalty by ninety-­six to eighty-­two parliamentary votes and would have been the only person executed for heresy and blasphemy during the English Revolution. However, despite its origins, and after its reintroduction during Mary’s reign, de Heretico was repealed only in 1677/78 as result of a “healthy repugnance to making conscience felony.”5 This action may have been due to the Friends’ intervention. Richard Davies’s journal notes how Counselor Thomas Corbet, a lawyer sympathetic to the Friends, warned that the continued existence of

2. Raymond Ayoub, “The Persecution of ‘an Innocent People’ in Seventeenth-­Century England,” QS 10, no. 1 (2005): 46–­66. 3. S. A. Royal, “John Foxe’s ‘Acts and Monuments’ and the Lollard Legacy in the Long English Reformation” (PhD diss., Durham University, 2014). 4. Braithwaite, BQ, 261; David Loewenstein, Treacherous Faith: The Spectre of Heresy in Early Modern English Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 231, 234. See also Moore’s assessment in chapter 1. 5. Braithwaite, SPQ, 108.

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de Heretico meant “they might try us all, if Popery came up again.”6 Hence Corbet, with the Welsh Quaker Thomas Lloyd, raised their concerns with Parliament, and shortly afterward the act was repealed. An additional piece of pre-­seventeenth-­century legislation used to greater effect in the oppression of the Quakers was the 1581 Recusancy Act. This, as part of the development of a harsher penal code to be applied to Catholic recusants during Elizabeth’s reign, made recusancy7 an indictable offense, with fines and forfeiture of estates applied to those found guilty. While the original intention of the law was to make Roman Catholics conform, by the 1660s it was used to persecute those Friends who refused to attend the established church or otherwise engage with Anglican practices, such as the payment of church rates. In the case of the latter, as for tithes, persecution for nonpayment continued into the nineteenth century.8 Although Quakers had already been suspected as “crypto-­papists” for some decades, their prosecution as recusants began in earnest from 1676, when laws against adult nonattenders were more strictly enforced.9 The Meeting for Sufferings responded swiftly by collating a list of those convicted under the statute and identifying which were Quaker. The intention here was to make an application “by some in power on their behalf.”10 Indeed, throughout the later 1670s, the Meeting for Sufferings sought recognition that the Friends were not Catholic and should not be persecuted as such.11 The Oxfordshire Quarterly Meeting noted in 1680 that the Friends should remind local constables that they ought to be presented before the magistrates as Quakers and “not as Papists.” Furthermore, the constable should “take two neighbours” to witness any abuse he received from the magistrate, as the Friends would “stand by him.”12 As identified in Hampshire in the 6. Richard Davies, An Account of the Convincement, Exercises, Services, and Travels . . . (London: Mary Hinde, 1771), 162–­63. 7. The refusal to attend the services of the established church. 8. John Merryweather, “Epistle CXXXII—­1804,” in LYM, A Collection of the Epistles from the Yearly Meeting of Friends in London . . . 1675 to 1805 . . . (Baltimore, Md.: Cole and Hewes, 1806), 402. 9. For examples, see Barry Reay, The Quakers and the English Revolution (London: Temple Smith, 1985), 59–­60. 10. Ellis Hookes, “Epistle III—­1677,” in LYM, Collection of the Epistles, 10. 11. Craig W. Horle, The Quakers and the English Legal System, 1660–­1688 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988), 218–­19. 12. LSF, TEMP MS 605, 7, Nina Saxon Snell, notebook of the Oxfordshire Quarterly Meeting, 1671–­1746 (September 14, 1680).

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late 1670s, the Quakers were particularly suspected as crypto-­papists due to their refusal to swear oaths, including those of supremacy and allegiance to the monarch.13 Persecution under the 1581 act continued, however, and was especially intense during the Tory Reaction (1682–­85), when the authorities sought conformity to Anglicanism and an unfettered monarchy.14 Consequently, large fines were imposed on those unwilling to accept the tenets of the established church.15 Certainly, the Friends constituted at least a sixth of County Durham “recusants” listed in 1685.16 Although it is not clear whether the Quakers were genuinely viewed as disguised Jesuits or if this was a convenient way to continue to fine them, certainly the capacity to apply an Elizabethan law to the Friends enabled legal and rhetorical persecution to continue. Such activities were noted by the Meeting for Sufferings, which, four years earlier, had asked the quarterly meetings to collate information from Quarter Sessions to identify the extent to which Quakers were “prosecuted for recusancy” and thereby “avoid such prosecutions” in the future. By 1682, the meeting had created a “printed sheet of the cases of recusancy” to be presented to Parliament and “moderate justices,” presumably those likely to heed their assertions that the law was “intentionally made against papists and not against [P]rotestants.”17 The introduction of the Toleration Act in 1689 meant, at least, that such laws were no longer applied to the Friends. The third law applied to the Friends was the 1593 Act Against Puritans or Act Against Seditious Sectaries, which from the Restoration until the 1680s was applied to both the Quakers and the Baptists, as it facilitated the prosecution of those not attending Anglican church services and those attending conventicles, especially during periods of particularly heavy oppression.18 This is not to suggest that only pre-­seventeenth-­century laws were applied to the Friends and other non-­Anglicans, as the majority used 13. Rosalind Johnson, “Protestant Dissenters in Hampshire, c.1640–­c.1740” (PhD diss., University of Winchester, 2013), 107. 14. See Southcombe in chapter 8. 15. Braithwaite, SPQ, 100, 104. 16. Durham County Record Office, Recusant Roll, 34 CII, Box QI, Indictments (1685). Of 1,235 recusants, at least 211 were Quakers. 17. Ellis Hookes, “Epistle IV—­1681,” and Richard Richardson, “Epistle V—­1682,” in LYM, Collection of the Epistles, 11, 14. 18. Keith E. Durso, No Armor for the Back: Baptist Prison Writings 1600s–­1700s (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 2007), 13; Tim Harris, Restoration: Charles II and His Kingdoms, 1660–­1685 (London: Penguin, 2006, [2005]), 300.

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to oppress the Friends originated from 1650 or later. By analyzing them, a sense of the changing religious and political landscape of the British Isles can be discerned. Clearly, a straightforward move to toleration is not apparent, as a consideration of laws passed after the Toleration Act reveals.

267 Laws Applied to the Friends: Seventeenth-­Century Legislation The 1650 Blasphemy Act, used to prosecute Nayler, originated from a desire to “return to an older era of church government” in which an established church, the revival of press licensing, and the passing of the act would allow the maintenance of social and moral order.19 Nayler’s activities, therefore, were particularly problematic. He was prosecuted under the act in Bristol after notoriously entering the city in apparent imitation of Christ’s entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.20 However, this was very unusual. David Manning notes that the Quakers were more likely to be accused of blasphemy as part of theological debates and anti-­Quaker rhetoric rather than through the act’s application in court cases.21 As he asserts, criminal blasphemy was a “complex and obscure crime,” with few cases, save Nayler’s, meeting legal requirements for prosecution to be instigated.22 Even in this case, the accused was effectively tried and condemned by Parliament. Indeed, the law, which originated from a desire to stem the most extreme politico-­religious developments of the Interregnum, had gray areas. The Commons decision to punish Nayler stemmed partially from the breaking of the law, but more specifically it was the means to safeguard the nation from “a grand Imposter and Seducer of the People.”23 The Blasphemy Act offered little clarity for those seeking to prosecute even the most radical of Quaker activities, and the 1660 Declaration of Breda, which Charles II issued from his court in the Low Countries seven weeks before leaving for Dover, declared his desire for national 19. Randy Robertson, Censorship and Conflict in Seventeenth-­Century England (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009), 126. 20. Erin Bell, “Eighteenth-­Century Quakerism and the Rehabilitation of James Nayler, Seventeenth-­Century Radical,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 59, no. 3 (2008): 426–­46. 21. David Manning, “Accusations of Blasphemy in English Anti-­Quaker Polemic, c.1660–­1701,” QS 14, no. 1 (2009): 27–­56. 22. Manning, 28. 23. David Lawton, Blasphemy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), 68.

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reconciliation, including “liberty to tender consciences,” and offered hope to the Friends and other religious minorities.24 Despite the royal promise, the years following the Restoration saw continued oppression, and arguably, only the death of Charles and the beginning of the reign of his brother James II in 1685 enabled a loosening of legal constraints. The 1660s to mid-­ 1670s otherwise saw an increasing range of antinonconformist legislation, beginning in 1661 with the Corporation Act. Although not specifically anti-­Quaker, the Corporation Act was intended to exclude the “disaffected” from town governments—­those not prepared to take the Anglican sacrament or swear oaths of supremacy and allegiance.25 Dissenters were barred from town, county, and national government.26 The act severely limited the potential for them to represent their regional communities. The 1662 Quaker Act was, however, very specifically aimed at the Friends, and its passing originated in the Commons’ desire in May 1661 to legislate against the Quakers, Anabaptists, and other “schismatics.” John Miller notes the clumsiness of the act, which penalized any who refused oaths but specifically the Friends who held “conventicles.”27 It had found impetus in the wake of the Muggleswick Plot of 1662, when a number of dissenters were suspected of involvement in a conspiracy originating in Northeast England to bring down the Anglican Church and Parliament.28 It is clear that under the terms of the 1662 act, many of the leading Friends were imprisoned, largely because of their refusal to flee from meetings.29 Unfortunately for the Friends, Parliament had rejected the king’s plan to declare his indulgence of the dissenters as outlined in the Declaration of Breda, and in a speech on February 18, 1663, Charles noted his unfulfilled 24. Charles II, “Declaration of Breda,” in Princes and Peoples: France and the British Isles, 1620–­1714: An Anthology of Primary Sources, ed. M. L. Kekewich (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994), 60–­62. 25. B. Young Kunze, Margaret Fell and the Rise of Quakerism (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1994), 140. 26. The law was repealed only in 1828. 27. Religious meetings of more than five unrelated adults. 28. This was a forerunner of the Northern Plot of 1663, involving some of the same people. For details, see Richard L. Greaves, Deliver Us from Evil: The Radical Underground in Britain, 1660–­1663 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 176–­92. Also see John Miller, After the Civil Wars: English Politics and Government in the Reign of Charles II (Abingdon: Routledge, 2014 [2000]), 135; D. S. Katz, Sabbath and Sectarianism in Seventeenth-­Century England (Leiden: Brill, 1988), 42. 29. Richard Greaves, Enemies under His Feet: Radicals and Nonconformists in Britain, 1664–­1677 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1990), 137.

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desire to comfort “peaceable Dissenters.” The Commons nevertheless dismissed such sentiments.30 In contrast, the 1662 Act of Uniformity had no obvious effects on the Quakers, as it commanded all clergy to be ordained by an Anglican bishop and required the sole use of the Book of Common Prayer.31 Despite royal sentiments, the following decade saw the passing of a range of laws intended to limit or even prevent the activities of religious minorities. The first, the 1664 Conventicle Act, was not specifically aimed at the Friends but was anti-­Quaker in its intention and application and, as far as the Friends are concerned, can be viewed as an extension of the 1662 Quaker Act. Meetings of five or more unrelated adults were viewed as requiring severe penalties: fines or imprisonment for the first two offenses and a fine of £100, or transportation for seven years, for the third. The act was to elapse in 1668, three years after the end of the parliamentary session in which it was passed, although a second was passed in 1670.32 Several high-­profile Friends, including Margaret Fell, were caught and fined heavily under the terms of the Conventicle Act. Persecution of the Friends continued after the passing of the Five Mile Act in 1665. This measure, although aimed at limiting the activities of all nonconformist ministry, may have sought to limit Quaker preaching in that it prohibited those convicted of preaching and who refused to swear oaths of loyalty from coming within five miles of any borough that sent burgesses to Parliament.33 Under the act, William Penn and William Mead were tried at the Old Bailey (c. September 1670), and this was recorded in the Quaker publication The Peoples Ancient and Just Liberties Asserted.34 The indictment of the pair asserted that Penn, alongside Mead, had “take[n] upon himself to preach and speak . . . in contempt of the said Lord the King, and of his Law” and ended, notoriously, with the two men’s acquittal, despite the best efforts of the judge to 30. Jacqueline Rose, Godly Kingship in Restoration England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 94–­95. 31. David J. Appleby, “From Ejectment to Toleration in England, 1662–­1689,” in The Great Ejectment of 1662, ed. Alan P. F. Sell (Eugene, Ore.: Pickwick, 2012), 67–­124 (especially 67–­68). 32. Tim Harris, London Crowds in the Reign of Charles II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 63–­64. 33. Young Kunze, Margaret Fell, 140; Jane Calvert, Quaker Constitutionalism and the Political Thought of John Dickinson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 58. 34. Nancy Black Sagafi-­nejad, Friends at the Bar (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2011), 31.

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intimidate the jury, led by Edward Bushel, with threats of fines and imprisonment for their refusal to accept that the Quakers were criminals.35 This led indirectly to the legal establishment (in November 1670) that jurors reaching a conclusion with which the judge disagreed could not be fined.36 During the following decade, more laws were passed aimed at the Friends and other dissenters. The second Conventicle Act of 1670 was, like its 1664 precursor, largely anti-­Quaker and was declared permanent. Furthermore, as David Appleby notes, “added incentives were given to informers, who stood to collect a third of the fines resulting from each incident.”37 Certainly, in Southampton, eleven Friends were jailed in 1670 as a result of the measure. However, application of the law was debated by the local legal authorities and was not simply applied wholesale when determining which religious meetings should be considered conventicles, as those allowing a conventicle at their home or preaching at one received particularly heavy fines.38 The short-­lived Declaration of Indulgence of 1672 offered little relief to the Friends, who refused to apply for preaching licenses,39 while the Test Act of 1673 required all officeholders to swear an oath to the king and the Church of England and sign a declaration denying the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation. This legislation was predominantly aimed at Catholics, but it continued the sanctions against the Friends and other dissenters. It also prevented them from attending English universities or holding public office.40 Three years after the Test Act, an order in council was passed in 1676 to enforce existing laws relating to both Catholics and those holding conventicles.41 The following year saw the repeal of de Heretico Comburendo, perhaps because it was viewed as a relic of Catholicism. Despite the removal of this potentially disastrous piece of medieval legislation, the later 1670s until 35. William Penn and William Mead, The Trial of William Penn and William Mead at the Old Bailey, 1670 (London: Headley Bros., 1908 [1670]), 14. 36. Kevin Crosby, “Bushell’s Case and the Juror’s Soul,” Legal History 33 (2012): 251–­90. 37. Appleby, “From Ejectment,” 103. 38. Andrew Coleby, Central Government and the Localities: Hampshire 1649–­1689 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002 [1987]), 140; Johnson, “Protestant Dissenters,” 102. 39. C. C. Weston and J. R. Greenberg, Subjects and Sovereigns: The Grand Controversy over Legal Sovereignty in Stuart England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002 [1981]), 164. 40. Judith Jennings, Gender, Religion and Radicalism in the Long Eighteenth Century (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 8. The Test Act was repealed only in 1829. 41. Braithwaite, SPQ, 100.

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1685 saw continued persecution. The application of the Clarendon Code, the collective term for the Corporation, Uniformity, Conventicle, and Five Mile Acts, continued unabated.42 That is not to suggest that the level of its application was the same throughout the period or in all parts of England and Wales. Indeed, regional variations have been noted, and overall persecution from the Restoration onward was “sporadic and capricious.”43

The Friends’ Responses to Sufferings Before the Meeting for Sufferings From 1657, the Friends were encouraged by George Fox to present accounts of their sufferings to assize judges and from the following year to collate evidence of persecution.44 This was not merely an act of memorialization, as such accounts served to support later Friends who were suffering in a similar fashion, underlining the sense of a godly inheritance for those experiencing persecution. However, the immediate purpose of this activity was to provide material for publicity and for appeals to the authorities: therefore, details were sent to London for central collation. Here the Great Book of Sufferings was held and used in applications and appeals to magistrates, politicians, and the royal court in order to “combat . . . persecution more effectively.”45 Before the founding of the Meeting for Sufferings in 1675, the chief activists were Edward Burrough, notably his 1659 Declaration of the Present Sufferings, and after Burrough’s death, George Whitehead, with publications such as To the King and Both Houses of Parliament (1666).46 Such works sought, at least in part, to appeal to non-­Quaker readers on the grounds that the laws being applied to the Friends were primarily Elizabethan and had originated as punishments for Roman Catholics. By implication, the Quakers, as fellow Protestants, should not have the laws applied to them. Such publications, though, came at a cost. In 1672, Whitehead wrote to the Friends across the nation, emphasizing the need for all meetings, not only those in London, to contribute “for Books that are disposed of & given away for the Publicke Service of Truth to the Chief Rulers & Others concerned . . . together with 42. John H. Ferguson, Politics Quaker Style (San Bernardino: Borgo Press, 1995), 104. 43. Horle, Quakers and the English Legal System, 268. 44. Horle, 164. 45. Black Sagafi-­nejad, Friends at the Bar, 211n2. Also see Moore in chapter 3. 46. Edward Burrough, A Declaration of the Present Sufferings of . . . Quakers (London: Tho. Simmons, 1659); To the King and Both Houses of Parliament . . . (London: s.n., 1666) was claimed for George Whitehead and reprinted in Samuel Tuke, ed., Memoirs of George Whitehead, 2 vols. (York: W. Alexander, 1830), 2:181–­86.

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Accounts off ffriends Generall Sufferings . . . [Such activities] doe equally concern the ffrds of the Country as well as the Citty to bear Especially for the future, Wherefore wee desire you that are concerned in the Quarterly Meetings to take care that a Collection be made accordingly in your County.”47 Quaker works intended for a wider readership in the period did not consider sufferings alone but also sought to explain their position on other legal and civil matters. For example, Penn and other Friends’ Treatise of Oaths (1675) sought to justify their position on swearing to king and Parliament. In a period in which the refusal to swear oaths was viewed as deeply suspicious, legislative measures taken to curtail Quaker missionary activity, such as the Quaker Act and Five Mile Act, severely hampered their progress, although garnering sympathy toward the Quakers might lead to less stringent application of such laws. Certainly, the work positioned Penn in particular, and by extension other Friends, as Quaker but also as wronged members of the gentry who were “cruelly treated in [their] Persons and Estates.”48 In short, the Friends approached those in authority with detailed accounts in the hope of lessening the oppression they experienced. In response to the array of legal tools, applied in both civil and ecclesiastical courts, originating in the seventeenth century and earlier, which were used to oppress the Quakers, the Friends were increasingly active. Penn, who had close familial ties to the Stuart court, was an influential voice for the Friends, as were other Meeting for Sufferings representatives after its creation in 1675, who petitioned those in authority for alleviation of their conditions both before and after the Toleration Act of 1689.49

The Friends’ Responses to Sufferings with the Meeting for Sufferings Appeals to authority were frequent and fitted into the wider Quaker administration in the course of the second generation. The Meeting for Sufferings was set up shortly after Penn’s Treatise was published so that when members such as Thomas Lloyd approached Parliament, they did so with the weight of the society, including often well-­respected London Quakers, behind them. Indeed, many of the Friends were receptive to the Meeting for Sufferings’ 47. LSF, MS Portfolio 16, 20, “At a General Meeting of Friends, for Managing the Public Affairs of Truth throughout the Nation . . . London, 29th of 3d Month, 1672.” This document is reproduced in The Friend or Advocate of Truth 15 (1842): 109. 48. William Penn and others, A Treatise of Oaths . . . (London: s.n., 1675), 3. 49. Also see Southcombe in chapter 8.

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offer of legal advice and support, “often from some of the finest legal minds in England.”50 The meeting was able, through the efforts of such legal counsel, to argue against the application of some aspects of the law. For example, in 1675, Thomas Corbet articulated the case that the second Conventicle Act should not be applied to the Friends meeting in a rented property.51 Papers produced by second-generation Friends additionally emphasized, as Penn had done, the respectability and economic significance of those being persecuted. An undated letter from Ellis Hookes, collator of the Great Book of Sufferings, to the king referred, no doubt drawing on the material he was involved in collecting, to one occasion in which “hundreds of the rude people breaking their [Quakers’] windows, & throwing stones to their danger and their hurt & no officer appeared, thus wee are used though wee pay our taxes & tribute.”52 Hookes’s reference to the Friends’ payment of taxes—­a legitimate claim made on them by the authorities, unlike tithes—­underscores his representation of them as good subjects seeking only to live peaceably and be protected by those in power. Similarly, published works, notably a 1697 broadsheet that responded to the 1696 measure relating to tithes, emphasized the self-­positioning of the Friends as nonthreatening.53 In Ireland, too, the sixth-­months meeting, equivalent to quarterly meetings, advised the Friends in late 1691 to approach those in authority and request the release of those imprisoned for the nonpayment of tithes. The involvement of respectable members of the wider community, such as Anthony Sharp, a Dublin merchant, no doubt added weight to such pleas.54 Oaths and tithes were not the only areas in which the Meeting for Sufferings was active. The meeting was also active in defending Cordelia Cowdry in Southampton, as the still-­debated legitimacy of Quaker marriages, which since 1661 had enjoyed some legal recognition, continued to be challenged.55 Cordelia, a young Quaker widow with a baby, had been threatened with eviction by her landlord in 1700 on the grounds that the copyhold lease on her property could not be inherited by her as it would 50. Horle, Quakers and the English Legal System, 187. 51. Horle, 190–­91. Horle does, though, view some of Corbet’s advice as “unconventional” (192). 52. LSF, Portfolio 2, 74. 53. Anon., Something Relating to the Bill for Small Tithes . . . in Behalf of the People Called Quakers (London: s.n., 1697). 54. R. L. Greaves, Dublin’s Merchant-­Quaker: Anthony Sharp and the Community of Friends (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1998), 106. 55. For a more detailed account, see Johnson, “Protestant Dissenters,” 198–­202.

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have been by other widows, as Quaker marriages were not recognized by the established church and therefore could be claimed to be legally invalid. The Meeting for Sufferings employed an attorney to defend her, and when the case threatened to be interminable, leading Friends, including Penn and Mead, became involved, investing considerable time and money. Thus Cordelia’s position represented a test case over the legality of Quaker marriage and, by extension, the legitimacy of children born into such unions. After three hearings in the Court of Common Pleas in London, one of the three superior English courts alongside the Exchequer and the King’s Bench, a settlement was offered whereby the child’s name would be put on the lease, which led to the formal discontinuance of the case against her in June 1705.56 The lack of a verdict more favorable to Quaker marriages resulted in additional lobbying to establish them in law, and in the same month, the meeting agreed to write to Queen Anne to ask her to condemn precedents set against the validity of the Friends’ marriages. In addition, a collection of legal precedents was planned. The London Yearly Meeting became involved, advising representatives from across the nation to contact their local members of Parliament on the issue. Despite the well-­organized and multipronged approach, it took until 1753 for Quaker and Jewish marriages to be legally recognized under Hardwicke’s Marriage Act; until the passing of the act, a marriage needed only to be held before an Anglican priest or other witnesses to be valid in law. Seen, by the mid-­eighteenth century, as encouraging couples to wed without parental consent, the act determined that to be considered legal, marriages must be conducted in a church or chapel of the established church, although the Jews and the Quakers were exempted.57

Anti-­Quaker Responses to the Friends’ Legal Petitions Published works petitioning Parliament dating from before the 1689 Toleration Act and organized by the Meeting for Sufferings tended to focus on the Friends imprisoned for meeting. Accounts such as Whitehead’s 1680 A Brief Account of Some of the Late and Present Sufferings were, like Hookes’s letter, “humbly presented” to king and Parliament and directly addressed the effect 56. J. H. Baker, Introduction to English Legal History, 3rd ed. (London: Butterworths, 1990), 44–­62. 57. R. B. Outhwaite, Clandestine Marriage in England, 1500–­1850 (London: Hambledon Press, 1995), 123–­25.

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of both Conventicle Acts.58 Whitehead authored several such accounts on behalf of the Meeting for Sufferings, both before and after the Toleration Act, which saw him personally identified as the recipient of the vitriol of apostates such as Francis Bugg, whose 1694 Quakerism Withering offered a lengthy response “in answer to a printed sheet deliver’d to the Parliament.”59 Although it is not clear which work Bugg wished to address, such publications sought, in general, to refute the Friends’ claims to legitimacy and continued to be published beyond the Toleration Act.

James II and Legal Indulgence The death of Charles II and the accession of his Catholic brother, James II, in February 1685 led to more lenient treatment of all religious dissenters, including the Friends. In 1753, Joseph Besse noted that the Friends were persecuted with “less vehemency” during James’s reign.60 Certainly, in 1686, more than a thousand Quakers, alongside other Protestant dissenters, were discharged from jail, including the Lancashire Friend Roger Haydock, an acquaintance of Penn, who, after two years in Lancaster Gaol, sailed for Amsterdam.61 The following year saw a Declaration of Indulgence in which James outlined his intentions that all his subjects be Catholic but added that “conscience ought not to be constrained nor people forced in matters of mere religion.”62 Indeed, it has been argued that James’s sentiments were at least as liberal as those enshrined in the later (1689) Toleration Act or possibly more liberal, as his declaration “exempted no denominations” and “specified no theological preconditions for tolerance.”63 Additionally, ecclesiastical penalties for nonattendance at church, or not receiving communion, were suspended. Previously, nonconformists, whose belief system did not allow them to attend Anglican services or pay church rates for the building’s upkeep, had been prosecuted 58. George Whitehead, A Brief Account of Some of the Late and Present Sufferings of the People Called Quakers . . . 1660 to 1680 (London: Andrew Sowle, 1680). 59. Francis Bugg, Quakerism Withering, and Christianity Reviving . . . (London: J. Dunton, 1694), frontispiece. 60. Besse, Sufferings, 1:473. 61. Besse, 1:482; William I. Hull, William Penn and the Dutch Quaker Migration to Pennsylvania (Swarthmore, Pa.: Swarthmore College, 1935), 107. 62. James II, “Declaration of Indulgence,” in English Historical Documents, 1660–­1714, ed. A. Browning (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1953), 395–­97 (395). 63. Michael Mullett, James II and Politics, 1678–­1688 (London: Routledge, 1994), 60. Also see Southcombe in chapter 8.

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through ecclesiastical courts. Certainly, the Friends benefitted by no longer being persecuted for nonattendance, although the continued collection of tithes led to ongoing sufferings, with tithes still core to Quaker identity. It is worth, then, considering the continued significance of tithe prosecution even during the reign of a monarch whose indulgence of non-­Anglicans was otherwise generous and wide-­ranging.

The Friends’ Ongoing Prosecution over Tithes Post-­Reformation tithe litigation was a “growth enterprise” in sixteenth-­ century ecclesiastical courts.64 The courts supported the canon law position that a tenth of a farmer’s crop, or its cash equivalent, was due to the established church. From 1587, the recovery of tithes might be attempted through civil courts, and the decision of which forum to use tended to reflect the plaintiff, Anglican cleric, or lay tithe farmer, as they would hope for a better hearing in one or the other.65 Thus by the later seventeenth century, the Friends were pursued for tithes in both ecclesiastical and civil courts, resulting in either distraint or imprisonment because they refused to pay. Some records suggest they attempted to argue that civil courts did not have a legal right to rule on such cases, reflecting their desire to find a way through the legal maze in which they found themselves.66 The same offense was potentially pursued in either or both civil and ecclesiastical courts. In response, in 1682 the Meeting for Sufferings discussed how those appearing in one type of court might “plead the former prosecution to the latter.”67 Quaker spiritual journals often represented tithe imprisonment as the root of their testimony against the wider world, when respectable and relatively well-­off Friends lost material wealth but gained spiritual strength and authority. Both Laura Brace and Nicholas Morgan note the use of the image of husbandry in journals and other Quaker works as a means to win support or sympathy, underlining the Quaker views of property rights, which attempted to convert individuals not to Quakerism

64. R. M. Helmholz, Roman Canon Law in Reformation England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994 [1990]), 90. 65. Helmholz, 95, 100. 66. DHC, NQ1/A19, Letters to Meetings 2.13–­15 (1668–­80). 67. Richardson, “Epistle V—­1682,” 16.

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but to a fairer economic system.68 This is true of later publications stressing the economic and social outcomes of tithe collection, but Anthony Pearson’s 1657 The Great Case of Tythes Truly Stated . . . instead begins by describing the abolition of Mosaic law with the coming of Christ, positioning tithe testimony as a rejection of Old Testament law as embodied in the coming of Jesus.69

The Accession of William of Orange and Its Legal Implications for the Friends, 1689–­91 William of Orange and Mary, his wife, were jointly crowned early in 1689, and the Toleration Act, passed later that year, enabled Protestant dissenters to worship without hindrance. Yet for the Quakers, the act had limitations. It did not repeal other measures that hindered the Friends, such as the Test and Corporation Acts, which required those in public office to take Anglican Holy Communion and therefore limited the Quakers’, and other dissenters’, access to such posts.70 Furthermore, in the following quarter century, several laws were passed that further oppressed the Friends, beyond the toleration of meetings offered by the 1689 act. For example, a seldom applied yet significant law that led to the Quakers, such as Robert Wardell of Durham, being distrained was the Poll Act of 1691.71 This act required many householders, including “every Preacher or Teacher in any Congregation . . . not having taken Orders according to the discipline of the Church of England,”72 to contribute 20s. per quarter, for a year, toward a fund for King William’s War with France. On being classed as such and refusing to fund warfare, Wardell had 68. Laura Brace, The Idea of Property in Seventeenth-­Century England: Tithes and the Individual (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998), 5, 46. The fairer system included a rejection of the payment of a tenth of goods to the established church, as clergymen were perceived as having done nothing to earn it and to be living off the labor of others. 69. Anthony Pearson, The Great Case of Tythes Truly Stated . . . (London: n.p., 1657); and cited in Nicholas Morgan, Lancashire Quakers and the Establishment, 1660–­1730 (Halifax: Ryburn, 1993), 176–­77. 70. Mark Hill, Russell Sandberg, and Norman Doe, Religion and Law in the United Kingdom (Alphen aan der Rijn: Kluwer Law International, 2014), 24. For further details of post-­Toleration oppression of Quakers, see Frost in chapter 9. 71. Besse, Sufferings, 1:190. 72. An Act for Raiseing Money by a Poll . . . for the Carrying on a Vigorous War against France (1691), in Statutes of the Realm, VI, 1685–­94 (1819), 302–­10. See http://​www​ .british​-history​.ac​.uk​/​report​.aspx​?compid​=​46360 (accessed October 17, 2014).

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goods taken valued at £1.8s.6d. Similarly, the 1690 Militia Act revisited the 1661 Militia Act, affecting those Friends adjudged wealthy enough to be taxed, notably Walter Phillips of Exon in Devon, who was distrained of goods worth £3.5s.3d. after refusing to contribute.73

278 Early Eighteenth-­C entury Legislation Anne’s reign (1702–­14) saw the renewal of the Affirmation Act in its first year, followed nine years later (1711) by the Occasional Conformity Act, which outlawed the practice by which dissenters occasionally took Anglican communion and thereby avoided the operation of the Test Acts. This affected the Friends insofar as the “church reforms” supported by the queen were likely to position nonconformists negatively.74 The queen had, in the interim, enacted a general pardon in July 1709, which benefitted the Friends, among other groups, including twenty-­three jailed for tithes.75 However, although the 1711 measure reiterated the terms of the Toleration Act, it offended several groups, including those seeking greater comprehension of dissent within the Church of England instead of the acceptance of such groups as independent of it. While the Friends did not seek this, the rejection of it as an idea makes later legislation more understandable. Specifically, the 1714 Schism Act sought explicitly to suppress dissenting schools unless they were licensed by an Anglican bishop, which would have proved disastrous to the Friends who were carefully building educational establishments, such as Sidcot School, founded in 1699.76 As William Gibson states, the law was a “pernicious piece of legislation” inspired by the Oxford University preacher Henry Sacheverell’s sermon attacking the schools of the dissenters for their alleged promotion of “irreligion and disunity.”77 Thankfully, given the incendiary nature of Sacheverell’s beliefs, although the legislation was passed, Anne’s death on the very day it was intended to be implemented in August 1714 prevented this. George, her distant German 73. Besse, Sufferings, 1:165; An Act for the Raising the Militia of this Kingdome . . . (1691), in Statutes of the Realm, VI, 1685–­94 (1819), 246. See http://​www​.british​-history​.ac​.uk ​/​report​.aspx​?compid​=​46351 (accessed October 17, 2014). 74. The Affirmation Act and related tithe legislation are considered by Frost in chapter 9. 75. Benjamin Bealing, “Epistle XXXII—­1709,” in LYM, Collection of the Epistles, 98. 76. For details, see Valerie Leimdorfer, Quakers at Sidcot, 1690–­1990 (Sidcot: Sidcot Preparative Meeting, 1990). 77. William Gibson, The Church of England, 1688–­1832 (London: Routledge, 2001), 83.

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cousin, ascended to the throne shortly thereafter. He never sought to implement the law and, indeed, both the Occasional Conformity and Schism Acts were repealed in 1718. John Seed interprets this as the reward for “dissenting loyalty” to the Hanoverian succession during the 1715 crisis, which had additionally seen a large degree of violence against the dissenters.78 The Affirmation Act was made perpetual in June 1715, with the wording of the affirmation itself simplified in 1722 to acknowledge some of the Friends’ disquiet at the earlier reference to “the presence of Almighty God,” possibly reflecting a similar desire to reward a minority still targeted by mobs in periods of political crisis.79 Certainly, Kathleen Wilson notes that on Restoration Day in Oxford in May 1715, the Baptist and Quaker meeting houses were pulled down by mobs. This was irrespective of improvements to the Friends’ legal status and demonstrates that periods of tension still led to violence against minorities well into the eighteenth century.80 Bearing Wilson’s comments in mind, a pertinent case tried at the Old Bailey is that of Thomas Rye and a number of other men accused of rioting in July 1715 in relation to the national election during which the Tory Party reiterated their warnings that the Anglican Church was being endangered. The mob’s misdemeanors included assaulting a Quaker, Mr. Gee, who may have been Joshua Gee, a wealthy and influential merchant.81 Rye had been seen “within 2 Doors of Mr. Gee’s,” and upon receiving an unsatisfactory response when he asked Mr. Gee if he was for the High Church, he was seen to “turn Mr. Gee’s Hat round, and heard him (Gee) say he was a Quaker”; Gee’s servant, Jardin, testified that immediately afterward, “he saw him turn his Master’s Hat, and strike him on the Face.”82 A parallel example in which the Presbyterians were victimized is offered in Amanda Herbert’s account of the journal of Sarah Savage, who noted the fear felt by her fellow 78. John Seed, Dissenting Histories: Religious Division and the Politics of Memory in Eighteenth-­Century England (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008), 29. 79. R. K. Webb, “From Toleration to Religious Liberty,” in Liberty Secured? Britain before and after 1688, ed. J. R. Jones (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1992), 158–­98 (175). 80. Kathleen Wilson, The Sense of the People (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 104. 81. Isabel Grubb, Quakerism and Industry before 1800 (London: Williams and Norgate, 1930), 53. 82. Old Bailey Proceedings Online, Trial of Thomas Rye, Thomas Harvey, Thomas Stringer, William Harvey, Thomas Oven, John Tyler and Richard Cannon, July 1715 (t17150713-­14). See http://​www​.oldbaileyonline​.org (accessed October 17, 2014).

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nonconformists in a period in which Whitchurch chapel, founded by her father some decades earlier, was destroyed.83 That Rye was found guilty probably had less to do with his attack on a Quaker than the disruption the riot caused and its implications for respectable members of society such as Gee. Nevertheless, at a more parochial level, tensions between those of similar status may have remained, with little opportunity for redress, as Herbert finds for the Presbyterians in North Wales.84 The case offers an interesting example of how the persecution of urban dissenters may have led to relief for imprisoned Friends, although as the Meeting for Sufferings noted in 1718, thirteen members remained prisoner, primarily for tithes.85 The number of the Quakers in prison nevertheless decreased significantly after 1722.86

The Quakers and the Old Bailey: The Friends in Popular Culture Having considered laws applied to, and sometimes specifically created for, the oppression of the Quakers as well as responses to such laws through bodies such as the Meeting for Sufferings, it is pertinent to consider how accounts of trials involving the Quakers became part of popular culture. Focusing, in particular, on published accounts of Old Bailey trials available from the mid-­ 1670s, it is interesting to examine the courtroom experiences of the Friends who were the victims or witnesses of crimes.87 The Old Bailey Proceedings, which were published eight times a year, after each court session, offer insights into the range of cases tried at London’s central criminal court.88 In the earliest decades for which there is extant material, from 1674 several cases reveal the Quaker experiences of the law and reflect attitudes toward the Quakers 83. Amanda E. Herbert, Female Alliances: Gender, Identity, and Friendship in Early Modern Britain (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014), 189. 84. Herbert, 190–­91. 85. Benjamin Bealing, “Epistle XLI—­1718,” in LYM, Collection of the Epistles, 121. 86. Anon., “Appendix,” in LYM, Collection of the Epistles, 410. 87. This follows from the work conducted by Edwina Newman, “‘Children of Light and Sons of Darkness’: Quakers, Oaths and the Old Bailey Proceedings in the Eighteenth Century,” QS 12, no. 1 (2007): 73–88; and Simon Webb, Quakers, Newgate and the Old Bailey (Durham: Langley Press, 2008). 88. See http://​www​.oldbaileyonline​.org​/​static​/​Publishinghistory​.jsp (accessed June 14, 2015).

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during the second generation. Around a dozen cases dating from 1676 to 1727 make reference to the Friends in some manner and in such a varied fashion that analysis of them reveals attitudes toward the Quakers that do not suggest a simple development of a culture of toleration after the 1689 Toleration Act. In addition, the cases reflect the worldview of publishers keen to offer representations of second-­generation Quakers that were rarely complimentary in order to entertain a wide readership. Consideration of a sample of the cases will display the ways in which a stereotype of a second-­generation Friend in court had permeated wider culture. The first case that makes reference to a Quaker dates from 1676 and relates to the receipt of stolen goods, for which an unnamed Friend was found guilty. While the lack of a name makes further pursuit of the case difficult and was common in many of the Old Bailey publications, the rather acerbic comment of the proceedings’ author that, in response to the verdict, the guilty party was likely to “make a sad complaint of grievous Persecution” is very revealing.89 Drawing explicitly on public awareness of the Friends’ legal campaigns against persecution, the author, who was probably an official court note taker, recognized or mirrored the prejudices of the expected readership. Indeed, although he does not deal with the idea explicitly, Robert Shoemaker’s work on the representation of crime in Old Bailey records of the eighteenth century touches on the idea of the reader implied within the text. He considers the expected preferences of those reading such accounts, a “literate middle-­and upper-­class newspaper-­reading audience” that was likely also to hold preconceptions of nonconformist minority groups.90 When published reports were “shaped, by selection, inclusion, exclusion, and emphasis,” therefore offering “a particular version of the trials,” in Ian Bell’s words, this possibly “distorted view” may reveal the expected desires of the readership.91 Hence exclusion, in terms of not only aspects of individual trials but entire trials, also merits consideration. It is certainly telling that the first extant account of a group of trials, published in April 1674, explicitly stated that it did not incorporate “divers other tryals which would 89. Old Bailey Proceedings Online, Trial of Quaker, June 1676 (t16760628-­5). See http://​ www​.oldbaileyonline​.org (accessed June 14, 2015). 90. R. B. Shoemaker, “The Old Bailey Proceedings and the Representation of Crime and Criminal Justice in Eighteenth-­Century London,” Journal of British Studies 47, no. 3 (2008): 559–­80 (563). 91. Ian Bell, Literature and Crime in Augustan England (London: Routledge, 1991), 73; and quoted in Shoemaker, “Old Bailey Proceedings,” 560–­61.

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be too tedious to insert.”92 Some, especially in the 1670s and 1680s, probably involved Quakers tried for crimes related to their faith. Such cases were heard regularly in courts across the country, and the mocking tone of the 1676 account shows an awareness of the Friends’ regular appeals to Parliament, the monarch, and other authorities. It assumes this on the reader’s part and firmly positions the unnamed Friend as a criminal not merely for receiving stolen goods but also, it is inferred, for simply being a Quaker. The same year saw an order in council encouraging the enforcement of laws against conventicles. The first Quaker victim in the proceedings appeared in 1678 in a trial for animal rustling. William Brayn was accused of stealing a gelding from Ambros(e) Galloway, a Quaker. When the Quaker refused to swear an oath in court, Brayn was released and Galloway jailed “as a concealer of felony.”93 Intriguingly, although his origins are not given in court records, a Sussex Quaker named Ambrose Galloway, a tailor of Lewes, in 1663 coauthored To All Rulers, Magistrates, Priests, and People . . . when he was imprisoned in Horsham Gaol.94 The Friend appearing in Besse’s Sufferings had already been jailed for attending a Quaker meeting, although ostensibly for refusing an oath in 1662, and in 1671 he was excommunicated.95 The latter penalty was applied because, as a resident of that parish, he was considered to be a member of the church and therefore subject to ecclesiastical and state laws. Breaking such laws by not attending church might thereby lead to excommunication, which, although spiritually insignificant to the Friends, could provoke economic, legal, and social ostracism from the local community.96 However, Galloway did not reappear in the Old Bailey records, so no examples of his wider spiritual and physical maltreatment, if they occurred after 1682 in the London area, were published for non-­Quaker readers. In addition, despite frequent references in the Old Bailey records to Newgate Prison, none of the Friends jailed there for a variety of offenses, mostly before 1685, appear in the proceedings. Although someone might have been imprisoned at Newgate after the trial, the proximity of Newgate 92. See http://​www​.oldbaileyonline​.org​/​static​/​Publishinghistory​.jsp (accessed June 14, 2015). 93. Old Bailey Proceedings Online, Trial of William Brayn, December 1678 (t16781211e-37). See http://www.oldbaileyonline.org. (accessed October 17, 2014). 94. Ambrose Rigge, Ambrose Galloway, Richard Webb, and James Matthew, To All Rulers, Magistrates, Priests, and People . . . of This County of Sussex (London: s.n., 1663). 95. Besse, Sufferings, 1:713, 717. 96. Ayoub, “The Persecution of ‘an Innocent People,’” 64.

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to the Old Bailey meant that it was at the very least common to be tried in one and jailed in the other. Particularly frustrating is the absence of the trial of William Penn and William Mead, under the 1665 Five Mile Act, at the Old Bailey in 1670, four years before the earliest extant publication. It would have been fascinating to see how Penn and Mead’s acquittal was depicted by court officials in parallel to the Quaker account.97 A less well-­known case is that of Richard Ashfield, a yeoman “of Stanes in the county of Middlesex,” who died at age sixty-­five in autumn 1677, after almost a year in Newgate, leaving his widow, Patience, to write an account of his persecution.98 His trial was not recorded in the proceedings and is one of potentially hundreds of “religious offences” tried at the Old Bailey and deemed either not of sufficient interest or perhaps too likely to stir readers’ sympathies. While Galloway and other Quakers were punished for their refusal to swear, after the Affirmation Act of 1695/96, the Friends should, in theory, have been offered the option of affirmation in civil cases, although, of course, not all wished to affirm. Certainly, in the case of James Anderson, indicted for stealing thirty yards of calico in 1717, an unnamed Quaker witness who was unwilling to swear an oath led to Anderson being found not guilty thanks to the “lucky Scrupulosity” of a Friend, in the rather ironic tone of the proceedings’ author.99 In a later case from 1726, it was, however, made clear that a Quaker, “Penn,” in Rosemary Lane had “made oath” that the hats he was asked to comment on had been stolen. Whether he did swear an oath—­and indeed the word “swear” is missing from the trial records—­or if he affirmed is not clear, although certainly this case, alongside others, points to the different decisions the Friends could reach when negotiating their role as witnesses. Two murder cases, both tried in 1696, give insights into attitudes toward the Friends held by those upholding the law and, probably, by those reading the accounts. Details of the first appear in the Ordinary’s Account, written by the Newgate chaplain and considered a “sister account” to the proceedings, containing biographies of executed prisoners and published from the 1670s until the 1770s. Although no Quakers appear among the condemned (and it seems likely that the Friends facing capital punishment would have been included in the accounts), the Newgate Calendar, published 97. William Penn, The Peoples Ancient and Just Liberties Asserted . . . (London: s.n., 1670). 98. Besse, Sufferings, 1:440. 99. Old Bailey Proceedings Online, Trial of James Anderson, October 1717 (t17171016-­10). See http://​www​.oldbaileyonline​.org (accessed October 17, 2014).

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some decades later, incorporated details of the hanging in 1691 of Jacob Halsey, a Quaker “highwayman.”100 The account does give details of the murder of Roger Levens, referred to throughout—­except in one instance—­not by his name but as “the Quaker.”101 Murdered by Thomas Randal in 1695, the assailant refused to acknowledge his misdeeds and was described by the chaplain as “insensible of his barbarous Crime.” That Levens was named as “Roger Levens” only once and otherwise as “the Quaker” suggests a tendency to seek to tarnish the victim’s name by placing him alongside other Quakers, who, as a group, were still viewed by a significant proportion of the population as suspicious dissenters from the state church, especially when those writing such accounts were Anglican clergymen. The second case is more complex and more revealing of the attitudes of those working in the court system. While the chaplain’s account of Levens’s murder focused on the sins of the murderer, the proceedings’ account of the murder of William Iles, “a Quaker,” gave significant details of the event, no doubt seeking the readers’ attention with gruesome particulars.102 It can also be pointed out that in January 1682, Iles, a leather cutter, had appeared before the Middlesex justices of the peace for holding a religious meeting “to the terror of the people of the Lord now King and in breach of his laws.”103 In the Old Bailey trial, Edward Holland and Peter Robinson were both accused (although only Holland was found guilty) of giving Iles “one mortal Wound with a Sword value 2s. on the right part of the Body nigh to the short Ribs, of the breadth of an Inch, and the depth of 12 Inches, of which he soon after died.” However, the most significant aspect of the reporting of the case, when details were often left out for brevity, was the inclusion of the attackers’ allegation that Iles had responded to Holland’s initial assault by taking Holland’s “stick from him, and broke his [Holland’s] head.” That this was part of Holland’s defense may be why it was included. Certainly, 100. Webb, Quakers, Newgate and the Old Bailey, 37–­39; Frank McLynn, Crime and Punishment in Eighteenth-­Century England (London: Routledge, 2002 [1989]), 62. 101. Old Bailey Proceedings Online, Ordinary of Newgate’s Account, January 1696 (OA16960129). See http://​www​.oldbaileyonline​.org (accessed October 17, 2014). 102. Old Bailey Proceedings Online, Trial of Edward Holland and Peter Robinson, September 1696 (t16960909-­460). See http://​www​.oldbaileyonline​.org (accessed October 17, 2014). 103. “Middlesex Sessions Rolls,” in Middlesex County Records: Vol. 4: 1667–­88, ed. John C. Jeaffreson (London: Middlesex County Record Society, 1892), 160–­91; British History Online, http://​www​.british​-history​.ac​.uk​/m ​ iddx​-county​-records​/v​ ol4​/p​ p160​ -191 (accessed March 6, 2017).

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the guilty verdict was by no means guaranteed in the circumstances, because Holland claimed that “the Deceased broke his head first,” and of course, the deceased was also a Quaker. That Holland was found guilty does perhaps reveal a slow movement toward greater toleration of, and sympathy for, the Friends reaching beyond the 1689 Toleration Act to a point in the early eighteenth century when “practical toleration of most religious dissention was well advanced even if principled tolerationists were still a very small minority.”104 In less explicit ways, too, such as the inclusion of Holland’s claims to have been assaulted by Iles, Quaker hypocrisy might be implied, if not directly asserted, in published accounts. Another case referring to the Quakers might also point to a continued desire to stereotype and mock the Quakers in a legal setting in contrast to the Quakers’ “official” self-­representation as a suffering, wronged, serious, and loyal group.105 The case, heard in 1727, involved Sarah Willaw, indicted for stealing a riding hood.106 An unnamed Quaker was proposed as a witness but “through Inadvertency pull’d off his Hat” in the courtroom. On doing so, he “took Pet, and ran out of the Court.” The case was therefore dismissed, and the depiction of the Quaker as simultaneously childish, comical, and a bad subject may summarize the views of many who, witnessing religious toleration, were unconvinced of the legitimacy of their additional claims. That he was not jailed, however, despite not “staying to take either Oath or Affirmation,” when arguably the claim of “concealing [a] felony” might have been levied on him as it had been on the Friends fifty years earlier, perhaps reflects a changing cultural response, including that of the Old Bailey, to the Quakers. Although these cases are only a small sample, their analysis demonstrates how consideration not only of the Quaker attempts to amend the law—­and politicians’, monarchs’, and courts’ efforts to assist or prevent this—­but also of the creation and consumption of accounts of the law help us gain a better idea of wider attitudes, or at least encouraged prejudices, toward second-generation Friends and the law. In conclusion, several points relating to second-­generation Friends may be drawn out of the topics analyzed in this chapter. Not least is the 104. Keith Lindley, “Review of J. Coffey, Persecution and Toleration in Protestant England 1558–­1689” (Longman: London, 2001). See http://www.​ history.​ ac.​ uk/​ r​ eviews​ /​review​/​192 (accessed June 14, 2015). 105. Newman, “‘Children of Light,’” 75. 106. Old Bailey Proceedings Online, Trial of Sarah Willaw, April 1727 (t17270412-­36). See http://​www​.oldbaileyonline​.org (accessed October 17, 2014).

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significance of laws predating Quakerism by a century or more to first-­ and second-­generation Friends. In addition, legislation passed specifically to prosecute religious minorities, particularly the Friends, and its cultural significance are key. Further, non-­Quaker representations of criminality and the courts, which implicitly referenced the Friends’ efforts to improve their lot in order to satirize them, have been found to be of great significance. Overall, and perhaps because of their status as one of the most oppressed dissenting communities of the mid-­seventeenth to early eighteenth centuries, consideration of the Quakers and the law reveals the establishment’s changing, but often negative, attitudes toward minorities in general as well as the means by which the Friends opposed oppression with a degree of success by lobbying both royalty and politicians and through self-­representation as humble, respectable, and economically sound members of society.

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C ha p t e r 13

Into the Eighteenth Century Robynne Rogers Healey

At the close of the second period, there was a greater emphasis on the theology known as formal Quietism and the rigid organizational structure that would come to dominate Quakerism in the eighteenth century. Historians have not viewed these years favorably. Introducing William Braithwaite’s Second Period of Quakerism, Rufus Jones contends that the years and events under consideration in this, the final chapter in this volume, were ones of “organization, consolidation, and congealment,” where the movement became “pretty well stiffened and arrested” and where “dynamic” Quakerism gave way to “static Quakerism.”1 Jones correctly identifies the greater organization and the strengthening of institutional structures within the society, but recent work has pointed to the complex theological, political, and social circumstances in which eighteenth-­century Quakerism emerged.2 1. Braithwaite, SPQ, xxiii. 2. For example, see Nikki Coffey Tousley, “The Experience of Regeneration and the Erosion of Certainty in the Theology of Second-­Generation Quakers: No Place for Doubt?,” QS 13, no. 1 (2008): 6–­88; Pink Dandelion, “Guarded Domesticity and Engagement with ‘the World’: The Separate Spheres of Quaker Quietism,” Common Knowledge 16, no. 1 (2010): 95–­109; Alice Southern, “The Rowntree History Series and the Growth of Liberal Quakerism,” QS 16, no. 1 (2011): 7–­73; Robynne Rogers Healey, “From Apocalyptic Prophecy to Tolerable Faithfulness: George Whitehead

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The story of Quakerism in this period is more than a story of withdrawal from mainstream society. Rather, an examination of conflict and accommodation among Quakers and between the Quakers and non-­ Quakers reveals a complex set of tensions that shaped the development of Quakerism in these years. These tensions were anything but static and illuminate the flexibility of early eighteenth-­century Quakerism despite efforts to strictly enforce some behaviors. During this period, Quietist theology developed to accommodate a dualism that separated worldly, or unholy, disputes from spiritual, or holy, ones. The first had to be resisted, the second engaged.3 To this end, London leaders disregarded their own counsel that the Friends detach themselves from the world “and mind their own business in God’s holy fear,” and they actively engaged in worldly concerns that affected the well-­being of the society.4 In chapter 9, Jerry Frost reminds us that despite the passage of the 1689 Toleration Act, disputes between the Quakers and mainstream society persisted. Foremost among these was the general religious and political antipathy that deemed the Friends heretics or, worse, closet papists. Besides these trials, tensions between the London Yearly Meeting (the Quaker metropole) and its growing constituent meetings (the Quaker periphery), already a challenge in the 1650s, persisted in Britain and expanded as more colonial meetings were established throughout the British Atlantic world. These tensions profoundly and dynamically shaped the structure of Quakerism. Strong leadership continued,5 but the center could not exert complete control. The Quaker belief that every person could experience union with the divine posed a challenge to the centralized organization and institutionalization pursued by a defensive posttoleration London leadership.6 The London Yearly Meeting had declared the universality of the light.7 Perfection



and a Theology for the Eschaton Deferred,” in Early Quakers and Their Theological Thought, 1647–­1723, ed. Stephen W. Angell and Pink Dandelion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 273–­92. 3. Healey, “From Apocalyptic Prophecy.” 4. “An Epistle Subjoined to the Preceding [1692], from S. C. [Stephen Crisp] and G. W. [George Whitehead],” in LYM, A Collection of the Epistles from the Yearly Meeting of Friends in London . . . 1675 to 1805 . . . (Baltimore, Md.: Cole and Hewes, 1806), 54. 5. See Moore, Light, and Moore in chapter 1. 6. Larry Ingle discusses the many attempts at early organization in his First among Friends: George Fox and the Creation of Quakerism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 42, 52, 102–­6, 152, 243–­63. 7. George Whitehead, The Christian Doctrine and Society of People Called Quakers, Cleared . . . (London: Thomas Northcott, 1693); and provided in Samuel Tuke, ed.,

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or sanctification was available to anyone. Added to this was the conviction that revelation surpassed formal education in unveiling the direct inward teaching of Christ.8 Together these precepts had empowered a confident ministry that challenged high-­ranking clerics as equals in public debate and pamphlet wars and gave support to a vigorous parliamentary and court lobby.9 Revelation also gave the Friends on the periphery the freedom to interrogate the advice of the London leadership. Was not the light’s revelation as significant to a Friend in the West Indies, or British North America, or even Northern England or Ireland as it was to a member of the Meetings for Sufferings in London? Moreover, for all the social cohesion created by the testimonies, Quakerism developed local expressions and was faced with unique circumstances wherever it was established. As the center tried to impose a particular order on the expanding Religious Society of Friends,10 it was itself shaped by the influences of the ever-­growing set of core-­periphery systems that developed throughout the Quaker Atlantic world.

Formal Quietism11 By the 1690s, Quaker worship had become more silent. Much of this is attributed to quietist theology introduced in Robert Barclay’s Apology (1678). Barclay regarded human nature pessimistically, insisting that the working of the light within required self-­annihilation.12 Quietism held that the absence of the self made way for the presence of the divine. Coming to the fore Memoirs of George Whitehead, 2 vols. (York: W. Alexander and Son, 1830), 2:331–­56 (341). 8. Howard R. Macy, “Quakers and Scripture,” in The Oxford Handbook of Quaker Studies, ed. Stephen W. Angell and Pink Dandelion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 187–­201 (192). 9. For details, see Southcombe in chapter 8. 10. Frederick B. Tolles, Quakers and the Atlantic Culture (New York: Macmillan, 1960), and his Meeting House and Counting House: The Quaker Merchants of Colonial Philadelphia, 1682–­1763 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1948); Jordan Landes, London Quakers in the Trans-­Atlantic World: The Creation of an Early Modern Community (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). 11. See Robynne Rogers Healey, “Quietist Quakerism, 1692–­c.1805,” in Angell and Dandelion, Oxford Handbook of Quaker Studies, 47–­55. 12. See especially “The Second Proposition: Of Immediate Revelation,” in Robert Barclay, An Apology for the True Christian Divinity . . . (1678; repr., Warminster, Pa.: Quaker Heritage Press, 2002), 21–­61.

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alongside the death of many first-­generation leaders, the declining sense of spiritual intimacy among second-­generation Friends, and the increasing focus on spiritual introspection and behavioral codes make it appear that Quietism gave rise to sectarianism and the loss of missionary zeal. In short, Quietism has been associated with Quakerism’s decline.13 That view is being revised as scholars seek to understand the Quietist paradox of spiritual withdrawal from the world coupled with the impetus to expansive social reform in the eighteenth century.14 Recent interpretations suggest that this dualism, or the creation of separate spheres in Quaker life, was the consequence of the desire to create a holy, distinct community in which the Quakers could freely live out their testimonies at the same time as they sought to reform the world in which they lived.15 The possibility of the world envisioned by George Fox and other early Friends had slipped away with the Restoration, and persecution was no longer as extreme as it had been. Now was the waiting time. Quietist theology, with its dualist possibilities, was well suited to the needs of this Quakerism, which continued to face challenges from Parliament and the established church. London leaders strove to maintain the hard-­won position of the Friends as a peculiar yet tolerated people. Those efforts went far beyond exhorting the Quakers to live “peaceably and inoffensively” under their “present government” as the epistles in this period repeatedly instructed. And the withdrawal from society to which historians have traditionally attributed the eventual acceptance of the Quakers as odd but at least not dangerous does not bear up under scrutiny.16 Barred from holding public office, London’s leading Quakers were hardly apolitical; their 13. This is discussed in Braithwaite, SPQ; Rufus M. Jones, The Later Periods of Quakerism (London: Macmillan, 1921); Walter R. Williams, The Rich Heritage of Quakerism (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1962); D. Elton Trueblood, The People Called Quakers (New York: Harper and Row, 1966); John Punshon, Portrait in Grey: A Short History of the Quakers (London: Quaker Home Service, 1986). 14. Southern, “The Rowntree History Series”; Elaine Pryce, “‘Negative to a Marked Degree’ or ‘An Intense and Glowing Faith’? Rufus Jones and Quaker Quietism,” Common Knowledge 16, no. 2 (2010): 518–­31; Dandelion, “Guarded Domesticity.” 15. See Dandelion, “Guarded Domesticity”; and Healey, “From Apocalyptic Prophecy.” 16. Richard L. Greaves, “Shattered Expectations? George Fox, the Quakers, and the Restoration State, 1660–­1685,” Albion 24, no. 2 (1992): 237–­59 (238), and his “Seditious Sectaries or ‘Sober and Useful Inhabitants’? Changing Conceptions of the Quakers in Early Modern Britain,” Albion 33, no. 1 (2001): 24–­50 (26). Also see Simon Dixon, “Quakers and the London Parish 1670–­1720,” London Journal 32, no. 3 (2007): 229–49; and Adrian Davies, The Quakers in English Society, 1655–­1725 (Oxford: Clarendon, 2000), 191–­215.

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political activism on behalf of the society has long been noted.17 Still, there is a lingering sense that the political activity of the Friends was concentrated in the activities of the Meeting for Sufferings or its members, leaving the rest of the society free to reject the “evil ways, fashions, and customs which the spirit of the world leads into.”18 For all its Quietist appeals to the elimination of self and separation from the unholy world, the London leadership also called the Friends to active engagement with holy issues that stood to affect the society. This was hardly an entirely inward orientation. The London Yearly Meeting invested great effort and expense in campaigning to increase religious liberty and end the seizure of property or incarceration for refusing to comply with laws at odds with Quaker testimonies.19 Closely associated with these efforts and considered necessary for their success, the meeting strained to ensure that the public face of Quakerism was as tolerable and compliant as possible. The Second Day’s Morning Meeting tightened its control of publications, judiciously ensuring they were edited to cast the Quakers in the most favorable light possible.20 This was especially important in the insecurity of the last decades of the Stuart monarchy, when the Quakers faced hostility from establishment Anglicans in Parliament and at court who fed on anti-­Quaker literature produced by former Quakers, notably George Keith and Francis Bugg. Prior to 1701, ad hoc groups from the Meeting for Sufferings were appointed to monitor the affairs of Parliament and intercede with legislators when necessary. This arrangement was formalized in 1701 with the creation of a “committee on expiring laws.”21 Its effectiveness earned the London Yearly 17. Braithwaite, SPQ, 177–­211. See also Frost’s and Southcombe’s chapters in this volume as well as Greaves, “Shattered Expectations” and “Seditious Sectaries.” Kenneth Carroll provides an interesting account of the transatlantic interests that also affected the Quakers’ political activity in London. See Kenneth L. Carroll, “American Quakers and their London Lobby,” QH 70, no. 1 (1981): 22–­39. 18. 1698 Epistle, in LYM, Collection of the Epistles, 74. Also see Allen in chapter 4. 19. For further details, see Bell in chapter 12. 20. See D. J. Hall, “‘The Fiery Tryal of Their Infallible Examination’: Self-­Control in the Regulation of Quaker Publishing in England from the 1670s to the Mid 19th Century,” in Censorship and the Control of Print in England and France 1600–­1910, ed. R. Myers and M. Harris (Winchester: St Paul’s Bibliographies, 1992), 59–86; and Erin Bell, “Eighteenth-­Century Quakerism and the Rehabilitation of James Nayler, Seventeenth-­Century Radical,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 59, no. 3 (2008): 426–­46, for examinations of the control of Quaker publications by the Morning Meeting. A more detailed examination of the extent of control over publication after 1700 is still needed. 21. LSF, MS, XIV ( January 2, 1701).

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Meeting its designation as the first organized lobbying group in British politics.22 Politics was costly. The Meeting for Sufferings ordered hundreds of copies of petitions and rejoinders to anti-­Quaker treatises for distribution at Parliament.23 In addition to the price of printing, the meeting regularly committed amounts between £20 and £50 “to defray the costs of attending Parliament” whenever an applicable bill was under consideration.24 What were these expenses? Were financial inducements integral to petitioning peers and members of Parliament? Were advocates compensated for business lost while attending Parliament? That is not clear. What is evident is that donations to London constituted their own form of service to the society. Note the appeal in 1722 following the petitioning that finally produced an Affirmation Act “very satisfactory to all the brethren”: “The sum last collected for the service of Friends being laid out, by reason of the late sundry needful and considerable occasions of expense . . . this meeting doth recommend, that a general, liberal, and speedy contribution be made by Friends in every county.”25 Not every Friend could attend Parliament; defraying the costs of those labors, however, was one form of holy political engagement. When the welfare of the society was in question, the London leadership expected all Friends to influence politics where they could and to defend the Quakers’ reputation and doctrines when necessary.26 In an uncertain religious and political climate, the London Friends provided advice and resources to this end.27 One London Friend urged the Lancashire Quakers 22. Norman Crowther Hunt, Two Early Political Associations: The Quakers and the Dissenting Deputies in the Age of Sir Robert Walpole (Oxford: Clarendon, 1961). 23. For example, between December 1693 and December 1695, the Meeting for Sufferings ordered 1,500 petitions and 1,600 copies of George Whitehead’s treatises to be printed (1,000 of Quakers Vindicated against Francis Buggs Calumnies, 500 of The Counterfeit Convert, and 100 of Innocency Triumphant) for circulation to members of Parliament, although 200 copies of Quakers Vindicated were set aside for distribution outside Parliament, 100 throughout London, and 100 “to the Countyes where Buggs books are spread.” See LSF, MS, IX (December 1, 1693, December 29, 1693, March 30, 1694, April 20, 1694), X (December 6, 1695). 24. For example, see LSF, MS, X (meetings throughout 1695), and XIV (meetings between 1700 and 1702). 25. 1722 Epistle, in LYM, Collection of the Epistles, 132. 26. Simon Dixon contends that the London Quakers’ involvement in parish politics was as much about “seeking to protect the interests of their own religion” as it was about being good neighbors. See Dixon, “Quakers and the London Parish,” 243–­44. 27. Richard Greaves demonstrates that the Quakers employed three strategies (repudiation of conspirators and sedition, passive resistance to injustice, and evidence that

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to use their influence in an upcoming election. He suggested that the Friends ought to visit candidates to verify their political position. “[I]f they will give you hopes that they will redress our Grievances when they shall sit in Parliment [sic],” B[enjamin]B[ealing] proposed that persuasion be used accordingly, “for now is the time to engage them in our Interest when wee [sic] are most capable of advancing theirs.” On the other hand, “where two would be elected and neither can be gained on our behalf then be silent and vote not at all.”28 The political perceptiveness required here suggests that at least some of the Friends kept stride with worldly events. Beyond political astuteness, the Friends were expected to defend the society from the smears of anti-­Quaker literature, which was rolling off printing presses at a great rate. This required knowledge of its contents, as the meeting clearly instructed in 1702: “And since the books of adversaries are industriously spread in many parts of the nation, for the aspersing ancient Friends, and defaming our true christian doctrines; it is therefore desired that Friends in their several Monthly Meetings, will appoint some judicious Friends to read over such answers as have been or may be written, to clear truth from their injurious calumnies; that Friends thereby understanding the controversy, and the falseness of our adversaries’ accusations, may be better able to vindicate truth and Friends, as occasion may be offered.”29 The need for a coordinated response is evident in the 1702 Virginia epistle that reported colonists in Virginia were “pretty open to receive Truth . . . notwithstanding these wicked instruments yt hath sent soe many lying books out of England, wch the hireling Priests make it part of their business to insence the Governmt against us and Truth.”30 These debates give us a sense of the environment in which the Friends “maintained their witness and proclaimed their message.”31 While the instruction on written materials identified only a selection of members in each monthly meeting, all of the Friends were reminded that they had a role to play. Their daily conduct could vindicate the society and economic success was a consequence of religious toleration) to solidify political alliances at the center that worked in their favor. See Greaves, “Seditious Sectaries,” 26. The argument that follows contends that similar strategies were employed outside the center. 28. LA, FRL 1/1/22/3, “Letter from B. B. in London October 19, 169?,” probably Benjamin Bealing the recording clerk. 29. 1702 Epistle, in LYM, Collection of the Epistles, 81–­82. 30. LYM, Epistles Received, I–­II (1683–­1738), Virginia Epistle, 1702. 31. Sylvia Stevens, Quakers in Northeast Norfolk, England, 1690–­1800 (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 2012), 151.

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was therefore a political act. Exhortations to “live inoffensively” or “peaceably” were commonplace. Occasionally these were more explicit: “Let all private interests give way to the public good, unity and prosperity of truth and righteousness . . . And by your blameless conversation, and just dealing, engage the government to continue the liberty you now enjoy under it.”32 In this tenuous time, the Friends could not set secular political affairs aside; they had to face them. What did it really mean to be in the world but not of the world?33 Differentiating between spiritual and profane matters was essential to the spiritual vigor of Quakerism for the “remnant.” Formal Quietism offered a way. On the one hand, the call to self-­annihilation reflected the uncertainty of second-­generation Quakers’ connection to the divine and the experience of personal transformation.34 Gone were most first-­generation Quakers with their confident, transformational faith. Remaining were elderly leaders, like George Whitehead, who entreated second-­generation Friends to patience and discipline: “O all you younger Friends, Brethren and Sisters, Be low in your own Minds and Thoughts, and little in your own Eyes, and in Godly Fear and Humility seek Wisdom. . . .’Tis not enough to go up to Jerusalem, the Vision of Peace, but there the true Disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ must wait till they be endued with Power from on High.”35 At stake was not just a confident redemptive experience. Constant active abiding in the light was the only route to “preserve you out of all those Evils those Apostates fell into, who departed from the Faith.”36 Quietism, then, while silent, was never intended to be passive; it demanded vigilant attention to the state of one’s soul. And the state of the Friends’ souls had become a grave concern for early eighteenth-­century Quaker leaders. Beyond responding to the decline of ecstatic faith, Quietism was also a reaction to the tension created by the Friends’ commercial success in a world of limited toleration coupled with their desire to see complete religious freedom realized. After toleration, the Friends continued to record losses they suffered on account of their testimonies. Furthermore, the epistles of this 32. 1704 Epistle, in LYM, Collection of the Epistles, 87. 33. John 17:14. 34. See Tousley, “Experience of Regeneration.” 35. George Whitehead, An Evangelical Epistle to the People of God in Derision Call’d Quakers . . . (London: T. Sowle, 1704), 38–­39. 36. Whitehead, Evangelical Epistle, 41.

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period urged faithfulness to the “ancient” testimonies, directly connecting the sacrifices and experiences of early Friends to its present adherents. As much as the Quakers still suffered for their testimonies and were continually reminded of their importance to the identity of the Friends, the epistles also indicate that second-­generation Quakers were not as steadfast as the London leadership desired. In part, this reveals the core-­periphery conversation that clarifies some of the testimonies discussed in the next section. It also signals a change in circumstances for the society, as its membership included a growing number of prosperous Friends. Increasingly, epistolary correspondence encouraged honest trade practices, discouraged tax evasion of any kind and excessive debt, and explicitly prohibited the purchase of “goods reasonably suspected to be run [smuggled].”37 Evidently, some of the Friends’ worldly entanglements went beyond those necessary for truth to prosper, occasioning the society’s leadership, some of it ironically wealthy itself, to voice its unease about the condition of its members’ souls. In 1720, the London Yearly Meeting warned that “all professing christianity [sic] among us may take heed of pride, covetousness, and hastening to be rich in the world, which are pernicious and growing evils.”38 The following year, when it felt its advice had “not been duly regarded by some,” the meeting repeated its concern for the state of the Friends’ souls, cautioning “against all the provoking sins of the age, which draw down the heavy judgments of God.”39 It is not clear how much of this business advice was connected to Quaker speculation in the financial crisis of 1720 known as the South Sea Bubble. According to the London and Middlesex Quarterly Meeting minutes, banker John Freame was offered specific guidance. Some of the Friends were ruined in that crisis; others concealed fraudulent activities for nearly a decade.40 For those Quakers tempted by, and sometimes caught in, the snares of the world, Quietism offered a theological channel to draw them back to the experience of the “early days.” “Abide under the daily cross,” the Friends were exhorted, “whereby the earthly mind may be crucified.”41 Only when the “self (that great mountain which stands so much in opposition to 37. 1709, 1719, and 1721 Epistles, in LYM, Collection of the Epistles, 99, 123, 130. 38. 1720 Epistle, in LYM, Collection of the Epistles, 128. 39. 1721 Epistle, in LYM, Collection of the Epistles, 129–­30. 40. Margaret Ackrill and Leslie Hannah, Barclays: The Business of Banking, 1690–­1996 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 13–­14, and Allen and Moore in chapter 11. 41. 1699 Epistle, in LYM, Collection of the Epistles, 75.

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the cross of Christ, and his love and peace in the church) will be abased,” could the Lord be truly exalted.42 If the Friends would only “retire inward, unto the gift of God in [them]selves,” they were assured they would “feel [their] minds truly engaged to seek the promotion and advancement of truth.”43 The promise of the transformative experience of God’s “early visitations in the assemblies of his people, where he broke in upon our hearts with his power and love,” was held out as the holy reward for such faithfulness. The success of the Quietist theology, superintended by Whitehead, was due to its capacity to hold in tension principles associated with evangelicalism and rationalism. Evangelicalism, which gained prominence as a set of organized beliefs in the mid-­eighteenth century, generally professed traditional Christian doctrine: belief in original sin, the incarnation, salvation through Christ’s atoning sacrifice, and the authority of scripture. It appealed to those seeking certainty in defining orthodoxy. Rationalism, on the other hand, asked whether reason was compatible with the light. It appealed to those who believed that contemplation, not just revelation, could lead to truth. Keith held doctrines that would come to be associated with evangelicalism. Despite his disownment, these beliefs were not expurgated but remained part of the rich theological tapestry of Quakerism in this period. Rational Quakerism also existed comfortably alongside Quietism.44 As much as the early Quaker writers disdained “head knowledge” as subordinate to revelation, they did not reject reason, often using it against their detractors.45 Thomas Beaven’s Essay concerning the Restoration of Primitive Christianity (1723) alludes to the careful balance between reason and the light: “The common Reason of Man stands in Need of Light and Help from Heaven, for attaining the true Knowledge and Practice of Religion 42. 1706 Epistle, in LYM, Collection of the Epistles, 93. 43. 1719 Epistle, in LYM, Collection of the Epistles, 126. 44. Hugh Barbour and J. William Frost, The Quakers (New York: Greenwood Press, 1988), 98. 45. The Quakers, especially William Penn, used reason in a number of ways. At its most basic, reason was a function of the senses through which individuals had the capacity to be aware of and understand things. It could also be used in the way Cambridge Platonists applied the term. For them, reason was imbued with mysticism. It was a divine imprint within humanity necessary for comprehending both the worldly and otherworldly aspects of the material world. Penn also used the term pejoratively when discussing non-­Quaker theology. All three meanings appear in Penn’s collected works published by the London Yearly Meeting in 1726. See A Collection of the Works of William Penn . . . (London: J. Sowle, 1726).

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and Piety; as the great Lock[e] acknowledges . . . ’tis the divine Spirit, which enlightens and influences the noble Faculty of Reason . . . Reason and the Spirit of God remain always, two several Powers and Principles in Man, of different and distinct Natures, the one Humane and the other Divine.’”46 The moderate Quakerism of the rationalists functioned between the poles of reason and revelation, scripture and nature, without having to choose one over the other. Unlike the Quietists, whose mysticism was uncompromisingly separated from the world, the rationalists, such as Richard Claridge, were comfortable with their compromise position. Claridge is an interesting example of a “first-­generation Friend” in the second period. Unlike other second-­generation Friends, he was not born into the faith but became convinced, or converted, into Quakerism in the second period. He joined the Friends in 1696, was recognized as a minister the following year, and was a faithful Quaker schoolmaster for his remaining days. Whereas Whitehead stands as an example of Quietist Quakerism and Claridge an example of a rationalist Quakerism, the theology of both men reveals strong elements of evangelical doctrine. Whitehead’s theology appears to have become increasingly Christological as he aged, including more frequent references to atonement and the historical Christ. His 1693 Christian Doctrine seems creedal, although Whitehead himself vehemently denied the allegation.47 Significant for understanding Whitehead’s theology is an awareness that elements that appear evangelical are held in tension with the light within, perfection, and revelation, the central tenets of Quietism. Near the end of his life, Whitehead implored the Quakers to accept the particulars of the incarnation and resurrection to be the “Great Mystery” to be “humbly admired” rather than “to be controverted, questioned, or disputed, in the World.”48 He could entertain the evangelical possibility, but he refused to restrict the transformative power of the light to the limits of precise terms; words could never have the revelatory capacity of experience. 46. Thomas Beaven, An Essay Concerning the Restoration of Primitive Christianity in a Conduct Truly Pious and Religious (London: J. Roberts, 1723), v. 47. Whitehead, Christian Doctrine, 2:341, and his An Antidote against the Venome of The Snake in the Grass . . . (London: Thomas Northcott, 1697), 156. Jerry Frost outlines the context in which The Christian Doctrine was written in chapter 9. For more on Quietist theology and Whitehead’s own theological influence, see Healey, “Quietist Quakerism, 1692–­c.1805,” 47–62; and Healey, “From Apocalyptic Prophecy.” 48. George Whitehead, The Gracious Design of True Christianity . . . (London: T. Sowle, 1719), 28.

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The dialogue about the nature of Christ was a conversation with those outside the society to ensure Quakerism would remain a tolerated faith.49 Now consider Claridge. His last will and testament was signed on April 18, 1723, ten days before his death,50 and contains a strikingly personal statement of belief not subject to the controls of any publication committee. It is worth quoting at length: Forasmuch as all men, the Man Christ excepted, have sinned and come short of the glory of God, and there is non other Name under Heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved, but that of Jesus Christ, who was delivered for our Offences & was raised again for our justification, and is able to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them. My faith and hope are in God alone for the full and free remission of all my transgressions through Sanctification of the Spirit into Obedience and Sprinkling of the Blood of Jesus Christ who is the Word the Light the Way the Truth and the Life, the One Mediator and Advocate with the father, and the propitiation for my Sins & not for my Sins only, but also for the Sins of the whole World that being thoroughly washed, Sanctified and Justified in his Name and by the Spirit of God I may be received into that Everlasting Glorious Rest which he hath prepared for his people, not for any works of Righteousness which I have done but according to the Exceeding Riches of his Grace and Mercy in and through Christ Jesus the son of his Infinite Love into whose hands I humbly commend my Immortall Spirit Earnestly and fervently beseeching him to keep me by his power through faith in Love to him above all and to my Neighbour, as my self walking though the assistance of his Grace in Righteousness and holiness before him all the days of mine appointed Time here upon Earth Waiting in patience as Resignation to his Holy Will & watching and praying always with all prayer and Supplication in the Spirit that my Soul may be ready through his preparing power whensoever my Earthly house of this Tabernacle shall be disposed to Enter 49. George Whitehead, A Gospel Salutation in True Christian Love . . . (London: T. Sowle, 1719), 22. 50. Whitehead died on March 8, 1723, and Claridge wrote a testimony to him that is included in George Whitehead, The Christian Progress of That Ancient Servant and Minister of Jesus Christ, George Whitehead . . . (London: J. Sowle, 1725), 688–­90.

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into that Building of God the house not made with hands, Eternal in the heavens.51

It is difficult not to see the doctrines that defined evangelicalism here. As in Whitehead’s case, they reside alongside the Quietist elements of perfection, revelation, and the transformative capacity of the light available to all who abide in Christ. These were not beliefs that entered Quakerism at the end of the eighteenth century as a prelude to the nineteenth-­century schisms; they were part of late second-­period Quakerism and shaped the society as much as Quietism. As long as these theological positions could reside in tension alongside one another, the fabric of the faith remained quite strong. A generous orthodoxy, or right belief, could dwell within an increasingly rigid orthopraxy, or right practice. At the same time, because these positions resided in tension, any push for a stronger alignment of the praxis of the periphery with that of the center could upset the balance, as expressed in earlier disputes with John Perrot, John Wilkinson, and John Story.

Negotiating Eighteenth-Century Quakerism within and without the Society of Friends Quietism allowed for the separation of temporal and spiritual disputes. When the two were bound tightly together, as they were in the well-­defined testimonies on oaths/affirmations and tithes, orthopraxy was often interpreted as orthodoxy. This was not the case with testimonies that were less precise at this time, as with the testimony against war and fighting (commonly referred to as the peace testimony) and the society’s position on slavery. Across the spectrum, from the fixed to the indefinite, a dialogue within and between the metropole and the peripheries shaped the form of eighteenth-­century Quakerism that developed in the second period. First, consider tithes. Throughout this period, the London Yearly Meeting epistles appealed for constancy to the testimony, since it had been “received from Christ” and was “not of our own making and imposing.”52 The annual account of “Sufferings” in England, Wales, and Ireland indicates that some Quakers maintained the 51. BL, MS 4373 (1654–­1723), Will of Richard Claridge, of St James, Clerkenwell, April 18, 1723. 52. 1701 Epistle, in LYM, Collection of the Epistles, 79.

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testimony and incurred financial penalties and imprisonment for doing so.53 Even so, in 1718, the London leadership was both beseeching and exhorting fidelity to the testimony not just for the spiritual growth of the wayward but because the lack of devotion of some of the Friends “add[ed] to the suffering of faithful Friends.”54 In her study of Northeast Norfolk, Sylvia Stevens demonstrates that the heightened Tory reaction to the threat of dissent between 1710 and 1719 did result in increased tithe cases during that period. At the same time, she found that some Quakers made arrangements in which “they neither announced that crops were ready to be taken nor prevented access to the field or barn, and the practised eye of the collectors ensured that an amount approximating the due was taken.”55 Those Friends paying and receiving tithes had become enough of a problem that by 1725, the yearly meeting despairingly directed monthly meetings to the recourse outlined in the 1706 yearly meeting minute that called for repeat offenders to be excluded from meetings for business and “collections made by friends” and then, should they persist, to be “give[n] judgment for the clearing of truth and friends.”56 At first glance, this seems to support Barry Reay’s conclusion that the early Quakers bore “a firmer testimony than their descendants.”57 Is the story more complex? Nicholas Morgan’s study of the Lancashire Quakers suggests that it is. Morgan demonstrates that in more northern counties, specifically Lancashire, “at least until the 1730s, sufferings for tithes persisted at a level that was higher than that experienced in the pre-­1689 era.”58 Recognizing that internal and external forces were at play,59 Morgan asserts that this is a reflection of “the existence in the county of a brand of fundamentalist Quakerism that was far nearer to the original precepts of the Society’s founders than was the urbane and metropolitan Quakerism practised in the capital and more generally in the south of the country.”60 53. “Yearly Amount of Friends’ Sufferings in Great Britain and Ireland, 1690–­1805,” in LYM, Collection of the Epistles, 410. 54. 1718 Epistle, in LYM, Collection of the Epistles, 121. 55. Stevens, Quakers in Northeast Norfolk, 225–­26. 56. 1725 Epistle, in LYM, Collection of the Epistles, 139; LYM, Extracts from the Minutes and Advices of the Yearly Meeting of Friends . . . (London: James Phillips, 1783), 241. 57. Barry Reay, “Quaker Opposition to Tithes, 1652–­1660,” Past and Present 86 (1980): 98–­120 (120). 58. Nicholas J. Morgan,“Lancashire Quakers and the Tithe, 1660–­1730,” Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester 70 (1988): 61–­75 (63). Morgan’s statistics for Lincolnshire and Somersetshire are similar. 59. Morgan, 69. 60. Morgan, 63.

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Changes to the 1695 tithe law as well as the inclusion of two clauses in the 1696 Affirmation Act extended summary procedures on collecting small tithes to cover amounts up to £10 with no limit on the time tithes or rates could be claimed. This improved the rates at which the collection of tithes could be prosecuted.61 Collectors could also confiscate goods to cover the “necessary charges of distraining.” Frequently, this led to disproportionate seizures. Braithwaite notes ten of the worst cases of misappropriation between 1696 and 1736 in which £800 was seized to satisfy demands that collectively added up to £15.62 In these cases, tithing did remain “the front line of religious conflict,” as Morgan suggests. And it was those Friends on the periphery who directed “the eschatological tones of the earliest Quakers” to those at the center.63 In 1698, at the same time that the Lancashire Friends assured London of the “state of Friends in our County of their love and zeal for Truth & Testimony of it,” they called to account Quakers “in all counties and countrys yt ye Zeal of God’s House may more and more be kindled . . . yt self love and exaltation be mortified, and self ease out of ye very suburbs belonging to ye holy city.”64 In some cases, local laws confused accounting for the testimony. This was the case for the Virginia Friends, who reported “for ye most part they put ye Priests wages into ye Country Taxes, soe yt its obscure to Friends wt they take.”65 Here it is difficult to determine whether the testimony was observed or not. Tightening and enforcing the discipline was a multidirectional dialectic process between the center and the margins. This is especially evident in the ways peripheral meetings reacted to the Affirmation Act. This does not minimize the disagreements internal to the London Friends and the Meeting for Sufferings itself66 but points to a narrative that included the Friends throughout the Quaker world. Oaths remained an obstacle to the Friends posttoleration, even though the 1696 Affirmation Act did provide some relief. The law still prohibited the Quakers from holding public 61. Morgan, 65. 62. Braithwaite, SPQ, 181. 63. Morgan, “Lancashire Quakers,” 75. 64. LSF, Epistles Received, Lancashire Quarterly Meeting to London Yearly Meeting, April 7, 1698. 65. LSF, Epistles Received, Virginia Quarterly Meeting to London Yearly Meeting, January 1696. 66. J. William Frost, “The Affirmation Controversy and Religious Liberty,” in The World of William Penn, ed. Richard S. Dunn and Mary M. Dunn (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986), 303–­22 (314–­18).

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office and from participating in criminal cases, but it opened up equity and civil proceedings to them. The wording of the affirmation, however, was disagreeable to a significant slice of the society. Some considered the phrase “in the Presence of Almighty God the Witnesse of the Truth of what I say”67 to be an oath. Jerry Frost has examined the specifics of the debate between “satisfied” and “dissatisfied” Friends, and they do not bear repeating here.68 Importantly, the negotiation that occurred over the course of a generation, from the act’s first disputed iteration in 1696 until its agreeable iteration in 1722, highlights the ways that the Friends on the margins of power helped shape the society’s practices. Braithwaite observed that the districts dissatisfied with the form of affirmation were those that “during the same period, were most zealously opposing the consequences of the growth of wealth and worldliness among Friends.”69 Following the 1696 act, the Friends in London and Bristol began to prosper in the burgeoning world of Atlantic trade, especially in trade with the Quaker colonies.70 The Friends outside centers of trade vocally disapproved of poor trade practices, among other offenses, and requested the London Friends to act. “It would be of great service,” observed the Worcester Friends, “if you would write something in relation to it from ye yearly meeting and what else you shall think more to add for too much pride be a loose Libertine spirit creeps in amongst too many professing Truth.”71 Debate surrounding the renewal of the Affirmation Act in 1712 was sufficiently acrimonious that the yearly meeting sat for eleven days in 1712 and two weeks in 1713.72 As usual, the Friends took to print to contend opposing positions.73 They also disputed their views in epistles. The Irish 67. An Act That the Solemne Affirmation and Declaration of the People Called Quakers (1695–9­ 6). Details are provided at http://​www​.british​-history​.ac​.uk​/​statutes​-realm ​/​vol7​/​p152 (accessed December 10, 2014). 68. Frost, “Affirmation Controversy.” 69. Braithwaite, SPQ, 191. 70. Jacob M. Price, “English Quaker Merchants and War at Sea, 1689–­1783,” in West Indies Accounts: Essays on the History of the British Caribbean and the Atlantic Economy in Honour of Richard Sheridan, ed. Roderick A. McDonald and Richard B. Sheridan (Kingston: University of the West Indies Press, 1996), 64–­86 (64–­65). 71. LSF, Epistles Received, Worcester Quarterly Meeting to London Yearly Meeting, 1702. 72. Braithwaite, SPQ, 192–­93. 73. For instance, see Anon., The Case of the People Called Quakers . . . Who Consciously Scruple the Taking of the Present Affirmation (London: s.n., 1715); Richard Claridge, The Novelty and Nullity of Dissatisfaction Or, The Solemn Affirmation Defended . . . (London: Philip Gwillim, 1714); John Lamb, Friendly Advice or, a Circumcising Knife

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Half-­Year’s Meeting in 1713 chastised the London Yearly Meeting for ignoring the position of its constituent meetings: Whereby it does appear yt there is yt under simpathysing concern for suffering Friends as ou[gh]t to be and especially in this case where ye matter concerns so great a body of Friends as ye dissatisfied are in England, Scotland, & Ireland, of whom ye yearly meeting hath taken care as may be seen by several minutes as also Epistles from ye said meetings, and therefore do hope yt ye yearly meeting will put a stop to such proceedings for ye future, for dear Friends we are deeply concerned for ye Peace of ye Church, and do earnestly desire yt a due consideration in ye spirit of meekness and power of our Lord may bear weight upon your spirits, that his Truth and Testimony may be performed and promoted before and above all temporal interests and earthly enjoyments.74

The Welsh Friends were less forthright in their condemnation. They offered prayers for love, peace, and unity at the upcoming yearly meeting. Nevertheless, they took a parting shot: “Whereof Christ Jesus is ye hole head to whom we ou[gh]t to be subject in all things then we shall not be willing to offend or hurt one of ye least living members.”75 The Scottish epistles are similar in tone and content. Even the distant Pennsylvanians called for “true love and pure unity,” reminding the London Yearly Meeting that “if ye least member be hurt or suffers all ye rest must simpathise and suffer with it.”76 This dynamic exchange demonstrates that negotiation of key Quaker principles by all members was not just accepted; it was expected. A schism was avoided, and in the more tolerant years of the Robert Walpole ministry, the Friends finally achieved wording for an affirmation that was satisfactory to all.

to Cut Off That Superfluous Branch, the Affirmation (London: printed for the author, 1714); Joseph Skidmore, Primitive Simplicity Demonstrated in a Defence of the Essay on the Vth of Matthew . . . (London: John Bradford, 1714). 74. LSF, Epistles Received, Ireland Half-­Year’s Meeting to London Yearly Meeting, May 8, 9, and 11, 1713. 75. LSF, Epistles Received, Wales Yearly Meeting to London Yearly Meeting, April 7, 8, and 9, 1713. 76. LSF, Epistles Received, Pennsylvania Yearly Meeting to London Yearly Meeting, 19–­September 22, 1714.

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An examination of the peace testimony, which underwent significant clarification in this period, provides a window through which to view conflict and accommodation at work in the society. Meredith Weddle’s work on the seventeenth-­century peace testimony provides a nuanced examination of the character of early Quaker pacifism. As she remarks, “Pacifism is complicated, because violence itself is complicated.”77 Despite the declaration of peaceable principles to Charles II in 1660, Quaker behavior did not always translate directly from a statement of belief. Rather, the consequences of the peace testimony were “developed through daily decisions confronting particular Quakers or groups of Quakers undergoing specific challenges to their witness against fighting, the use of weapons, and war.”78 Initially, peace was viewed as an outcome of a sanctified life. Consider the 1693 epistle that took issue with shipmasters who armed their ships defensively. Here the yearly meeting directed monthly and quarterly meetings to “stir up” and “awaken the consciences” of offenders “that they may seriously consider how they injure their own souls” and damage the reputation of the Friends.79 It was not until the middle of the eighteenth century that violence was equated with “injustice, barbarity, and bloodshed.”80 The New England Quakers’ participation at various levels in King Philip’s War (1675–­76) demonstrates how unsettled the peace testimony was in the seventeenth century. Even for those to whom it was very important, inconsistencies in its application reveal diverse interpretations.81 Weddle’s assertion that an aggregate of individual Quakers’ actions presents the testimony’s parameters in a particular time and place applies to this period as well.82 What therefore can be concluded of the peace testimony in this period? It shifted over time, was not consistently interpreted or applied throughout the Quaker world, and did not attain a form that denied connection to any war-­associated activity until well after the period covered here. This was an era of increasing overseas trade and the beginning of a century of wars of empire in the Atlantic world. Certainly circumstances and location played a role in the interpretation of the testimony wherever one lived. The Friends 77. Meredith Baldwin Weddle, Walking in the Way of Peace: Quaker Pacifism in the Seventeenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 4. 78. Weddle, 40. 79. 1693 Epistle, in LYM, Collection of the Epistles, 56. 80. 1744 Advice, in LYM, Extracts from the Minutes and Advices of the Yearly Meeting of Friends . . . , 254. 81. Weddle, Walking in the Way of Peace, 190–­95. Also see Allen in chapter 5. 82. Weddle, Walking in the Way of Peace, 197–­224.

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often responded individually, not collectively, to this testimony. Barbados is a case in point. When Richard Ford produced his 1675 map of Barbados, he did not identify any forts due to his religious principles.83 In 1696, the Barbadian Friends reported that they suffered under the “severe Militia Act, being still in force.”84 Still, Larry Gragg’s examination of the Quaker community on Barbados shows that between 1689 and 1691, individual Quakers assisted with the construction or maintenance of the island’s fortifications by providing labor or materials. Some of the Friends supplied ships for defensive purposes, others for an offensive expedition against Martinique in 1694. And when Thomas Story visited the island in 1709 and 1714 and learned that the Friends in and around Speightstown had volunteered to serve in the militia, he felt obligated to testify against those who “appear in Arms on training Days.”85 The Bermuda Friends also had mixed results with the testimony. In 1700, they reported, “As for bearing Arms and paying of Priests our Testimony is against and hath long been, except some of our sons yt are grown to age, that we cannot well dissuade.”86 Armed conflict around the Atlantic world and within Britain itself presented the Friends with circumstances that could not always be avoided. As Stevens’s study of the Norfolk Friends concludes, “The witness against fighting exposed the interface between the state and popular culture on the one hand and the individual Friend’s conscience in matters of religion on the other.”87 The long eighteenth century witnessed the Jacobite uprisings of 1715 and 1745, four Atlantic wars of empire (the War of the League of Augsburg, 1688–­97; the War of the Spanish Succession, 1702–­13; the War of the Austrian Succession, including the War of Jenkin’s Ear, 1739–­48; and the Seven Years’ War, 1754–­63), and two democratic revolutions—­one a civil war between British subjects and the other a prelude to wars that extended into the nineteenth century. The Quakers in the West Atlantic could easily be caught in the crossfire of battles between European soldiers and their aboriginal allies. The finer details of the peace testimony in times of war, beyond refusing to bear arms, is lost in epistolary correspondence that 83. Larry D. Gragg, The Quaker Community on Barbados: Challenging the Culture of the Planter Class (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2009), 71. 84. LSF, Epistles Received, Barbados Quarterly Meeting to London Yearly Meeting, December 24, 1696. 85. Gragg, Quaker Community on Barbados, 151. 86. LSF, Epistles Received, Bermudas Epistle, 1700. 87. Stevens, Quakers in Northeast Norfolk, 233.

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largely recounts relief for moments of peace in a bellicose period. Reflect on the 1713 Rhode Island epistle: “As we have some times past acquainted of ye deep sufferings the inhabitants of ye eastern parts of our country have been under on account of the barbarous Heathen, and that our Friends in some sense have suffered with them, we may now acquaint that that exercise seems much abated if not over since a peace is concluded between the nations.”88 What was the “sense” in which the Friends suffered? Were they attacked? Did they offer refuge to those who were? Did they tend to any wounded? It is not possible to say, but the wording suggests that the Friends were neither entirely uninvolved nor unaffected. Stevens relates the story of George Watson of Norfolk, who had been a Quaker for seven years after 1675. After leaving the society, he eventually joined the king’s guards and fought in Flanders during the War of the League of Augsburg. His experience there brought about a change of heart; he laid down his arms; was imprisoned, although not executed; and subsequently rejoined the Friends.89 How does this experience reflect the way the Quakers thought about the relationship between their faith and violence? Quaker merchants active in the Atlantic trade are also illuminating in this regard. Jacob Price has shown that the Quaker share of British commerce in the eighteenth century outpaced its proportion of the population.90 Significantly, trade expanded at the same time that Atlantic wars were commonplace. Beyond peacetime piracy or privateering, these wars opened the season on the seizure of ships and their goods as a profitable casualty of war at sea. How did the Quaker merchants align their need to protect their ships with a testimony against war? Could the Quakers profit from appropriating others’ goods and vessels on the seas? Price tells us that admiralty court records indicate that letters of marque (government licenses authorizing the capture of another state’s commercial ships) were issued to Quaker merchants between 1692 and 1712, especially those Friends from Bristol, an Atlantic port city.91 Some of these Quakers did arm their vessels defensively (and in some cases offensively), but it was not until the 88. LSF, Epistles Received, Rhode Island Epistle, 1713. 89. Stevens, Quakers in Northeast Norfolk, 234–­35. 90. Jacob M. Price, “The Great Quaker Business Families of Eighteenth-­Century London: The Rise and Fall of a Sectarian Patriciate,” in Dunn and Dunn, World of William Penn, 363–99, and his “English Quaker Merchants.” 91. Price, “English Quaker Merchants,” 68.

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midcentury wars that the local meeting in Bristol began to disown offenders for such behavior. Similarly, it was midcentury before the London meeting cracked down on offenders.92 Both meetings distinguished between the defensive arming of vessels and privateering, with privateering rarely being a problem in London.93 These activities indicate how orthopraxy became increasingly expected in Quaker culture. By Price’s count, forty-­five letters of marque were issued during the War of the Spanish Succession to the Bristol Friends and two to the London Friends. By contrast, during the War of the Austrian Succession, sixteen letters of marque were issued to the Bristol Friends and twenty-­one to the London Friends. Price identifies twelve of these Bristol vessels as “definite” or “likely” privateers; only three of the London vessels fall into the same category.94 This number decreased further in successive eighteenth-­century wars, suggesting that the Friends became more sensitive to the disapproval of other Friends.95 At the same time, the peace testimony was clarified, and local meetings amplified the disciplinary process. The 1693 London Yearly Meeting epistle identified the defensive arming of ships as contrary to the Friends’ “former principle and practice.”96 Recall that it requested quarterly and monthly meetings to deal with their meetings’ shipmasters to warn them that fighting damned their souls and damaged the society’s reputation. Other than expressing a desire for the recovery of these wayward souls, however, the epistle offered no further corrective advice. Until 1730, when the yearly meeting epistle stated its “weighty concern” that the “ancient and honourable testimony against Friends being concerned in the bearing or arms, or fighting, may be maintained,” there is no mention of the peace testimony in the epistles or advices.97 It was not until 1744 that the London Yearly Meeting responded to a concern from the Bristol Men’s Monthly Meeting98 and issued a stern epistle that clearly articulated both the society’s position on arming ships or privateering and the consequences for those who disobeyed.99 It was not just the Bristol Friends who needed correction. John Hanbury, a member of the Meeting for Sufferings, 92. Price, 74. 93. Price, 71–­74. 94. Price, 75. 95. Price, 75–­76. 96. 1693 Epistle, in LYM, Collection of the Epistles, 56. 97. 1730 Epistle, in LYM, Collection of the Epistles, 154. 98. Price, “English Quaker Merchants,” 69. 99. LYM, Extracts from the Minutes and Advices of the Yearly Meeting of Friends . . . , 254.

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invested in a privateering venture that departed in April 1744. While this was probably Hanbury’s first and last privateering expedition, Price suggests that “the 1744 epistle resolution and epistle can be viewed as a reproach as much to him as to the more obvious Bristol strayers from the path.”100 These stories are suggestive of the multiple ways that individuals, within a collective community, acted on a testimony that was not as clearly defined after 1660 as historians have suggested.101 It is insufficient to explain away or ignore these contradictions between Quaker behavior and statements of belief. Rather, they should become part of a more complex understanding of the Quaker experience and the ways in which boundaries within and around Quaker culture were navigated.

The Society of Friends at the Death of George Whitehead In many ways, George Whitehead’s death on March 8, 1723, marks the end of a Quaker era.102 He was the last of the first Friends; his life traversed the period from apocalyptic prophecy to faithfulness. The respectability of the Friends was no longer in doubt,103 although their sufferings did not cease.104 Their political activism, often led by Whitehead himself, had given the Quakers the ability to affirm instead of having to swear in civil proceedings; by 1722, all Quakers were satisfied with the affirmation’s form. The Friends were still unable to be witnesses in criminal proceedings, they were still unable to attend English universities, and they were still unable to hold public office in England (although they could in the colonies).105 Nonetheless, they were prospering in the Atlantic trade, they had established their own schools, and the 100. Price, “English Quaker Merchants,” 79–­80. 101. In appendix 4 of her book, Weddle outlines the influence of the scholarship of W. Alan Cole, Barry Reay, and Christopher Hill, who identified pacifism as a post-­1660 expression of Quakerism. While Cole, Reay, and Hill recognized anomalies in their studies, subsequent work “exaggerated what was only an unfolding trend into fixed doctrine.” See Weddle, Walking in the Way of Peace, 245–­53 (247). 102. Whitehead, Christian Progress, 694–­95. 103. Mary K. Geiter, “Affirmation, Assassination, and Association: The Quakers, Parliament and the Court in 1696,” Parliamentary History 16, no. 3 (1997): 277–­88; Greaves, “Shattered Expectations,” and his “Seditious Sectaries”; John Miller, “‘A Suffering People’: English Quakers and Their Neighbours c.1650–c.1700,” Past and Present 188, no. 1 (2005): 71–­103; Dixon, “Quakers and the London Parish.” 104. “Yearly Amount of Friends’ Sufferings in Great Britain and Ireland,” 410. 105. Dixon, “Quakers and the London Parish,” 237–­44.

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Quaker Atlantic world was expanding, especially in British North America, with new settlements being established regularly. The London Yearly Meeting attempted to control the periphery from the center and was originally successful in doing so,106 but Quakerism was lived in its local contexts, and transatlantic Quakerism was ever more shaped by a variety of local expressions. Whitehead had superintended much of this activity and remained at the forefront of Quaker authority from the time he settled in London (about 1660) until his death. As imposing as he was, the Friends did not always adopt Whitehead’s views, nor did they silence their disagreement, giving us further insight into the tension of the lived experience of Quakerism. The case of Richard Ransome, a Norfolk minister, is one example. His dissatisfaction with the first Affirmation Act took him to London in 1700 to deliver a testimony “against our Leaders Officiousness in usurping God’s Prerogative, by joining with the World, in chusing us Law-­makers in their own Wills according to their several seeming outward Interests, without his Divine Direction; together with their offering their devised Affirmation to be enacted as a standing stinted Form.”107 Ransome was dealt with by his meeting, and he subsequently offered a letter of apology. He remained a member and continued to travel in ministry; when he died in Bristol in 1717, the Friends testified that they were greatly satisfied with his ministry.108 Stevens suggests that while the Lammas Monthly Meeting and Norfolk Quarterly Meeting did not agree with Ransome’s approach, they shared his sentiments about the affirmation.109 Perhaps they also agreed that the London Friends, especially Whitehead, were a trifle overbearing. After Whitehead’s death, the London printer responsible for printing his journal sent twelve, instead of the requisite six, copies to the Norfolk Quarterly Meeting. The meeting promptly returned the extras and demanded an explanation. Was this an unexpected expense, or was Whitehead “compromised by being at the centre of London-­based Quakerism”?110 The London Friends outside the center of 106. Landes, London Quakers, 37–­83, 107–­125. 107. This is quoted in Stevens, Quakers in Northeast Norfolk, 136. Stevens notes that this testimony was not recorded in the meeting minutes but is found in Henry Pickworth’s disaffected publication against the Quakers, so it should be treated with caution. Pickworth was no longer a Friend when his tract was published in 1716 but was a Friend in good standing in 1700, when the testimony was made. 108. Stevens, 135. 109. Stevens, 137. 110. Stevens, 162.

Into the Eighteenth Century

309

power also looked askance at the Quaker gentry. Braithwaite relates Henry Goulding’s account of the yearly meeting’s address to King George I in 1716. Goulding, a London Friend loyal to William Penn, was noticeably unimpressed with the flattery he witnessed among the Friends at court:

310 This afternoon we were admitted to the King’s presence, attending him with our address. G. W. had the usual honour to present it with an introductory discourse. Though not very long, yet considering it was not lively, was too long in the occasions. Upon presenting it, it was returned by the King to him for reading, and he, by a previous agreement, delivered it to B[enjamin] Coole [of Bristol], who read it with an air usual to his eloquence, and made humble curtseys at the end of every paragraph. At the end he concluded with, “Amen, saith the reader”; and G. W. as wittily added, “And so we say all.” The King seemed pleased with our appearance, and I suppose might have been favoured to kiss his hand, which some seemed willing enough of, had we not before declared our “Dissatisfaction” in introducing a “Novelty.”111

The Friends may have kept their hats on their heads, but one gets the sense that everyone present was not comfortable that the spirit of the testimony had been followed. It was not just Whitehead’s position on the affirmation that drew disagreement. Joanna Myers relates the story of the second marriage of Sylvanus Bevan to Martha Heathcoate, daughter of a former physician to King William III. The wedding took place on April 30, 1719, under the authority of the Westminster Monthly Meeting in London. According to the account, the Prince and Princess of Wales, George Augustus and Caroline, and some of their daughters attended.112 The account reads, “George Whitehead preached but made out poorly [he would have been eighty-­three years old at the time], endeavouring to show that man was the head of the woman.” Alice Hayes, an “old woman” from Tottenham, disagreed with Whitehead’s sentiments. She stood and responded that Whitehead was “rather under a mistake, for it is said in Scripture that a virtuous woman is a crown to her husband, and the crown is above the head.” Two important 111. This is quoted in Braithwaite, SPQ, 200. 112. Joanna Shaw Myers, “Did Royal Friendship Alter Quaker Influence on English History?,” QH 80, no. 2 (1991): 100–­107 (101).

The Quakers, 1656–­1723

pieces of information can be drawn from this story. First, if royalty were attending Quaker weddings, the Friends/members were well connected to the Hanoverian court, a factor that would have affected their general public acceptance. Second, Hayes was strongly committed to Quaker principles, and she was willing to act on them. She had been incarcerated for refusing to pay tithes.113 Moreover, her behavior suggests she took no account of rank or privilege, contradicting one of the most respected Quaker leaders of the day in front of royalty when she felt led to do so. The external and internal challenges that had shaped the faith from its earliest days continued through this period. The Quaker world at the end of Whitehead’s life was an expansive (as well as expanding) and complex space. Some of the Friends interpreted this diversity as a decline in faithfulness. Note the difference between the Irish Quaker Elizabeth Jacob’s assessments of the society at two points in this period. After attending the half-­year’s meeting in 1713, she traveled among the Friends and described her experience glowingly: “That day I left Dublin I had a braw meeting at Wicsolo booth with friends and others it was so satisfactory that if I had another day I would hoaw given the popole another meeting.”114 Remember 1713 was the year the Irish Friends were united in their annoyance over the affirmation. By 1729, Jacob was less enthusiastic. Worldliness seems to have crept in. About the yearly meeting in Dublin, she noted that while crowded, “hear is a larg number which profess truth but it is to be feared thear is but a few of them which rightly know and obay ye truth.” She found a number of faults among the Friends: “Prid and covetousness abounds so in an amonst ye professors of truth & later even to a degreay of [one word illegible] to gather with a spirit of discord that has prevailed in some places.” She bemoaned “ye unfaithful professors of truth in this day,” remarking, “I must say that I have much sweeter times amonst other popole than those of our own socyatty.”115 The tension evident in the diversity of the Quaker lived experience reminds us that there were many intersecting layers of negotiation within the society itself and between the Friends and mainstream society. Quietism had room for some theological flexibility and a multidimensional exchange of ideas about the interpretation or, as in the case of slavery, the creation 113. Myers, “Did Royal Friendship Alter Quaker Influence,” 101–­3. 114. BL, Add. MS 71116, Correspondence of the Irish Quaker family of Jacob, 1701–­1802. Letter from Elizabeth Jacob to her son Isaac Jacob, May 21, 1713. 115. BL, Add. MS 71116, Letter from Elizabeth Jacob to her son, June 24, 1729.

Into the Eighteenth Century

311

312

of testimonies. Second-­period Quakerism was not static. It was different from early Quakerism—­and for scholars, perhaps not as exciting—­but it remained dynamic and responsive. As much as the London leadership called for uniformity of faith and practice throughout the Quaker world, it was powerless to impose its ideal. Local experiences influenced the Quaker communities outside the metropole as much as they affected the Quaker community that had developed in London. Dialogue within and between the metropole and the peripheries, then, shaped the form of eighteenth-­century Quakerism that developed in the second period. For all the prescriptions calling for uniformity, it was the capacity to hold diversity in tension that gave Quakerism a durability that allowed the Friends to engage the world in social reform while maintaining their unique and separate identities in this period and throughout the long eighteenth century.

The Quakers, 1656–­1723

Appendix Timeline

Quaker Events

Year Significant Historical Events

Birth of Margaret Fell

1614 1618

Birth of George Fox

Start of Thirty Years’ War in Europe

1624 1625

Accession of Charles I; marriage of Charles I to French Catholic princess Henrietta Maria

1628

Petition of Right

1629

Beginning of Charles I’s “Personal Rule”

1630

Birth of Prince Charles Stuart (later Charles II)

1633

Birth of Prince James Stuart (later James II)

1634

Ship Money tax introduced by Charles I

1635

Cardinal Richelieu, France’s first minister, declares war on Spain (Franco-­Spanish War, 1635–­59); Peace of Prague signed between Ferdinand II, the Habsburg emperor, and the Electorate of Saxony (representing Protestant states of the Holy Roman Empire); Ferdinand II declares war on France

1637

Riots in Scotland after introduction of the Book of Common Prayer

1638

Birth of Louis XIV of France

1639

Start of Bishops Wars in Scotland (1639–­40)

1640 “Short Parliament” and election of “Long Parliament”; William Laud, archbishop of Canterbury, accused of treason (continued)

Quaker Events

Year Significant Historical Events 1641

Irish Rebellion; issuing of the Grand Remonstrance; execution of Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford, at Tower Hill, London

1642

Start of First Civil War

Fox leaves home in Drayton-­in-­the-­Clay, Leicestershire (now Fenny Drayton)

1643

Battle of Edgehill

Birth of William Penn

1644 Battle of Marston Moor; publication of the Puritan minister Thomas Edwards’s Gangraena

314

1645

Battle of Naseby; Laud beheaded at Tower Hill, London

1646

Charles I surrenders (May 5) to Gen. David Leslie, commander of the Scottish army, at Newark; end of First Civil War

1647

Levellers’ Putney Debates; “Agreement of the People” drawn up

1648

End of Thirty Years’ War in Europe; Second Civil War; “Pride’s Purge”

Fox imprisoned in Notting- 1649 ham after interrupting a church service

End of Second Civil War; execution of Charles I ( January 30); Gerrard Winstanley and the Digger movement

Fox imprisoned in Derby for blasphemy

1650

Ranterism at its height; Blasphemy Act introduced

Fox travels to Yorkshire in the autumn, meeting with Richard Farnworth, Thomas Aldam, James Nayler, William Dewsbury, and others

1651

Battle of Worcester

Fox meets with Elizabeth Hooton in Skegby, Nottinghamshire; hears voice “There is one, even Christ Jesus . . .”

Westward journey culmi1652 nates with meetings at Pendle Hill and Swarthmoor

First coffeehouse established in London; first of three Anglo-­Dutch wars

The Quakers spread from 1653 the North of England; pamphleteering takes off

Expulsion of the Rump Parliament; Nominated Parliament; Oliver Cromwell appointed as lord protector of the Commonwealth for life (“Instrument of Government”) (continued)

Appendix

Quaker Events

Year Significant Historical Events

1654 Major expansion of the Quakers throughout Britain, Ireland, and Europe; Edward Burrough and Francis Howgill in London; renting of Bull and Mouth meeting room

First Protectorate Parliament

Increase of anti-­Quaker lit- 1655 erature; the London Men’s Meeting active in replying; missionaries in the Caribbean and North America

Governance imposed by Cromwell’s major-­generals; Britain seizes Jamaica from Spain

Fox imprisoned in Launceston; Nayler affair; Balby Epistle

1656

Second Protectorate Parliament

Setting up of county organization, centered on London with Gerrard Robert’s house as center; employment of Ellis Hookes; London Women’s Meeting

1657

Fifth Monarchist plot

Isaac and Mary Penington join the Quakers; John Perrot’s missionary work in Italy and subsequent imprisonment

1658

Death of Cromwell; beginning of executions of the Friends in Boston

315

1659 The Quakers share apocalyptic hopes; Fox taken ill; Thomas Ellwood joins the Quakers; Katherine Evans and Sarah Cheevers’s missionary visit and imprisonment in Malta; additional missionary activity in the Middle East; Fox’s The Great Mistery of the Great Whore published

End of the Protectorate

The Quakers consider their 1660 relationship with the new government; death of James Nayler

Declaration of Breda signed; restoration of the monarchy; foundation of the Royal Society

(continued)

Appendix

Quaker Events

Year Significant Historical Events

“Peace Testimony” pub1661 lished; New England Yearly Meeting established

316

Fifth Monarchist rebellion; Act of Uniformity enacted; introduction of penal legislation (“Clarendon Code,” 1661–­65)

Major persecution of the Quakers begins; Perrot (“hat”) controversy at its height

1662

Quaker Act; Act of Uniformity enforced; the “Great Ejection”

Burrough’s death in prison; a Quaker group becomes active in Aberdeen, joined by George Keith

1663

Northern Plot

Fox and Fell imprisoned

1664

First Conventicle Act

1665

Great Plague; Five Mile Act

1666

Great Fire of London

“Testimony of the (Eleven) Brethren”; death of Farnworth; convincement of Robert Barclay; release of Fox in September

Fox sets up monthly meet- 1667 ings and Six Weeks Meeting; Penn becomes involved with the Quakers

Fall of the Earl of Clarendon; “Cabal” ministry

Publication of Penn’s Sandy 1668 Foundation Shaken; Penn imprisoned in Tower of London; national Meeting of Ministers and agreement to meet annually Fox-­Fell marriage; Penn’s No Cross, No Crown published

1669

Bushel trial of Penn and William Mead

1670

Fox encourages women’s meetings before leaving for America; letter sent to governor of Barbados; Irish National Meeting established

1671

Second Conventicle Act

(continued)

Appendix

Quaker Events

Year Significant Historical Events

General Meeting of Friends 1672 for the Nation (London Yearly Meeting) established; Baltimore and Virginia Yearly Meetings established

Declaration of Indulgence

1673 Fox returns from America and is imprisoned in Worcester; Second Day’s Morning Meeting set up; William Mucklow revives “hat” controversy; Wilkinson-­Story separation begins

Test Act excluding Catholics and Nonconformists from public office

317

Barbican debates

1674

Fox released

1675

Meeting for Sufferings set up; Robert Barclay’s Apology published in Latin

1676

Barclay’s Apology published in English

1678

Popish Plot

1679

Beginning of Exclusion Crisis

William Rogers publishes The Christian-­Quaker

1680

Pennsylvania grant; general meeting for the Friends in the Delaware Valley area convened at Burlington

1681

Purchase of East New Jersey; First Frame of Government (Pennsylvania)

1682

Second Frame of Govern1683 ment (Pennsylvania); Welsh Yearly Meeting established

Two meetings active in Reading

King Philip’s War

Rye House Plot

1684

Charles II revokes Massachusetts Bay Colony charter

1685

Death of Charles II and accession of James II; Monmouth Rebellion

1686 (continued)

Appendix

Quaker Events

318

Protest against slavery (“Germantown Declaration”)

Year Significant Historical Events 1687

Battle of Mohacs (Ottoman invaders of Hungary defeated by forces of Holy Roman Emperor)

1688

“Glorious Revolution”; Nine Years’ War (also known as the War of the League of Augsburg or War of the Grand Alliance and as King William’s War / Second Indian War) in America, 1688–­97

1689 The Quakers hasten to register meeting houses but come under attack as insufficiently Trinitarian; Francis Bugg and others active until beyond the end the century

William III and Mary crowned king and queen after defeat of James II; Toleration Act

1690 Death of Barclay; John Freame set up in business as goldsmith-­banker, leading to founding of Barclays Bank

Militia Act

Death of Fox; beginning of Keithian controversy

1691 1692

Christian Doctrine and Society of the People Called Quakers (George Whitehead and others) published

1693

Ellwood’s edition of Fox’s Journal published

1694

Keith disowned by yearly meeting in London

1695

Charles Leslie’s Snake in the 1696 Grass published; New York Yearly Meeting founded 1697 Collection of Fox’s Epistles published

1698

Sidcot School, Somersetshire, founded

1699

Glencoe Massacre; accusations of witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts

Queen Mary dies; Bank of England founded

Affirmation Act

Treaty of Ryswick brings an end to King William’s War in America

Penn begins monthly meet- 1700 Great Northern War begins ings for blacks advocating emancipation (continued)

Appendix

Quaker Events

Year Significant Historical Events

Charter of Privileges (Pennsylvania)

1701

Act of Settlement: no Catholic may inherit the throne; Grand Alliance signed by English, Dutch, and Austrians

Death of Margaret Fell

1702

Death of William III and accession of Queen Anne; East and West New Jersey combined into New Jersey; War of the Spanish Succession (1702–­13)

1704 Defeat of the French army at Blenheim London Lead Company established

1705

Collection of Fox’s other published works, entitled Gospel Truth Demonstrated, published

1706

1707

Act of Union of England and Scotland

Abraham Darby establishes 1708 business in Coalbrookdale 1710

St. Paul’s Cathedral, London, completed

1711

Occasional Conformity Act

1712

Affirmation Act renewed

1713

Treaty of Utrecht concludes decade of war in Europe

1714

Death of Queen Anne and accession of George I

1715

Death of Louis XIV of France; Jacobite rising (The “Fifteen”)

London Yearly Meeting’s address to George

1716

Death of Abraham Darby I

1717

Death of William Penn

1718

Occasional Conformity and Schism Acts repealed; transportation of British convicts to penal colonies overseas begins

1720

Major financial crisis: “South Sea Bubble”

1721

Sir Robert Walpole becomes first prime minister

Affirmation Act

1722

Death of George Whitehead

1723 1724

King Philip V of Spain abdicates

Appendix

319

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Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Class Authority and Leadership. Boston: Beacon, 1979. Barbour, Hugh. The Quakers in Puritan England. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964. ———, ed. William Penn on Religion and Ethics: The Emergence of Liberal Quakerism. 2 vols. Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 1991. Barbour, Hugh, and J. William Frost. The Quakers. New York: Greenwood, 1988. Beck, William, and T. Frederick Ball. The London Friends Meetings. London: Bowyer Kitto, 1869. Reprinted with an introduction, illustrations, and index by Simon Dixon and Peter Daniels. London: Pronoun Press, 2009. Bell, Erin. “Eighteenth-­Century Quakerism and the Rehabilitation of James Nayler, Seventeenth-­Century Radical.” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 59, no. 3 (2008): 426–­46. Bernet, Claus. “Quaker Missionaries in Holland and North Germany in

322

the Late Seventeenth Century: Ames, Caton, and Furly.” QH 95, no. 2 (Fall 2006): 1–­18. Block, Kristen. Ordinary Lives in the Early Caribbean: Religion, Colonial Competition, and the Politics of Profit. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2012. Braithwaite, William C. The Beginnings of Quakerism. London: Macmillan 1912; 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1955. ———. The Second Period of Quakerism. London: Macmillan, 1919; 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961. Bronner, Edwin. William Penn’s “Holy Experiment”: The Founding of Pennsylvania 1681–­1701. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1962. Reprint, Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1978. Brown, Raymond. English Baptists of the Eighteenth Century. Didcot: Baptist Historical Society, 1986. Burnet, George B. The Story of Quakerism in Scotland, 1650–­1950. London: J. Clarke, 1952. Cadbury, Henry J. George Fox’s “Book of Miracles”. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1948. Carroll, Kenneth L. Quakerism on the Eastern Shore. Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 1970. ———. “Quakers in Venice, 1657–­1658.” QH 92, no. 1 (Spring 2003): 22–­33. Coffey, John. Persecution and Toleration in Protestant England, 1558–­1689. London: Harlow, 2000. Cole, W. Alan. “The Social Origins of the Early Friends.” JFHS 48, no. 3 (Spring 1957): 99–­118. Coudert, Allison P. The Impact of the Kabbala in the Seventeenth Century: The Life and Thought of Francis Mercury van Helmont (1614–­1698). Leiden: Brill, 1999.

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Damrosch, Leo. Sorrows of the Quaker Jesus: James Nayler and the Puritan Crackdown on the Free Spirit. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996. Davies, Adrian. The Quakers in English Society, 1655–­1725. Oxford: Clarendon, 2000. De Krey, Gary S. London and the Restoration, 1659–­1683. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Dixon, Simon. “Quaker Communities in London, 1667–­c.1714.” PhD diss., University of London, 2005. Dunn, Richard S., and Mary M. Dunn, eds. The Papers of William Penn. 5 vols. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981–­87. ———. The World of William Penn. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986. Durham, Harriet Frorer. Caribbean Quakers. Hollywood, Fla.: Dukane Press, 1972. Endy, Melvin B. “George Fox and William Penn: Their Relationship and Their Roles within the Quaker Movement.” QH 93, no. 1 (2004): 1–­39. ———. William Penn and Early Quakerism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973. Frost, J. William, ed. The Keithian Controversy in Early Pennsylvania. Norwood, Pa.: Norwood Editions, 1980. ———. A Perfect Freedom: Religious Liberty in Pennsylvania. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. ———. The Quaker Family in Colonial America: A Portrait of the Society of Friends. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1973. ———, ed. The Quaker Origins of Antislavery. Norwood, Pa.: Norwood, 1980. Garman, Mary, Judith Applegate, Margaret Benefiel, and Dortha Meredith,

eds. Hidden in Plain Sight: Quaker Women’s Writings, 1650–­1700. Wallingford, Pa.: Pendle Hill, 1996. Geiter, Mary K. William Penn. Harlow: Pearson Education, 2000. Gill, Catie. Women in the Seventeenth Century Quaker Community: A Literary Study of Quaker Identities. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005. Glines, Elsa F. Undaunted Zeal: The Letters of Margaret Fell. Richmond, Ind.: Friends United Press, 2003. Gragg, Larry. The Quaker Community on Barbados: Challenging the Culture of the Planter Class. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2009. Greaves, Richard L. Deliver Us from Evil: The Radical Underground in Britain, 1660–­1663. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986. ———. Enemies under His Feet: Radicals and Nonconformists in Britain, 1664–­1677. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1990. ———. Secrets of the Kingdom: British Radicals from the Popish Plot to the Revolution of 1688–­89. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1992. Herlihy, Kevin, ed. The Religion of Irish Dissent, 1650–­1800. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1996. Hinds, Hilary. George Fox and Early Quaker Culture. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011. Horle, Craig W. The Quakers and the English Legal System, 1660–­1688. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988. Hull, William I. Benjamin Furly and Quakerism in Rotterdam. Swarthmore, Pa.: Swarthmore College, 1941. ———. The Rise of Quakerism in Amsterdam, 1655–­1665. Swarthmore, Pa.: Swarthmore College, 1938. ———. William Penn and the Dutch Quaker Migration to Pennsylvania.

Swarthmore, Pa.: Swarthmore College, 1935. Ingle, H. Larry. First among Friends: George Fox and the Creation of Quakerism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. Jones, Rufus. The Quakers in the American Colonies. London: Macmillan, 1911. Juterczenka, Sünne. “Crossing Borders and Negotiating Boundaries: The Seventeenth-­Century European Missions and Persecution.” QS 21 (2007): 39–­53. ———. Über Gott und die Welt: Endzeitvisionen, Reformdebatten und die europäische in der Frühen Neuzeit. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2008. Kirby, Ethan W. George Keith. New York: Appleton Century, 1942. Kunze, Bonnelyn. Margaret Fell and the Rise of Quakerism. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1993. Landes, Jordan. London Quakers in the Trans-­Atlantic World: The Creation of an Early Modern Community. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Lapsansky, Emma Jones, and Anne A. Verplanck, eds. Quaker Aesthetics: Reflections on a Quaker Ethic in American Design and Consumption. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003. Leachman, Caroline L. “From an ‘Unruly Sect’ to a Society of ‘Strict Unity’: The Development of English Quakerism c.1650–­1689.” PhD diss., University of London, 1998. Levy, Barry. Quakers and the American Family. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988. Lloyd, Humphrey. The Quaker Lloyds in the Industrial Revolution. London: Hutchinson, 1975. Mack, Phyllis. Visionary Women: Ecstatic Prophecy in Seventeenth-Century

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Selected Bibliography

Introduction of Quakerism into the Counties of England and Wales. London: Headley Bros., 1907. Pestana, Carla. Quakers and Baptists in Colonial Massachusetts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Peters, Kate. Print Culture and the Early Quakers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Plank, Geoffrey. “Discipline and Divinity: Colonial Quakerism, and ‘Heathenism’ in the Seventeenth Century.” Church History 85, no. 3 (September 2016): 502–­28. Punshon, John. Portrait in Grey: A Short History of Quakers. London: Quaker Home Service, 1986. Raistrick, Arthur. Dynasty of Ironfounders: The Darbys and Coalbrookdale. Newton Abbot: David and Charles, 1970. ———. Quakers in Science and Industry, Being an Account of the Quaker Contributions to Science and Industry during the 17th and 18th Centuries. London: Bannisdale Press, 1950. Reprint, Newton Abbott: David and Charles, 1968. ———. Two Centuries of Industrial Welfare: The London (Quaker) Lead Company, 1692–­1905. Newcastle-­on-­ Tyne: Kelsall and Davis, 1938. Revised 1977, reprinted 1988. Reay, Barry. The Quakers and the English Revolution. London: Temple Smith, 1985. ———. “The Social Origins of Early Quakerism.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 11, no. 1 (Summer 1980): 55–­72. Sell, Alan P. F. Enlightenment, Ecumenism, Evangel: Theological Themes and Thinkers, 1500–­2000. Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2005. Soderlund, Jean R. William Penn and the Founding of Pennsylvania,

1680–­1684: A Documentary History. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983. Southcombe, George, and Grant Tapsell. Restoration Politics, Religion and Culture: Britain and Ireland, 1660–­1714. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Sowerby, Scott. Making Toleration: The Repealers and the Glorious Revolution. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2013. Stevens, Sylvia. Quakers in Northeast Norfolk, England, 1690–­1800. Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 2012. Tartar, Michelle Lise, and Catie Gill, eds. New Critical Studies on Early Quaker Women, 1650–­1800. Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming. Thomas, Emyr. Coalbrookdale and the Darbys: The Story of the World’s First Industrial Dynasty. York: Sessions, 1999. Tolles, Frederick B. The Atlantic Community of the Early Friends. London: Friends Historical Society, 1952. ———. Meeting House and Counting House: The Quaker Merchants of Colonial Philadelphia, 1682–­1763. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1948. Trevett, Christine. Quaker Women Prophets in England and Wales, 1650–­1700. Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 2000. ———. Women and Quakerism in the 17th Century. York: Ebor Press, 1991. Underwood, T. L. Primitivism, Radicalism and the Lamb’s War: The Baptist-­ Quaker Conflict in Seventeenth-­ Century England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Vann, Richard T. The Social Development of Early Quakerism, 1655–­1755. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969. Villani, Stefano. Tremolanti e Papisti: Missioni Quacchero nell’Italia del Seicento. Rome: Edizione di Storia e Letteratura, 1996. Walsham, Alexandra. Charitable Hatred: Tolerance and Intolerance in England, 1500–­1700. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006. Walvin, James. The Quakers: Money and Morals. London: John Murray, 1997. Watts, Michael R. The Dissenters: From the Reformation to the French Revolution. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978. Weddle, Meredith Baldwin. Walking in the Way of Peace: Quaker Pacifism in the Seventeenth Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. White, B. R. English Baptists of the Seventeenth Century. Didcot: Baptist Historical Society, 1996. Wilcox, Catherine M. Theology and Women’s Ministry in Seventeenth-­ Century English Quakerism: Handmaids of the Lord. Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 2005. Worrall, Arthur J. Quakers in the Colonial Northeast. Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1980. Worrall, Jay. The Friendly Virginians: America’s First Quakers. Athens, Ga.: Iberian, 1994. Wykes, David. “Friends, Parliament and the Toleration Act.” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 45, no. 1 (1994): 42–­63.

Selected Bibliography

325

Contributors

Richard C. Allenis a visiting fellow at Newcastle University and a former reader in early modern cultural history at the University of South Wales. He has published widely on Quakerism, migration, and identity. His most recent works are Quaker Communities in Early Modern Wales: From Radicalism to Respectability (2007) and the coedited Irelands of the Mind (2008); Faith of Our Fathers: Popular Culture and Belief in Post-­Reformation England, Ireland and Wales (2009); and The Religious History of Wales: A Survey of Religious Life and Practice from the Seventeenth Century to the Present Day (2013). He is currently writing Welsh Quaker Emigrants and Colonial Pennsylvania and coauthoring, with Erin Bell, Quaker Networks and Moral Reform in the North East of England. Erin Bellreceived her PhD from the University of York in 2004, and she is currently a senior lecturer in the Department of History at the University of Lincoln. Her areas of research interest include religious dissent in Northern England circa 1650–­1850, links between Norwegian and British Quakers in the nineteenth century, and early modern gender history and the representation of the past on television. Her publications include History on Television (2013, with Ann Gray) and a number of articles in the field of Quaker history. Raymond Brownis a former principal of Spurgeon’s College, London, where he taught church history. He also served as minister of Baptist

churches in Cambridge, Torquay, and Eastbourne. His publications include a history of eighteenth-­century Baptists and, most recently, Spirituality in Adversity: English Nonconformity in a Period of Repression, 1660–­1689 (2012).

328

J. William (Jerry) Frostis emeritus Howard M. and Charles F. Jenkins Professor of Quaker History and Research at Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania. He taught in the history and religion department from 1973 until his retirement in 2001. He is the author of many books and articles on Quaker history and peace studies, including The Quaker Family in Colonial America: A Portrait of the Society of Friends (1973), The Quakers (1988), A Perfect Freedom: Religious Liberty in Pennsylvania (1990), and A History of Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, and Muslim Perspectives on War and Peace (2004). Robynne Rogers Healeyis professor of history as well as codirector of the Gender Studies Institute and the Centre for Equity and Global Engagement at Trinity Western University in Langley, British Columbia, Canada. Her publications include From Quaker to Upper Canada: Faith and Community among Yonge Street Friends, 1801–­1850 (2006) and a number of articles on Quakers and Quakerism, including a recent chapter on Quietist Quakerism in The Oxford Handbook of Quaker Studies (2013). Her research interests include gender and Quakerism, the transatlantic world in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the twentieth-­century peace testimony, and Canadian Quakerism. Emma Lapsansky-­Werneris emeritus professor of history and curator of special collections, Haverford College, Pennsylvania. Her recent publications include Quaker Aesthetics (2003, with Anne Verplanck); Back to Africa: Benjamin Coates and the American Colonization Movement (2005, with Margaret Hope Bacon), and “Identity, Spirituality, and Organization: The Episcopal Church in Early Pennsylvania,” in This Far by Faith, ed. David Contosta (2012); “Thomas Clarkson’s Quaker Trilogy: Abolitionist Narrative as Transformative History,” coauthored with Dee Andrews, in Quakers and Abolition, ed. Brycchan Carey and Geoffrey Plank (2014). She is currently engaged in two research projects: a history of a Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, Quaker family and a study of a mid-­twentieth-­century Philadelphia Quaker utopian community.

Contributors

Rosemary Mooretook up the study of Quaker history as a retirement project, receiving a PhD from the University of Birmingham in 1993. She is now attached to the Centre for Research in Quaker Studies at Woodbrooke Quaker Centre, Birmingham. Her publications include The Light in Their Consciences: Early Quakers in Britain, 1646–­1666 (2000), an edition of The History of the Life of Thomas Ellwood, Written by Himself (2004), and (with R. Melvin Keiser) Knowing the Mystery of Life Within: Selected Writings of Isaac Penington in Their Historical and Theological Context (2005). She was a cooperating editor for Protestant Nonconformist Texts, vol. 1, 1550–­1700 (2007). She is currently researching the life of George Whitehead. Alan P. F. Sell,latterly of the University of Wales Trinity Saint David and the University of Chester, was a philosopher-­theologian and ecumenist who had strong interests in the history of Christian thought. A minister of the United Reformed Church, he held ecclesiastical posts in England and Geneva and academic posts in England, Canada, and Wales. He was the author of more than thirty books and edited a number of others, including the four-­volume Protestant Nonconformist Texts (2007). He lectured widely at home and abroad. George Southcombeis director of the Sarah Lawrence Programme, Wadham College, Oxford. His publications include, as editor, English Nonconformist Poetry, 1660–­1700, 3 vols. (2012); Restoration Politics, Religion and Culture: Britain and Ireland, 1660–­1714 (2010), with Grant Tapsell; “‘A Prophet and a Poet Both!’: Nonconformist Culture and the Literary Afterlives of Robert Wild,” Huntington Library Quarterly 73 (2010); and “Dissent and the Restoration Church of England,” in The Later Stuart Church, 1660–1714, ed. Grant Tapsell (2012). He has held lectureships at nine Oxford colleges, and he is currently completing a book provisionally titled “The Wonders of the Lord”: The Culture of Dissent in Restoration England.

Contributors

329

Index

Aberdeen, Scotland, 34, 35, 160 Ackrill, Margaret, 238 Act Against Puritans (Act Against Seditious Sectaries; 1593), 266 Act of Uniformity (1662), 124–­25, 269, 271 affirmation, 2, 194, 195, 196–­97, 251, 283, 301–­3, 308, 309 Affirmation Acts, 2, 195–­96, 248, 251, 278, 279, 283, 292, 301–­2 agriculture, 239, 242 Algonquians, 43 American colonies, 2, 4, 42–­45, 101, 114–­18, 119–­20, 239, 309. See also Delaware; Maryland; Massachusetts; New England; New Jersey; New York; North Carolina; Pennsylvania; Rhode Island; Virginia educational provision, 88 emigration to, 100, 102, 123, 220–­21 marriage, attitudes toward, 79–­81 American Indians. See Native Americans Ames, William, 36, 46, 51 death of, 49 in Germany, 47, 50–­51 in Holland, 46, 47, 48 Amsterdam, Holland, 46, 47–­48, 49–­50, 99, 100

Amyraut, Moses, 61 Anabaptists, 46, 137, 138, 195, 268 Anderson, Alan, 241–­42 Anderson, James, 283 Anderson, Robert, 139 Anglicans/Anglican church, 191, 192, 265, 266 Barbados, 39, 105, 153 Anne, queen of Great Britain, 278 Antigua, 38, 112 anti-­Quaker literature, 33, 137–­38, 213–­14, 275, 291, 292, 293 Appleby, David, 270 apprenticeships, 57, 89, 91, 246 Arminians, 46, 136 Arminius, Jacobus, 136 army, 34, 36. See also militias service in, 14 Ashfield, Richard, 283 Atkins, Jonathan, 108 atonement, 201, 209, 212, 214, 297 Austin, Ann, 42 Ayoub, Raymond, 263 Bahamas, 38 Baldwin, Meredith, 4 Baltimore Friends, 79–­80, 81, 84, 88

332

Bandon, Ireland, 36 banking, 249–­50, 251–­52 Bank of England, 250 Banks, John, 127–­28, 230 To Live Well Is the Way to Die Well, 235 baptism, 79, 125, 135, 143, 145, 149, 228 Baptist-­Quaker relationships, 136–­46 local tensions, 137–­38 London debates (1672–­74), 140–­45 provocative narratives about, 138–­40 shared convictions, 136 Baptists, 5, 22, 23, 31, 51, 124, 125, 134, 155, 187, 279 General Baptists, 136, 144, 145 organization and leadership, 54–­55 Particular Baptists, 136, 144, 145 and recusancy prosecutions, 266 and tithe payments, 129 Barbados, 4, 38–­41, 42, 64, 83–­84, 102, 103–­12, 113, 209, 221–­22 Anglican church in, 39, 105, 153 disputes between Friends, 92–­93 educational provision, 88–­89 Epistle to the Governor of Barbados, 153 militia, 103, 193, 305 and peace testimony, 305 persecution of Quakers, 108–­9 poor relief, 90 Rous on strength of meetings in, 114 slave population, 104–­5, 106–­8, 109–­12, 121, 153 women preachers in, 113 Barbour, Hugh, 240 Barclay, David (linen draper), 250 Barclay, David, laird of Urie, 35 Barclay, Robert, 2, 6, 28, 35, 99, 117, 131, 135, 160, 168, 169, 214, 218, 250 death of, 213 on the light within, 165 theology of, 161–­62, 165–­66 on van Helmont, 164 Barclay, Robert, writings, 194 Anarchy of the Ranters, The, 67–­68, 71 Apology for the True Christian Divinity, 165–­66, 194, 211, 289 Possibility and Necessity of the Immediate Revelation of the Spirit of God, The, 161

INDEX

Quakerism Confirmed, 99 Theologiae verè Christianae Apologia, 99–­100 Theses Theologicae, 162, 165 Universal Love, 131 Barclays Bank, 249, 250, 251 Barden, Elizabeth, 81 Bathurst, Elizabeth, 228 death of, 216 Truth’s Vindication, 166–67, 216 Baxter, Benjamin, 138 Baxter, Josiah, 138 Baxter, Richard, 125, 127, 129, 131, 132–­33, 134 Quaker’s Catechism, The, 126, 130–­31 Baylies, Thomas, 258, 259 Bayly, Charles, 42, 139 Bealing, Benjamin, 293 Beavan, Thomas, Essay Concerning the Restoration of Primitive Christianity, 296–­97 Bell, Ian, 281 Bellers, John, 91 Benbricke, Robert, 29 bequests, 84 charitable, 90–­91 of land, 102–­3 of slaves, 110 Berkeley, John, Lord Berkeley, 116 Berkeley, William, governor of Virginia, 45 Bermuda Friends, 305 Besse, Joseph, 275 Bevan, Evan, 84 Bevan, Sylvanus, 310 Bewdley, Samuel, 89 Bible, 12, 133, 134, 149, 192, 212. See also scripture private reading of, 87–­88 Biddle, Hester, 47 Billing (Byllynge), Edward, 116, 117, 198 Birch, Henry, 93 births, recording of, 77, 79 Bishop, George, 15, 17, 22, 28 Blackwell, John, 198 blasphemy, prosecutions for, 9, 11, 14, 263 Blasphemy Act (1650), 267 Blaugdone (Blagdon), Barbara, 37 Bohemia, 48, 51

Bolton, John, 59, 249 Bond, Isaac, 81 Book of Common Prayer, 125, 142–­43, 269 Borden, Joseph, 108 Boss, Peter, 207 Bousfield, Miles, 35 Bowman, Jane, 81 Boyce, Rebecca, 96 Brace, Laura, 276 Bradford, Andrew, 206, 207 Braithwaite, William Charles, 1, 5, 238, 264, 287, 301, 302, 310 Brass Wire Company, 256 Brayn, William, 282 Brecon, Wales, 31 Briggs, Thomas, 105, 112 Bristol, England, 15, 17, 91, 306–­8 business development, 254–­55, 256, 261, 302 Christmas Day shop opening, 129 joint meetings, 73 men’s meeting, 58, 307 women’s meeting, 63, 65, 71 Broseley, Shropshire, 73, 258–­59, 261 Brown, James, 76 Browne, Robert, 126 “Brownists,” 126 Buckinghamshire, 242, 243 Buckinghamshire Upperside Meeting, 65–­66, 68, 70 Budd, Thomas, 107, 201 Bugg, Francis, 213, 214, 291 De Christiana Libertate, 213 Quakerism Withering, 275 Bunyan, John, 137 Burial in Woollen Acts, 85 Burlington and Rancocas (Province of West New Jersey) Friends, 101 Burnet, George, 34 Burnyeat, John, 115 Burrough, Edward, 11, 16, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 137, 214 on conduct of meetings, 58 death of, 23 Declaration of the Present Sufferings . . . , 271 in Ireland, 36–­37 Burton, Philip, 183

Bushel, Edward, 270 business, 5–­6, 78, 90, 238–­62, 295 and Atlantic wars, 306–­8 Bristol as center for, 254–­55, 256, 261, 302 London as center for, 247–­50, 261, 302 meetings as source of assistance for, 246–­47 and oath requirement, 247, 248, 251 sanctions affecting, 239, 247 social relationships and, 261–­62 transatlantic, 101, 239, 248, 254, 260–­61, 302, 306–­8 truth and honesty in, 13, 239, 245–­46, 260, 295 business meetings, 24, 27, 55, 114 Cabal ministry, 172 Cadbury, Henry, 225 Calvin, John, 136 Cambridge Platonists, 131, 162 Cambridgeshire, 242 Caribbean, 4, 38–­42, 53, 102–­14, 221, 239. See also Barbados; Jamaica Quakers as indentured servants to plantations in, 41–­42 Carmarthenshire, Wales, 32 Carteret, Sir George, 116, 117 Catholics/Catholic Church, 38, 51, 52, 130, 183, 184, 185, 192, 265, 270. See also Exclusion Crisis; Popish Plot Caton, William, 46 death of, 50 and Derricks (Derrix) sisters, 49 in Germany, 47, 50, 51 in Holland, 46, 47, 48–­49, 50 Moderate Enquirer Resolved, The, 18 in Scotland, 33, 34 Channel Islands, 32, 33 Chapman, Thomas, 42 Charles II, king of England, 2, 21–­22, 28, 121, 172, 176, 268–­69 Cabal ministry, 172 death of, 181 Declaration of Breda (1660), 267–­68 Declaration of Indulgence (1672), 82, 140, 142, 175, 270 dissolution of Parliament (1681), 178, 179

INDEX

333

334

Charles Louis, Elector Palatine, 50 Cheevers, Sarah, 52, 98 Chesapeake Bay, 42 Cheshire, 242, 243 children baptism of, 79, 143, 228 innocence of, 208 provision for, after death, 84 transmission of Quaker heritage to, 227–­28, 229–­35 in workhouses, 91–­92 Children of Light, 9, 154 Christ, 137, 163, 165–­66 historical, 135, 200–­201, 205, 206, 209, 211, 212, 214, 297 humanity of, 148, 150, 153–­54, 155, 157–­58, 162, 200 light of, 131, 132, 134, 152, 153, 154, 156, 209, 212 sacrifice on the cross, 148, 149, 161 second coming, 149 unity with, 12, 14, 149, 164, 168 within, 148, 152, 200 Christison, Elizabeth, 84 Christmas Day, shop opening on, 129 Church of England, 23, 125, 192. See also Anglicans/Anglican Church Clapham, Jonathan, Guide to the True Religion, 157 Clarendon, Edward Hyde, Earl of, 172 Clarendon Code, 271 Claridge, Richard, 297, 298–­99 Clark, Thomas, 92 Claypoole, James, 248–­49 Clayton, Ann, 44 Clerkenwell (London) Friends, 91 Coalbrookdale ironworks, 255, 257, 258, 259 Coale, Josiah, 41, 42–­43, 44, 45 Codrington, Christopher, 104, 106 coffeehouses, 248 coffins, 85 Colchester, England, 215, 242, 243, 244 Cole, Alan, 239–­40, 244 Cole, William, 127 Coleman, Nathaniel, 70 Collegiants, 46, 48 commerce. See business Committee of Ten, 60

INDEX

communion, 149, 275, 277 comprehension, 176, 187 Congregationalists, 124, 125–­36, 201 Connecticut, 120 conscience, 131, 172 freedom of, 142, 146, 173, 184 Constantinople, 52 Conventicle Acts, 23, 25, 45, 82, 83, 143, 174, 269, 270, 271, 273, 275 convincement, 87, 215, 218, 224, 234 Conway, Anne, 162, 163, 164 Cooper, Thomas, 250, 251 Copeland, John, 42 Corbet, Thomas, 264–­65, 273 Cork, Ireland, 36 Corporation Act (1661), 187, 256, 268, 271, 277 courtship, regulation of, 77, 79–­81 Cowart, Elizabeth, 51 Cowdry, Cordelia, 273–­74 Cox, Daniel, 198 Cox, Elizabeth, 47 Crisp, Stephen, 19, 86–­87, 98, 102 Crisp, Thomas, 92, 93 Babel’s Builders Unmasking Themselves, 113 Cromwell, Henry, 37 Cromwell, Oliver, 21, 34, 36, 214 Crook, John, 15, 137 Currer, Henry, 93 Curtis, Thomas and Ann, 21, 72, 73, 254 Danby, Thomas Osborne, Earl of, 176 dancing, 94 Danson, Thomas, 133, 134, 135, 136 Quakers Folly . . . , The, 133 Synopsis of Quakerism, A, 134–­35 Danzig, 51, 99 Darby, Abraham, I, 89, 238, 252, 254, 255–­58, 259, 260, 261 Darby, Abraham, II, 259 Darby, Joan, 259 Darby, John, 256, 259 Darby, Mary, 259 Davies, Adrian, 243–­44 Davies, Richard, 264–­65 death, preparation for, 77, 79, 83–­86, 234 bequests, 84 coffins, 85

funeral arrangements, 77, 79, 84–­85 gravestones, 85–­86 shrouds, 85 debates, Baptist-­Quaker, 140–­45 Declaration of Breda (1660), 267–­68 Declaration of Indulgence (1672), 82, 140, 142, 175, 270 Declaration of Indulgence (1687), 183, 184, 185, 186, 275 de Heretico Comburendo, 264–­65, 270 De Krey, Gary S., 172 Delaware, 122, 199 Denmark, 48 Derbyshire Friends, 80, 242 Derricks (Derrix), Annekin, 49 Derricks (Derrix), Niesje, 49 Descartes, Ren‚, 162 Devizes, Wiltshire, 139–­40 Devonshire House, London headquarters, 59 Baptist-­Quaker debate (1672), 140 Devonshire Quarterly Meeting, 65 Dewsbury, William, 137 Diggers, 13 discipline, 17–­18, 57, 76–­78 “Epistle from the Elders of Balby,” 17–­18, 245 “Testimony of the (Eleven) Brethren, The,” 27–­28, 55, 60, 77 disownment, 78, 97 George Keith, 211 for marrying non-­Quakers, 79, 81 disputes. See also debates, Baptist-­Quaker between Friends, 66–­67, 78, 92–­94, 145 Dixon, William, 84 Docwra, Anne, 86 Dole, Dorcas, 86 Dolobran, Wales, 32, 252–­53, 258 Dover Baptists, 139 Drakes, John, 105 Dunn, Mary M., 6 Dunn, Richard, 6 Dutch Reformed Consistory, 47 Dutton, Richard, 109 Dyer, Mary, 43 East Midlands, England, 8 East New Jersey, 116, 117–­18, 219

Eccles, Solomon, 93, 94–­95, 105, 171 economics, 221–­22, 223–­24 Edinburgh, Scotland, 34 Edmundson, William, 35, 36, 104, 105, 112, 115, 196, 222 education, 87, 88–­89, 231–­33 Edwards, R., 129 elections/electioneering, 177–­78, 179, 189 Elizabeth of the Palatinate, 99 Ellwood, Thomas, 20, 24–­25, 54, 59, 70, 71–­72, 141, 168, 180, 193, 211 Elson, Mary, 86 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 226 emigration, transatlantic, 100, 102, 123, 220–­21 employment, 89 endogamy, 79–­80, 136 Endy, Melvin B., 6 “Epistle from the Elders of Balby,” 17, 245 equality, belief in, 13, 29 Essex Friends, 90, 242, 243–­44 evangelicalism, 296, 297–­99 Evans, Katherine, 33, 52, 98 Exclusion Crisis (1678–­81), 82, 145, 176–­79 excommunication, 34, 38 factionalism, 93–­94 Faldo, John, 134, 135, 136 Falmouth and Liskeard (Cornwall) Meeting, 91 family transmission of Quaker heritage, 227–­28 Farmer, Ralph, 149 Farnworth, Richard, 10, 18, 25, 27, 77 and “Epistle from the Elders of Balby,” 17 pamphlets, 10 and theological debate, 16 Feake, Henry, 110 Fell, Henry, 40, 41, 42, 108, 113 Fell, Lydia, 113 Fell, Margaret, 6, 11, 17, 21, 22, 23, 29, 32, 37, 54, 68, 108, 150, 174–­75, 227, 269 death of, 234 epistle on women’s meetings, 66 and Fox marriage, 63, 64 imprisonment of, 23, 63, 64, 174, 197 and Kendal Fund, 15

INDEX

335

336

Fell, Margaret (continued) pamphlets, 19 “Peace Testimony,” 28 in Yorkshire, 66 Fell, Thomas, 11 Fenwick, John, 116–­17 Fetherston, Cuthbert, 84 Fetherston, Elioner, 84 Fifth Monarchists, 13, 20, 22 Finch, Heneage, 175 Fisher, Abigail, 229–­30 Fisher, Martha, 174 Fisher, Mary, 42, 52, 98 Fisher, Samuel, 16, 25, 133–­34 Rusticus ad Academicos . . . , 133 Fitzwater, Thomas, 203, 204, 205, 206 Five Mile Act (1665), 172, 269, 271, 272 Fletcher, Benjamin, 207 Fletcher, Elizabeth, 36 Ford, Richard, 93, 260, 305 Forde, Helen, 80, 242 Forster, Mary, 86 Fox, George, 2, 6, 8, 10, 11, 13, 14, 19, 23, 28, 31, 92, 93, 150, 174–­75, 214, 218 in American colonies, 115 on Baptists, 136 Barbados visit, 4, 64, 103–­4, 105, 106–­7, 111–­12, 222 blasphemy charges, 9 and Bunyan, 137 on Catholic practices, 52 on Christ on earth, 153–­54 conversion experience, 9 death of, 2, 213, 226, 234 and Fell, Margaret, marriage to, 63, 64 on funeral arrangements, 85 in Germany and Holland, 99, 100, 168 ill health, 21 imprisonments, 9, 17, 22, 23, 27, 68, 77, 83 as inspirational leader, 54 in Jamaica, 112 and “light,” 131–­32, 154, 155 and Nayler relationship, 17 and organization of meetings, 55–­56, 57–­58, 59, 75 pastoral writings, 87 and Penn relationship, 157 on poor relief, 90

INDEX

and Quaker discipline, 18, 28 in Scotland, 34 and slavery, 105, 106–­8, 110, 111–­12 theology of, 152–­55 on tithe payments, 129 on the Trinity, 154–­55 on truth and honesty in business, 245 in Wales, 32 Fox, George, the Younger, 150 Fox, George, writings, 18, 149, 152–­55, 217, 235–­36 Book of Examples, 168 Book of Miracles, 168 Catechism for Children, 149 Declaration from the Harmless and Innocent People of God called Quakers, 22–­23 epistles, 194 Epistle to the Governor of Barbados, 153 Gospel Family-­Order, 107 Great Mystery of the Great Whore Unfolded, The, 18, 132 Instructions for Right Spelling and Plain Directions for Reading . . . , 231–­32 Journal, 193–­94, 220 Saul’s Errand to Damascus, 127 Some Principles of the Elect People of God Called Quakers, 152–­53 Something in Answer to Such as Falsely Say the Quakers are No Christians, 154–­55 To All Who Would Know the Way to the Kingdom, 152 France, war with, 192, 193 Frankfort Company, 100 Freame, John, 238, 249–­51, 261, 295 Freeth, Jonathan, 256 Fretwell, Ralph, 88–­89, 93, 108, 109, 110 Frost, Jerry, 107–­8, 110, 302 Fuller, Capt. William, 44 funds, women’s meetings, 74 funeral arrangements, 77, 79, 84–­85 Furly, Benjamin, 46, 100 Furly, John, 99 Galloway, Ambros(e), 282, 283 gambling, 95–­96

Gargill, Ann, 47 “gathered” meetings, 31 Gawith, Richard, 88 Gee, Joshua, 279, 280 Geiter, Mary K., 121, 178 General Baptists, 136, 144, 145 George I, king of Great Britain, 278–­79 Germantown, Pennsylvania, 100, 202 Germany, 47, 48, 50–­51, 98, 99, 100, 168 Gibson, William, 278 Glasgow, Scotland, 192 Godfrey, Sir Edmund Berry, 176 Godolphin, Sidney, 121 Goldney (Gouldney), Thomas, I, 255, 261 Goldney (Gouldney), Thomas, II, 255, 257 Goldney (Gouldney), Thomas, III, 260 Gould, Thomas, 249, 250–­51 Goulding, Henry, 310 Gragg, Larry, 236, 305 Graham, Richard, 183 Grantham, Thomas, Christianismus Primitivus, 146 gravestones, 85–­86 Gray, George, 110 Great Book of Sufferings, 32–­33, 271 Great Ejection (1662), 23 Great Fire of London (1666), 25, 142, 219 Greaves, Richard, 238 Grimes, William, 94 Grocers’ Company, 249 Gurney family, 251–­52 Haddon, John, 250, 251 Hall, John, 34 Halsey, Jacob, 284 Hamburg, Germany, 50 Hanbury, John, 307–­8 Hannah, Leslie, 238 Hannay, Robert, 211 Hardwicke’s Marriage Act (1753), 274 Harris, Elizabeth, 42, 44–­45, 51 Harris, Tim, 189 Harrison, James, 93 hats controversy over wearing during prayer, 26, 54, 62 refusal to remove before supposed superiors, 13

Haworth, William, 135 Haydock, Roger, 275 Hayes, Alice, 310–­11 Head, Peter, 40 Hearth Tax returns, 241 Heathcote, Martha, 310 Hendrickz, Peter, 50, 51 Herbert, Amanda, 279–­80 Hicks, Thomas, 139, 140, 141, 142 Dialogue between a Christian and a Quaker . . . , A, 140, 141, 142 Quakers Appeal Answer’d . . . , The, 146 Higginson, Francis, 127 High Wycombe Meeting, 70–­71 Hill, Christopher, 7 Hilton gang, 180, 183 Hobbs, Richard, 139 Hodgson, Robert, 44 Holland, 46–­50, 98, 99–­100, 168 Holland, Edward, 284–­85 Hollister, Dennis, 137–­38 Holme, Thomas, 32 Holmes, Elizabeth, 36 honesty in business, 13, 239, 245–­46, 260, 295 Hookes, Ellis, 19, 24, 25, 60, 62, 273, 274 Hooton, Elizabeth, 8, 9, 222 Hooton, Oliver, 84 Horle, Craig W., 5 Horsham Men’s Monthly Meeting, 69 Houlder, Christopher, 42 Howard, Luke, 139 Howgill, Francis, 10, 16, 19, 27, 34, 126, 127, 214 imprisonment of, 23 in Ireland, 36, 37 Woe against the Magistrates, Priests and People of Kendal . . . , A, 128 Hubberthorne, Richard, 11, 23, 30, 133 Hull, John, 104 Hurwich, Judith, 241, 244 Husband, John, 32 hymn singing, 145 Iles, William, 284–­85 incarnation, 135, 296, 297 Independents, 20, 23, 31, 54, 55, 125. See also Congregationalists

INDEX

337

338

industry, Quaker involvement in. See business informers, 82, 174, 180 Ingle, H. Larry, 6, 234 Inquisition, 52 “insider” versus “outsider” history, 6–­7 Interregnum, 31, 34, 37, 83, 137, 263 Ireland, 14, 16, 35–­38, 193, 196, 273, 302–­3, 311 Islam, 52 Isle of Man, 32–­33 Italy, 51–­52 Jackson, Thomas, 126 Jacob, Elizabeth, 230–­31, 311 Jacobites, 188, 305 Jaffrey, Andrew, 35 Jamaica, 38, 41, 42, 102, 112, 221 James, John, 110 James, Ralph, 139 James II (duke of York), 175–­76, 181–­90, 192, 198, 199, 268 conversion to Catholicism, 175–­76 Declaration of Indulgence (1687), 183, 184, 185, 186, 275 and Exclusion Crisis, 82, 145, 176–­79 legal indulgence, 275–­76 Penn and, 183–­86, 187, 190, 198 James VI and I, 173–­74 Jenner, Obedience, 81 Jennings, Samuel, 201, 202, 204, 207, 210, 211 Jersey, 33 Jerusalem, 52 Jews, 48, 51, 157, 274 John ap John, 30 John Sobieski, king of Poland, 99 Jones, Rufus, 1, 5, 44–­45, 219, 287 Jones, Sarah, 79–­80 Judkins, Obadiah, 81 Kabbala, 163, 164, 165, 166 Keach, Benjamin, The Grand Impostor Discovered . . . , 146 Keith, George, 6, 28, 35, 141, 144, 168, 169, 191, 219, 296. See also Keithian controversy as Anglican priest, 211, 224

INDEX

anti-­Quaker writing, 291 disowned by London Yearly Meeting, 211 in Germany and Holland, 99, 100 “Gospel Order and Discipline Improved,” 202 Immediate Revelation, 160–­61, 164 Kabbala, influence on, 164 on private Bible reading, 87–­88 on slavery, 236 theology of, 160–­61, 163–­64 Keithian controversy, 200–­212, 224–­25 Kelsall, John, Jr., 80, 89, 123, 254, 259 Kelsall, John, Sr., Testimony against Gaming, Musick, Dancing, Singing, Swearing, 95 Kendal, England, 128 Kendal Fund, 15 Kendal Monthly meeting, women’s meeting, 66 Kiffin, William, 141 Kingdom of God, 12, 14, 20, 25, 150 King Philip’s War (1675–­76), 119–­20, 304 Kinsale, Ireland, 36 Kirkbridge, Joseph, 204 Kirkby Stephen, Westmorland, 127, 128 Knollys, Hanserd, 141 Knorr von Rosenroth, Christian, 164 Kriegsheim, 50 Kuyper, Frans, 100 Labadists, 99 Lammas Monthly Meeting, 309 Lamplugh, Thomas, 181 Lancashire Quakers, 292–­93, 300 Lancashire Quarterly Meeting, 57 Lancaster, England, 196, 197, 214, 241–­42 land, bequests of, 102–­3 Landes, Jordan, 238 Larkham, George, 126, 128 Latey, Gilbert, 181, 186, 188–­89 law, Quakers and, 5, 15, 25, 83, 263–­86. See also individual laws and accession of William of Orange, 277–­78 early eighteenth-­century legislation, 278–­80 Friends’ legal petitions, 272–­75

James II and legal indulgence, 275–­76 Old Bailey trials, 269–­70, 280–­85 pre-­seventeenth-­century legislation, 264–­67 seventeenth-­century legislation, 267–­78 tithe litigation, 276–­77 Lawrie, Gawen, 117 Laws in Wales Acts, 30 Lawson, John, 30 lay preaching, 136 Lear, Alice, 92 Leddra, William, 43 Leeds, Daniel, 211–­12 Leeward Islands, 112 Leith, Scotland, 34 Le Marinel, Thomas, 33 Lenni Lenape, 199 Leslie, Charles, 213, 214 Snake in the Grass, The, 214 Levens, Roger, 284 light, 11–­12, 17, 26, 135, 148, 160, 162, 164, 288, 299 challenges regarding meaning of, 131–­33, 149 children of, 9, 154 of Christ, 131, 132, 134, 152, 153, 154, 156, 209 within, 14, 16, 132, 134, 162, 165, 200, 205, 206, 208, 214, 218, 289 Lincolnshire, 139 literacy, 87, 231 livery companies, 248, 249 Lloyd, Charles, III, 252, 253, 258 Lloyd, Charles, IV, 253 Lloyd, Sampson, 253 Lloyd, Thomas, 198, 204, 207, 208, 209, 265 Lloyd family of Dolobran, 32, 238, 252–­53, 256, 259 Lloyds Bank, 253 Llwyd, Morgan, 31 Locke, John, 219 Loddington, William, 74 Lodowick, Christian, 201 London, 10, 16–­17 Baptist-­Quaker debates (1672–­74), 140–­45 business development, 247–­50, 261, 302

as center of Quaker organization, 19, 21, 28, 59 city livery companies, 248, 249 Devonshire House headquarters, 59 Friends House, Euston Road, 59 Great Fire (1666), 25, 142, 219 plague (1665), 25 London Lead Company, 250–­51 London meetings, 15, 75 Bull and Mouth Inn center, 59 business meetings, 24 men’s meetings, 55, 60 monthly, 55 Six Weeks Meeting, 59, 72–­73, 75 women’s meetings, 55, 63 London Quakers Property Trust, 75 London Yearly Meeting, 191, 195–­96, 215, 274, 288, 291–­92, 309 on education, 232 epistle on leading a quiet life (1692), 226 and Keithian controversy, 209, 210–­11 and peace testimony, 307 and tithes, 299 warning against worldliness, 295 Lord’s Supper, 135 Louis XIV, king of France, 176 Lower, Thomas, 194 Lucas, Nicholas, 117 Lucy, Bishop, 88 Ludgater, Robert, The Presbyter’s Antidote Choaking Himself . . . , 134 Luffe, John, 52 Lynch, Sir Thomas, 112 Magdalen College, Oxford, 185–­86 Manning, David, 267 Marche, Richard, 175 marriage, 120, 215 endogamous, 79–­80, 136 legality of, 273–­74 regulation of, 57, 63–­65, 66, 68, 69, 71, 77, 79–­81, 104, 113 Marriage Act (1753), 274 Martha’s Vineyard, 43 Maryland, 42, 43, 44, 101, 115, 199, 209, 222 Mary of Modena, 186 Massachusetts, 42, 43, 44, 96, 101, 119, 120, 201

INDEX

339

340

Mather, Cotton, 201 Mead, William, 143, 194, 269–­70, 274, 283 Meeting for Sufferings, 61–­62, 75, 83, 188, 192, 193, 214, 247, 263, 291, 292 and affirmation controversy, 195, 196 legal advice and support, 265, 272–­74 meeting houses, 222–­23 registration of, 191–­92 meetings, 15, 19, 77. See also London meetings; Second Day’s Morning Meeting; women’s meetings business, 24, 27, 55, 114 as business support, 246–­47 conduct of, 58 consideration of proposed marriages at, 57, 63–­65, 66, 68, 69, 71 county, 19, 56 Fox and organization of, 55–­56, 57–­58, 59, 75 “gathered,” 31 general, 56 joint men’s and women’s, 72–­74 local, 24 monthly, 15, 55, 56, 75, 99 national, 59–­60 quarterly, 56, 57, 61, 62, 75, 99 regional, 15, 77 silent, 25 Six Weeks Meeting, 62 “threshing,” 31 time of, 26 yearly, 59–­60, 75, 99 memory, and Quaker writing, 217–­18 Mennonites, 46, 47, 99, 212 Meredith, Reese, 89 Meredith, Titas, 129 Merlan, Johanna Eleonora von, 99 metalworking industry, 250–51, 252–54, 255–­58, 259–­60 Middle East, 222 Militia Act (1661), 109, 278 Militia Act (1690), 278 militias, 103, 112–­13, 120, 193, 305 Miller, John, 268 Miller, William, 34, 254 Milner, Samuel, 253 Monck, George, 21, 33, 34 Monmouth Rebellion (1685), 181–­82

INDEX

Montagu, Ralph, 176 Moore, Rosemary, 2 More, Henry, 131, 162, 163, 164 Morgan, Nicholas, 195, 197, 214, 276–­77, 300–­301 Morrice, Roger, 187 Morris, Lewis, 104, 112 Morris, William, 36 Mucklow, William, 62–­63 Muggleswick Plot (1662), 268 music, 94–­95 Muslims, 52 Myers, Joanna, 310–­11 Nailsworth (Gloucestershire) Meeting, 90–­91 nakedness, 128, 171 Narragansett, 115 Native Americans, 42–­43, 44, 119, 199, 201, 208 Nayler, James, 10, 18, 26, 28, 54, 72, 126, 127, 149, 152 imprisonment, 17 and Martha Simmons disturbance, 17 and theological debate, 16 trial for blasphemy, 263, 267 Ndi, Bill, 217 Neale, William, 84 Negro Act (1678), 109 Nevis, 38, 42, 102, 112–­13, 118–­19 New England, 42, 44, 119, 304 New England Yearly Meeting, 115 Newgate Calendar, 283–­84 Newgate Prison, 282–­83 New Jersey, 116. See also East New Jersey; West New Jersey New Netherlands, 43 New York, 120, 209 Norfolk, 242, 243, 300, 305, 306 Norfolk Quarterly Meeting, 309 Norris, John, 131 North Carolina, 219, 221, 225 Northcott, Thomas, 216–­17 northern Europe, 46–­51, 98–­100. See also Germany; Holland Northern Plot (1663), 22, 23, 118 Northumberland (England) Friends, 85 Norton, Katherine, 113

Norwich, England, 214–­15, 242, 243 business development, 251–­52 Nottinghamshire, 8 oaths, 2, 13, 23, 109, 130, 136, 191, 192, 194–­96, 266, 269, 272, 283, 301 business and taking of, 247, 248, 251 Occasional Conformity Act (1711), 278, 279 Oistine, Edward, 102–­3 Olive, Thomas, 118 ordination, 125 original sin, 208, 296 Ormond, Duke of, 38 Osborne, William, 33 Owen, John, 125, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134 Owstwick, Yorkshire, 69 Oxfordshire Quarterly Meeting, 265 pacifism, 14, 102, 116, 118–­19, 120, 171, 182, 193. See also peace testimony pamphlets, 10, 21 apocalyptic language, 25 moderation of tone, 14, 18 monitoring and editing, 60 pamphlet wars, 10, 120, 155 social messages, 12–­13 women authored, 18–­19, 21, 86 parish ministry Baptist and Congregationalist attitude to, 124–­25 Quaker attitude to, 12, 31, 149 Parke, James, 222, 228–­29, 233, 234 Parker, Alexander, 77, 92 Parliament(s) elections to, 177–­78, 179, 189 and Exclusion Crisis, 176–­79 monitoring and lobbying of, 195, 291–­92 Particular Baptists, 136, 144, 145 pastoral epistles, 86–­87 Pawtuxet, 115 Payton, Henry, 253 Peace of Nijmegen (1678), 179 peace testimony, 4, 34, 299, 304–­8. See also pacifism Pearcy, Benomi, 108 Pearson, Ben, 105 Penington, Isaac, 20, 27, 61, 73, 151–­52, 169

Penington, Mary, 20, 69, 70, 74, 87 Penn, Admiral Sir William, 61 Penn, William, 2, 6, 28, 60, 62–­63, 116, 117, 143, 164, 212, 214, 219–­20, 227, 274 and affirmation controversy, 195, 196 and Baptist-­Quaker debates, 138, 141, 144–­45 in continental Europe, 98, 99, 100 debating skills, 159 early life and education, 61 and Fox relationship, 157 and Jacobites, 188 and James II’s regime, 182–­86, 187, 190, 198 on “light,” 160 Old Bailey trial (1670), 269–­70, 283 Pennsylvania charter, 121–­23, 178–­79 and politics, 173–­74, 177–­79, 183–­86, 190 propitiation, acceptance of, 160 and Second Day’s Morning Meeting, 167 suspected of treason, 198, 213 theology of, 157–­60, 168 and tolerationist cause, 184–­85 in Tower of London, 158 on the Trinity, 157, 158 and Wilkinson-­Story separation, 68 Penn, William, writings, 152 Christian-­Quaker, The, 155, 159 England’s Great Interest, 177, 178 Essay on the Peace of Europe, An, 213 Fruits of Solitude, 213 Great Case of Liberty of Conscience, The, 173 Guide Mistaken, The, 157 Innocency with Her Open face Presented, 158 Key Opening the Way, 213 No Cross, No Crown, 87, 99 “Rise and Progress of the People Called Quakers,” 194 Sandy Foundation Shaken, The, 158, 159 Treatise of Oaths, 272 Pennsylvania, 100, 121–­23, 178–­79, 191, 197–­200, 221, 222, 223, 233 and Keithian controversy, 200–­212, 224–­25

INDEX

341

342

Pennyman, John, 62, 105 Pepys, Samuel, 171 perfection, 12, 149, 197, 235, 288–­89 Perrot, John, 26–­27, 52, 54, 62, 72, 92, 299 persecution, 23–­24, 32–­33, 34, 37, 38, 53, 77, 120, 172, 173, 179–­80, 192. See also law, Quakers and; sufferings in American colonies, 43–­44 appeals to authority concerning, 271–­74 in Barbados, 108–­9 meetings to consider, 61–­62 Restoration era, 21–­22, 32, 82 strategies for dealing with, 24–­25, 82–­83, 174, 180, 189 Philadelphia, 224 Philadelphia Friends, 201, 202, 203–­4 Philadelphia Monthly Meeting, 208 Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, 208, 210 philanthropy, 90–­91 Phillip, Henry, 115 Phillips, Walter, 278 Picton, James, 88 Pietists, 212 plague, London (1665), 25 Plaice, Thomas, 182 plainness, 96 Plant, Thomas, 141 Plymouth, Massachusetts, 42 Plymouth Colony, 43, 119 Poland, 48, 51 politics/political action, 7, 290–­93 electioneering, 177–­78, 179, 189 and First Restoration Crisis (1667–­73), 172–­76 and James II’s reign and Revolution of 1688–­89, 181–­90 Pennsylvania, 204, 206–­8 personal interaction with key political actors, 174–­75 Popish Plot and Exclusion Crisis, 176–­79 print and, 172–­75 Poll Act (1691), 277 poor relief, 13, 57, 90–­92 Popish Plot, 82, 176–­77 Powell, Thomas, 135 Powell, Vavasor, 30

INDEX

Prankard, Graffin, 257, 258 Presbyterians, 23, 54, 124, 125–­36, 155, 192, 199, 279–­80 Price, Jacob, 306, 307, 308 privateering, 306–­8 property rights, 13 propitiation, 160 psalm singing, 135 publications. See also pamphlets; works listed under individuals distribution of, 193 and political action, 172–­74 vetting of, 60, 145, 167, 193, 291 women’s, 18–­19, 21, 86, 194 publishers, Quaker, reprints of earlier works, 235–­36 Puritans, 43, 119, 120 Pusey, Caleb, 205, 210, 211–­12 Quaker Act (1662), 23, 25, 83, 268, 269, 272 Quaker Lead Company, 251, 260 Quaker organization, 54–­55. See also discipline; meetings London as center of, 19, 21, 28 Quakers Ballad, The, 144 quaking, 8, 9, 127, 150 Quietism, 287, 288, 289–­99, 311 Raistrick, Arthur, 5, 238 Randal, Thomas, 284 Ransome, Richard, 309 rational Quakerism, 296–­97 Rawlinson, William, 258 Reading Monthly Meeting, 72, 73–­74 Reay, Barry, 242–­43, 244, 300 recusancy, 33, 265–­66 Recusancy Act (1581), 265–­66 Redford, Elizabeth, 193 registration of meeting houses, 191–­92 Reigate and Dorking Monthly Meeting, 73 reincarnation, 163, 164 Restoration, 2, 21–­22, 28, 32, 61, 80, 82 and Quaker modes of political action, 172–­76 resurrection, 200, 201, 206, 209, 211, 214, 297 revelation, 161, 162, 289, 297, 299 Revolution of 1688, 182, 186–­87

Rhode Island, 44, 101, 119, 201, 209, 306 Quaker government, 115–­16 Rich, Robert, Hidden Things Brought to Light, 72 Richards, Thomas, 83–­84 Rigge, Ambrose, 227 Rijnsburger Collegiants, 46 Roberts, Gerrard, 44, 59 Robinson, Peter, 284 Robinson, William, 43 Rochester, Laurence Hyde, Earl of, 121, 193 Rofe, George, 50 Rogers, William, 92, 93, 248–­49, 255 Christian Quaker, The, 71 Rome, 52 Rose, George, 102 Rotterdam, Holland, 48, 99, 100 Rous, John, 42, 92, 93, 104, 105, 108, 113–­14 slave ownership, 110 Rous, Thomas, 39, 40, 110 Rowntree Histories, 1, 2 Royal Mint, 251 Rye, Thomas, 279 Rye House Plot (1683), 82, 179 Sacheverell, Henry, 278 sacraments, 135–­36, 149, 154 Salem, Massachusetts, 42, 44, 96 Salmon, Joseph, 40 salvation, 137, 148, 154, 156, 161, 200, 206, 296 Sancroft, William, archbishop of Canterbury, 186 Sarjant, Mary, 256 Savage, Sarah, 279–­80 Scandrett, Stephen, 134, 135, 136 Antidote against Quakerism, 134 Schism Act (1714), 278, 279 schools, 231, 232–­33, 308 Scotland, 33–­35, 192, 196, 303 scripture, 9, 87–­88, 132, 133, 134, 137, 154, 156, 162, 167, 216, 228 Searle, Daniel, 41 Seaton, John, 34 Second Day’s Morning Meeting, 60, 62, 68, 72, 75, 167, 193, 247, 291 Sedgemoor, battle of (1885), 181 seed, 131, 152, 165, 166

Seekers, 9, 20 “separated” churches, 9, 10 Sergeant, Joseph, 259 sermons, length of, 135 Seven Bishops, trial of (1688), 186–­87 Seven Year’s War (1754–­63), 305 Sharp, Anthony, 273 Shewen, William, Counsel to the Christian Traveller, 87 Shoemaker, Robert, 281 shop owners, Christmas Day opening, 129 Shrewsbury Friends, 258, 259 Sidney, Algernon, 178, 179 silent meetings, 25 Simcock, Jean, 66 Simmons, Martha, 16, 17 Simmons, Thomas, 16 sin, 131, 208, 296 slaves/slavery, 103, 104–­5, 106–­8, 109–­12, 121, 153, 202, 222, 299, 311 bequests of slaves, 110 condemnation of slavery, 202, 207, 212, 236 as disownable offense, 236 Quaker ownership of slaves, 110, 222, 236–­37 Smith, Nigel, 103–­4 Smith, Stephen, “The Baptist Leaders’ Thresht,” 145 Smith, William, 19–­20, 27, 86, 151 social messages, 12–­13 social origins of Quakers, 239–­44 Society of Merchant Adventurers, 254 Socinians, 157–­58 Somerset, 242, 243 Somerset Quarterly Meeting, 57, 182 Southall, Samuel, 89 Southeby, William, 204 South Sea Bubble crisis (1720), 251, 295 Sowerby, Scott, 185 Sowle family, 235–­36 Specht, Neva, 233 Speed, Thomas, 254–­55 spirit, 132–­33 Spirit of the Hat, The (anonymous pamphlet), 62–­63 sports, 94, 95 Springett, Gulielma, 61

INDEX

343

344

Spufford, Margaret, 242 Stapleton, Edmond, 112–­13 Ste Croix, Michel de, 33 Stevens, Sylvia, 300, 305, 306, 309 Stevenson, Marmaduke, 43 Stillingfleet, Dr. Edward, 158 Stirredge, Elizabeth, 86 Stockdale, William, 202–­3, 204, 205, 206 Stoddard, Amor, 59 Story, Christopher, 233 Story, John, 66–­67, 68, 71, 145, 299 Story, Thomas, 305 Stringer, Hannah, 174 Stubbs, John, 33, 46, 51, 104, 105, 115 sufferings, 19, 57. See also Meeting for Sufferings; persecution literature of, 15, 32–­33, 271–­72 Sunderland, Robert Spencer, Earl of, 121, 183 Susquehanna Indians, 42, 44 Sutton, Richard, 110, 114 Swarthmoor Hall, 11, 19, 55, 66, 168 women’s meeting, 65 Swarthmore Manuscripts, 168 Swinton, John, 35 Symonds, Thomas, 245 Taylor, John, 40 Test Acts, 175, 185, 187, 270, 277 “Testimony of the (Eleven) Brethren, The,” 27–­28, 55, 60, 77 textile trade, 239, 242, 261 Thatcher, Humble, 48 theological thought and writing, 6, 16, 18. See also atonement; Christ; incarnation; Kingdom of God; light; salvation; sin; Trinity Keithian controversy, 200–­212, 224–­25 in lifetime of George Fox, 148–­69 Quietist, 287, 288, 289–­99, 311 Thomas, John, 256 thou, as form of address, 13 “threshing” meetings, 31 Thurloe, John, 34 Thurston, Thomas, 42, 45 tithes, 12, 15, 31, 33, 38, 45, 83, 109, 125, 129, 191, 192, 197, 299–­301 prosecution over, 265, 273, 276–­77, 301 Todd, John, 110

INDEX

toleration, 2, 34, 36, 61, 82, 97, 118, 172, 173, 174, 176, 177, 184–­85, 187, 189 Toleration Act (1689), 82, 97, 187, 188, 191, 195, 226, 263, 266, 275, 277 Tolles, Frederick B., 2–­3, 78, 238 Tombes, John, 134 Tomkins (Tompkins), John, 129 Tories, 177, 179–­81, 186, 189, 191, 192 Torrance, James, 34 Tory Reaction (1682–­85), 266 trade. See business transmigration of souls, 201, 210, 212 Travers, Rebecca, 108 Triennial Act (1694), 189 Triennial Parliaments Act (1664), 179 Trinity, 134–­35, 149, 153, 154–­55, 156, 157, 158, 192 truth and honesty in business, 13, 245–­46 use of term, 13 Underwood, Ted, 5 Unitarians, 157 Vale of White Horse Monthly Meeting, 73 Van Helmont, Francis Mercury, 163, 164–­65, 168 Two Hundred Queries Moderately Propounded . . . , 164 Vann, Richard, 240, 241, 242, 243, 244 Venice, 51 Venner, Thomas, 20, 22, 32 Vincent, Thomas, 135, 158 Foundation of God Standeth Sure . . . , The, 135 Virginia, 41, 44–­45, 115, 221, 293, 301 Vokins, Hopeful, 94 Vokins, Joan, 109, 217 Wade, Mary, 86 Wales, 30–­32, 252–­54, 303 Walvin, James, 238 Wampanoag, 119 Wardell, Robert, 277–­78 War of the Austrian Succession (1739–­48), 305, 307 War of the League of Augsburg (1688–­97), 306

War of the Spanish Succession (1702–­13), 305, 307 Warwickshire Friends, 241 Watson, George, 306 Watson, Samuel, A Mirrour to Distinguish the True Ministry for the False, 167 Weale, John, 92, 93 Weddle, Meredith, 304 West, Robert, 139, 142 Westmorland, England, 10, 66–­67, 68, 127 West New Jersey, 116, 117, 198, 199 Wheeler, Charles, 112, 113 Whigs, 177, 178, 179, 186, 189 White, Dorothy, 21, 27 Whitehead, Anne, 86 Whitehead, George, 5, 6, 11, 18, 25, 27, 28, 71, 77, 92, 150, 198, 214, 271–­72, 294, 310 on Christ and the light, 156 death of, 2, 308 debates with Presbyterians and Baptists, 133, 134, 138, 140, 141, 155 and informers, 183 and James II, 186 and Keithian controversy, 210, 211 as leader of Friends, 213 scripture, use of, 156 and Second Day’s Morning Meeting, 60, 167 theology of, 155–­57, 168, 297–­98 on the Trinity, 156 Whitehead, George, writings Brief Account of Some of the Late and Present Sufferings, A, 274–­75 Christian-­Quaker, The, 155–­56 Son of Perdition Revealed, The, 155 To the King and Both Houses of Parliament, 271 Whitehead, John, 170–­71, 181 Whitton, Katharine, 86

Wilkinson, Jane, 47 Wilkinson, John, 66–­67, 71, 299 Wilkinson-­Story separation, 66–­67, 145, 211 Willaw, Sarah, 285 William III (William of Orange), 183, 187, 193, 196, 277–­78 Williams, Roger, 115, 120 Willis, Daniel, 118 Wilson, Anne, 126 Wilson, George, 45 Wilson, Kathleen, 279 Wiltshire, England, 70, 139–­40 Wiltshire Quarterly Meeting, 93–­94 Windsor, Thomas, Lord Windsor, 41 Winthrop, Samuel, 112 Wolseley, Charles, 213 women, 3, 77, 97 women preachers, 47, 91, 98, 113 women’s meetings, 15, 19, 55, 63, 64–­66, 67, 68–­71, 74–­75 advice on an ordered life, 228 consideration of proposed marriages at, 64, 66, 68, 69, 71 dissension about, 66–­67, 69–­72, 113–­14 funds, 74 joint meetings with men, 72–­74 as support network, 91 women’s writing, 18–­19, 21, 86, 194 workhouses, 91–­92 Wrexham, Wales, 31–­32 Wright, Edward, 250–­51, 261 writings. See pamphlets; pastoral epistles; publications; women’s writing Yeamans, Isobel, 65 Yeamans, William, 254 Yorkshire, England, 9, 10, 66, 71 young people, transmission of Quaker heritage to, 227–­28, 229–­35

INDEX

345